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Γεφυραῖοι. H. rejects the family tradition in favour of a fanciful conjecture resting on the hypothesis that the Gephyraeans were Cadmeians, and Cadmus a Phoenician immigrant. Perhaps he connected Gephyra, the other name for Tanagra (cf. Strabo 404, Steph. Byz.), with Gephyrae in Syria, and was thus led to derive the Gephyraeans from Phoenicia (Petersen, de hist. gent. Attic. p. 6 f.), or he may have misinterpreted the name of Phoenix, the tutor of Achilles, who dwelt at Eleon (ch. 43 n.) near Tanagra, and thus have imagined a connexion between the men of Tanagra and Cadmus ‘the Phoenician’ (Toepffer, Attic Geneal. 293 f.). In any case the name Γεφυραῖοι seems to be derived from γέφυρα, a bridge or dyke, as pontifex from pons; and even if Cadmeian Thebes be a Phoenician settlement (cf. iv. 147. 4 n.), there is no reason to connect the Gephyraeans of Tanagra with Thebes. Their own tradition that they came from Euboea is far more probable.

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