Geography

​And by mentioning the Spercheius many times as a river of his own country, having its sources in Typhrestus, a Dryopian mountain as it was formerly called, and emptying near Thermopylae, between them and Lamia, the poet shows that both the places inside the Pass, as many as belong to the Maliac Gulf, and those outside, were under him. The Spercheius is about thirty stadia distant from Lamia, which lies above a certain plain stretching down to the Maliac Gulf. And that the Spercheius was his local river is clear both from his saying that he was growing his hair for it, and from Menesthius, one of his captains, being said to be the son of Spercheius and the sister of Achilles. And it is probable that all those under Achilles and Patroclus were called Myrmidons, who accompanied Peleus when he fled from Aegina. And all the Phthians were called Achaeans.

​Those who enumerate the settlements under the Phthiotic division that was under Achilles, beginning from the Malians, count rather many of them, and among them Phthiotic Thebes, Echinus, and Lamia, near which the Lamian War arose for the Macedonians and Antipater against the Athenians; in which war Leosthenes fell, the general of the Athenians, who had been a companion of King Alexander. And also [...], Erineus, Coroneia, homonymous with the Boeotian city, Meliteia, Thaumacoi, Proerna, Pharsalus, Eretria, homonymous with the Euboean city, and the Paracheloitae, these too being homonymous with the Aetolian ones; for here too there is an Achelous river near Lamia, along which the Paracheloitae dwell. And this country extended, towards the north, to the territory of the western Asclepiadae and to that of Eurypylus and Protesilaus, which incline towards the east; and towards the south, to Oetaea, which is divided into fourteen demes, and to Heracleia and Dryopis, which was once a tetrapolis just like Doris, and is considered the mother-land of the Dryopians in the Peloponnese. To Oetaea belong also Acyphas, Parasopia, Oeneiadae, and Anticyra, homonymous with the one among the Western Locrians. But I speak of these arrangements as not having always remained the same, but having changed in various ways; yet the most famous are especially worthy of mention.

​And concerning the Dolopians, the poet also sufficiently indicates that they are at the extremities of Phthia, and that both they and the Phthians were under the same ruler, Peleus; for he says, “I dwelt at the extremity of Phthia, ruling over the Dolopians,” Peleus having given it. And it is adjacent to Pindus and the territories around it, most of which are Thessalian. For because of the fame and the power of the Thessalians and the Macedonians, those of the Epirotes who lived closest to them became, some voluntarily and others involuntarily, parts of the Thessalians or the Macedonians; just as the Athamanes, Aethices, and Talares became parts of the Thessalians, and the Orestae, Pelagones, and Elimiotae of the Macedonians.

​And Pindus is a great mountain, [having] to the north the [territory] of the Macedonians, to the west the Perrhaebi (a migrant people), and to the south the Dolopians; and this latter belongs to Thessaly. And on Pindus itself dwelt the Talares, a Molossian tribe, a branch of those around Tomarus, and the Aethices, to whom the poet says the Centaurs were driven by Pirithous; and they are reported to have now disappeared. And this disappearance must be understood in two ways: either that the people vanished and the country was completely deserted, or that the ethnic name no longer exists, nor does their political organization continue as such. Whenever, therefore, the political organization that now remains is completely obscure, we do not consider either it or its changed name worthy of mention; but when it has a just cause for being mentioned, it is necessary to describe the change.