Geography

​From Tarsus there have arisen, among the Stoics, Antipater and Archedemus and Nestor, and also two Athenodoruses, of whom the one called Cordylion lived with Marcus Cato and died in his house; the other, the son of Sandon, whom they also call Cananites from some village, was the teacher of Caesar and obtained great honor. Returning to his homeland when he was already an old man, he dissolved the established constitution, which was being badly administered by others and especially by Boethus, a bad poet and a bad citizen, who had gained power chiefly through demagoguery. Antony also had puffed him up at the beginning by accepting his epic poem written on the victory at Philippi, and still more so did the facility prevalent among the Tarsians for improvising endlessly on any given subject on the spot; indeed, having promised the Tarsians a gymnasiarchy, Antony appointed this man gymnasiarch and entrusted the expenses to him. But he was detected embezzling other things and especially the oil; and when convicted by his accusers before Antony, he tried to deprecate his anger, saying among other things: “Just as Homer praised Achilles and Agamemnon and Odysseus, so did I praise you; it is therefore not just that I should be brought under such slanders before you.” Whereupon the accuser, taking up the word, said: “But Homer did not steal the oil of Agamemnon, nor that of Achilles, whereas you did; therefore you shall pay the penalty.” However, having warded off the anger by some flatteries, he nevertheless continued plundering the city until the downfall of Antony. Having found the city in such a condition, Athenodorus for a time attempted to reform both him and his partisans by argument; but when they did not abstain from any insolence, he used the authority given to him by Caesar and banished them, condemning them to exile. And they at first wrote on his walls such lampoons as: “The deeds of young men, the counsels of the middle-aged, the farts of old men.” But when he, taking it as a joke, ordered them to write beside it: “And the thunders of old men,” someone, despising his leniency and having his bowels loose, bespattered the door and the wall of his house abundantly as he passed by at night. Athenodorus, accusing this faction in the assembly, said: “The disease of the city and its bad habit of body can be seen from many signs, and indeed from its excrements.” These, then, were the Stoic men; and Nestor of the Academy was a contemporary of ours, who was the teacher of Marcellus, the son of Caesar’s sister Octavia. He also presided over the state, succeeding Athenodorus, and continued to be honored both by the governors and in the city.

​Of the other philosophers, “whom I well might know and tell their names,” there were Plutiades and Diogenes, of those who travelled about and delivered lectures with natural talent; and Diogenes even used to pour forth poems, as if inspired, when a subject was proposed, for the most part tragedies. Of grammarians whose writings are extant, there are Artemidorus and Diodorus; and the best tragic poet among those numbered in the Pleiad was Dionysides. Rome is best able to show the multitude of philologists from this city, for it is full of Tarsians and Alexandrians. Such is Tarsus.