PXOSIAHS. 15 part, of it a course, began the tribes of the great Thracian race, Mygdonifvis, Krestonians, Edonians, Bisaltas, Sithonians : the Mygdoni.ins seem to have been originally the most powerful, since the country still continued to be called by their name, Myg- donia, even after the Macedonian conquest. These, and various other rhrncian tribes, originally occupied most part of the coun- try between the mouth of the Axius and that of the Strymon ; together with that memorable three-pronged peninsula which de- rived from the Grecian colonies its name of Chalkidike. It will thus appear, if we consider the Bottiaeans as well as the Pierians to be Thracians, that the Thracian race extended originally south- ward as far as the mouth of the Peneius : the Bottiaeans pro- fessed, ir?^.eed, a Kretan origin, but this pretension is not noticed by either Herodotus or Thucydides. In the time of Skylax, 1 seemingly during the early reign of Philip the son of Amyntas, Macedonia and Thrace were separated by the Strymon. We have yet to notice the Pseonians, 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 neighbor- hood 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 Pangoeus, and even a portion of the space through which Xerxes 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 Paeonian tribes ; how far down the river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to sup- pose 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, thai while the land immediately bordering on both rivers is in very otus appears incorrectly apprehended, and some erroneous inferences found- r-i upon it. That this tract -vas the original Pieria, there is sufficient reason f>r believing (compare Strabo, vii. Frag. 22, with Tafel's note, and ix, p
- 10; Livy, xliv, 9) ; but Herodotus notices it only as Macedonia.
1 Skylax, c. 67. The conquests of Philip extended the boundary beyond '.he Stryraon to the Nestus (Strabo, lib. vii. Fragm. 33, ed. Tafel).
