TFBT: Marpessus and Aidoneus

Over at the Kosmos Society, today the Attican study was translating Pausanias 10.12.4

Even to-day there remain on Trojan Ida the ruins of the city Marpessus, with some sixty inhabitants. All the land around Marpessus is reddish and terribly parched, so that the light and porous nature of Ida in this place is in my opinion the reason why the river Aidoneus sinks into the ground, rises to sink once more, finally disappearing altogether beneath the earth. Marpessus is two hundred and forty stades distant from Alexandria in the Troad. (Alexandria Troas, not the one in Egypt)

I found it confusing because I had never heard of the city of Marpessus or the River Aidoneus.  Apparently, Homer didn’t know of them either, nor Walter Leaf because I just finished ready his famous geographical study of “Troy”.

 

Marpessus

 The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, lists Mermessus as an alternative spelling for Marpessus. 

“ Mermessus (Μερμησσός or Μυρμισσός), a town in Troas or Mysia, belonging to the territory of Lampsacus, was celebrated in antiquity as the native place of a sibyl (Steph. B. sub voce Paus. 10.12.2; Lactant. 1.6, 12, where it is called Marmessus; Suid. s. v.); but its exact site is unknown.

Hence Pausanias comment two paragraphs later; “However, death came upon (the Sybil)  in the Troad, and her tomb is in the grove of the Sminthian (Apollo)”  Of her and the area Pausanias also says;

“she states that her mother was an immortal, one of the nymphs of Ida, while her father was a human. These are the verses:—“I am by birth half mortal, half divine; An immortal nymph was my mother, my father an eater of corn; On my mother's side of Idaean birth, but my fatherland was red Marpessus, sacred to the Mother (Cybele), and the river Aidoneus.” Pausanias 10.12.3

 Aidoneus

As to the River Aidoneus, I can find no reference to such a river or its god.  “Aidoneus” was another name for Hades.  And that is the only reference I can find to the name,  other than some lame late rationalized version of the Theseus/Pirithous in Hell myth.