Dodona Oracle and the Boiotians

It was the Boiotians  and Pelasgians who consulted the Oracle at Dodona before a battle with the Thracians and their Pelasgian allies. The Thracians had abused a peace treaty saying they could still attack the Boiotians at night which was rather unfair since the Boiotians had lapsed off their defences since the treaty. Thus the proverb 'A Thracian pretext'. The Oracle had three priestesses and one of them was faithful to the opposing side of Pelasgians since Dodona had seemed to be biased towards the Pelasgians - it being located in the area of where they originated. She gave a supposedly biased oracle translation, after rustling and waving leaves and interpreting the voices of the Gods and all that. She suggested the Boioioioiotians commit sacrilege. The Boiotian messenger decided to take the matter in his own hands and he burned the priestess for giving a supposedly false oracle or maybe it was because she was Pelasgian and they were only doing what she had advised them to do. They were in subsequent bother anyway and a trial was set up. The Boeotians noticed to their chagrin that there was an all woman dury and wanted more men to balance things out and make things equal. This was granted and the verdict was a draw, thus the Boiotioans escaped a conviction. Close one. The men then took charge of the Dodonian Oracle. A clothed tripod is now paraded as a reminder of the unfortunate episode. Sorry about the typos. You try writing Boiotians constantly under such duress.

Oracle of Abai - a lesser known oracle

The Oracle of Abai was in Locria. Some say the Persian commander Mardonius consulted it before the battle of Salamis. Since he was a Persian maybe this was just a rumour. He defeated the United Greeks at Thermopylai although the Spartans under Leonidas certainly gave him something to think about.
   The Doric tetrapolis was composed of four cities exactly like the Quad Cities in America. The tetrapolis consisted of Erineos Boium Cytinium and Pindus. The tetrapolis was located in the valley of the Pindus river. There is also an Attic tetrapolis.
    A neapolis is basically a new town. Neapolis is based where Naples is located now and is the place where the fashion editor of Tatler, the eccentric aristocrat Isabella Blow, wanted to do a risqué topless fashion shoot to be called "Nipples in Naples" but the head said no so she went back to Elizabeth Street and told a male model she had a terrible day and said "stick it up my hourglass darling" I digress. It's nice to relate modern day tales with classic geography ha ha.
   Metapontium was in Italia I believe.
   The Lokrians went on to found Locri in southern Italy and were mostly people from the city of Opus. There were some Lacedaimonians involved too as they always seem to get their oar in matters. The main cities of Western Lokria were Naupaktos and Amphissa, so I was mistaken about Opus being the main city. It was a split region being on both coasts. They say there might have been an invasion that split the original Dorian and Locrian state. Opus was in fact the main city of the more northern Opuntian Locrian part. Ozolian Lokrians were considered to be the less civilised of the Lokrians. The main towns of Epiknemidian Lokris on the Malian coast were Larymna and Thronium. Skarpheia and Nicaia were up there on the Malian coast.
   At Naupaktos the Herakleidai built their fleet to invade the Peloponnesos and has always been associated with shipbuilding ever since. Seems they can't shake off the legacy of Hercules. Naupaktos was still operational as a naval station in roman times.
  So Locris was split down the middle by Doris. Locris never caught on as a woman's name like Doris. Locris Day. Nah. The Ainianians bordered the west.
   Thermopylai. The Asopus river emerges nearby into the Malian gulf and it's tributary the Phoenix joins nearby. The coast has changed a lot since 480 bc and the coastal pass of Thermopylai used to be practically on the coast or a little bit set back. The Persians came in through the Anopean Mts into Trachinia. The Persian camp was on the banks of the Melas river not far from the city of Trachin. Just north of Heraclea. The Sperchius and Dyras rivers empty into the Malian gulf north of Trachin. Antikyra lies on the Sperchius.
   At the battle of Thermopylai the Persians under Mardonius won but not without exceptional courage and bravery from the vastly outnumbered Greeks and Spartans under Leonidas. The Greeks under Themistocles saw the Persians home at the naval battle of Salamis and another land-based battle at Platea during the second Persian war. Xerxes's  men left for Persia very displeased, diseased and wounded and didn't return for a long time in the third Persian war.

Peloponnesian War by Thucydides notes

When the people reluctantly moved from the countryside to Athens they used areas of the city previously uninhabited to avoid overcrowding. Temples and sanctuaries were temporary homes. The oracle at Delphi had once declared the area behind the acropolis called the Pelargikon cursed, but the newcomers camped in the area regardless of such dire warnings. Livestock was pushed out to Euboia. Inside the city walls of Athens was considered to be appropriate. Pericles was in charge. Various sea battles in gulf of Krisa. Phormio Athenian admiral.

During the battle for Pylos there was a food shortage. The Lacedaimonians used divers who swam under water in the harbour with a cord attached pulling a waterproof skin wrapped with honey nuts and linseed. They evaded lookouts for a whole but started to be spotted. The island was a wooded mess and the Athenian general Demosthenes had designs on torching the Spartan held island as he had always considered it a disgraceful place. After a truce and several people going back on their word such ad the Athenians denying the Lacedaimonians the release of their ships - Kleon took over command of the Athenian offensive from Nikias.
Brasidas took Amphipolis and Akte. Bloody battle at Delion and athenians defeated.

Archias of the Herakleidai in Corinth founded Syracuse. Nikias not convinced about sailing to Sicily. Many problems back in Greece but Alcibiades wants to go and make money and conquer. Xenophanes.

Sicilian expedition sails under a reluctant Nikias and a more favourable yet possibly detested Alcibiades. Costs. Silver gold etc. Trireme preparation in both looks and speed. Customization. Laches. Syracusans mostly disbelieve the rumours and remain complacent despite the words of Athenagoras and others. Ionian sea. Taras would be friendly to the Syracusans. Egestians being the only Athenian allies. Most of the sikeliots would unite against Athens. Sikels prefer their freedom. Eurymedon.
Alkamenes general. Arhyokos. Chios was a central issue. Sparta allied with Persian Tissaphernes who paid well. Treaty. Syracusans under Gylippus sailed into the Aegeian arena. Athens lower classes revolted against uppers. Same on other Athenian held islands. Beached ships. Big sea battle off Miletos. Miletians. More hoplites supplied from Athens. Naval superiority. Lacedaimonians had zeal and aggression. Chalkideus was killed. Klearchos involved.

Sicilian expedition ended in catastrophe. Nikias fled to a far river but Syracusans pursued and there was a bloody battle where the wearisome Athenians hungry tired and thirsty were fighting and trying to drink the muddy bloodied death strewn waters. Slaughter. Horrendous. One of the bloodiest moments in Hellenic history. Nikias was executed despite his virtuous leadership. A brave man who gave everything was defeated and he knew the expedition was risky right from the start. Demosthenes executed.

Lesbos involved. Hermokrates mentioned again. Thucydides doesn't cover the last seven years of the war. Pedacritos. Korykos a harbour. Argives fought with Spartans at Miletos. Stop the walls being built around the city! Lade island. Alcibiades still at large on good terms with Tissaphernes. One drachma pay per hoplite and sailor. Persian intervention was obviously a bone of contention; the Athenians and Spartans had fought together against the Persians so this was going back on a pledge. Knidos involved. Athens never regained its standing after the war ever again. It changed the history of Greece forever. But they still won the Euros! Spartans decided not to raze Athens despite people calling for them to do so.
When the people reluctantly moved from the countryside to Athens they used areas of the city previously uninhabited to avoid overcrowding. Temples and sanctuaries were temporary homes. The oracle at Delphi had once declared the area behind the acropolis called the Pelargikon cursed, but the newcomers camped in the area regardless of such dire warnings. Livestock was pushed out to Euboia. Inside the city walls of Athens was considered to be appropriate. Pericles was in charge. Various sea battles in gulf of Krisa. Phormio Athenian admiral. Spartans constantly attacking Attica. Boiotians were Spartan allies. Antiphon.

During the battle for Pylos ( Spakteria island) there was a food shortage. The Lacedaimonians used divers who swam under water in the harbour with a cord attached pulling a waterproof skin wrapped with honey nuts and linseed. They evaded lookouts for a whole but started to be spotted. The island was a wooded mess and the Athenian general Demosthenes had designs on torching the Spartan held island as he had always considered it a disgraceful place. After a truce and several people going back on their word such ad the Athenians denying the Lacedaimonians the release of their ships - Kleon took over command of the Athenian offensive from Nikias.
Brasidas took Amphipolis and Akte. Kleon was killed.  Bloody battle at Delion,  the only land battle! and athenians defeated. Brasidas killed.

Archias of the Herakleidai in Corinth founded Syracuse. Nikias not convinced about sailing to Sicily. Many problems back in Greece but Alcibiades wants to go and make money and conquer. Xenophanes.

Athenian fleet at Naupaktos

Sicilian expedition sails under a reluctant Nikias and a more enthusiastic yet possibly detested Alcibiades as he may have been involved in the so called Athenian mysteries. And Lamarchus.  Costs. Silver gold etc. Trireme and pentekonter preparation in both looks and speed. Customization. Laches. Syracusans mostly disbelieve the rumours and remain complacent despite the words of Athenagoras and others. Ionian sea. Taras would be friendly to the Syracusans. Egestians being the only Athenian allies. Most of the sikeliots would unite against Athens. Sikels prefer their freedom. Digression of Thucydides on Hippas and Hipparchus. The stabbing of a tyrant.

So was Alcibiades the Athenian general  working undercover for the Spartans? Thucydides says he defected to Sparta  and on his return from Sicily after his exile ( he was supposedly being tried at Athens for Eleusian mysteries ) was welcomed into Lacedaimon despite his being a bit of a pain at the battle of Mantinea that the Spartans won.
   Athens and Syracuse failed to gain the alliance of Kamarina who remained neutral despite the threats from both sides that their city would be razed after the war. Euphemos the Athenian said the Syracusan plea was slanderous. The Syracusans said that Athens would turn sicily into a slave state and was using Segesta as a pretext. Naxos became a port for Syracuse. No battles took place during winters. The distance of Sicily across the Ionian sea was always going to be an obstacle ( rather like the later day American War of Independence and the Atlantic being a hurdle for Britain ).
Lots of wall building strategies on the plain of Syracuse ( too rocky for trenches) ; Epipolae. Stakes in the harbour causing problems for Athenian ships, divers sorted them out. Plemmyrium taken by Athens and retaken by Sparta. Strategic point.

Thucydides bias towards Athens as he was an Athenian general. He saw the Spartans as barbarians. Mind you Xenophon was pro Sparta and he was of the same opinion about them. Thucydides seen as a bit of a modernist.

The Boiotians at Syracuse routed the Athenians. Several battles in the harbour. Kind of a draw. Ramming was used. Small boats full of javelin-throwers took out Athenian rowers. Syracusans withdrew for dinner and unexpectedly returned thus confusing the resting athenians. Their ships needed drying and repairing but nowhere to do it. Demosthenes made for Epipolae and the cross - wall.

