4.34.10
But the people of Asine give this account of themselves. They admit that they were conquered by Heracles and their city in Parnassus captured, but they deny that they were made prisoners and brought to Apollo. But when the walls were carried by Heracles, they deserted the town and fled to the heights of Parnassus, and afterwards crossed the sea to Peloponnese and appealed to Eurystheus. Being at feud with Heracles, he gave them Asine in the Argolid.
4.34.11
The men of Asine are the only members of the race of the Dryopes to pride themselves on the name to this day. The case is very different with the Euboeans of Styra. They too are Dryopes in origin, who took no part in the battle with Heracles, as they dwelt at some distance from the city. Yet the people of Styra disdain the name of Dryopes, just as the Delphians have refused to be called Phocians. But the men of Asine take the greatest pleasure in being called Dryopes, and clearly have made the most holy of their sanctuaries in memory of those which they once had, established on Parnassus. For they have both a temple of Apollo and again a temple and ancient statue of Dryops, whose mysteries they celebrate every year, saying that he is the son of Apollo.
4.34.12
The town itself lies on the coast just as the old Asine in Argive territory. It is a journey of forty stades from Colonides to Asine, and of an equal number from Asine to the promontory called Acritas. Acritas projects into the sea and has a deserted island, Theganussa, lying off it. After Acritas is the harbor Phoenicus and the Oenussae islands lying opposite.
ch. 35
4.35.1
Before the mustering of the army for the Trojan war, and during the war, Mothone was called Pedasus. Later, as the people themselves say, it received a new name from the daughter of Oeneus. They say that Mothone was born of a concubine to Oeneus the son of Porthaon, when he had taken refuge with Diomede in Peloponnese after the fall of Troy. But in my view it was the rock Mothon that gave the place its name. It is this which forms their harbor. For projecting under water, it makes the entrance for ships more narrow and also serves as a breakwater against a heavy swell.
4.35.2
I have shown in earlier passages note that, when the Nauplians in the reign of Damocratidas in Argos were expelled for their Laconian sympathies, the Lacedaemonians gave them Mothone, and that no change was made regarding them on the part of the Messenians when they returned. The Nauplians in my view were Egyptians originally, who came by sea with Danaus to the Argolid, and two generations later were settled in Nauplia by Nauplius the son of Amymone.
4.35.3
The Emperor Trajan granted civic freedom and autonomy to the people of Mothone. In earlier days they were the only people of Messenia on the coast to suffer a disaster like the following: Thesprotian Epirus was ruined by anarchy. For Deidameia the daughter of Pyrrhus, being without children, handed over the government to the people when she was on the point of death. She was the daughter of Pyrrhus, son of Ptolemy, son of Alexander, son of Pyrrhus.
4.35.4
I have told the facts relating to Pyrrhus the son of Aeacides in my account of the Athenians. note Procles the Carthaginian note indeed rated Alexander the son of Philip higher on account of his good fortune and for the brilliance of his achievements, but said that Pyrrhus was the better man in infantry and cavalry tactics and in the invention of stratagems of war.
4.35.5
When the Epirots were rid of their kings, the people threw off all control and disdained to listen to their magistrates, and the Illyrians who live on the Ionian sea above Epirus reduced them by a raid. We have yet to hear of a democracy bringing prosperity to a nation other than the Athenians; the Athenians attained to greatness by its means, for they surpassed the Greek world in native wit, and least disregarded the established laws.
4.35.6
Now the Illyrians, having tasted empire and being always desirous of more, built ships, and plundering others whom they fell in with, put in to the coast of Mothone and anchored as in a friendly port. Sending a messenger to the city they asked for wine to be brought to their ships. A few men came with it and they bought the wine at the price which the inhabitants asked, and themselves sold a part of their cargo.
