6.
The verses in Homer are to this effect,
“Mesthles and Antiphus, sons of Talæmenes, born of the lake Gygæa, were the leaders of the Meones, who live below Tmolus.”1538
Some persons add a fourth verse to these,
“below snowy Tmolus, in the rich district of Hyda.”
But no Hyda1539 is to be found among the Lydians. Others make this the birth-place of Tychius, mentioned by the poet,
“he was the best leather-cutter in Hyda.”1540
They add that the place is woody, and frequently struck with lightning, and that here also were the dwellings of the Arimi; for to this verse,
“Among the Arimi, where they say is the bed of Typhoëus,”1541
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[CAS. 626]
they add the following,
“in a woody country, in the rich district of Hyda.”
Some lay the scene of the last fable in Cilicia, others in Syria, others among the Pithecussæ (islands),1542 who say that the Pitheci (or monkeys) are called by the Tyrrhenians Arimi. Some call Sardes Hyda; others give this name to its Acropolis.
The Scepsian (Demetrius) says that the opinion of those authors is most to be depended upon who place the Arimi in the Catacecaumene in Mysia. But Pindar associates the Pithecussæ which lie in front of the Cymæan territory and Sicily with Cilicia, for the poet says that Typhon lay beneath Ætna;
“Once he dwelt in far-famed Cilician caverns, but now Sicily, and the sea-girt isle, o’ershadowing Cyme, press upon his shaggy breast.”1543
And again,
“O’er him lies Ætna, and in her vast prison holds him.”
And again,
“’Twas the great Jove alone of gods that o’erpowered, with resistless force, the fifty-headed monster Typhon, of yore among the Arimi.”
Others understand Syrians by the Arimi, who are now called Aramæi, and maintain that the Cilicians in the Troad migrated and settled in Syria, and deprived the Syrians of the country which is now called Cilicia.
Callisthenes says, that the Arimi from whom the mountains in the neighbourhood have the name of Arima, are situated near the Calycadnus,1544 and the promontory Sarpedon close to the Corycian cave.