Mazaka by Mykalus Kane

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. I'm from Kilikia not to be confused with Rough Kilikia but it's all part of Cappadocia. See that island in the the river? That's called Elaioussa, it's where old Archelaos spent most of his time fishing for catfish until he married the governess Pythodoris who wore the old fucker out. I'm from the city of Mazaka and I live in one of the few fortresses that don't belong to the bloody king. Mazaka is the metropolis of the people and some call it Eusebeia Argaios because it's situated at the foot of Mt Argaios, which is the highest bloody mountain in Kilikia and the summit is always covered in bloody snow. If you climb to the top on a clear day you can see both the Issic and the bloody Pontic Sea. Some call the Issic sea the Mediterranean and the Pontic the Black Sea. It's all bloody Greek if you ask me.
   I run a little stall selling wood and there's a bloody big forest around Mt Argaios so I make a decent bloody living. Mazaka is nice but there's not a lot of bloody water. They say it was a bloody stupid place to have built a city here in the first place, but the king liked it because there was a lot of bloody timber and stone. The trouble is it's surrounded by desert, so essentials have to be brought in from quite a long way away. Mazaka don't have any walls around it, because they say it's never been a target for invaders what with it being in the middle of fucking nowhere. Like I say, the fields are barren and uncultivated and pretty bloody useless but the sand is good for mortar and that's bloody useful! The ground is rocky so you don't get many tent dwellers about which is a shame as I think camping is a nice cheap alternative to having to fork out for a fucking hotel up in Sinope. Pay through the nose you do in Sinope! It does have a nice branch of Woolworths though, where my new bird got some pick n' mix. She's from Tyana in the district of Tyanitis. She cooks and cleans and don't shut up!
   The plains outside the city are dry and volcanic and there are larva pits everywhere, which are bloody dangerous. If you don't keep your mincers peeled you can fall down one and you ain't gonna catch a cold! There's a lot of marshes too and the gases drift over the larva pits and ignite a proper little firework display, but not always in bloody November!! The gas from the marsh sometimes permeates into the city and it don't arf pen and ink in the summer. Only last week old Maninnikos was walking a big herd of cattle and one of his cows fell into some larva and the smell of roast beef attracted a pack of dogs and a lion. He beat them off with a scythe as he's handy is old Maninnikos. That fucking lion scratched him a bit though, he had to visit A&E in Herakleion.
   Last year King Ariarathes, I call him Hairyarse, decided it would be a good idea to dam the Melas river thus turning the plains into a lake. He even went as far as building little islands in the lake because he was off his bloody rocker! The dam broke causing a great deal of devastation. Several villages in Cappadocia ended up being washed down the Euphrates river towards Babylon and the villages belonged to a mob called the Galatians, who were said to be the ancestors of the French! Not a lot of people know that. Anyway, because of that, old King Hairyarse had to pay 300,000 bob in damages to the Galatians by order of the Roman senate. So what does he do, he goes and dams another river and the same thing bloody happens, this time he destroys Mallos, a lovely old town, and the Romans fine him a second time. Seems the fucker never gives up. Mad as a box of frogs. Up on the Pontic coast is the upmarket city of Sinope and they're all a bunch of merchant bankers. Bootos says the city is built of slabs made from crystal and onyx but I say Bootos is talking cobblers cos when I was there I only saw bloody marble!! They use carved stone for the handles of their daggers and they bloody well need 'em cos there's a lot of cunts in Sinope. Well nice talking to ya, now fuck off, my tea's getting cold!

Lovers Leap at Leukas

The rock that projects from Leukas into the open sea is called The Leap. Wings and birds are attached to the leaping person and sometimes many rescuers would be gathered in the waters directly below. Leuke - white. The Rock was called The Leap and was white in colour. Menandros documented the location and there were many scenarios and tales about it. When the falling person had been saved the boatmen would make sure the leaper would be able to escape across the border to another state. The Leap is believed to end the longings of love.
   Menandros thus says that the poet and songstress Sappho was one of the first people to leap off The Leap. Kephalos was said to be the very first. Those more knowledgeable in antiquarianism acknowledge this as being the truth and that it was indeed Kephalos. Anyway the ancestral custom among the people was to sometimes throw a miscreant off the leap every now and then as a sacrifice to rid them of evil.

Spartans and Helots

Nemea is a city halfway between Argos and Corinth, famous for the Nemean lion slayed by Herakles.
  WATH. War against the Helots. Helots once revolted against the Spartan King Agis who took away their privileges and forced to pay contributions to the government which was obviously bloody unfair so they revolted but lost and became state Slaves and were given jobs with homes. Originally from Helos in Laconia which was a foundation of Heleios son of Perseus. Eurotas river runs through Sparta to the gulf of Laconia. Later the Helots sided with the romans because of a tyrannical and disordered government.
   Twice mentioned now in strabo are caves where supposedly Hercules went down to Hades to catch the Cerberus a three headed dog creature. There is a Cape off Laconia where this also may have happened.
   They say in Elis at the Pisatis region there is a city called Pisa or Bisa which means spring or water spout.
  Aitolos the Eleian named his land Aitolia after he was ousted from Elis by Salmonius, whose daughter was Tyro who fell in love with a river. His descendant Oxylos wanted his ancestral land Elis back but the Epeians were there and what a cheek. Pyraichmes the Aitolian fought Degmenos the Epeian in single combat - customary Hellenic style the first with a slingshot and the latter with a bow. Pyraichmes won with his slingshot a more modern weapon and  Degmenos hit the deck and died. The Aitolians possessed Olympia now! They made it sacred to Zeus and therefore it was a curse for anyone to attack it so they never bothered fortifying it with walls and demanded any strangers drop their weapons on entry for they would receive them back once they had passed through peacefully. Iphitos established the games. The population increased. It was a peaceful city now. Indeed it became one of the most prosperous and populous states under Pheidon the Argive from Argos who started a mint. Eventually Pheidon invaded other parts of the Peloponnesos and this hacked off the Lacedaimonians so they got together with Elis and took Pheidon to the cleaners. The Lacedaimonians said we can't have this Pheidon depriving the Peloponnesos of its hegemony! The Spartans took to the seas one day and founded Taras in southern Italy. Now Taranto. So is the art publisher Phaidon named after this guy?
   Tyrtaios wrote the Eunomia an elegy about the war. Limnai is a suburb of Sparta where the Messenians were said to have raped some maidens who had come to sacrifice. What they sacrificed I don't know but the outrage infused a war. Aristocrates was a commander. Tyrtaios was supposedly an Athenian from Aphidna. Tyrtaios wrote "Kronion the spouse of beautifully crowned Hera Zeus himself gave this city to the Herakleidai with whom I abandoned windy Erineos and came to the broad island of Pelops" 
   Someone said Laconia is lacking in men but they must have been talking nonsense as the Spartan army lived there! One time the Spartans invaded most of the Peloponnesos but it wasn't a long standing effort. During Roman times a bloke called Eurykles ran the island of Kythera just off Laconia. Sparta lies in the shadow of Mt Taygetos where it has supposedly erupted being in an earthquake zone and where recently the Romans have excavated a mine at considerable cost but with a view to making good profits.
   Thornax, now that's a name! Need to find out more about it. Funny how the Greeks often called the wind the Lips which is understandable since you use your lips to blow so they naturally must have thought Zephyrus had a massive pair of lips and thus created the wind as indeed would have Boreas. They did some weird things including divining and examining the bowels and intestines of fallen enemy soldiers to establish omens and such like. An eagle perched high in a tree was regarded as a bad omen. They seriously believed their dreams meant something and even family members killed each other because of portentous dreams.

Herculaneum short

In Herculaneum it was the lower middle class and artisans who were classified as plebians and they often played backgammon whilst eating English walnuts with Vesuvius rumbling ominously in the background. They lived in cramped conditions in what could be described as a prototype for the tenement buildings of today. That's it for now on Herculaneum.

Iliad loose notes

Machaon the medic treated the arrow wound on Menelaus, Agamemnon's brother. Urged on by Pallas Athene in disguised as a man, Pandarus fired an arrow from a bow fashioned from antelope horns he had once killed. She said the Trojans will be indebted to you Pandarus.
    Greeks v Trojans. King Agamemnon and Achilles are on the same side but they fall out over a prize which happens to be a maiden Crises and also Breises. Zeus and Hera running the show. Aphrodite likes Paris, who has ran off with Helen who is Menelaus's wife. Diomedes gets involved. Odysseus is a commanding presence despite his facade. Nestor too old for battle but wise. Idomeneus involved. Laertes relayed messages. Athene. Goats often roasted on the beach and sacrificed to the gods. Artemis. Thetis. Chalkadon. Pallas  Athene shoots across the sky like a comet. Athene tries to beg her father Zeus to help Paris. Zeus is listening more to Agamemnon.
    Diores was hit by the Thracian Peiros who later finished off the job by plunging his spear into his stomach and spilling his entrails thus bringing darkness to the eyes of Diores. Diomedes holding back the horses.
   Aphrodite gets a spear from the son of Tydeus, Diomedes in the wrist but there is no blood in an immortal goddess only ichor. Injured, she drops her son Aeneas who she tries to protect from a savage attack by Diomedes. Apollo saves him by wrapping him in a dark blue cloud.
   Zeus was known as Zeus the Thunderer and aegis-bearing Zeus or Zeus the cloud compeller. Colin wouldn't be like Zeus. He would be Colin the Trouser soiler.  Or Colin the sandwich spiller.
   Tlepolemus and Sarpedon exchanging threats and threw javelins at the same time. Tlepolemus copped it in the neck and croaked Sarpedon suffered a spear in the thigh and was dragged off to safety. Glittery javelin heads flying everywhere.
   Diomedes the tamer of horses and Glaucus the Lycian make friends on the battlefield due to an ancestral connection that goes back to Argos. Didn't see that one coming. Glaucus related to Bellerophon who killed Chimaera and the Amazons and a thousand men. Formidable chap. Diomedes was impressed. They swap armour as is the custom in such circumstances. Diomedes swapped gold for bronze which seemed to peeve the gods a bit.
  Aias fights Hector. A draw so they decided to call it off in a sportsman like way after spears pierce shields and much boulder throwing and fighting each other on the ground like lions. Paris does not want to give up Helen and tells Antenor his brain is addled by the gods.
  Achilles needs to be here says Agamemnon. Ajax odysseus and Phoenix go to sicily and get him.

Graffiti-ing replica Venuses is wrong

Marcus Beshope of the Arethusan Road suburb (with its abandoned urn shop), was caught at 8am on August 3rd ( 130th Olympiad possibly ) graffiti-ing and defacing a replica temple of Venus in the garden of Julian and Chrysanthemum Gallsworthian. Neighbours of the Gallsworthians were appalled on hearing the news and a rather diligent Mr Sectario-Tottus thought it would be appropriate to apprehend Mr Beshope as soon as possible. Mr Beshope's large black ostrich marker feather was inelegantly rammed up his ractal spassagium and he was stripped naked and anointed with Hyettian honey and New Carthagena marmalade and golden sap. His tatty pseudo-Skythian pointy cap was donated to Alypius the Labrador. He was suspended from the bough of an oak tree in a net, thus exposed to the sun and the stings and bites of insects for a whole day. The Gallsworthians held a garden party where guests laughed most audibly at Mr Beshope and hadn't laughed as much since watching last week's satirical play by Aristophanes. Despite his unfortunate captivity aloft he persisted to glory in his crime. Mr Sectario-Tottus released him and chased him around the garden smacking his bum with a blue plastic scimitar, much to the applause of the guests. Mr Beshope eventually escaped by jumping over a gate. He ran back to his estate with the ostrich marker feather still firmly lodged up his ractal spassagium!

