Euphrates, and the other the
Tigris. One of these, the Tigris, descends, with no deviations and with
no tributaries except small ones emptying into it, straight toward the
city of Amida. And continuing into the country which lies to the north
of this city it enters the land of Assyria. But the Euphrates at its
beginning flows for a short distance, and is then immediately lost to
sight as it goes on; it does not, however, become subterranean, but a
very strange thing happens. For the water is covered by a bog of great
depth, extending about fifty stades in length and twenty in breadth; and
reeds grow in this mud in great abundance. But the earth there is of
such a hard sort that it seems to those who chance upon it to be nothing
else than solid ground, so that both pedestrians and horsemen travel
over it without any fear. Nay more, even wagons pass over the place in
great numbers every day, but they are wholly insufficient to shake the
bog or to find a weak spot in it at any point. The natives burn the
reeds every year, to prevent the roads being stopped up by them, and
once, when an exceedingly violent wind struck the place, it came about
that the fire reached the extremities of the roots, and the water
appeared at a small opening; but in a short time the ground closed
again, and gave the spot the same appearance which it had had before.
From there the river proceeds into the land called Celesene, where was
the sanctuary of Artemis among the Taurians, from which they say
Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, fled with Orestes and Pylades, bearing
the statue of Artemis. For the other temple which has existed even to my
day in the city of Comana is not the one "Among the Taurians." But I
shall explain how this temple came into being.

When Orestes had departed in haste from the Taurians with his sister, it
so happened that he contracted some disease. And when he made inquiry
about the disease they say that the oracle responded that his trouble
would not abate until he built a temple to Artemis in a spot such as the
one among the Taurians, and there cut off his hair and named the city
after it. So then Orestes, going about the country there, came to
Pontus, and saw a mountain which rose steep and towering, while below
along the extremities of the mountain flowed the river Iris. Orestes,
therefore, supposing at that time that this was the place indicated to
him by the oracle, built there a great city and the temple of Artemis,