Strabo Geography 8.5.3

[3] They say that one of the places mentioned in Homer’s Catalogue, ¹ Messe, is nowhere to be seen; and that Messoa was not a part of the country but of Sparta, as was the case with Limnaeum, ² . . . ³ But some take “Messe” as an apocopated form of “Messene,” for, as I have said, ⁴ Messene too was a part of Laconia. As examples of apocope from the poet himself, writers cite “kri,” “do,” and “maps,” ⁵ and also the passage ⁶ for “Alcimedon”; then from Hesiod, who uses “bri” for “brithu” or “briaron”; and Sophocles and Ion, “rha” for “rhadion”; and Epicharmus, “li” for “lian,” and “Syraco” for “Syracuse”; and in Empedocles, ⁷ “ops” for “opsis”: ⁹ and in Antimachus, ¹⁰ and “alphi” for “alphiton”; and Euphorion even uses “hel” for “helos”; and in Philetas, “eri” for “erion”: ¹² and Aratus says “peda” for “pedalia”: “the ‘peda’ ¹³ towards the wind”; and Simmias, “Dodo” for “Dodona.” As for the rest of the places listed by the poet, some have been destroyed; of others traces are still left; and of others the names have been changed, for example, Augeiae ¹⁴ to Aegaeae; ¹⁵ for the Augeiae in Locris ¹⁶ no longer exists at all. As for Las, the story goes, the Dioscuri ¹⁷ once captured it by siege, and it was from this fact that they got the appellation “Lapersae.” ¹⁸ And Sophocles says, ¹⁹