Crete and Thera

Knossos was the capital but also there was Kydonia and Lyktos and Gortyna. Eastern side is Eteocretans. The Diktaein zeus is here. Thera is in the Cyclades. Minos ruled at Knossos fairly but others say he was a tyrant and exacted tributes from everyone. The two opposing powers of the island were often at war but sometimes they joined each other and there was less upheaval. Lots of Cretans migrated to other parts of Hellas and elsewhere in the Med and vice versa. The main port for Knossos was Herakleion. In earlier times it was Amnisos. They say Crete was settled by Lacedaimonians, Dorians from Doris, Thessalians, and the migratory Pelasgians and is sometimes considered part of the Peloponnesos. Samonian Cape is east facing Egypt and the White mountains are in the west.
    Gifts were very often given to abducted lovers as was the custom, usually including a miltary uniform, a drinking cup and an ox which was sacrificed to Zeus and later consumed at a party attended by friends of the lovers. The friends of the lovers were always following and making sure the lovers were a good match for each other. Other gifts were given. It was quite a long courtship lasting for two months including many entertainments and hunting expeditions. At any point the relationship could averted and could be terminated only by the Andreion who had a paidonomos to supervise him. An expensive business. If you were good looking and well bred it was said to be disgraceful not to have a lover. Looks were secondary to manliness and decorum. Money in Crete was provided by the State to balance out any equality and nobody starved in the mess halls which were ran for the 'herds' of lads.
   Ancient Hellenes sometimes believed the sun went beneath the sea. That was in Homer's time. Homeric times. It was ruled then by Idomeneus. Ephoros mentions crete. Kallimachus does too. Mithridates IV was involved.
   Mallia is now a clubby resort not far from Amnisos. A world of hedonism in summer: a long way from ancient Knossos or maybe it did have elements of that. From some accounts Minos was no goody goody. Phaistos is a port on the south coast facing the Libyan sea. Theothrastus comments about greek lads in love in his book 'in love'. Delos became under Athenian rule during Strabo's time. They say Delos was an island that floated around the Aegian sea and a goddess once landed there and she wanted a solid platform to give birth so she erected four vast columns to anchor the island in place and Delos has retained it's strategic position ever since. A plausible tale.
   Leukokomas of Leben once said to his lover Euxynthetos "go to Praisos and bring back my dog!" Cheek of it. When he got to Praises he may have seen the sanctuary of Diktaian Zeus from where Minos asked many questions every ninth year. I doubt Euxynthetos would've seen the woman Britomartis who escaped from the supposedly violent and tyrannical king Minos although some say he was a just man and civilised Cretans society with laws etc. Anyway Britomartis ran away regardless of whether he was good or bad and she jumped into a fisherman's net and she was called Diktyanna after having done so as the greek word for net is Diktya. There is a mount dikte nearby. Well Euxynthetos obviously brought back his lover's dog and all was good. Now that's love for you. Maybe Euxynthetos said to Leukokomas "ok I got your dog now you go get mine, it's in China ha ha". Mt Dikte was said to be near Mt Ida but this is bullshit as it is nowhere near it. Aratos doesn't alway get his brass tacks correct.

Corinth and Megaris

Corinth was the capital of Corinthia and it was wealthy. Acrocorinth mountain sat above the city. Corinth was razed to the ground a few times by raiders and rebuilt by the Romans but they were gratuitous  gravediggers and plundered valuable bronze and gold ornaments and pots the Corinthians had buried with their dead to take to the next life. Necrocorinthia as it was fashionably called eventually went out of vogue so the people of Rome  stopped decorating their villas with such items. Bit of a shame they didn't return the property to the dead Corinthians but that's the Romans for you. Civilised?
   Below the mountain, below the temple of Aphrodite there was a spring dedicated to Peirene and it never overflowed and the water was beautiful clear and potable - pots were understandably important reticules and were decorated accordingly. Philip K Dick was a fan of pots and so is my mum so they've certainly rubbed off on modern society! The waters of Peirene spring flowed down Acrocorinth and into the waterways of Corinth which helped keep the residents healthy.
   Sinkholes or zerethra were in Arcadia. Theseus slay a sow that was part of his Labours so it seems Labours were all part of the deal back in ancient Greece.
   Parts of Peloponnesos and Hellas were named after their founders such as aigiatos for aigiatia. Doros who founded Doria. Hellen who was actually a bloke gave his name to the Hellenes and Hellas which in turn gave its name to the branch of John Lewis in Reading - Heelas. Ion was another son of an important Greek king who went on to found Ionia, also founding Ionia in southern Turkey. Aigiaos founded the aegian sea. Maleia mentioned.
   Nice groves were dedicated to gods. Usually quite Arcadian these groves were. Nothing like Grove Road in Ware.
   A giant bronze statue of Poseidon  could be seen after the big flood, its head still poking defiantly above the swirling waters which completely inundated some cities. Many drowned and it was thought that someone had brought on the wrath of Poseidon.
   Las was a city in northern Laconia. Said to be a port but this is massively debatable as Las was not just inland a few miles but practically near the border of Arcadia and it was serviced by no rivers, so what sort of port Las was is anyone's guess. (Someone just ordered a medium Spritzer but that's not important.)
   Megaris was a little state that was situated between Corinthia and Attica. Corinth used to be the venue for the Isthmian games named because Corinth was on an isthmus - with goods coming from Asia on one side of the city and from Italia on the other side. A sort of early Istanbul. Marcius Lucullus and Lucius Mummius were Roman commanders in the area in the time of Strabo. They hung about round Argos and Corinth back in 10 BC. Supposedly some disrespectful Roman soldiers took down some nice art paintings and played games on them and ruined them so maybe the subject matter depicted on the paintings was not to their liking but all the same it's pretty childish behaviour which gives us an idea how some contingents of the Roman military behaved. Quite untoward really.
   Herakleidai. A word that keeps cropping up. Dorians also had colonies in Lydia which is now modern Turkey. Achaians were named after Achaios. Achaia was the northernmost part of the Peloponnesos and Ionians were rehoused across the water from the Drepanium promontory. It was cut off and remote from the rest of the Peloponnesos because of a mountainous ridge.
   Corinth was ridged and hollow and the old proverb goes 'Corinth is ridged and hollow' so there's no argument with that. Hollow is a word that crops up a lot as with Hollow Elis. More investigation is required. If I opened a pub I'd call it the Hollow Elis. Polybos was not Polybius or at least I don't think so but it could be one of Strabo's eponyms which he was liable to produce in his geographical writings. I think he's entitled to the odd eponym with his standing. Tight Stevens wouldn't be into eponyms.
 

Eudoxos of Kyzikos, a Greek Circumnavigator

One day an Indian sailor turned up on the coast of Egypt after being shipwrecked. He was arrested by guards who took him to King Ptolemy VIII. Egypt was an established Greek colony back then. Because the sailor couldn't speak Greek they had no idea where he'd come from so they taught him some elementary Greek. Eudoxos was the King's advisor on geography at the time and he asked the Indian "where have you come from?" The Indian replied "I'm from India mate, over the ocean, 3000 miles away. My ship was lost in the Arabian Sea for a long time, having gone off course after we missed the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The rest of the crew perished through starvation and I steered the ship up the Red Sea to Egypt on my tod." Eudoxos said "It must have been a huge undertaking, since it takes an expert crew of many hands to manage an ocean-going ship." The sailor nodded in agreement. Eudoxos, after a chat with the king, was given permission to sail to India with the sailor. When he reached India he received a load of precious stones and glorious spices from an accommodating Indian prince. When he returned to Egypt, greedy old King Ptolemy took charge of all the treasure. Eudoxos was a bit put out and voiced his disapproval and the king locked him up for his insolence. After the king died, he was succeeded by his wife Queen Cleopatra III, who released Eudoxos. She entrusted him to sail back to India to get more jewels and spices. Eudoxos went and received more jewels and by the time he returned to Egypt, her son was king, and he took most of the treasure, except for the stuff Eudoxos had wisely stashed away in his secret box. Anyway, while crossing the Red Sea he found part of a shipwreck, a wooden prow. He assumed it was foreign, being of a carved horse design. He showed it to an expert on the antiques market and he verified it was Spanish Celtic. Eudoxos put two and two together and came to the conclusion "blimey, that means you must be able to sail around Libya!" Which was what they called the whole of Africa in those days. So with royal backing, he sailed up the Med with a large crew that included a gang of female dancers, but his ship was accidentally grounded and damaged so he built another one on the Spanish coast. He launched it and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean and down the coast of Mauretania. He took note of the Canary Islands and continued all the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the island of Bogos, which is said to be on the Horn of Africa. This means he was only about 200 miles away from completing his desired circumnavigation! Eudoxos, however,  decided to turn back at the last minute. I dare say he had his reasons. After a while, as he'd been missing for a few years, some of the king's sailors set out to track him down, as the king had invested a lot of money into the venture, but they couldn't find him.
   Poseidonius the ancient historian and geographer, reckons it's possible that Eudoxos turned back and went into hiding because he heard the king was after him, apparently he heard the king was furious because he'd somehow found out about the items of Indian treasure that he'd previously stashed away. Poseidonius reckons he shacked up somewhere in the Canaries, happy as Larry in his garden.
   So that was the end of the expedition. To this day no one knows what really happened to Eudoxos or the dancing girls he took with him or indeed, as the Graeco-Roman geographer Strabo says "Poseidonius may have fabricated the whole shabang as various threads of the tale just don't seem to add up." He questions the fact about the Indian sailor getting lost. If they were an expert crew how the devil did they miss the entrance to the Persian Gulf? It's a hundred miles wide! Then again Strabo might be nit-picking. It could've been a perfectly legitimate story that was slightly embellished over time.

