classical era writers, the Caucones were among the tribes displaced or absorbed by the Bithynians, who had migrated from Thrace
.
In myth and literature
The
Paionians, Leleges, and Pelasgians. In the Odyssey (3.366), Athena tells Nestor at Pylos that she will "go to the Caucones, where there's an old debt still owing me, not a small amount." This allusion may refer to a subgroup of Caucones who had migrated to mainland Greece, as reported by Strabo.[citation needed
]
Other references to the Caucones in epic tradition may have been attempts to recognize the Caucones as deserving a place in the Neleiad kingdom in southwestern Greece. Efforts were made, we are told by Pausanias (4.1.5). to 'historicize' Kaukon as the early ancestor of the Athenian genosLykomidai around 480 BC by inventing a grandson of an earth-born Phlyus named Kaukon who taught the Eleusinian Mysteries to a royal queen Messene. His name was Kaukon, a teacher of religious rites.[citation needed]
Their penetration beyond
Lycaon or Lycos (Apollodorus, Library 3.8.1) explains their enduring presence over time in literature. Pausanias' description of the carved figure of Caucon holding a lyre atop his tomb speaks to their tribal poetic literacy. Several scholars believed Pylian Caucones (Hdt. 4.148, 1.147, 5.65) brought Neleid legends and Nestor's polemic exhortations to Colophon.[1]Mimnermus (fr. 9, 14–15, Strabo 14.1.3–4) their ancestor extended the traditional royal "we" of Homeric Nestor in his words of inspiration to Smyrnaeans fighting LydianGyges in the Hermus plain (Paus. 4.21.2, quoted by Theoclus
