Greek Texts & Translations

voyage of two days and nights. From Cimarus [to Malea] are 700 stadia. ^note In the midway is Cythera. ^note From the promontory Samonium ^note to Aegypt a ship sails in four days and nights, but, according to other writers, in three. Some say that it is a voyage of 5000 stadia; others, of still less than this. According to Eratosthenes, the distance from Cyrenaica to Criu-Metopon is 2000 stadia, and thence to Peloponnesus less than [1000]. ^note 6

One language is intermixed with another, says the poet; there are in Crete, Achaei, the brave Eteocretans, Cydones, Dorians divided into three bands, ^note and the divine Pelasgi. ^note Of these people, says Staphylus, the Dorians occupy the eastern parts of the island, Cydonians the western, Eteocretans the southern, to whom Prasus, a small town, belonged, where is the temple of the Dictaean Jupiter; the other nations, being more powerful, inhabited the plains. It is probable that the Eteocretans ^note and Cydonians were aboriginal inhabitants, and that the others were foreigners, who Andron says came from Thessaly, formerly called Doris, but now Hestiaeotis, from which country he says the Dorians, who were settled about Parnassus, migrated, and founded Erineum, Boeum, and Cytinium, whence they are called by the poet Trichaïces, or tripartite. But the account of Andron is not generally admitted, who represents the Tetrapolis Doris as composed of three cities, and the metropolis of the Dorians as a colony of Thessalians. The epithet Trichaïces ^note is understood to be derived either from their wearing a triple crest, ^note or from having crests of hair. ^note 7

There are many cities in Crete, but the largest and most distinguished are Cnossus, ^note Gortyna, ^note Cydonia. ^note Both Homer and later writers celebrate Cnossus ^note above the rest,