27. Chap. 27.-Mount Taurus.

CHAP. 27.—MOUNT TAURUS.

Adjoining to Pamphylia is the Sea of Lycia and the country of Lycia[1] itself, where the chain of Taurus, coming from the eastern shores, terminates the vast Gulf[2] by the Promontory of Chelidonium[3]. Of immense extent, and separating nations innumerable, after taking its first rise at the Indian Sea[4], it branches off to the north on the right-hand side, and on the left towards the south. Then taking a direction towards the west, it would cut through the middle of Asia, were it not that the seas check it in its triumphant career along the land. It accordingly strikes off in a northerly direction, and forming an arc, occupies an immense tract of country, nature, designedly as it were, every now and then throwing seas in the way to oppose its career; here the Sea of Phœnicia, there the Sea of Pontus, in this direction the Caspian and Hyrcanian[5], and then, opposite to them, the Lake Mæotis. Although somewhat curtailed by these obstacles, it still winds along between them, and makes its way even amidst these barriers; and victorious after all, it then escapes with its sinuous course to the kindred chain of the Riphæan mountains. Numerous are the names which it bears, as it is continuously designated by new ones throughout the whole of its course. In the first part of its career it has the name of Imaüs[6], after which it is known successively by the names of Emodus, Paropanisus, Circius, Cambades, Paryadres, Choatras, Oreges, Oroandes, Niphates, Taurus, and, where it even out-tops itself, Caucasus. Where it throws forth its arms as though every now and then it would attempt to invade the sea, it bears the names of Sarpedon, Coracesius, Cragus, and then again Taurus. Where also it opens and makes a passage to admit mankind, it still claims the credit of an unbroken continuity by giving the name of "Gates" to these passes, which in one place are called the "Gates of Armenia[7]," in another the "Gates of the Caspian," and in another the "Gates of Cilicia." In addition to this, when it has been cut short in its onward career, it retires to a distance from the seas, and covers itself on the one side and the other with the names of numerous nations, being called, on the right-hand side the Hyrcanian and the Caspian, and on the left the Parvadrian[8], the Moschian, the Amazonian, the Coraxican, and the Scythian chain. Among the Greeks it bears the one general name of Ceraunian[9].

1. It was inclosed by Caria and Pamphylia on the west and east, and on the north by the district of Cibyrates in Phrygia.

2. The Gulf of Satalieh or Adalia.

3. Still known as Cape Khelidonia or Cameroso.

4. Parisot remarks here, "Pliny describes on this occasion, with an exactness very remarkable for his time, the chain of mountains which runs through the part of Asia known to the ancients, although it is evident that he confines the extent of them within much too small a compass."

5. The Caspian and the Hyrcanian Seas are generally looked upon as identical, but we find them again distinguished by Pliny in B. vi. c. 13, where he says that this inland sea commences to be called the Caspian after you have passed the river Cyrus (or Kúr), and that the Caspii live near it; and in C. 16, that it is called the Hyrcanian Sea, from the Hyrcani who live along its shores. The western side would therefore in strictness be called the Caspian, and the eastern the Hyrcanian Sea.

6. The name of Imaüs was, in the first instance, applied by the Greek geographers to the Hindú-Kúsh and to the chain parallel to the equator, to which the name of Himâlaya is usually given at the present day. The name was gradually extended to the intersection running north and south, the meridian axis of Central Asia, or the Bolor range. The divisions of Asia into 'intra et extra Imaum,' were unknown to Strabo and Pliny, though the latter describes the knot of mountains formed by the intersections of the Himalaya, the Hindú-Kúsh, and Bolor, by the expression 'quorum (Montes Emodi) promontorium Imaüs vocatur.' The Bolor chain has been for ages, with one or two exceptions, the boundary between the empires of China and Turkestan."—Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography.

7. The Gates of Armenia are spoken of in B. vi. c. 12, the Gates of the Caspian in C. 16 of the same Book, and the Gates of Cilicia in C. 22 of the present Book.

8. See C. ix. of the next Book.

9. Strabo gives this name to only the eastern portion of the Caucasian chain which overhangs the Caspian Sea and forms the northern boundary of Albania, and in which he places the Amazons. Mela seems to apply the name to the whole chain which other writers call Caucasus, confining the latter term to a part of it. Pliny (B. v. c. 27 & B. vi. c. 11) gives precisely the same representation, with the additional error of making the Ceraunii (i. e. the Caucasus of others) part of the Great Taurus Chain. He seems to apply the name of Caucasus to the spurs which spread out both to the north-east and the south-east from the main chain near its eastern extremity, and which he regarded as a continuous range, bordering the western shores of the Caspian. See B. vi. c. 10."—Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Ancient Geography.