Kitap 8
5.6
As to the nature of the places in Laconia and Messenia, we may take the description of Euripides;This quotation, as also the one which follows, are from a tragedy of Euripides, now lost. Laconia has much land capable of tillage, but difficult to be worked, for it is hollow, surrounded by mountains, rugged, and difficult of access to an enemy. Messenia he describes in this manner: It bears excellent fruit; is watered by innumerable streams; it affords the finest pasture to herds and flocks; it is not subject to the blasts of winter, nor too much heated by the coursers of the sun; and a little farther on, speaking of the division of the country by the Heracleidae according to lot, the first was lord of the Lacaenian land, a bad soil, the second was Messene, whose excellence no language could express; and Tyrtaeus speaks of it in the same manner.
5.6
But we cannot admit that Laconia and Messenia are bounded, as Euripides says, by the Pamisus,The Pirnatza. which empties itself into the sea; this river flows through the middle of Messenia, and does not touch any part of the present Laconia. Nor is he right, when he says that Mess nia is inaccessible to sailors, whereas it borders upon the sea, in the same manner as Laconia.