Crete and Minos with Mykalus

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. I fancied a quick butchers at Crete so I grabbed the old Chuck Berry from Miletos to Matalan. My first port of call was an old boozer called The White Bull and Europa overlooking the beach. Nice pint of Minotaur Gold which cost me a small irregular silver penny with a skinny bull imprinted on one side.
   King Minos was the first one at old Knossos to have a thalassocracy - which derives from the greek word 'thalassa' meaning 'the sea'. A sea-borne empire. Rhadamanthys was the first king to civilize Crete by administering laws he says he heard direct from the mouth of Zeus. King Minos emulated Rhadamanthys by visiting the cave and praying to Zeus every ninth year. He declared laws that he said were the edicts of Zeus and the Cretans believed that these laws came directly from Zeus. Minos was a powerful and intimidating  bloke, what with being mates with the 'God of Thunder', Joe Bloggs thought twice about trying to mug him off. If there were any detractors it was obviously wiser to keep shtum or get the fuck out of Dodge.
   Lycourgos became the legal guardian of his nephew Charilaos, when his brother King Polydektes died. He thought it would be sensible to fuck off to Crete for a bit and let things calm down. Maybe he wasn't keen on looking after a screaming dustbin lid. Some people were also starting rumours that Lycourgos looked like the sort of bloke who would murder his little nephew, which was a totally slanderous accusation. Lycourgos took charge of Crete to take his mind off family matters and he copied King Minos who had copied Rhadamanthys with all that Zeus bollocks. Lycourgos went to Egypt for a while and when he eventually came back home he found out Charilaos was king - so it's all groovy biscuits in the end. So says Ephoros. I've got a lot of time for Ephoros. Homer also mentioned it in his epic poem the Odyssey.
   Contrary to popular opinion, some say Minos was not a nice bloke but a violent and cruel tyrant and imposed harsh taxes on his subjects. In the Iliad, which recounts the siege of Troy, Minos is known as the fair and just guardian of Crete. Opinions differ about Minos. I suppose it depends a lot on whether you were a friend or foe. Archaeologists say King Minos is nothing but a myth, especially my mate Biggius who once said "Minos is a bit hit and miss." Biggius has got a lisp!
    Strabo says there is an inaccurate account by Kallimachus who reckons that a woman called Britomartis escapes from the violence of King Minos by jumping into a fisherman's net. The locals nicknamed her Diktynna 'net-girl.' A sanctuary of Britomartis was erected to commemorate this event whether it was true or not, at a different spot to where she jumped in the net, on the western part of the island. Maybe she invented fishnet stockings! I reckon modern archaeologists and classical historians need to bang their heads together over a few ouzos and maybe try and figure out the truth.
   Gortyn is the Roman capital of Crete, and Egypt. I heard this jackanory that Euxinthetus of Gortyn asked his new servant Leukokomas to go to the pikeys in Praisos to fetch a dog, the first test in an ancient set of labours known as the 'athlon'. That's a fair old trot, nearly a 400 stadia round trip. Anyway Leukokomas rode off to fetch the mutt and when he got to Praisos he said "I've come to pick up a dag for my master". The Praisians knew nothing about it and they all looked at each other and shrugged. Leukokomas frowned and uttered a few choice words and eventually headed back to Gortyn in a right old huff. He said to Euxinthetus "fucking pikeys didn't have your dog!" Euxinthetus, who's forgetful as fuck said "What dog!?"
   Had one for the road in Gortyn ( now called Gortis ) at a pub called The Praetorium Arms and thought I'd better be getting back to me old trouble n' strife for a cup of tea.

Cappadocia and Paphlagonia

The romans invaded kilikia and the people said they were worthy of being ruled by a king do Lucullus granted this and told them to choose a king,this they did and the roman's happily accepted his kingship of kilikia, which is part of Cappadocia. Sinope was a metropolis and was surrounded by fine gardens. Fishing for pelymades and dolphins took place in some ports. Strabo was born in Amaseia. Various rivers run through the region including Halys. Mt Argaios is the highest and on a clear day you can see both the Issus gulf and the Pontos.
   The Heptakometians were a savage crew. Mossynoccians hung out in trees and towers called mosynoi and when passers by came near they would swing down and attack them. The romans were often attacked. The Heptakometians cut down three if Pompeius' maniples. Nasty. Supposedly they were tempted by jars of drugged honey and when this was consumed by weary travellers they were weakened and easily beaten. Tricky Heptakometians.
   Komana in Cappadocia was the location of the sanctuary at Enyo where Orestes and his sister Iphigenia left the hair of mourning which with the word for hair being 'kome' and that is why Komana is so named.
   Kilikia is volcanic and hot. Many fire pits were perilous and people and animals fell in occasionally. The fires on the Marsh were seen a lot. The area does have forest and boxwood was popular.
The Romans annexed the area after defeating Antiochus VIII.
   Near Tyana in Kastabala at the sanctuary dedicated to Artemis they say the priestesses walked with bare feet on hot coals. Alternately they say the rocks of the promontory are too spikey to walk on bare foot.
   Zenodotos wrote that there is a race of wild mules roaming Enete. Some of the rivers were dammed but a few catastrophes took place. Romans recompensed. People's belongings and towns were washed far downstream. Another Herakleion was here.

Bithynian Olympos with Mykalus Kane

My name is Mykalus Kain and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. I was riding through Bithynia on my horse and I fancied stopping for a pig's ear in bloody Mysia. Some Lydian bloke at the bar was telling me the Mysians was named after beech trees cos there was a lot of of bloody beech trees in Mysia! He went on to say the Cretans founded Miletos and I told him I already bloody knew that. He started to bore the tits off me, so I went to play the fruity and four melons came in. Lovely jub!
   Next stop was Mt Olympos overlooking Troy. There's been many a bloody battle in that manor. I won't go on about that right now as it's a long-winded story and the last war with Greece lasted nine bloody years. I was on the Trojan side during the war but I was too old to join the front line troops so I sorted out some of the soldiers with spears. I got hold of some wood from Styrax, which is bloody good for making spears and lances.
   Mt Olympus is surrounded by forest which is home to a lot of dodgy bastards who prey on unsuspecting travellers so I'm always keeping my mincers peeled. Some of those fuckers have been established up there a long time and have become proper tyrants like that bloke Cleon, who reckons he's the daddy. He was from Ioulioupolis ( try fucking saying that after a few Veras! ) but he relocated to Kallydion for his secret operations. Now, this Cleon became good mates with Antonius the Roman Emperor as Cleon kept attacking the authorities who were exacting levies from Labienus the Roman which was fucking up Roman preparations in Asia. During the war at Actium in Greece, Cleon ditched Antonius and joined up with Caesar and he received honours from both Antonius and Caesar, the tricky bastard! Cleon was no longer regarded as a gangster and he was elevated to dynastic status, even being entrusted with the priesthood of several temples dedicated to bloody Zeus. He fucked up royally though, as he was greedy and stuffed himself with so much pork he got fat and keeled over. He was told the rules of the sanctuary at Komana strictly prohibited the eating of pigs. He didn't give a flying fuck did old Cleon, he was eating roast pork and bacon sandwiches and pork scratchings by the cart load! The other priests and priestesses told him off for violating their customs and corrupting the sanctity of the precinct by continuing to eat so much Duchess of York. He said 'I run the show now, so fuck off with your nagging and leave me alone. I love a bit of streaky! Fuck off back to your precinct or peribolos or whatever you fucking call it. Leave me alone you cunts!' So lovely little Cleon got large and croaked it!
   I trotted down Mt Olympos and over the bridge to Kyzikos where I had that Olympic sandwich. There was a war here called the Mithridatic War because it was started by King Mithridates from Persia who unexpectedly turned up with 150,000 soldiers! The leader of the Kyzekenian Greeks said 'cor, fuck me look at that lot!' King Mith swiftly took Mt Adrastia and some of the Kyzikene suburbs. The Greeks almost took old King Mith alive but when they cornered him in a trench, he slithered away safely. The Roman commander Lucullus sent a load of centurians one night to help the Greeks. The Persians, also suffering from famine, beat a hasty retreat and never fucking came back. Anyway because of that, the Romans have granted Kyzikene as a free city in honour of the war. And they make a bloody good kebab!
    Then I rode to Apameia for some good barbecued trout as there are many fast flowing rivers meandering and converging there. After that I galloped through the region of Laodicia into a city called Karoura for a soak in the hot springs. The city is liable to earthquakes like most parts of Asia Minor. One time a brothel keeper was staying in a hotel with a large number of beautiful women and an earthquake happened at night while they were all shagging and the ground opened up and they all disappeared down a big fucking hole together. They didn't catch a cold! Anyway that's enough gassing for now, you can all fuck off, it's tea time!

Attica Stomp with Mykalus

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian and today I'm gonna take a butchers at bloody Attica. This means I need to cop a lift on a beaked ship going out of Abydos.
   So I arrives in Nisaia on the coast of Megaris, now a separate state but it was once part of Attica. They say Attica gets its name from Akte and became Aktika then Attica. I had a quick nose round Nisaia. Nearby are the Skironides rocks where there's a very dangerous mountain road and a lot of bloody carts fall off it. Plenty of bandits lurk in the bushes too, so don't go down it after dark. Skiron the bloke was one of these fuckers and they say old Theseus clobbered him one day and made the route much safer. There's a violent westerly wind in these parts and they now call it the Skiron after that robbing bastard.
   Visited a pub in Megara and some geezer told me about an old pillar. He said 'back in the days they erected a pillar, it was written on one side "this belongs to Ionians and on the other side this belongs to Dorians" as this was always disputed territory. It's a place worth fighting over as it's very strategic.' I had another sherbert. He said 'Attica and Megaris was all one state called Ionia, named after Ion the bloke. Ionia was divided into four parts owned by Aigeus, Lycos, Pallas, and Nisos. That's why the port of Megaris is called Nisaia. Eventually we kicked out the fucking Ionians and it became run by us Dorians from darn sarf. We removed the pillar.'
   Right, so I stock up on pine from the island of Salamis after a rocky old boat trip over the Bay of Eleusis. There was a big sea battle with old Xerxes here years ago but the Greeks sent him packing. On Salamis there was a bloke called Kychreus who had a snake and he fed it loads of rats and mice until it grew so big and menacing it started to cause a lot of bloody bother. So Eurylochos drove it off the island and the girl Demeter felt sorry for it and took it in. I got a nice bundle of choice wood anyway and grabbed the ferry to Eleusis and had a bacon sarnie, plenty of brarn sauce and a honey- roasted sparrer. Pericles was here once supervising the construction of a nice Parthenon.
   Trotted down the Sacred Way to Athens. Had a butchers at a different Parthenon which has a bloody nice ivory statue of Athena. There's a lamp at the temple of Polias and it's been going since it was lit as no bastard has ever been able to blow it out. Nice view of the city from up on the acropolis. I could see the port of Peiraious and nearby Munichia where people live in caves on the headland. Saw the Leokorion, Pantheon and the bloody Theseion. Munichia had 400 ships at anchor once and some big old harbour walls. The walls were destroyed by the Spartans and then by the Romans under Sulla. Lovely Olympic stadium in Athens but the Olympion is half built. Had some wine. Wandered through the gardens of Academia a bit half cut and caught a film in the Odeon called 300. Couldn't be arsed with the Panhellenion!
   Kekrops supposedly founded Athens. Then Solon ran it, then a tyrant called Pisistratus took over, then Kleisthenes had a stab at it. After that 430 blokes were installed by the Spartans. It became a democracy again until the Romans moved in. Some citizens said they had a right old Todd Carty under Cassandros the Macedonian who placed Demetrios in charge of Athens who kept the democracy going. He fled to Egypt when king Cassandros died and the people melted down all the bronze statues of the king and turned them into pisspots! Romans took Athens again but after the Mithridatic War a nasty cunt called Aristion ruled until the Roman bloke Sulla fucked him up and gave him a smack in the jackdaw. To this day Athens is a free city because of the Romans.
   Plenty of pelicans about in the city who are a migratory people from up north.  Kallimachus says the waters of the Eridanos river are pure enough for Athenian virgins but cattle won't fucking drink it! The fountain near the Lycion is potable. I prefer the beer in the fucking Theatre of Dionysius to be honest. See ya later!

