28.

Apollodorus remarks, that Homer mentions certain unknown nations, and he is right in specifying Caucones, Solymi, Ceteii, Leleges, and the Cilicians from the plain of Thebe; but the Halizones are a fiction of his own, or rather of those who, not knowing who the Halizones were, frequently altered the mode of writing the name, and invented the existence of [Pg 66]
[CAS. 680]mines of silver and of many other mines, all of which are abandoned.

With this vain intention they collected the stories related by the Scepsian, (Demetrius,) and taken from Callisthenes and other writers, who did not clear them from false notions respecting the Halizones; for example, the wealth of Tantalus and of the Pelopidæ was derived, it is said, from the mines about Phrygia and Sipylus; that of Cadmus from the mines about Thrace and Mount Pangæum; that of Priam from the gold mines at Astyra, near Abydos (of which at present there are small remains, yet there is a large quantity of matter ejected, and the excavations are proofs of former workings); that of Midas from the mines about Mount Bermium; that of Gyges, Alyattes, and Crœsus, from the mines in Lydia and the small deserted city between Atarneus and Pergamum, where are the sites of exhausted mines.278