[269] The seventh Oration of Dio Chrysostom, which describes his shipwreck near Cape Kaphareus, on the island of Eubœa, and the shelter and kindness which he experienced from a poor mountain huntsman, presents one of the most interesting pictures remaining, of this purely rustic portion of the Greek population (Or. vii, p. 221, _seq._),—men who never entered the city, and were strangers to the habits, manners, and dress there prevailing,—men who drank milk and were clothed in skins (γαλακτοπότας ἀνὴρ, οὐρειβάτας, Eurip. Elektr. 169), yet nevertheless (as it seems) possessing right of citizenship (p. 238) which they never exercised. The industry of the poor men visited by Dion had brought into cultivation a little garden and field in a desert spot near Kaphareus. Two-thirds of the territory of this Euboic city consisted of barren mountain (p. 232); it must probably have been Karystus. The high lands of Eubœa were both uninhabited and difficult of approach, even at the time of the battle of Marathon, when Chalkis and Eretria had not greatly declined from the maximum of their power: the inhabitants of Eretria looked to τὰ ἄρκα τῆς Εὐβοίης as a refuge against the Persian force under Datis (Herod. vi, 100). The towns above enumerated in Eubœa, excepting Athenæ Diades, all find a place in the Iliad. Of their history we know no particulars until considerably after 776 B. C., and they are first introduced to us as Ionic, though in Homer the population are called Abantes. The Greek authors are never at a loss to give us the etymology of a name. While Aristotle tells us that the Abantes were Thracians who had passed over into the island from Abæ in Phokis, Hesiod deduces the name of Eubœa from the cow Iô.[270] Hellopia, a district near Histiæa, was said to have been founded by Hellops, son of Ion: according to others, Æklus and Kothus, two Athenians,[271] were the founders, the former of Eretria, the latter of Chalkis and Kêrinthus: and we are told, that among the demes of Attica, there were two named Histiæa and Eretria, from whence some contended that the appellations of the two Eubœan towns were derived. Though Herodotus represents the population of Styra as Dryopian, there were others who contended that it had originally been peopled from Marathon and the tetrapolis of Attica, partly from the deme called Steireïs. The principal writers whom Strabo consulted seem to trace the population of Eubœa, by one means or other, to an Attic origin, though there were peculiarities in the Eretrian dialect which gave rise to the supposition that they had been joined by settlers from Elis, or from the Triphylian Makistus. [270] Strabo, x, p. 445. [271] Plutarch, Quæst. Græc. p. 296; Strab. x, p. 446 (whose statements are very perplexed); Velleius Patercul. i, 4. According to Skymnus the Chian (v. 572), Chalkis was founded by Pandôrus son of Erechtheus, and Kêrinthus by Kothôn, from Athens.