Greek Texts & Translations

2

The Greeks indeed considered the Getae to be Thracians. They occupied either bank of the Danube, as also did the Mysians, likewise a Thracian people, now called the Moesi, from whom are descended the Mysians, settled between the Lydians, the Phrygians, and the inhabitants of the Troad. Even the Phrygians themselves are the same as the Briges, a people of Thrace, as also are the Mygdones, the Bebryces, the Maedobithyni, the Bithyni, the Thyni, and, as I consider, also are the Mariandyni. All these people quitted Europe entirely, the Mysians alone remaining. Posidonius appears to me to have rightly conjectured that it is the Mysians of Europe (or as I should say of Thrace) that Homer designates when he says, and his glorious eyes
Averting, on the land look'd down remote
Of the horse-breeding Thracians, of the bold
Close-fighting Mysian race. . . . ^note
Iliad xiii. 3. For if any one should understand them as the Mysians of Asia, the expression of the poet would not be fitting. For this would be, that having turned his eyes from the Trojans towards the land of the Thracians, he beheld at the same time the land of the Mysians, situated not far off from where he was, but conterminous with the Troad, rather behind it and on either side, but separated from Thrace by the breadth of the Hellespont. ^note This would be to confound the continents, and at the same time to disregard the form of the poet's expression. For to turn his eyes again, is more especially to turn them behind him; but he who extends his vision from the Trojans to the people either behind them, or on either side of them, stretches his sight to a greater distance, but not in the least behind him. And this also is introduced as a proof of this very thing, that Homer classes with these the Hippemolgi, ^note the Galactophagi, ^note and the Abii, ^note who are the Scythian Hamaxoeci ^note and Sarmatians; for at this day, all these nations, as well as the Bastarnae, are mixed with the Thracians, more especially with those beyond the Danube, and some even with