Geography (Books 6-14) (7.frag.18-7.frag.21)

At the base of Olympus is a city Dium. And it has a village near by, Pimpleia. Here lived Orpheus, the Ciconian, it is said—a wizard who at first collected money from his music, together with his soothsaying and his celebration of the orgies connected with the mystic initiatory rites, but soon afterwards thought himself worthy of still greater things and procured for himself a throng of followers and power. Some, of course, received him willingly, but others, since they suspected a plot and violence, combined against him and killed him. And near here, also, is Leibethra.

In the early times the soothsayers also practised music.

After Dium come the outlets of the Haliacmon; then Pydna, Methone, Alorus, and the Erigon and Ludias Rivers. The Erigon flows from the country of the Triclari[*] through that of the Orestae and through Pellaea, leaves the city on the left,[*] and meets the Axius; the Ludias is navigable inland to Pella, a distance of one hundred and twenty stadia. Methone, which lies between the two cities, is about forty stadia from Pydna and seventy from Alorus. Alorus is in the inmost recess of the Thermaean Gulf, and it is called Thessaloniceia because of its fame.[*] Now Alorus is regarded as a Bottiaean city, whereas Pydna is regarded as a Pierian.[*] Pella belongs to lower Macedonia, which the Bottiaei used to occupy; in early times the treasury of Macedonia was here. Philip enlarged it from a small city, because he was reared in it. It has a headland in what is called Lake Ludias; and it is from this lake that the Ludias River issues, and the lake itself is supplied by an offshoot of the Axius. The Axius empties between Chalastra and Therma; and on this river lies a fortified place which now is called Abydon, though Homer calls it Amydon, and says that the Paeonians went to the aid of Troy from there,

“from afar, out of Amydon, from wide-flowing Axius.”

Abydon, Abydonis; a place in Macedonia, according to Strabo.

The Axius is a muddy stream; but Homer[*] calls it “water most fair,” perhaps on account of the spring called Aea, which, since it empties purest water into the Axius, proves that the present current reading[*] of the passage in the poet is faulty. After the Axius, at a distance of twenty stadia, is the Echedorus;[*] then, forty stadia farther on, Thessaloniceia, founded by Gassander, and also the Egnatian Road. Cassander named the city after his wife Thessalonice, daughter of Philip son of Amyntas, after he had razed to the ground the towns in Crusis and those on the Thermaean Gulf, about twenty-six in number, and had settled all the inhabitants together in one city; and this city is the metropolis of what is now Macedonia. Among those included in the settlement were Apollonia, Chalastra, Therma, Garescus, Aenea, and Cissus; and of these one might suspect that Cissus belonged to Cisses,[*] whom the poet mentions in speaking of Iphidamas,

“whom Cisses reared.”