23.

This may be true, says he, but some expressions are to be understood as loosely applied, such as these,

“Far from Ascania,”1173

and

“His name was Arnæus, given to him by his honoured mother,”1174

and

“Penelope seized the well-turned key with her firm hand.”1175

But admitting this, the other assertions are not to be allowed to which Demetrius is disposed to attend; nor has he refuted in a convincing manner those persons who maintain that we ought to read “far from Chalybe.” For having conceded that, although at present there are not silver mines among the Chalybes, they might formerly have existed, he does not grant that they were far-famed, and worthy of notice, like the iron mines. But some one may say, what should prevent them from being as famous as the iron mines, or does an abundance of iron make a place celebrated, and not an abundance of silver? Again, if the silver mines had obtained celebrity in the age of Homer, but not in the heroic times, can any one blame the poet’s representation? How did their fame reach him? How did the fame of the copper mines at Temesa in Italy, or of the wealth of Thebes in Egypt, reach his ears, although Egyptian Thebes was situated almost at double the distance of the Chaldæi.

But Demetrius does not altogether agree with those whose opinions he espouses. For when he is describing the neighbourhood of Scepsis his own birth-place, he mentions Enea, a village, Argyria, and Alazonia, as near Scepsis, and the Æsepus;1176 but if these places exist at all, they must be near the sources of the Æsepus. Hecatæus places them beyond the mouths of that river. Palæphatus, who says that the Amazons formerly occupied Alope, and at present Zeleia, does not advance anything in agreement with these statements. But if Menecrates agrees with Demetrius, neither does Menecrates say what this Alope, or Alobe, is, (or, in whatever manner they please to write the name,) nor yet does Demetrius himself.