Ancient Localizations

Pseudo-Hesiod Catalogues of Women and Eoiae, fr. 150.26, eds. Merkelbach and West (online text: Eng. (=fr. 40a))

[The Boreads chase the Harpies] "about the steep Fawn mountain and rugged Etna to the isle Ortygia and the people sprung from Laestrygon who was the son of wide-reigning Poseidon."

Thucydides 6.2.1 (online text: Eng., Grk.)

"It (Sicily) was inhabited in old time thus, and these were the nations that held it: The most ancient inhabitants in a part thereof are said to have been the Cyclopes and Laestrigones, of whose stock and whence they came or to what place they removed I have nothing to say."

Crates of Mallus fr. 50, ed. Broggiato

Crates of Mallus thought the Laistrygonians lived in the north, based on the Homeric reference to long days in Telepylus.

Horace Carmen 3.16.34 (online text: Eng., Lat.)

"Though no Calabrian bees their honey yield / For me, nor mellowing sleeps the god of wine / In Formian jar (nec Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora / languescit mihi) ... "

Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum 2.13.2 (online text: Eng., Lat.)

"When you come to "Laestrygonia of the distant gates" — I mean Formiae— what loud murmurs! what angry souls! what unpopularity for our friend Magnus!"

Strabo 1.2.9 (online text: Eng., Grk.)

"Homer's narrative is founded on history. He tells us that king Aeolus governed the Lipari Islands, that around Mount Aetna and Leontini dwelt the Cyclopae, and certain Laestrygonians inhospitable to strangers."

Pliny the Elder Natural History 3.5 (online text: Eng., Lat.)

"Next is the site of the Grotto, Lake Fundanus, the port of Caieta, and then the town of Formiae, formerly called Hormiae, the ancient seat of the Laestrygones, it is supposed."

Pliny the Elder Natural History 3.14 (online text: Eng., Lat.)

"[We then come to the three rocks of the Cyclopes, the Port of Ulysses, the colony of Catina, and the rivers Symæthus and Terias;] while more inland lie the Læstrygonian Plains"

Dictys Chronicle of the Trojan War 6.5 (online text: Eng.)

"Then they had gone to the island of Sicily, where the brothers Cyclops and Laestrygon had treated them with every indignity and where Polyphemus and Antiphates, who were the sons of the former, had killed many of them."

Places