Geography

​After Salganeus is Anthedon, a city having a harbor, the last of the Boeotian coast opposite Euboea, just as the poet also has said: ‘and Anthedon at the extremity.’ However, for one proceeding a little further, there are still two small towns of the Boeotians: Larymna, beside which the Cephisus empties, and still further beyond, Halae, homonymous with the Attic demes. Opposite this coast they say lies Aegae in Euboea, in which is the temple of Poseidon of Aegae; we have mentioned it also before. The passage across from Anthedon to Aegae is one hundred and twenty stadia, but from the other places much less; and the temple lies on a high mountain, and there was once also a city; and near these is also Orobiae. In the territory of Anthedon is Mount Messapium, named after Messapus, who went to Iapygia and called the country Messapia. And here indeed are also mythologized the stories concerning Glaucus of Anthedon, who they say was transformed into a sea monster.

​Near Anthedon is a sacred place of Boeotia, containing traces of a city, which is called Isus with the first syllable shortened. But some think they ought to write: ‘and sacred Isus and Anthedon at the extremity’ lengthening the first syllable poetically for the sake of the meter, instead of: ‘and sacred Nisa.’ For Nisa is nowhere to be seen in Boeotia, as Apollodorus says in his work ‘On Ships’ <...>, unless he called Nisa in this way; for there was <...> in Megarian territory colonized from there toward <Cithae>ron, but it has now disappeared. But some write: ‘and sacred Creusa,’ taking it to mean the present Creusa, the harbor-town of the Thespians situated in the Crisaean Gulf; others write: ‘and sacred Pharae.’ And this is one of the four villages (tetracomia) around Tanagra, which consists of Heleon, Harma, Mycalessus, and Pharae. And they also write this: ‘and sacred Nysa.’ Nysa is a village of Helicon. Such indeed is the coast opposite Euboea.

​The next plains in the interior are hollow, surrounded on all other sides by mountains, by the Attic mountains on the south, and by the Phocian mountains on the north; and from the west Mount Cithaeron falls obliquely a little above the Crisaean Sea, having its beginning continuous with the Megarian and Attic mountains, and then turning toward the plains, and ending near the territory of Thebes.

​Of these plains, some are flooded as rivers spread out into them, while other rivers flow into them and then find outlets; and some are dried up and cultivated in all kinds of ways because of their fertility. Since the earth deep down is hollow and full of caverns, violent earthquakes occurring frequently have blocked some of the passages and opened others, some up to the surface and others through underground channels. Consequently, it happens also to the waters, both of the lakes and of the rivers, that some of their streams are carried through underground channels, and others on the surface. And when the passages deep down are choked up, it happens that the lakes rise as far as the inhabited places, so that both cities and lands are swallowed up, but when the same or other passages are opened, they are uncovered again, and the same places are at one time navigated by boats and at another traversed on foot, and the same cities lie at one time on the lake and at another far from it.