52. Palæscepsis is situated above Cebrene towards the most elevated part of Ida near Polichna. It had the name of Scepsis[1461] either for some other reason or because it was within view of the places around, if we may be allowed to derive words then in use among Barbarians from the Greek language. Afterwards the inhabitants were transferred to the present Scepsis, 60 stadia lower down, by Scamandrius, the son of Hector, and by Ascanius, the son of Æneas; these two families reigned, it is said, a long time at Scepsis. They changed the form of government to an oligarchy; afterwards the Milesians united with the Scepsians, and formed a democracy.[1462] The descendants of these families had nevertheless the name of kings, and held certain dignities. Antigonus incorporated the Scepsians with the inhabitants of Alexandreia (Troas); Lysimachus dissolved this union, and they returned to their own country. 53. The Scepsian (Demetrius) supposes that Scepsis was the palace of Æneas, situated between the dominion of Æneas and Lyrnessus, where, it is said, he took refuge when pursued by Achilles. “Remember you not,” says Achilles, “how I chased you when alone and apart from the herds, with swift steps, from the heights of Ida, thence indeed you escaped to Lyrnessus; but I took and destroyed it.”[1463] Present traditions respecting Æneas do not agree with the story respecting the first founders of Scepsis. For it is said that he was spared on account of his hatred to Priam: “he ever bore hatred to Priam, for never had Priam bestowed any honour upon him for his valour.”[1464] His companion chiefs, the Antenoridæ, and Antenor, and myself, escaped on account of the hospitality which the latter had shown to Menelaus. Sophocles, in his play, The Capture of Troy, says, that a panther’s skin was placed before Antenor’s door as a signal that his house should be spared from plunder. Antenor and [CAS. 600] [CAS. 608] his four sons, together with the surviving Heneti, are said to have escaped into Thrace, and thence into Henetica on the Adriatic;[1465] but Æneas, with his father Anchises and his son Ascanius, are said to have collected a large body of people, and to have set sail. Some writers say that he settled about the Macedonian Olympus; according to others he founded Capuæ,[1466] near Mantineia in Arcadia, and that he took the name of the city from Capys. There is another account, that he disembarked at Ægesta[1467] in Sicily, with Elymus, a Trojan, and took possession of Eryx[1468] and Lilybæus,[1469] and called the rivers about Ægesta Scamander and Simoïs; that from Sicily he went to Latium, and settled there in obedience to an oracle enjoining him to remain wherever he should eat his table. This happened in Latium, near Lavinium, when a large cake of bread which was set down instead of, and for want of, a table, was eaten together with the meat that was laid upon it.