(urth) Soldier of Arete geography

[Robert Pirkola]

The River Melas that is referred to in Arete is the Thracian one mentioned by Herodotus.  See Histories, Bk. 7, Ch. 198.  Wolfe owned Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus which Rawlinson fills with copious notes.  Check out pp. 167-168 of the fourth volume and the associated notes, accessible here:  https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_Herodotus/k4kOAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=overview.  Other translations might directly refer to the Melas River as the "Black" River given the meaning of the word.  It is definitely the Thracian river and not the one in Boeotia.  Arete, Ch. 9 -- "She says this river is the Melas, the boundary of the country of the Apsinthians."  The Apsinthians are Thracians and Herodotus's discussion of them gives us the only ancient reference to Pleistorus, who Rawlinson calls in his notes "the Thracian Mars".  See Histories, Bk. 9, Ch. 119 and associated notes also accessible at the above link to Rawlinson's translation and found at pg. 479.  Pleistorus is obviously a big part of Arete.
[https://books.google.com/books/content?id=k4kOAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&imgtk=AFLRE71Oy4e1FBp_BHyyZ-82VqcKBaYhkqnobxZAAxPC90hV2ZXQl5fhTHzHsIRtECSmxSHo6Ob1zplyYrIlDNK79qZJYuC4CE0OCwC41BS0C9mRF8IyaX2WrnVfonXtNktLk78v2tyq]<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_Herodotus/k4kOAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=overview>
The History of Herodotus<https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_Herodotus/k4kOAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=overview>
/
www.google.com

Cheers,
Robert

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re:  Soldier of Arete geography (Eric Bourland)


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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2023 21:12:42 -0400
From: "Eric Bourland" <eb at hwaet.com>
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Soldier of Arete geography
Message-ID: <855ef4c6f9104d39873d6f1301533aeb at hwaet.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I saw a map somewhere, a long time ago, along with an exegesis. . . I'll try to track it down. For me one of the pleasures of the book is to try to figure out where everything is.

*******
Eric Bourland
eb at hwaet.com
https://www.hwaet.com/

----------------------------------------
From: "Fernando Gouvea" <fqgouvea at colby.edu>
Sent: 3/24/23 4:30 PM
To: "urth at lists.urth.net" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: (urth) Soldier of Arete geography

Has anyone made/seen a good map of the area where much of the action of Arete takes place? (It is European Turkey and nearby areas, basically.) I managed, for example, to figure out where the Hebrus River is, but not the Melas.
Fernando
--
=============================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea         http://www.colby.edu/~fqgouvea
Carter Professor of Mathematics
Dept. of Mathematics
Colby College
5836 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME 04901

Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
 -- Ford Prefect
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