Geography

​After Coracesium comes the city of Arsinoe, then Hamaxia, a settlement on a hill with a harbor where shipbuilding timber is brought down. Most of this timber is cedar, and these parts seem to abound in this kind of wood; and for this reason Antony assigned these places to Cleopatra, as they were suitable for the construction of fleets. Then Laertes, a fortress on a breast-shaped hill with a harbor; then the city of Selinus; then Cragus, a precipitous rock on the sea; then Charadrus, a fortress which itself has a harbor (above which lies Mt. Andriclus), and a rugged coastal passage called Platanistes; then Cape Anemurium, at which the mainland is closest to Cyprus, being a distance of three hundred and fifty stadia in crossing to Cape Crommyum. Now, the coastal voyage of Cilicia from the boundaries of Pamphylia to Anemurium is eight hundred and twenty stadia, and the remaining voyage as far as Soli is about five hundred stadia. On this remaining passage, the first city after Anemurium is Nagidus; then Arsinoe, which has an anchorage; then a place called Melania, and Celenderis, a city with a harbor. Some, among whom is Artemidorus, make this latter place, and not Coracesium, the beginning of Cilicia; and he says that from the Pelusiac mouth to Orthosia is three thousand six hundred stadia, to the Orontes river one thousand one hundred and thirty, next to the Gates five hundred and twenty-five, and to the boundaries of the Cilicians one thousand nine hundred and twenty.

​Then Holmi, where the people who now live in Seleucia formerly lived; but when Seleucia was founded on the Calycadnus, they migrated there. For immediately, as one rounds the sandy cape that forms Sarpedon, is the mouth of the Calycadnus. Near the Calycadnus is also Zephyrium, and this too is a cape. The river has an inland passage up to the city of Seleucia, which is well-peopled and far removed from the Cilician and Pamphylian way of life. Here were born in our time notable men of the Peripatetic school of philosophers, Athenaeus and Xenarchus, of whom Athenaeus both engaged in politics and led the people for some time in his native city, but later, falling into a friendship with Murena, was captured with him while fleeing when the conspiracy formed against Caesar Augustus was discovered; but having been shown to be guiltless, he was released by Caesar. When, upon his return to Rome, the first people who met him greeted him and asked for news, he quoted the verse of Euripides: “ἥκω νεκρῶν κευθμῶνα καὶ σκότου πύλας λιπών.” (I am come, leaving the vault of the dead and the gates of darkness.) After surviving for only a short time, he perished in the night when the house in which he lived collapsed. On the other hand, Xenarchus, whose lectures we ourselves attended, did not spend much time at home, but lived in Alexandria, Athens, and finally Rome, choosing the life of a teacher; having enjoyed the friendship of Areius and after that of Caesar Augustus, he continued to be held in honor until his old age; and shortly before his end, having lost his sight, he ended his life by disease.

​After the Calycadnus comes the rock called Poecile, which has a flight of steps cut in the stone leading to Seleucia. Then Cape Anemurium, of the same name as the former one, and Crambusa island, and Cape Corycus, twenty stadia above which is the Corycian cave, in which the best saffron grows. It is a large circular valley surrounded by a rocky lip that is quite high on all sides; to one who goes down into it, the floor is uneven and for the most part rocky, but full of evergreen and cultivated shrubs; and the soils that bear the saffron are scattered here and there. There is also a cave there which has a great spring pouring forth a river of pure and transparent water, which immediately falls underground; having been carried unseen, it issues into the sea; and they call it “bitter water.”