Strabo Geography 9.5.17

[17] However, the poet, after proceeding thus far on the Magnetan seacoast, returns to Upper Thessaly; for, beginning at Dolopia and Pindus, he recounts the parts that stretch alongside Phthiotis, as far as Lower Thessaly: ¹ These places belong in fact to Histiaeotis, ² though in earlier times Histiaeotis was called Doris, as they say; but when the Perrhaebians took possession of it, who had already subdued Histiaeotis in Euboea and had forced its inhabitants to migrate to the mainland, they called the country Histiaeotis after these Histiaeans, because of the large number of these people who settled there. They call Histiaeotis and Dolopia Upper Thessaly, which is in a straight line with Upper Macedonia, as is Lower Thessaly with Lower Macedonia. Now Tricce, where is the earliest and most famous temple of Asclepius, borders on the country of the Dolopians and the regions round Pindus. Ithome, which is called by the same name as the Messenian city, ought not, they say, to be pronounced in this way, but without the first syllable; ³ for thus, they add, it was called in earlier times, though now its name has been changed to Ithome. It is a stronghold and is in reality a heap of stones; ⁴ and it is situated between four strongholds, which lie in a square, as it were: Tricce, Metropolis, Pelinnaeum, and Gomphi. But Ithome belongs to the territory of the Metropolitans. Metropolis in earlier times was a joint settlement composed of three insignificant towns; but later several others were added to it, among which was Ithome. Now Callimachus, in his Iambics, says that, “of all the Aphrodites (for there was not merely one goddess of this name), Aphrodite Castnietis surpasses all in wisdom, since she alone accepts the sacrifice of swine.” ⁵ And surely he was very learned, if any other man was, and all his life, as he himself states, wished to recount these things. ⁶ But the writers of later times have discovered that not merely one Aphrodite, but several, have accepted this rite; and that among these was the Aphrodite at Metropolis, and that one of the cities included in the settlement transmitted to it the Onthurian rite. ⁷ Pharcadon, also, is in Histiaeotis; and the Peneius and the Curalius flow through its territory. Of these rivers, the Curalius flows past the temple of the Itonian Athena and empties into the Peneius; but the Peneius itself rises in Pindus, as I have already said, ⁸ and after leaving Tricce and Pelinnaeum and Pharcadon on the left flows past both Atrax and Larisa, and after receiving the rivers in Thessaliotis flows on through Tempe to its outlet. Historians place the Oechalia which is called the “city of Eurytus “ ⁹ not only in this region, but also in Euboea and in Arcadia; and they give its name in different ways, as I have already said in my description of the Peloponnesus. ¹⁰ They inquire concerning these, and particularly in regard to what Oechalia it was that was captured by Heracles, ¹¹ and concerning what Oechalia was meant by the poet who wrote The Capture of Oechalia ¹² These places, then, were classed by Homer as subject to the Asclepiadae.