Belgians according to Strabo

According to Strabo, the Belgians ( long before the country of Belgium was formed from the Spanish Netherlands )  had assemblies and were under Roman occupation. The people wore sagos made from rough lamb's wool that was wrapped around the body a bit like a toga. Well, a most peculiar thing can happen. If a person in the audience starts talking, coughs or farts while the speaker is in full flow, and the speaker is interrupted by the noise, an official draws his sword and threatens the miscreant to hush. If he doesn't take heed the sword is redrawn more aggressively and the miscreant is given a final warning. If the miscreant makes another noise the official proceeds to cut away his clothing so that not much remains to be of any use. The miscreant then usually leaves the assembly room and the speaker continues with his oration. The miscreant goes home and knits another sago! On  some occasions the miscreant never learns because he returns to the assembly a few days later. He lets out an almighty burp and the official draws his sword and warns him most sternly not to interrupt the speaker again. The miscreant obviously has the devil in him  because he shouts out "bullocks" so the swordsman points his sharpened sword at him and offers a final warning. The miscreant shouts "Campania!" Very very loud. The official approaches the miscreant without further ado and cuts away his clothing so that not much remains that is of any use, so the miscreant goes home and knits another sago. These were the things officials at assemblies had to deal with on a regular basis.

Delphi and Lokria

Phocis and the Delphic Oracle.  Built in central Hellas. They say Zeus sent two eagles one from the west and one from the east and they may have been ravens but we'll stick to eagles aiglai and they met at Delphi. To this day the sanctuary has a navel because it's central to all lands and the headband of the navel is decorated with an image of the eagles myth. Hotel California was not played on reed flutes or pipes or syringai as they were called. Paeans were a common thing. Especially during the Pythean games when the theatre was full. Delphi an Oracle dedicated and founded by the winged one Apollo. The first Pythia was a prophetess called Phemonoe. Pythia is from pythestai which means to inquire which makes sense. Delphi is not far from Krisa which gives its name to the Krisaian gulf and Kirrha ( Girrha )is not far however both cities were razed.
   Delphi stayed intact despite many plunderings over the centuries as it has always been a sacred storehouse of great wealth although not in Strabo's time. It has been pillaged many times and since the cave entrance leads deep down precious treasures were locked well below in rocky caverns but one guy Onomarchus tried to tunnel through and dig it out but supposedly caused an earthquake and this tale has deterred those ever since.
   Sacred Parnassos. Sacred caves and the nymphs of Korkyra in the shadow of Mount Korax. The Amphictyonian decree forbade the Krisaians from exacting duties from Italian and Sicilian products coming into the port of Krisa but it didn't stop the greedy Krisaians and it made them rather prosperous.
   Tityos was slain and good riddance to the monstrous man and so was the Python also known as the Dracon. Definitely a link between snakes and dragons. Tityos seemed to have been killed and then reappeared again in Euboia which is myth.
   Elatia was the largest city in Phocia and according to Demosthenes the Orator you could hear the thunderous clashes in Elatia from Athens during the Phocian war. There was also a Krisaian war. Elatia was not as populous in Homer's time.
   Hellebore was supposedly a tasty treat. Give me some Hellebore. It was found in Antikyra and was known as hell flowers. Melampus observed its cathartic effects on goats and is deemed to be a magico-poisonous plant in the same family of plants as the deadly aconite. Melampus used the milk of the goats to cure the daughters of the King of Argos who were inflicted with a divine madness. Ella bora. It was used as a medicine and a cure for phlegm by Dioscorides and as an early type of mouthwash to elimate toothache. Pliny said it was used in fumigation. Pausanias says the river Pleistus was poisoned with Hellebore roots during the war with Krisa and thus the water supply of the city was contaminated giving the invaders the edge over the Krisaians. Nasty trick. Early chemical warfare in fact.
   Ephoros was a man of truth and sort of had no time for historical myth but made allowances for certain myths with a semblance of truth such as Apollo and Themis and he believed Apollo founded the delphic Oracle to benefit man. The religious aspect was high and the place became a sort of diocese to many incorporated cities similar to the Achaian cities. Ephoros was subject to paradoxical comments and often contradicts his beliefs but Strabo thought he was a good authority on Phocia.
   Ozolian Lokrians from Lokri a place that is split down the middle - amongst the west to east ribbons of states north of Boiotia with Boiotia included in the ribbons.

Focians and Aristarche updated with anachronistic fashions

Strabo says when the Focians left their big houses, an Oracle was delivered to them for use on their trip to Ephesos - to ask how they could be provided with what the goddess Artemis commanded.
    In a dream Artemis stood beside sexy Aristarche, a very desirable woman, and said "join up with the dashing Focians. They adore you Aristarche darling!"
   So she joined the Focians as she rather liked them and assisted them in war. A town was built and the Focians set up sanctuary and honored Aristarche by appointing her as CEO of a bank and awarded her with constant million pound bonuses, keeping a representation of the xoanan.
   Fashion companies would continually donate stiletto shoes and boots and luxury handbags and Aristarche bought a huge house on the slopes of the mountain in Argos looking over the docking narrow ships below where she observed many exotic things being carried up to her house by her slaves.
    Aristarche laid back on her bearskin rug with Jimmy Choo knee-high boots on with a gold zip up the back, smoking a banting leaf and said "it's only 28 miles to Ocelum! Slave, get me my Mercedes CLK and have the leather seats cleaned with kelikalec for I must play 'hogs of the road' with my lovely friend Artemis who drives a Lambo."

Hyrkanian Sea and the Massagetians according to Strabo

Aristoboulus says that the Oxos river is navigable so that goods come down from the Indian mountains and are taken to the Caspian sea then carried across to Albania via the Kyros river and through successive places to the Euxine Sea and on through the Dardanelles into the Aegian sea and round the Peloponnesos and onward to Taras, Megara and Syracuse in Sikelia. Goods such as bronze gold honey and wine. Honey is rich near Tape on the edge of the Hyrkanian sea and the bees swarm in the trees and the honey drips from the leaves. Some roll the leaves and it is very sweet. They say the Caspian sea itself is too sweet to be a sea and is sometimes regarded as a huge lake. The Tanais flows into it and links it to the Maiotic gulf. Fir from Indike is  popular with boat construction. Eratosthenes backs up what Aristoboulus says. The other river Ochos flows into the Oxos.
   The Hyrkanian Massagetians were cannibals and lived in the well watered lands around the Araxes river. When people died they were cut up and mixed with diced lamb and eaten. If a person died of a nasty disease they were thrown into the open and left for wild animals to consume. Massagetians married one woman but were far from loyal partners. They had sex with other women and it was done openly where the man would hang his quiver on the wagon where the intercourse was about to ensue. Some of the Massagetians in the marshes wore tree bark for clothing as animal skins were scarce and they did not kill their sheep as they used the wool and decorated it with bright painted colours
  Up near Scythia there were many poisonous creatures including scorpions and phalangia ( spiders ) which could be deadly. On Hyrkania the vine produces a metretes of wine, grown in the gardens of the royal residence at Tape. Can't seem to locate where Tape was,  although it might be short for Taprake. Tapyrians are not far as are the Derbikians. Bactra city is also known as Zariaspa. The Medes and Persians had much influence in the area.
    In Albania, near the Kaspian sea where the river Alazonios flows, there was a priest of the king who would chain lost and wandering temple slaves to a tree in the forest of Iberia, and the captive would be maintained luxuriously for a year or so. Then he is led to the goddess to be sacrificed and anointed with sacred oils. A member of the audience would step forward and thrust a spear into the victim's heart. His fall to the ground would be analysed carefully for any signs from the gods and then his body is carried to another place to be trampled on where the people walking on the dead person are thus purified. In this region there were 26 languages which made conversation tricky at the best of times.
   Arachosians were further towards the east. Same as Sakia. Iberia was obviously linked with Iberia in the west which is now Spain and Portugal. The northern Scythian peoples were generally peaceful farmers but could gather myriads if they were threatened by neighbours. They had the usual weapons and oblong shields. Lots of gold in the region and this reflected in their lavish bridleware. Arians came from the area round the Caucasus and the Kaspian Gates.
   There was many fast flowing streams that sprayed over the cliffs and promontories and over the beach into the Caspian. There were holes in the mountains home to Troglodytes  ( cave dwellers ). Maybe the song wild thing by the Troggs has its origins in the word Troglodyte. The southern Caucasus was noted as being the highest region.
   The Queen of the Amazons was called Thalestria and she was said to have fucked Alexander the Great on quite a regular basis as they both knocked about in the Kaspian region. He had a fair few sprogs running about who wrere taken to the male camp. Some writers embellished the truth with myths regarding Alexander and the Amazons including Homer and Hesiod who understandably wanted to tell a good story while forfeiting the facts. Polykleites was in the area. They say the Amazons were fierce women who conquered many lands and founded Smyrna and Kyme.

Kyllene

At Kyllene, a port on the Elis coast there was a statue of Asklepios by Kolotes made in ivory. Many towns on the Peloponnesos were once individual villages that had become amalgamated into cities. On the north coast of Elis there is a sickle-shaped promontory called Drepanium and the word drepanus means sickle. There was a prehistoric armour-plated fish called drepanaspis and its head was sickle-shaped. Amathus river was sandy and the word amathus means sandy. The gulfs or Sinus around the Peloponnesos are going anti-clockwise,  the Corinthian Messenic Laconic Argolic Hermionic and Saronic. "There is a pylos in front of pylos, and even another pylos". It seems the Argolian gulf is made up partly by the smaller hermionic gulf.
   The Persians supposedly exhumed King Amasis's corpse and flogged it and beat it and prodded it with gourds and committed all manner of atrocious acts upon it until it was rotten and they burnt it but someone pointed out that it wasn't actually Amasis! They obviously dug up the wrong bloke.
   The Persian King Xerxes built a pontoon bridge over the Hellespont, he installed high fences on either side so that the horses wouldn't be alarmed by seeing the raging torrents below while they trotted across it.
   The Greeks admired revenge. Pericles came home from a party one night escorted by his slave with a torch, and was tailed by a bloke who hurled much abuse and insults at him all the way. Pericles took no notice, but on reaching his own house he turned to his slave, winked and said "Archie, see this fellow safely home".
   Chersonesos. Dyme. Peneius river and alpheius river. There was a stinking misty lagoon located near where the Alpheius flows into the Tyrrhenian sea where all the fish are inedible and Homer said it was where the Centaurs washed off the poison from the bites inflicted by the Hydra and later the area was well known to be a cure for leprosy leuke leichine and other skin diseases. The big mountain Homer called the onelian rock is called scullios. Arene, lovely Arene, it was there but where? Ainos. Triphylians lived in the southern region of Elis and the central part near Alpheius is the Pisatis.   
 
