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Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Ancient literary sources for destination: "LESVOS Island NORTH AEGEAN".


Ancient literary sources (2)

Strabo

Lesbos

  Since Lesbos, an island worthy of a full account, lies alongside and opposite the coast which extends from Lectum to Canae, and also has small islands lying round it, some outside it and some between it and the mainland, it is now time to describe these; for these are Aeolian, and I might almost say that Lesbos is the metropolis of the Aeolian cities. But I must begin at the point whence I began to traverse the coast that lies opposite the island. Now as one sails from Lectum to Assus, the Lesbian country begins at Sigrium, its promontory on the north.1 In this general neighborhood is also Methymna, a city of the Lesbians, sixty stadia distant from the coast that stretches from Polymedium to Assus. But while the perimeter which is filled out by the island as a whole is eleven hundred stadia, the several distances are as follows: From Methymna to Malia, the southernmost promontory to one keeping the island on the right, I mean at the point where Canae lies most directly opposite the island and precisely corresponds with it, the distance is three hundred and forty stadia; thence to Sigrium, which is the length of the island, five hundred and sixty; and then to Methymna, two hundred and ten.3 Mitylene, the largest city, lies between Methymna and Malia, being seventy stadia distant from Malia, one hundred and twenty from Canae, and the same distance from the Arginussae, which are three small islands lying near the mainland alongside Canae. In the interval between Mitylene and Methymna, in the neighborhood of a village called Aegeirus in the Methymnaean territory, the island is narrowest, with a passage of only twenty stadia over to the Euripus of the Pyrrhaeans. Pyrrha is situated on the western side of Lesbos at a distance of one hundred stadia from Malia. (Strabo 13.2.1-2)

This extract is from: The Geography of Strabo (ed. H. L. Jones, 1924), Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Cited Jan 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.


Perseus Encyclopedia

Lesbos

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