Here are the quotes of Strabo's geography Book 3 Chapter 5
URL is
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Strabo/3E*.htmlOn account of the same fertility of their islands, however, the inhabitants are ever the object of plots, albeit they are peaceable; still they are spoken of as the best of slingers. And this art they have practised assiduously, so it is said, ever since the Phoenicians took possession p127of the islands.
but the people used to go forth to their fights without a girdle on — with only a goat-skin, wrapped round the arm,135 or with a javelin that had been hardened in the fire (though in rare cases it was also pointed with a small iron tip), and with three slings worn round the head,136 of black-tufted rush (that is, a species of rope-rush, out of which the ropes are woven; and Philetas, too, in his "Hermeneia"137 says, "Sorry his tunic befouled with dirt; and round about him his slender waist is entwined with a strip of black-tufted rush," meaning a man girdled with a rush-rope), of black-tufted rush, I say, or of hair or of sinews: the sling with the long straps for the shots at short range, and the medium sling for the medium shots. And their training in the use of slings used to be such, from childhood up, that they would not so much as give bread to their children unless they first hit it with the sling.138 This is why Metellus, when he was approaching the islands from the sea, stretched hides above the decks as a protection against the slings. And he brought thither as colonists three thousand of the Romans who were in Iberia.
Here are the footnotes:
135 That is, for a shield.
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136 But cp. Diodorus Siculus, who says (5.18): "Their equipment for fighting is three slings (so also Florus 3.8 = 1.43 in Rossbach's ed.); and, of these, they keep one round the head, another round the belly, and a third in the hands."
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137 The works of Philetas of Cos are lost. This "Hermeneia," meaning "Interpretation" (?), is otherwise unknown. The reference may be to a poem of Philetas which, according to Parthenius (Erotica 2), was entitled "Hermes." However, the entire reference has every appearance of being merely a gloss on "black-tufted rush," as was first suggested by Casaubon.
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138 So Diodorus 5.18 and Florus 3.8.
Marc's note: apparently there is more in book 14 but this work is not yet online