Strymon is a river of Thrace, that flows along by the city Edonis. It
was formerly called Palaestinus, from Palaestinus the son of Neptune.
For he being at war with his neighbors, and seized with a violent
sickness, sent his son Haliacmon to be general of his army; who, rashly
giving battle to his enemies, was slain in the fight. The tidings of
which misfortune being brought to Palaestinus, he privately withdrew
himself from his guards, and in the desperation of his grief flung
himself into the River Conozus, which from that accident was afterwards
called Palaestinus. But as for Strymon, he was the son of Mars and
Helice; and hearing that his son Rhesus was slain, he flung himself
into the river Palaestinus, which was after that called Strymon, by his
own name.
In this river grows a stone which is called pausilypus, or the
grief-easing stone. This stone if any one find who is oppressed with
grief, he shall presently be eased of his sorrow;—as Jason of Byzantium
relates in his Thracian Histories.
Near to this river lie the mountains Rhodope and Haemus. These being
brother and sister, and both falling in love with each other, the one
was so presumptuous as to call his sister his Juno, the other to call
her brother her Jupiter; which so offended the Deities, that they
changed them into mountains bearing their own names.
In these two mountains grow certain stones, which are called
philadelphi, or the loving brethren. These stones are of a crow-color,
and resembling human shape, and if they chance to be named when they
are separated one from another, they presently and separately, as they
lie, dissolve and waste away; as Thrasyllus the Mendesian testifies in
his Third Book of Stones, but more accurately in his Thracian Histories.