CI´LICES(Κίλικες). The Cilices are mentioned in the Iliad as the inhabitants of the part of Mysia called Troas. Eetion, the father of Andromache, Hector's wife, lived beneath wooded Placos; and his chief city was Thebe Hypoplacie. ( Il. 6.395, 415.) He was king of the Cilices. Strabo observes (p. 221) that Homer makes Pelasgi border on these Cilices, for he mentions Larissa as one of the cities of the Pelasgi ( Il. 2.840). In another passage (pp. 586, 611) he divides the territory of these Cilices into two parts, one the Thebaice, and the other Lyrnessis; and he makes the territory of the Cilices comprehend the territories of Adramyttium, Atarneus, and Pitane, and extend to the mouth of the Caicus. It seems to have been the opinion of some of the Greek critics that the Cilices of Homer were akin to the other Cilices; for Strabo (p. 667) observes, they say that in the tract between Phaselis in Lycia and Attalia there are pointed out a Thebe and Lyrnessus, a part of the Troic Cilices who were ejected from the plain of Thebe having gone to Pamphylia, as Callisthenes has said.Whether Callisthenes stated the emigration of these Cilicians and the existence of these cities as a fact, or as report, seems somewhat doubtful. The passage, perhaps, means that there was a story that ruins were pointed out in these parts, which had the names of Thebe and Lyrnessus. But it was a disputed question which of the two Cilices were the parent stock; for while some pointed to places in Cilicia as evidence of an emigration of Cilicians from the Troad, as in Pamphylia they referred to a Thebe and Lyrnessus, others turned the argument the other way, and referred to an Aleian plain also in the Troad (p. 676). The discussion in Strabo is not very profitable reading. There was, however, a tradition that these Troic Cilicians drove the Syri from the country afterwards called Cilicia. There is no doubt that Cilicia was once occupied by an Aramaic race, but it cannot be determined whether the Cilices of Cilicia in the historical period derived their name from some Cilices who invaded their country from the west, or whether it was the name of the earliest known inhabitants of the country.
[G.L]