We have yet to notice the Pæonians, a numerous and much-divided race,—seemingly neither Thracian nor Macedonian nor Illyrian, but professing to be descended from the Teukri of Troy,—who occupied both banks of the Strymon, from the neighborhood of Mount Skomius, in which that river rises, down to the lake near its mouth. Some of their tribes possessed the fertile plain of Siris (now Seres),—the land immediately north of Mount Pangæus,—and even a portion of the space through which Xerxês marched on his route from Akanthus to Therma. Besides this, it appears that the upper parts of the valley of the Axius were also occupied by Pæonian tribes; how far down the river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to suppose that the whole territory between Axius and Strymon was continuously peopled by them. Continuous population is not the character of the ancient world, and it seems, moreover, that while the land immediately bordering on both rivers is in very many places of the richest quality, the spaces between the two are either mountain or barren low hill,—forming a marked contrast with the rich alluvial basin of the Macedonian river Erigon.[24] The Pæonians, in their north-western tribes, thus bordered upon the Macedonian Pelagonia,—in their northern tribes, upon the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ,—in their eastern, southern, and south-eastern tribes, upon the Thracians and Pierians;[25] that is, upon the second seats occupied by the expelled Pierians under Mount Pangæus. [24] See this contrast noticed in Grisebach, especially in reference to the wide but barren region called the plain of Mustapha, no great distance from the left bank of the Axius (Grisebach, Reisen, v, ii, p. 225; Boué, Voyage, vol. i, p. 168). For the description of the banks of the Axius (Vardar) and the Strymon, see Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, pp. 196-199. “La plaine ovale de Seres est un des diamans de la couronne de Byzance,” etc. He remarks how incorrectly the course of the Strymon is depicted on the maps (vol. iv, p. 482). [25] The expression of Strabo or his Epitomator—τὴν Παιονίαν μέχρι Πελαγονίας καὶ Πιερίας ἐκτετάσθαι,—seems quite exact, though Tafel finds a difficulty in it. See his Note on the Vatican Fragments of the seventh book of Strabo, Fr. 37. The Fragment 40 is expressed much more loosely. Compare Herodot. v, 13-16, vii, 124; Thucyd. ii, 96; Diodor. xx, 19. Such was, as far as we can make it out, the position of the Macedonians and their immediate neighbors, in the seventh century B. C. It was first altered by the enterprise and ability of a family of exiled Greeks, who conducted a section of the Macedonian people to those conquests which their descendants, Philip and Alexander the Great, afterwards so marvellously multiplied.