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[18] The poet next mentions the country which was under the dominion of Eurypylus;
Il. ii. 734.
They who possessed Ormenium and the spring Hypereia,
And they who occupied Asterium and the white peaks of Titanus.
1
Ormenium is now called Orminium. It is a village situated below Pelion, near the Pagasitic Gulf, but was one of the cities which contributed to form the settlement of Demetrias, as I have before said.
The lake Boebeis must be near, because both Boebe and Ormenium belonged to the cities lying around Demetrias.
Ormenium is distant by land 27 stadia from Demetrias. The site of Iolcus, which is on the road, is distant 7 stadia from Demetrias, and the remaining 20 from Ormenium.
Demetrius of Scepsis says, that Phoenix came from Ormenium, and that he fled thence from his father Amyntor, the son of Ormenus, to Phthia, to king Peleus. For this place was founded by Ormenus, the son of Cercaphus, the son of Aeolus. The sons of Ormenus were Amyntor and Eumaemon; the son of the former was Phoenix, and of the latter, Eurypylus. The succession to his possessions was preserved secure for Eurypylus, after the departure of Phoenix from his home, and we ought to write the verse of the poet in this manner:
Il. ix. 447.
instead of
as when I first left Ormenium, abounding with flocks,
2
left Hellas, abounding with beautiful women.
But Crates makes Phoenix a Phocaean, conjecturing this from the helmet of Meges, which Ulysses wore on the night expedition; of which helmet the poet says,
Autolycus brought it away from Eleon, out of the house of Amyntor, the son of Ormenus, having broken through the thick walls.
3
Now Eleon was a small city on Parnassus, and by Amyntor, the son of Ormenus, he could not mean any other person than the father of Phoenix, and that Autolycus, who lived on Parnassus, was in the habit of digging through the houses of his neighbours, which is the common practice of every housebreaker, and not of persons living at a distance. But Demetrius the Scepsian says, that there is no such place on Parnassus as Eleon, but Neon, which was built after the Trojan war, and that digging through houses was not confined to robbers of the neighbourhood. Other things might be advanced, but I am unwilling to insist long on this subject. Others write the words
but this is a Tanagrian town; and the words
Il. ix. 424.
would make this passage absurd.
from Heleon;
Then far away I fled through Hellas and came to Phthia,
4
Hypereia is a spring in the middle of the city of the Pheraei [subject to Eumelus]. It would therefore be absurd [to assign it to Eurypylus].
Titanus
5
had its name from the accident of its colour, for the soil of the country near Arne and [Aphe]tae is white, and Asterium is not far from these places.
Geography. Strabo. Hans Claude Hamilton (Translator), William Falconer (Translator). London. 1854-1857.
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