   Arcadia is in the middle of the Peloponnesos and is associated with idyllic rural beauty and good living very often depicted in the paintings of Poussin and Claude and other classicist masters as well as more modern day classicists such as Richard Wilson and Thomas Jones. It is said that the valleys of Arcadia and most of Hellas were far more lush and verdant 2000 years ago than it is now because of over farming and climate change. Or maybe it was the same except the artists and poets beautified it more than it actually was. Who really knows.
   Sparta is situated in central Laconia and they taught the kids both male and female how to fight from a very early age much like lions. In fact lions roamed Greece two millenia ago. One of Herakles first Labours was to slay the Nemean lion and afterwards he always wore it's head. The word Nemo is Greek and could be related to Neme. Spartans were the best warriors in Greece. They lived close to the Lacedaimonians and were pretty much the same people.

Lykia and Pamphylia

The Corcyrian Caves are now known as the Heaven and Hell caves. The underground river was very clear and pure that ran to the sea and was called the Bitter Water. Amongst the shrubs that grew here was the saffron crocus. The caves are actually sinkholes.
    Aratos wrote the original Phainomena. Pompeiupolis was a later Roman settlement built on Soloi where pirates were resettled. The Issic gulf is the eastern Mediterranean at Israel. Issus is a city that gave it its name. Philamon the comedic poet was from the area. Panaitios too. Pamphylia pamphlet? Zenothetes.
   Xanthos is one of the larger cities who voted in three representatives. Proportional representation. Myra was another big city. The Chelidonian islands lie off Lykia near Pisidia. Cleopatra VII liked Antonius and he liked her.
   Isaura pirate said Isauricus and I destroyed him at Isaura along with the other pirates as they were an eyesore. Servilius Isauricus.
   Chimaira monster from near Mount Antikragos and city of Kragos and Pandaros the Trojan was honoured near Pinara. Kragos is similar to the Gaelic word crag. Gaelic gall gaul Galatians. All one race.
   Lykian Phaselis was razed by Alexander the Great when he opened the narrows of Termessos and he navigated the narrow passage at the foot of Mt Klimax in stormy weather. The tide was in and the coastal area was flooded so he and his army spent most of the day wading up to their bellies in water coming in from the Pamphylian Sea.
  River Kataractes was very torrential and noisy and can be heard as far as Berlin. Attaleia was named after King Attalos. Kallisthenes says the Trojans came to Pamphylia. Korakesion is the start of Rough Kilikia or Trachiotis. Level Kilikia is called Pedias. Herodotus says the Trojans followed Amphilochos and Kalchas. Others went with Mopsos over the Tauros mountains.
   In Kilikia there was a revolutionary  called Diodotus who operated from Korakesion, a fortress on a rock called Tryphon. Diodotus urged the Syrian and Kilikian people to revolt against the Seleukian kings and he was eventually locked up in a cell by Antiochus VII and was forced to kill himself. Other uprisings quickly followed suit as is often the case in revolutions. The people began to revolt against these nasty kings. Kilikian pirates took advantage of the situation and captured people and sold them as slaves to the Romans at the great naval base and emporium of Delos. This was a lucrative trade as the Romans paid good money for slaves as they were very wealthy and made much use of slaves since the capture and plundering of Corinth and Karchedon. The slaves were easy to capture in times of great upheaval. It was one ship in and one ship out. The Romans sent Scipius Aemilianus along to monitor the slave situation as it was getting quite ruthless. The kings of Egypt and Cyprus and the Rhodians were getting in on the slave trade in the guise of supporting the cause of the revolutionaries as they were enemies of the Syrians. Scipius and other Romans decided not to intervene as the Romans had ratified the hereditary succession of the Seleukian kings and were too proud to admit that they had fucked things up by doing so! The slave trade continued with the Kilikians calling themselves slave traders instead of pirates thinking that it sounded less evil. The terrible rule of King Seleukos Nikator of Syria was the straw that broke the camel's back and paved the way for the Parthians, sometimes known as Arsakes. The Romans had no choice but to go to war with the Parthians and kicked them out of Kilikia after a few bloodthirsty battles. The Romans then gave the Kilikians their country back along with their coastline and there was peace at last.
   "One sees the sickness in Tarsos especially in its excrement" said Athenodoros, teacher of Caesar, at an assembly. This relates to the man who had splattered diarrhoea extensively on his front door and walls of his house. Prior to this, Boethus the bad poet was exiled from Tarsos and his government was dissolved by Athenodoros son of Sandon.

Magnesia with Mykalus Kane

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy Cappadocian. I like Magnesia it's a nice town and one day I had to go there to get some special milk that cures indigestion. I crossed over the river Maiandros which is a twisty turny old lamb's liver. When anyone says a river 'meanders' it's because it goes round a lot of bends and the word derives from the river Maiandros. Not a lot of people know that.
   They reckon this place is of Aiolian descent as there's a region called Magnesia in Aiolia over in Greece proper. Others say the original settlers were Delphians which is also Aiolian.
    I met an old poet called Hesiod in a pub called the Thorax and he was almost legless and he slapped me on the back and spoke in a sort of Carian-Barbarian-Hellenic accent. It's the equivalent of Welsh-Jamaican-French. He said "Ah wance knows a lovely ma'amoiselle called Larissa, who lived in Diddyman Hills by the Dortian Pleeeen near Amyros man, lorded with greeps, she dipped her Sebs in Leak Beebis" I said "did you get your oats?" Hesiod fell off his stool and laughed "Ha ha bettah than dat boyo. I got ma greeps in! Le best blowjob in Ellass, mon ami!" He laughed and puked in a vase.
   I exited the Thorax which is named after the nearby mountain of Thorax where old Daphitas the novelist was crucified for treason. He wrote a few lines in a book that the kings didn't agree with and that was his lot!
   I went to have a butchers at the sanctuary of Dindymene but some bastard had come along and half-inched it because it was bloody gorn. I overheard they moved it and I thought fuck me that ain't on! The temple of Artemis is still here, not as big as the one in Ephesos but it's better quality both in harmony and construction, said to be one of the best in Asia.
   Some geezer called Kallinos said that the Magnesians were once destroyed by the Kimmerians and then the Miletians beat them and they became the new Magnesians and they had a war with the Ephesians. He reckons the Kimmerians were a violent lot and also invaded Sardis up the road.
    At the gym I got talking to a boxer called Kleomachus who was having a bit of a threesome with a high class woman and a slave girl. I said "blimey don't let your hubby find out." She said "he knows about it and sometimes joins in wearing his bronze helmet and plumes!" Well I left them all to it. Good old Magnesia. Cures indigestion haha.
   Supposedly there was a bit of a legal dispute over some plaque on the bronze image of Zeus in the theatre. The inscription was written in bad grammar so the city of Magnesia was charged with ignorance because of the ambiguity of the text. This was because some bloke had forgotten to write the last letter on a word. Well it confused people didn't it. So the word didn't really make any sense as it was in the wrong tense - although you only had to use your fucking nod to work it out whether it was nominative or dative. It was a bit petty really but the city councillors were fined a few drachmas because of gross negligence and they had to do without a month's sherberts. Fucking nonsense ain't it? Old Zeus didn't give a monkeys did he, living it up on Mt Olympos, eating steak, drinking champagne and playing marbles.
   They reckon last week the roman commander Antonius took a fancy to a citharodist called Anaxenor who plays a pretty fucking mean cithar it has to be said. Antonius appointed him as a tax collector for the whole region and decked him out in purple designer clobber and gave him a legion of soldiers. Blimey he must have liked him a fucking lot! That's a weird thing to get as a gift though - a job as a tax collector but then again you can earn a nice bit of bunce. I wonder if he played his music while he was collecting taxes? I like being a wood merchant though. Nothing like the niff of recently cut pine! Time for a quick pint before I do the Frank Bough. I'll have one in the Thorax again as they've got some nice bloody chairs in there. Ok, better watch me grammar in this manor as I don't want to incur a fine and get those fucking councillors in bother!

An oracle at Dodona

I think it was the Boiotians who consulted the Oracle at Dodona before a battle and the Oracle was three priestesses and one of them was faithful to the opposing side and she gave biased opinions so the Boiotians wanted the priestesses exchanged for men which was their custom so the two priestesses had to go as one had been slain for her bias and the men took charge of the Dodonian Oracle.

Persian Magi

They sacrifice to fire or water and worship Helios. They add dry wood no bark plenty of fat on top pouring on oil lighting from below never blowing the flame always use a fan ( a bit like those electric ones you can get from Robert Dyas for a pony ). If anyone blows or adds dead animals or dung to the fire is immediately executed. They get water from a river or spring by digging a canal to it and in the process of doing so they kill a crowned victim, being careful not to pollute the canal with his blood. They place divided meat on a laurel or myrtle log, never terebinth or oak, and the wise men touch the chops with small wands and make incantations, pouring more oil mixed with milk and honey straight onto the ground. Lots of it. They make incantations for weeks holding a bunch of small tamarisk sticks and waving them while making odd incantational sounds and scrape their sandals in the sandy soil. They never use a dagger to make sacrifices but use a kind of tree trunk, it is not said if it whittled or sharpened for such sacrificial purposes but they explicitly never use a dagger. A tree trunk only! They say their fires are inextinguishable and they are guarded while many incantations are performed honoring Mithra, Selena Scott and Aphrodite. Why they crown their victims is not certain but it's a bit of a fucker really when you think you've been crowned the new king and some mad Pyraithian wizards are only having a laugh and then they stab you with a fucking tree trunk and cut one of your legs off as an omentum and place it on the fire. Stay away from myrtle! There is frequent insurrection in the region but the Parthian sheriffs do their best to quell such uprisings as the whole area falls into the great Parthian empire.

The Citharodist of Lycia

citharodist was playing to the big group of people one day and suddenly the bell went to announce that the daily fish catch had arrived and all the people at the gig promptly got up and left and went to get their fish as they were starving. A deaf man was left watching. The citharodist went up to him and said thanks for staying and listening to my music rather than going with all the others to get fish. The man was deaf and he said oh has the fish bell rung? When the citharodist had said it had rung the deaf man got up and joined the others.
Rhodes had three cities Ialysos Lindos and Karinos. They say Herodotus was from there. The Colossus of Helios Zeus was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. An earthquake caused it to fall at the knees and it was never resurrected. The Rhodians had a good autonomous state going on and were a sea faring nation. Halicarnassos was once Zephyrus. Glaucus.

