|
Such is the account which the Persians give of these matters. They
trace to the attack upon Troy their ancient enmity towards the
Greeks. The Phoenicians, however, as regards Io, vary from the
Persian statements. They deny that they used any violence to remove
her into Egypt; she herself, they say, having formed an intimacy
with the captain, while his vessel lay at Argos, and perceiving
herself to be with child, of her own free will accompanied the
Phoenicians on their leaving the shore, to escape the shame of
detection and the reproaches of her parents. Whether this latter
account be true, or whether the matter happened otherwise, I shall
not discuss further. I shall proceed at once to point out the person
who first within my own knowledge inflicted injury on the Greeks,
after which I shall go forward with my history, describing equally the
greater and the lesser cities. For the cities which were formerly
great have most of them become insignificant; and such as are at
present powerful, were weak in the olden time. I shall therefore
discourse equally of both, convinced that human happiness never
continues long in one stay.
|
|