Greek Texts & Translations

The present city has four harbours, one of which will admit a fleet of ships. ^note The citizens have achieved many great deeds, but the most important is the number of colonies which they established. The whole Euxine, for instance, and the Propontis, and many other places, are peopled with their settlers.

Anaximenes of Lampsacus says, that the Milesians colonized both the island Icarus and Lerus, and Limnae on the Hellespont, in the Chersonesus; in Asia, Abydus, Arisba, and Paesus; on the island of the Cyziceni, Artace and Cyzicus; in the interior of the Troad, Scepsis. We have mentioned, in our particular description of places, other cities which this writer has omitted.

Both the Milesians and Delians invoke Apollo Ulius, as dispensing health and curing diseases; for οὔλειν ^note is to be in health, whence οὐλή ^note a wound healed, and the phrase in Homer, ^note ολέ τε καὶ μέγα χαῖε, health and good welcome; for Apollo is a healer, and Artemis has her name from making persons ἀτεμέας, or sound. The sun, also, and moon are associated with these deities, since they are the causes of the good qualities of the air; pestilential diseases, also, and sudden death are attributed to these deities. 7

Illustrious persons, natives of Miletus, were Thales, one of the seven wise men, the first person who introduced among the Greeks physiology and mathematics; his disciple Anaximander, and Anaximenes the disciple of Anaximander. Besides these, Hecataeus the historian; ^note and of our time, Aeschines the orator, who was banished for having spoken with two great freedom before Pompey the Great, and died in exile.

Miletus shut her gates against Alexander, and experienced the misfortune of being taken by storm, which was also the fate of Halicarnassus; long before this time it was captured by the Persians. Callisthenes relates, that Phrynichus the tragic writer was fined a thousand drachmae by the Athenians for composing a play entitled The taking of Miletus by Darius.