Histories

In olden times all the people working together set the piles which support the platform there, but they later developed another method of setting them. The men bring the piles from a mountain called Orbelus,[*](Between the Strymon and the Nestus.) and every man plants three for each of the three women that he weds.

Each man has both a hut on the platform and a trap-door in the platform leading down into the lake. They make a cord fast to the feet of their little children out of fear that they will fall into the water.

They give fish as fodder to their horses and beasts of burden, and there is such an abundance of fish that a man can open his trap-door, let down an empty basket by a line into the lake, and draw it up after a short time full of fish. There are two kinds of these, some called “paprakes,” some “tilones.”