Listed 2 sub titles with search on: Ancient literary sources for destination: "MYTILINI Ancient city LESVOS".
Mitylene has two harbors, of which the southern can be closed and
holds only fifty triremes, but the northern is large and deep, and is sheltered
by a mole. Off both lies a small island, which contains a part of the city that
is settled there. And the city is well equipped with everything.
Mitylene has produced famous men: in early times, Pittacus, one of
the Seven Wise Men; and the poet Alcaeus, and his brother Antimenidas, who, according
to Alcaeus, won a great struggle when fighting on the side of the Babylonians,
and rescued them from their toils by killing "a warrior, the royal wrestler
(as he says), who was but one short of five cubits in height". And along
with these flourished also Sappho, a marvellous woman; for in all the time of
which we have record I do not know of the appearance of any woman who could rival
Sappho, even in a slight degree, in the matter of poetry. The city was in those
times ruled over by several tyrants because of the dissensions among the inhabitants;
and these dissensions are the subject of the Stasiotic poems, as they are called,
of Alcaeus. And also Pittacus was one of the tyrants. Now Alcaeus would rail alike
at both Pittacus and the rest, Myrsilus and Melanchrus and the Cleanactidae and
certain others, though even he himself was not innocent of revolutionary attempts;
but even Pittacus himself used monarchy for the overthrow of the oligarchs, and
then, after overthrowing them, restored to the city its independence. Diophanes
the rhetorician was born much later; but Potamon, Lesbocles, Crinagoras, and Theophanes
the historian in my time. Theophanes was also a statesman; and he became a friend
to Pompey the Great, mostly through his very ability, and helped him to succeed
in all his achievements; whence he not only adorned his native land, partly through
Pompey and partly through himself, but also rendered himself the most illustrious
of all the Greeks. He left a son, Marcus Pompey, whom Augustus Caesar once set
up as Procurator of Asia, and who is now counted among the first of the friends
of Tiberius. The Athenians were in danger of suffering an irreparable disgrace
when they voted that all Mitylenaeans from youth upwards should be slain, but
they changed their minds and their counter-decree reached the generals only one
day before the order was to be executed. (Strabo 13.2.2-3)
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.
Receive our daily Newsletter with all the latest updates on the Greek Travel industry.
Subscribe now!