Tigranes the Great in Armenia

The river Tigris has its source in the Tauros. The Tigris is named after the Medic word for arrow. Tigranes II was the father of Artavasdes II and was a descendent of Artaxias. Pompeius assessed Tigranes 6000 talents of silver which was distributed among the Roman army.
   Many parts of Armenia were colonised by Hellenes and Thessalians in particular. Medios was a Larisian. The Armenian fashion for long chitons and eagerness for horsemanship originated in Thessaly. This seems to be related to the earlier expeditions of Jason and Medeia. They say the region is cold and liable to sudden snowstorms and blizzards and the soldiers carry a long coloured pipe which they can thrust upward through the snow if they become trapped which allows them to breathe through whole they await rescue.
   Tigranes founded Tigranokerta on the Euphrates river not far from Zeugma. He ravaged several cities including Ninos and Arbela and eventually took Syria and Phoenicia in revenge against the Parthians. Lucullus later razed Tigranokerta and it became nothing more than a village. He also pushed Tigranes out of the Levant. 
   King Artavasdes became friends with the Roman Emperor Antonius and later betrayed the Romans to the Parthians so Artavasdes was seized and paraded in chains through Alexandria and was later killed during the war at Aktium.
   Armenia possibly gets its name from Armenos, who came from the city of Armenion, which was a Thessalian city that lies on Lake Boibe between Pharai and Larisa. They say some wild and disobedient Thracians settled in the mountainous areas and were called Saraparians. They were scalpers and beheaders. A nice bunch of folk.
   Artanes (descendent of Zariadris, the commander of Antiochus the Great) was beaten by Tigranes. Artanes was a Sophenian. The Persians once held Armenia under Orontes descendant of Hydarnes and so did the Macedonians.

Thessaly and the Magic Helmet

Housebreaking sometimes takes place between neighbours and other times people travel far with the intention of burgling a home, especially if they know there's a priceless magic helmet there.
    In one case, at a place called Eleon in ancient Thessaly, King Amyntor had somehow acquired an invisible helmet. It actually belonged to a neighbour called  Autolycus who had lent it to his grandson Odysseus to wear at the siege of Troy.
   Autolycus broke into the armory of Amyntor, who was incidentally the father of Phoinix, snatched the helmet, scuttled off down some tracks, through the woods in the moonlight shadow of Mt Parnassos and returned home without being seen. Autolycus passed it on to his mate Amphidamas of Kythera and he passed it on to a bloke called Molus who gave it to his son Meriones. Meriones gave it back to Odysseus.
   So if it was an invisible helmet it must have been quite tricky to find, although Autolycus had supreme talents for thievery so an invisible helmet locked in an armory would've been a sinch for such a man. Moreover, maybe it only transformed to invisible when you said the magic word. Or maybe you rubbed one of the boars tusks on it. It'd be funny if Odysseus gave it back to King Amyntor.

Notes on Sicily

Sicily sikelia was once called triniakia  then thrinakia because of it being triangular. Syracuse settled by archias  who wanted wealth andwas advised by the delphic Oracle that Syracuse was his best bet if he wanted to make extreme amounts of money and thus a proverb was created. His friend wanted health so he was advised by the Oracle to settle at Kroton and it became synonymous with good living. The myth of the river flowing underground from Greece to sicily is supposedly complete nonsense and regarded by strabo as an impossibility. The river was said to emerge above a coastal town in sikelia. Catania was katane. Panormos is now palermo. Rhegion is reggio. Locris loggia. One of the finest examples of roman engineering still stands at Nimes in France nemausos the 800 m aqueduct. The Romans made good use of the hellenic arch. Masses of Greeks migrated to sicily and southern Italy. Messene is now messina. Messenger? Mt Aitna.  Brettians. Nelson owned a bit of sicily called bronte and he always signed his letters Duke of bronte! Greek colonies were at war all over Italy and sicily. Megara. A man once chambered up Aitna got over the wall and jumped down into the crater and witnessed a 200 ft smoke cloud above a dark hot sandy terrain and he decided not to venture too far in as the sand got deeper and hotter and indeed he lost a bronze shoe before he climbed back out. Brindisi was Brentian as it resembles a deers horns regarding the shape of the town and harbour. Baris was not far. Most trade to Rome from Greece came through Brindisi across the adriatic and Ionian seas. Supposedly Taranto Taras had a bronze colossus of zeus nearly as big as the one in Rhodes and there was also a large bronze statue of herakles. Italia was a successful roman starting point as the country goes through many climates and is protected on one side by the appennine mountains making the adriatic coast a formidable place to invade. Hera was volcanic in the liparaian island chain where today we call it stromboli. Many hot springs in that area due to the fault lines in the tyrrhenian sea. Etna stromboli vesuvius.

Spearing galeotes

Strabo talks about hunting the swordfish by spear. Off Sicily in the strait they hunted galeotes ( swordfish and dogfish ). According to Polybius there were two men, a rower and a spearman who would hunt them and once spotted the spear is thrust into the galeote and there is much sport until it is worn out and it is dragged ashore or put into the boat depending on its size. The spears are made of oak with a bronze barbed tip. There is a line attached a bit like a modern harpoon. The spears are sometimes discarded temporarily but they don't sink so they can easily be recovered later. The galeotes are fierce sporting fish and fight like wild boars and sometimes a fisherman is injured by the sword. The spearman stands on the prow of the boat and waits for the signal from the man stationed up in the lookout. Near the Skyllaion, in the shadow of Mt Aitna. So while Etna was rumbling and spitting rocks and smoke they were hunting galeotes! If they hunted by night they would have seen a bright light at the top of Etna.

Thessaly and Larissa

Sperchius river is on the southern Phthoitian border. Nessonis and Boibeis are the main lakes. The whole region was once covered in a big lake but an earthquake drained the plains. Nessonis had embankments built by the Larisaians to stop the flooding of arable land. Thessaly was often invaded by the Macedonians to the north. Phillipos liked to invaded the islands adding them to his hegemony; places like Skiathos and Skyros. He simply invaded because they were near to Macedonia, which you can't argue with.
   Thessaly was divided into four parts, Phthoitis Helaiotis Thessalotis and Pelasgiaotis.
  Larisa was a central city in Pelasgiaotis Lapiths moved into the area. They later lived together with the Perrhaibians who moved closer to Dodona in the colder mountains. They were ruled by the Larisians who made them pay tribute until the Macedonians took the land. Perrhaibians were Pelasgians of Krimante and were migrant types.
  Iolkos was razed eventually but it was where Peleus detailed Jason before he  left in the Argo for Chalkis. Pegai or Pagasai named after springs "pegai" or was where the shipbuilding was. This was later razed. This became the naval station at modern Volos.
    Some say Thessaly was ruled by Deukalion who named the southern part Pandora after his mum and the northern part was ruled by his dad Haimon and called Haimonia. It has also been called Hellas after Hellen the son of Deukalion. It was also called Pyrrhia. May have been named after Thessalos son of Herakles.
  There was a big battle where the romans fought Demetrios of the Macedonians at Kynoskephalai.
The roman leader was Titus Quinctus.
   City of Leimone was destroyed. This was a recurring theme in Thessaly with a lot of invaders and migrants coming from all sides, essentially a large plain and good land. There was a Phthiolian Thebes too. Phthoitis is the southern most part.
  Paracheloitai has to be mentioned as it is a posh sounding name.
  The so called metropolis was here and is named due to the amalgamation of three unimportant towns. Ithome was also added. Later Thamai.
    There were good goats on Skyros as well as a sort of variegated white stone that was used in much construction at Rome but eventually it became so cheap it went out of vogue, which was often the case with the fastidious bourgeoisie of Roma. Skyros was famed for Lycomedes and Achilles and the raising of his son Neoptolemus. Macedonians later seized it as they did most of the islands off Magnesia and made them known because of it.
   Larisa preserves its ancestral reputation. Many places throughout Greece and Asia are called Larisa and Larisos. Larisa in Attica is famed for its wine. Larisan Zeus is associated as he loved a tipple.
  Phoenix lived in Farthest Phthoitis, Lord of the Dolopians. Phoenix did not accompany his Dolopians subjects in the battle around Ilion  (Troy ). Homer says it would be absurd if the king took part in the expedition without his subjects or army for that matter. Pelasgian Argos. Phoenic may have been only an advisor to Achilles. He says Phoenix does not go forth into danger at Ilion. Pindar  says Phoenix "led a rash crowd of Dolopians who used the sling and aided the missiles of the horse-taming Danaans" Phoenix was said to be from Ormenion.
   Mount Pindos was in the Pindus mountains. Typhrestos was a Dryopian mountain.
   Antron,  a city subject to Protesilaos. In the Euboian strait there's a reef known as the Ass of Antron. Mt. Othrys. Halos and Demetrias. Pyrasos, a city with a good harbour and nice groves dedicated to Demeter. The Amphrysos flows through it. Part of Thessialotis is subject to Eurypylos, a cousin of Phoenix. At Phyllos there is a sanctuary of Apollo and at Ichnai there us one to Themis.
   Hesiod says of Lake Boibeis in Magnesia "Or as the unwedded maiden who living in the sacred Didymian hills in the Dostian plain in front of Amyros abundant in grapes bathed her foot in the Boibiadian lake"
   Eurypylos was the son of Euaimos, the son of Ormenos who was the son of Kerphios so of Aiolos.

Mykalus Kane checking out the Troad again

My name is Mykalus Kane and I'm a nosy bastard. Someone put a leopard skin on Antenor's front door. A leopard skin on a door is a sign that the place is not to be looted by soldiers.
   Assos has an harbour miles from the town and it's a bloody steep climb. Stratonikos the citharast said 'go to Assos so that you may quickly come to destruction'. He plays a mean cithara does old Strat! One day Zeus was angry and sent a lightning bolt from his cloud clean into the neck of old Strat's cithara and it sounded fucking amazing. An electric cithara. He could never play as well again as his arm was fucked.
   Kane or Kanai was founded by Lokrians from Kynos. That's where my great great great great great grandad was from. He was a Lokrian. Fuck knows where his dad came from. London maybe.
   Ajax the Greek was destroyed in a shipwreck, not by Athena's wrath as she hated all the Greeks for violating her sanctuary, but by Poseidon because Ajax was a boastful git and Poseidon hated show offs. That's a bit rich coming from him! There's a statue of Ajax but I can't remember where the fuck it is. Someone named some scouring powder after the bloke which is nice.
   One day one of Maninnikus's goats fell down into a cave that has a river, near Lake Sapra, and when it emerged it was found by a shepherd called Dog. Aiga is old Hellenic for goat and Aiga gives its name to the Aiegian sea. It's the goat sea.
   The Aphrodision is on Cape Pyrrha at Gargara on the Adramyttenian gulf or Idaian gulf. A lot people go up there for a bit of dogging as Aphrodite was the goddess of banging.
   Troy has various speculated locations and it's still not apparent as to its bloody exact location. There's a lot of discrepancies on the location and the source of its rivers. The Skamandros river once had hot springs but they're gorn now. Troy was once nearer to its harbour but since then there's been a lot of silt building up thus extending the coast of the Troad. Lysimachus built a circuitous wall around Troy.
   Asia is named after a geezer called Asios. Asia denotes the area of northeast Anatolia called Aiolia, but one day the prophets reckon Asia will expand to include Persia and India and beyond. I'm inclined to believe it but I often believe that lying bastard Poseidonius!
   Anyway the Troad got going when Orestes began an expedition from Hellas but he croaked it in Arcadia before he got here. His son Penthilos took the baton and then handed it to Archelaos who settled on Kyzikos and then Gras colonised an area by the Granikos river. Kleues was a descendent of King Agamemnon and had quite an army.
   Lekton was the southern spur of Mt Ida. That's all I know about Lekton but not a lot of people know that. No not Luton you berk,  Lekton.
   The Tarsios river at Zeleia of the beautiful countryside is bridged 20 times by the same fucking road. A twisty little brook is the Tarsios. They could've followed the riverbank but you know the Romans and their adherence to straight roads. I saw old Lucullus with a ruler out the other day and I said "hey Lucullus it ain't gonna get any bigger mate haha!"
   Epikouros was from Lampsakos where the grapes grew big and plentiful, a bit like my fucking Nobbies! Ouch. They say the wine was excellent. Epikouros gives his name to the word epicure. An epicure relates to the pleasures of food and drink - as in epicurean delights. The god of wine Dionysius is from Lampsakos and his son Priapos gives his name to a medical condition called Priapism which is a constant erection due to a blocked artery. An emergency usually and painful. Priapos must have been permanently on the viagra.
   The harbour of Sestos has the Tower of Hero as a marker so when you cross the Hellespont from Abydos you know what to head for.
   There's wild fig trees in Erineos and one of them could've been the fig tree that Athena advised would be a good spot from which to storm the walls of Troy - so the city could've been near Erineos. There was an oak tree mentioned by Achilles in the Iliad. No cunt has ever found it.

