Geography

​As for the territory of the Volaterrani, it is washed by the sea, but their city-settlement is a high hill, steep on all sides, in a deep valley, flat at its summit, upon which the wall of the city is built. The ascent to it is fifteen stadia from the base, all of it steep and difficult. Here some of the Tyrrhenians and of those proscribed by Sulla gathered; and having filled four legions, they were besieged for a period of two years, and then withdrew from the place under a truce. Populonium is situated on a high cliff which breaks off into the sea and forms a peninsula; it also underwent a siege about the same times. The little town itself, indeed, is completely deserted except for the temples and a few dwellings, but the harbor-settlement is better inhabited, having a small harbor at the foot of the mountain and two ship-houses; and it seems to me that this is the only one of the ancient Tyrrhenian cities that was built upon the sea itself. The reason is the harborless character of the territory; wherefore the founders altogether avoided the sea or threw up defenses in front of it, so that it might not lie exposed as an easy booty to those who sailed against it. There is also a tunny-watchers’ station under the cliff. From the city, Sardinia is kept in view from afar and with difficulty, and closer is Kyrnos, which is about sixty stadia distant from Sardinia, and much more so than these Aethalia, which is nearer to the mainland, being about three hundred stadia distant, and is at the same distance from Kyrnos. This place is the best starting-point for the three islands mentioned. We ourselves saw these islands when we went up to Populonium, and also some abandoned mines in the territory. We saw too the people working the iron brought from Aethalia; for it cannot be smelted into a mass when melted in the island, but is carried straight from the mines to the mainland. This strange property indeed the island has, and also that the excavations which have been mined are filled up again in time, just as they say of the flat rocky shores in Rhodes, and the marble stone in Paros, and the salt in India, of which Cleitarchus speaks. Therefore, neither is Eratosthenes right when he says that neither Kyrnos nor Sardinia is visible from the mainland, nor Artemidorus when he says that both are in the open sea at a distance of one thousand two hundred stadia. For indeed, if to anyone else, to us at least they would not have failed to be visible to such an extent as they were clearly seen, and especially Kyrnos. And near Aethalia is a harbor called Argoüs, after the Argo, as they say. For Jason sailed there when seeking the dwelling of Circe, since Medea wished to see the goddess; and indeed they say that because the scrapings of oil and dirt which the Argonauts made became solidified, the multicolored pebbles on the shore still remain even now. Such myth-makings are proofs of what is said by us, that Homer did not invent everything himself, but hearing of many such things being talked about, he himself added great distances and displacements; and just as he cast Odysseus out into the ocean, in a similar way he also cast Jason, since a certain wandering occurred to this one and to that one, just as also to Menelaus. Concerning Aethalia, then, let this suffice.