Schliemann, Heinrich: Troy and its remains: a narrative of researches and discoveries made on the site of Illium, and in the Trojan Plain (London, 1875)

<OTE .

Note A.

THE RIVER SIMOIS.

As the present name of the Simoi's, Dumbrek, is not a Turkish word,
some take it for a corruption of the name Thymbrius, and use it to prove
that the river—which, flowing past the foot of the ruins of Ophrynium,
runs through the north-eastern valley of the Plain of Troy, and falls into
the Kalifatli Asmak, the very ancient bed of the Scamander, in front
of Ilium—is the Thymbrius, and cannot possibly be the Simoi's.

To this I reply : that there is no example of a Greek word ending in
os being rendered in Turkish by a word ending in a k: further that
Dumbrek must certainly be a corruption of the two Turkish words &Jo
Ojj Don barek. Don signifies ' ice,' and barek the ' possession' or
the 'habitation'; the two words therefore mean much the same thing as
containing ice, and the name might be explained by the fact that the inun-
dations caused by the Simoi's are frequently frozen over in winter, when
the whole north-eastern plain forms a sheet of ice. Throughout antiquity,
however, the river was called the Simoi's, for according to Strabo (XIII.
i. p. 103), the grove dedicated to Hector was situated on a hill near
Ophrynium; according to Lycophron (Cassandra), the hero was buried
in Ophrynium; and according to Virgil,* who is the most conscientious
preserver of ancient traditions, Hector's tomb was situated in a little
grove on the shores of the Simoi's.

* JEneid, III. 302-305 :—

" Ante urbem in luco, falsi Simoentis ad undam,
Libabat cineri Andromache manesque vocabat
Hectoreum ad tumulum, viridi quem caespite inanem,
Et geminas, causam lacrimis, sacraverat aras."