Geography

​Let the account concerning Phrygia be defined up to this point; and returning again to the Propontis and the coast adjacent to the Aesepus, we shall render the same order of our description. And the Troad is the first part of this coast, of which the legendary fame, although it is left in ruins and in desolation, nevertheless provides no ordinary amount of words to our writing. And for this, there is need of indulgence and entreaty, so that readers may not attribute the cause of the length to us rather than to those who vehemently desire the knowledge of glorious and ancient things. And there adds to the length also the multitude of Greeks and barbarians who colonized the country, and the historians who do not write the same things about the same matters, nor everything clearly; among whom Homer is in the first place, providing opportunity for conjecture about most things. But we must arbitrate both his statements and those of the others, having first sketched in outline the nature of the places.

​Indeed, the coast of the Propontis happens to extend from the territory of Cyzicus and the places around the Aesepus and Granicus up to Abydus and Sestus; and from Abydus to Lectum is the Troad, the region around Ilium, Tenedos, and Alexandria; over all these indeed lies Mount Ida, stretching down as far as Lectum; and from Lectum to the river Caicus and the place called Canae are the regions around Assus, Adramyttium, Atarneus, Pitane, and the Elaitic Gulf; alongside all of which lies the island of the Lesbians; then next the region around Cyme as far as the Hermus and Phocaea, which is the beginning of Ionia and the end of Aeolis. These being the layout of the places, the Poet implies that the Trojans ruled especially from the places around the Aesepus and the territory of what is now Cyzicene as far as the river Caicus, divided according to dynasties into eight parts, or even nine; and the multitude of the other auxiliaries is counted among the allies.

​And later writers do not state the same boundaries and use the names differently, assigning more divisions. And especially the colonies of the Greeks have given cause for discussion; less so the Ionian (for it is at a greater distance from the Troad), but that of the Aeolians entirely so; for it was scattered throughout the whole country from the territory of Cyzicus as far as the Caicus and took in still more, the region between the Caicus and the river Hermus. For indeed they say that the Aeolian colonization was older than the Ionian by four generations, and took up delays and longer times. For they say that Orestes began the expedition, but when he ended his life in Arcadia, his son Penthilus succeeded him and advanced as far as Thrace sixty years after the Trojan War, just at the time of the return of the Heracleidae to the Peloponnese; then Archelaus, his son, crossed the Aeolian expedition over into the present Cyzicene country around Dascylium; and Gras, his youngest son, having advanced as far as the river Granicus and being better equipped, crossed the greater part of the army over to Lesbos and occupied it; and Cleues the son of Dorus, and Malaus, they too being descendants of Agamemnon, gathered their army at the same time as Penthilus, but while the expedition of Penthilus anticipated them by crossing from Thrace into Asia, these men tarried a long time around Locris and Mount Phricium, and later, having crossed over, founded Cyme, which was called Phriconis after the Locrian mountain.