Mykalus Kane at the Troad

My name is Mykalus Kane. The Troad is the peninsula by the Hellespont, where ancient Troy was bloody located. King Xerxes made a pontoon bridge from boats, spanning the narrowest part of  the Hellespont, during the Persian Wars. The bridge went from Abydos across to Sestos - 'the mistress of the passage', as Theopompus called it. If you want to sail across the narrows it can be bloody tricky, there's a fierce current, so you have to sail at an angle against the current for a few miles upstream to get you into the bloody harbour. If you don't do it right you'll end up in fucking Lemnos! Returning from Sestos to Abydos all you do is drift with the current and it's a fucking doddle. He must have been a clever cunt that Xerxes to keep his pontoon bridge (called the Heptastadion) steady with those rapids knocking it about. Must have had some heavy anchorage going on. Hats off to the bloke!
   Ilion or Troy no longer exists. Not a trace of it! There's a burger van there now and Achilles would be proud of that. Ilion was named after Ilos, son of Dardanos, who was buried nearby, next to the famous wild fig tree.
    The city of Priapos was named after Priapos the son of Dionysius and a tart. The whole area is a haven for grapes.    Long ago King Xerxes gave the city of Lampsakos to his mate Themistocles, because he loved a bit of vino. Generous chap!
    There's a big mountain called Mt Ida that overlooks the Troad and it's in the shape of a scolopendra, which is greek for bloody centipede. It has many rocky spurs like the legs of a centipede. Loads of rivers flow down from Ida and they used to keep Troy well watered.
   Adrastia and Zeleia both had oracles that have long since been abandoned. At Zeleia there was the sanctuary of Nemesis but they decided to move it to Parion. Zeleia is surrounded by beautiful cultivated hills. Nice place for a bloody picnic.
    I had a pig's ear in Parion where the Ophiogenians lived, who were serpent healers, and if you was bitten by a snake then a serpent healer would rub you all over and you'd be cured. One of the Libyan healers supposedly said "I used to be a snake once, but one day I transformed myself into a human" - if you believe that you'll believe the moon is made of cheese!
   I trotted on to Pitya of the Pines, so named because there's fucking pine trees everywhere. There's a seafood hut and this bloke Mysian Les gets hold of some nice Linousian snails soaked in wine.
   After a bite, I went to Prokonnesos on an island, only a short sail, where that poet Aristeas is from and he's not to be trusted. He told the cozzers I was dealing in hooky boxwood. Anyway, I was supplying the old bill with cheap truncheons so they didn't bother me.
   King Darius burnt a load of cities down, including Abydos, to stop nomads crossing over the Hellespont, bent on vengeance, and he was afraid the cities would ferry supplies across to their armies on the Chersonesos. The Hellespont is a narrow strait that separates Europe from Asia. Not a lot of people know that!
    I met Xanthus in the pub and he started going on about Plato, the old philosopher and lawyer. After the big flood, he reckons Plato nailed it. He said that there were three stages of culture. 1) Mountain tops - simple and wild people who were scared of water. 2) Foothills - people who were courageous once the plains were dry 3) The Plains - the most civilized people. Xanthus said he personally thought there were more stages of culture than what Plato suggested, as in people who live near beaches or on islands. I said "well you might be right Xanth, that makes five stages of culture." Then I said "what about people who live up lamp-posts?" and he said "that makes six!" Anyway we eventually settled on 72 stages, going way beyond what Plato had originally said.
"I left the old battlecruiser and galloped back to where Troy once was, over the wide Skamandrian Plain, named after Skamandros, Hector's lad. Once it was called the Trojan Plain, the location of many a nasty old swashbuckle. Many skulls were cracked in half by Achilles and Hector's bronze swords and eyeballs speared out of their sockets. The walls of Troy came down during that war. After the war, Lysimachus rebuilt some temples and the city walls as he was fond of Troy. Then a gang nicked the walls and all the roof tiles! The Galatians wanted protection in Troy but they immediately fucked off because it was a city without any buildings. Walls were built, but a Roman called Fimbria knocked them down again in the Mithridatic War. Cornelius Sulla removed Fimbria and rebuilt the walls. They reckon Sulla and King Mithridates had a chat at Dardanos and King Mith agreed to call it a day and that was that. Some bloke called Archeanax of Sigion nicked the remains of the wall and used the stones to build a wall round his garden!
   Caesar liked Homer and he heard Alexander the Great had read Homer so Caesar became a fan of Alexander. The Romans believed that after the fall of Troy, a bloke called Aeneios escaped to Sicily with his mate Elmo and eventually settled in Latina. They reckon Romulus and Remus founded Rome and they were descendants of Aeneios. Homer didn't believe this, but many historians did. Caesar believed it and encouraged it.
   During the Trojan war a bloke called Polites was keeping doggy up on the old mound of Aiyetes which was five miles from Troy and he kept having to abandon his post and scarper back to Troy to safety. He was Mr Fast but he was also Mr Daft. He should've kept watch up on the fucking acropolis! It was in the middle of Troy and was much higher than that mound. He should've stayed up the acropolis, the bloody idiot. Oh well it's 1000 years ago now so fuck it. Let's go have a butchers at the Beautiful Pine.
    Plenty of bloody pines on the Troad but none as spectacular as this fucker. Look at that! 240 ft in circumference and 670 ft high. It actually splits into three trunks and rejoins near the crown. King Attalos measured it as he had fuck all else to do. Well one day Demetrios the Skepsian came to look at it and he said "that's a big bastard ain't it!?" The tree isn't far from Old Skepsis which is a bit like Old Harlow. Demetrios wrote about 30 volumes called 'The Catalogue of the Trojans'. Maybe it was like Kays catalogue! Maybe the Trojans got their armour and weapons by mail order and paid by fucking HP!
   Skepsis was also where they hid some books by Aristotle and Theophrastus, in a trench and they went mouldy and moth-eaten so a pelican rewrote the missing parts but made a shit load of errors. The later scholars had a tough time figuring them out and making practical philosophies. After a while they pieced them back together and all was hunky dory again. Sorry I meant a bloke called Apellikon, not a bloody pelican. Can't imagine a pelican writing Socratic philosophy with a pen in its beak!
   Rode to Chrysa to see the sanctuary of Apollo Smintheus the Mouse Killer. According to myth, one day a load of mice came out the fields and ate all the leather on the weapons and equipment belonging to the Teukrians of Crete. A xoanan was carved by Skopas showing Apollo stepping on a mouse. Mice love this sanctuary and aren't phased by the statue. I had a few pig's ears at The Nibbling Mouse, a nice old pub, and moved on, I ain't keen on rodents!
    Up on Mount Alexandria they say that Paris rode over from Troy and judged the goddesses. Sounds like it could've been like a beauty contest. I bet Miss Troy bloody won that! Down there in the  valley there's Aspaneus and there's a timber market where they get some bloody good sticks from Mt Ida. Then I had a butchers at Assos. Stratonikos said 'don't go to Assos or you'll quickly come to destruction'. That's going a bit far but it's a long steep climb from the harbour up to the town and we was a bit cream-crackered! Anyone for Hovis?
Rode down to Achilleion for a butchers at the statue of Achilles and on to Adramyttion. Not an easy one to say after a few Vera Lynns but a bloody nice little manor. The city suffered during the Mithridatic War, as Commander Diodoros cut the throats of the citizen council. He pretended to be a philosopher of the Academy, teacher of rhetoric and dispenser of Justice, a bit like Judge Dredd. This pleased his boss King Mithridates, but he paid for his foul deeds when the king was overthrown by the Romans. He was charged for his actions and he starved himself to death during his incarceration in Amasia as he couldn't handle the bloody shame. Some say he was offered a nice bit of kidney with plum pudding for afters and a drop of Lampsakian red, but he stuck to his guns and met his maker.
    Xenokles is from Adramyttion but I don't know the geezer from Adam. The Adramyttians built an aqueduct to bring water from the fresher parts of the Euenos river. I bet they got plenty of help from the Romans. Oh, there goes old Xenokles, what's he's up to? He's gone in the knocking shop haha.
   Had a quick nose at Pitane where they say the geographer Poseidonius saw some bricks floating on water. Then he went on to say the bricks were made of fake silver and it all gets a bit far-fetched. If the bricks were made from a material that's lighter than water I don't think they'd be much cop. A good joke I suppose, if you wanted to chuck a load of bricks in a lake and see everyone's stunned faces when they all floated to the top.    
   Poseidonius said some geezer called Eudoxos found a Celtic shipwreck in the Red Sea and instantly realised you must be able to sail around Africa if you go south beyond the Pillars of Hercules. After several false starts he got within a few miles from circumnavigating Africa and suddenly decided he couldn't be arsed because he found better things to do on an island off Morocco. The Egyptian authorities were furious and tried to track him down as Cleopatra had loaned him a fucking fortune. People say that Poseidonius is a bit of a Jackanory and he fabricated the whole thing.
    Galloped like Dick Turpin down to Halicarnassos in Pedasia. Nice manor. Old Herodotus once said 'when anything shifty happens to the Pedasians and their neighbours, the priestess of Athena grows a beard'. She's done it three times. Cor she must be hacked off. "Ere will you stop fighting your neighbours, I'm fed up with growing beards! It's putting my husband to shame!"
   Onward to Teuthrania, via a city called Kane or Kanai, where my descendants are from, said to have been founded by people from Kynai in Greece. They reckon an Arcadian girl Auge and her son Telephos were locked in a chest which was thrown into the Aegeian Sea by her crazy dad Aleos because Hercules had given her the eye and she quite fancied a bit of his dick! The goddess Athene made sure they safely reached the mouth of the river Kaikos. King Teuthras rescued them, took a shine to Auge and married her on the spot. Telephos took over as ruler when the king popped his clogs. I dunno about some of these myths mate, anyway time to head back to Mazaka for tea, so you can all fuck off!