Histories

They invented three things in which they were followed by the Greeks: it was the Carians who originated wearing crests on their helmets and devices on their shields, and who first made grips for their shields; until then all who used shields carried them without these grips, and guided them with leather belts which they slung round the neck and over the left shoulder.[*](This is the management of the Homeric “man-covering” shield, as shown in the Iliad. The shield is not carried on the arm, but hangs by a belt which passes over the left shoulder and under the right arm-pit; by a pull on the telamw/n it can be shifted so as to protect breast or back.)

Then, a long time afterwards, the Carians were driven from the islands by Dorians and Ionians and so came to the mainland. This is the Cretan story about the Carians; but the Carians themselves do not subscribe to it, but believe that they are aboriginal inhabitants of the mainland and always bore the name which they bear now;

and they point to an ancient shrine of Carian Zeus at Mylasa [27.8,37.3167] (Perseus)Mylasa, to which Mysians and Lydians, as brethren of the Carians (for Lydus and Mysus, they say, were brothers of Car), are admitted, but not those who spoke the same language as the Carians but were of another people.

I think the Caunians are aborigines of the soil, but they say that they came from Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete. Their speech has become like the Carian, or the Carian like theirs (for I cannot clearly decide), but in their customs they diverge widely from the Carians, as from all other men. Their chief pleasure is to assemble for drinking-bouts in groups according to their ages and friendships: men, women, and children.

Certain foreign rites of worship were established among them; but afterwards, when they were inclined otherwise, and wanted to worship only the gods of their fathers, all Caunian men of full age put on their armor and went together as far as the boundaries of Calynda, striking the air with their spears and saying that they were casting out the alien gods.