[389] Strabo, xii, pp. 575-576; Steph. Byz. Μυγδονíα; Thucyd. ii, 99. The territory Mygdonia and the Mygdonians, in the distant region of Mesopotamia, eastward of the river Chaboras (Plutarch, Lucullus, 32; Polyb. v, 51; Xenophon, Anab. iv, 3, 4), is difficult to understand, since it is surprising to find a branch of these more westerly Asiatics in the midst of the Syro-Arabian population. Strabo (xv, p. 747) supposes it to date only from the times of the Macedonian conquest of Asia, which is disproved by the mention of the name in Xenophon; though this reading in the text of Xenophon is by some called in question. See Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten Geographie, part ii, sect. 98, p. 628. [390] Iliad, iii, 188; Strabo, xii, p. 551. The town of Otrœa, of which Otreus seems to be the eponymus, was situated in Phrygia, just on the borders of Bithynia (Strabo, xii, p. 566). [391] Archiloch. Fragm. 28 Schneid., 26 Gaisf.— ... ὥσπερ αὐλῷ βρῦτον ἢ Θρῆϊξ ἀνὴρ Ἢ Φρὺξ ἔβρυζε, etc. The passage is too corrupt to support any inference, except the near approximation in the poet’s mind of Thracians and Phrygians. To settle with any accuracy the extent and condition of these Asiatic nations during the early days of Grecian settlement among them is impracticable; the problem was not to be solved even by the ancient geographers, with their superior means of knowledge. The early indigenous distribution of the Phrygian population is unknown to us, and the division into the Greater and Lesser Phrygia belongs to a period at least subsequent to the Persian conquest, like most of the recognized divisions of Asia Minor; it cannot, therefore, be applied with reference to the period earlier than Crœsus. It appears that the name Phrygians, like that of Thracians, was a generic designation, and comprehended tribes or separate communities who had also specific names of their own. We trace Phrygians at wide distances: on the western bank of the river Halys,—at Kelænæ, in the interior of Asia Minor, towards the rise of the river Mæander,—and on the coast of the Propontis near Kios;—in both of these latter localities there is a salt lake called Askanius, which is the name both of the leader of the Phrygian allies of Troy, and of the country from whence they are said to come, in the Iliad.[392] They thus occupy a territory bounded on the south by the Pisidian mountains, on the west by the Lydians (indicated by a terminal pillar set up by Crœsus at Kydrara),[393]—on the east by the river Halys, on the other side of which were Kappadokians or Syrians, on the north by Paphlagonians and Mariandynians. But it seems, besides this, that they must have extended farther to the west, so as to occupy a great portion of the region of Mount Ida and the Troad. For Apollodôrus considered that both the Doliones and the Bebrykians were included in the great Phrygian name;[394] and even in the ancient poem called “Phorônis,”