Greek Texts & Translations

a beginning, or with an occasion of inquiring into what is controverted. 24

First then with respect to Acarnania. We have already said, that it was occupied by Laertes and the Cephallenians; but as many writers have advanced statements respecting the first occupants in terms sufficiently clear, indeed, but contradictory, the inquiry and discussion are left open to us.

They say, that the Taphii and Teleboae, as they are called, were the first inhabitants of Acarnania, and that their chief, Cephalus, who was appointed by Amphitryon sovereign of the islands about Taphus, was master also of this country. Hence is related of him the fable, that he was the first person who took the reputed leap from Leucatas. But the poet does not say, that the Taphii inhabited Acarnania before the arrival of the Cephallenians and Laertes, but that they were friends of the Ithacenses; consequently, in his time, either they had not the entire command of these places, or had voluntarily retired, or had even become joint settlers.

A colony of certain from Lacedaemon seems to have settled in Acarnania, who were followers of Icarius, father of Penelope, for the poet in the Odyssey represents him and the brothers of Penelope as then living; who did not dare to go to the palace of Icarius with a view of his disposing of his daughter in marriage. ^note And with respect to the brothers; for now a long time both her father and her brothers were urging her to marry Eurymachus. ^note Nor is it probable that they were living at Lacedaemon, for Telemachus would not, in that case, have been the guest of Menelaus upon his arrival, nor is there a tradition, that they had any other habitation. But they say that Tyndareus and his brother Icarius, after being banished from their own country by Hippocoon, repaired to Thestius, the king of the Pleuronii, and assisted in obtaining possession of a large tract of country on the other side of the Achelous on condition of receiving a portion of it; that Tyndareus, having espoused Leda the daughter of Thestius, returned home; that Icarius continued there in possession of a portion of Acarnania, and had Penelope and her brothers by his wife Poly- casta, daughter of Lygaeus.