Histories

Such are their ways. The Lycians were from Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete in ancient times (for in the past none that lived on Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete were Greek).

Now there was a dispute in Crete [25,35.166] (region), Greece, Europe Crete about the royal power between Sarpedon and Minos, sons of Europa; Minos prevailed in this dispute and drove out Sarpedon and his partisans; who, after being driven out, came to the Milyan land in Asia (continent)Asia. What is now possessed by the Lycians was in the past Milyan, and the Milyans were then called Solymi.

For a while Sarpedon ruled them, and the people were called Termilae, which was the name that they had brought with them and that is still given to the Lycians by their neighbors; but after Lycus son of Pandion came from Athens [23.7333,37.9667] (Perseus)Athens—banished as well by his brother, Aegeus—to join Sarpedon in the land of the Termilae, they came in time to be called Lycians after Lycus.

Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. But they have one which is their own and shared by no other men: they take their names not from their fathers but from their mothers,

and when one is asked by his neighbor who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and rehearse the mothers of his mother. Indeed, if a female citizen marries a slave, her children are considered pure-blooded; but if a male citizen, even the most prominent of them, takes an alien wife or concubine, the children are dishonored.