Geography

​Melitene is very similar to Commagene; for it is entirely planted with cultivated trees, being the only part of the rest of Cappadocia to do so, so that it even produces olive oil and the Monarites wine, which rivals the Greek ones. It lies opposite Sophene, having the Euphrates River in the middle, and is itself bordering on Commagene. There is a notable fortress of the Cappadocians on the opposite bank called Tomisa; this was sold to the ruler of Sophene for a hundred talents, but later Lucullus presented it as a prize of valor to the Cappadocian who fought with him in the war against Mithridates.

​Cataonia is a wide and hollow plain, producing everything except evergreen trees. It is surrounded by other mountains, and especially by Amanus on the south side, which is a branch of the Cilician Taurus, and by Antitaurus, which breaks off in the opposite direction. For Amanus extends towards the Cilician and Syrian sea to the west and south from Cataonia; and by such an extension it encloses the entire Gulf of Issus and the plains between the Cilicians and the Taurus. Antitaurus, on the other hand, inclines towards the north and takes in a small part of the east, then ends in the interior.

​In this Antitaurus there are deep and narrow valleys, in which are situated Comana and the temple of Enyo, whom they call Ma. It is a notable city, but the multitude of those possessed by the god and of the temple-slaves in it is very great. The inhabitants are Cataonians, who are otherwise subject to the king, but obey the priest for the most part; and the priest is master of both the temple and the temple-slaves, who at the time of our stay were more than six thousand, men and women together. A large territory is also attached to the temple, and the priest enjoys its revenue, and he is second in honor in Cappadocia after the king; and for the most part the priests were of the same family as the kings. These sacred rites, those of Artemis Tauropolos, Orestes along with his sister Iphigenia is believed to have brought here from Tauric Scythia, and there also to have deposited his mourning hair, from which indeed the city got its name. Now through this city flows the Sarus River, and it passes through the ravines of the Taurus to the plains of the Cilicians and the sea that lies below.

​Through Cataonia flows the Pyramus, a navigable river, having its sources in the middle of the plain. There is a remarkable pit, through which one can see the water carried secretly underground for a long distance, and then rising to the surface. To one who lets down a javelin from above into the pit, the force of the water resists so much that it is scarcely submerged. Having been carried along in great volume with immense depth and width, when it joins the Taurus, it undergoes a wonderful narrowing; and wonderful also is the cleft in the mountain through which the stream is conducted. For just as in rocks that have received a fracture and been split in two, the projections on one side happen to match the hollows on the other so that they could even be fitted together, so we saw the rocks towering above the river on both sides, reaching almost to the mountain tops, at a distance of two or three plethra, having their hollows facing the projections. The ground between is all rocky, quite deep and extremely narrow, having a cleft through the middle so that even a dog and a hare can leap across. This is the stream of the river, full to the brim, resembling a wide canal, but because of its winding, its narrowing from so great a width, and the depth of the ravine, the noise strikes those who approach from afar immediately as like thunder. In passing out of the mountains, it brings down so much alluvial soil to the sea, partly from Cataonia and partly from the Cilician plains, that an oracle has even been issued and is circulated concerning it to this effect: “There shall be a time for those yet to be, when silver-eddying Pyramus, pouring forth its shore, shall reach sacred Cyprus.” For something similar happens both there and in Egypt, since the Nile is always making the sea into mainland by its silt. Wherefore Herodotus indeed called Egypt the gift of the river, and the poet said that Pharos was formerly out in the open sea, and not, as now, close to the mainland of Egypt.