The Geography of Strabo, Volume 2 (of 3)

Sunium, is the island Helena; it is rocky and uninhabited, extending in length about 60 stadia, which, they say, the poet mentions in the words, in which Alexander addresses Helen,

“Not when first I carried thee away from the pleasant Lacedæmon, across the deep, and in the island Cranaë embraced thee.”[321]

For Cranaë, from the kind of intercourse which took place there, is now called Helena. Next to Helena,[322] Eubœa[323] lies in front of the following tract of coast. It is long and narrow, and stretching along the continent like Helena. From Sunium to the southern point of Eubœa, which is called Leuce Acte,[324] [or, the white coast,] is a voyage of 300 stadia, but we shall speak hereafter of Eubœa.

It would be tedious to recite the names of the Demi of Attica in the inland parts, on account of their number.[325]

23. Among the mountains which are most celebrated, are the Hymettus, Brilessus, Lycabettus, Parnes, and Corydallus.[326] Near the city are excellent quarries of Hymettian and Pentelic marble. The Hymettus produces also the finest honey. The silver mines in Attica were at first of importance, but are now exhausted. The workmen, when the mines yielded a bad return to their labour, committed to the furnace the old refuse and scoria, and hence obtained very pure silver, for the former workmen had carried on the process in the furnace unskilfully.

Although the Attic is the best of all the kinds of honey, yet by far the best of the Attic honey is that found in the country of the silver mines,[327] which they call acapniston, or unsmoked, from the mode of its preparation.

24. Among the rivers is the Cephissus, having its source from the Trinemeis, it flows through the plain (where are the Gephyra, and the Gephyrismi) between the legs or walls extending from the Asty to the Piræus, and empties itself into the Phalericum. Its character is chiefly that of a winter torrent, for in the summer time it fails altogether. Such also, for the most part, is the Ilissus, which flows from the other side of the Asty to the same coast, from the parts above Agra, and the Lyceium, and the fountain celebrated by Plato in the Phædrus. So much then respecting Attica.