Proceeding from the coast of Pieria along that of Emathia and Bottiaea, we meet with several towns of which it is doubtful whether they were Chalcidian or Bottiaean: Therma, subsequently called Thessalonica, appears to have been Chalcidian, but I shall say more about this when I come to Macedonia. AENEA on the promontory where the smaller and larger Thermaic gulfs separate, is called by Herodotus a Greek town, but seems to have originally been Pelasgian and to have afterwards become hellenised. Farther on the Greek towns are more closely together, though nearly all of them are without historical importance, whence I shall not enter upon an enumeration of them. The Bottiaeans, who, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, rose against the Athenians, were a Pelasgian people, akin to the Greeks, like the Epirots and Thessalians, but not Greek. I shall say more of them hereafter. If you will understand the first book of Thucydides, you must have a thoroughly clear notion about them, which the early commentators had not. The Bottians and Bottiaeans must be distinguished. From the projecting Acte of Macedonia, three peninsulas run out into the sea: the easternmost contains mount ATHOS, which extends in a south-eastern direction, and is highest at the point where it reaches the sea; this mountain must be conceived to extend below the sea, first to Lemnos and thence to mount Ida. PALLENE, the western peninsula, forms the eastern shore of the Thermaic gulf, and is connected with the Acte by a narrow isthmus. The middle peninsula is called SITHONIA. The interior of the broad Acte was never inhabited by Greeks, but only by barbarians, except a few isolated points, such as Apollonia. Sithonia itself was likewise occupied by barbarians, and Μιξέλληνες existed only here and there. Pallene, on the other hand, was thoroughly Greek. This country is one of the most fertile in all Europe; it was also, like Campania, called _Phlegra_, a name implying a volcanic district of immense fertility. The use of manure in Pallene would be injurious and cause the wheat to shoot up too high. There are districts in that peninsula where tobacco, which otherwise exhausts the most fertile soil, is grown in ordinary corn-fields; but if it were not for the tobacco, everything would be overgrown with weeds, and it would require great labour to destroy them. Wheat there grows to a height of from five to six feet, and it is nothing uncommon to see it rise even to seven or eight feet. Hence that country was a χώρα περιμάχητος. Potidaea, one of the _faces malorum_ of the Peloponnesian war, was situated on the isthmus of Pallene. Potidaea and Syracuse, the two ill-fated places that brought ruin on Greece in this war, were colonies of Corinth.