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Cf. Athenaeus 345 e οἶδα δὲ καὶ τοὺς περὶ Μόσσυνον τῆς Θρᾴκης βοῦς οἳ ἰχθῦς ἐσθίουσι παραβαλλομένους αὐτοῖς ἐς τὰς φάτνας, a notice made more interesting by the fact that μόσσυνος means ‘a house built on piles’; cf. Xen. Anab. v. 4. 26.

This is the earliest known description of lake dwellings. The settlement here may be a survival of a primitive civilization, like that which existed on the shores of the lakes on both sides the Alps, where many remains of pile dwellings and other relics of the Stone and Bronze ages have been discovered (cf. O. Keller, Lake Dwellings, and the able summary in Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, ch. v, also ‘The Glastonbury Lake Village’). They were specially adapted for purposes of defence, and are still so used in Borneo, New Guinea, and Dahomey. For the fishing cf. Rawlinson, and for Thracian polygamy, ch. 5 n. Herodotus seems to imply in the word ἐπειρήθη that Megabazus failed in his attempt to capture these inaccessible dwellings. We may compare the escape of Venice when the Huns sacked Aquileia A. D. 452.

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