and, shearing off his hair, named after it the city which even up to the
present time has been called Comana. The story goes on that after
Orestes had done these things, the disease continued to be as violent as
before, if not even more so. Then the man perceived that he was not
satisfying the oracle by doing these things, and he again went about
looking everywhere and found a certain spot in Cappadocia very closely
resembling the one among the Taurians. I myself have often seen this
place and admired it exceedingly, and have imagined that I was in the
land of the Taurians. For this mountain resembles the other remarkably,
since the Taurus is here also and the river Sarus is similar to the
Euphrates there. So Orestes built in that place an imposing city and two
temples, the one to Artemis and the other to his sister Iphigenia, which
the Christians have made sanctuaries for themselves, without changing
their structure at all. This is called even now Golden Comana, being
named from the hair of Orestes, which they say he cut off there and thus
escaped from his affliction. But some say that this disease from which
he escaped was nothing else than that of madness which seized him after
he had killed his own mother. But I shall return to the previous
narrative.

From Tauric Armenia and the land of Celesene the River Euphrates,
flowing to the right of the Tigris, flows around an extensive territory,
and since many rivers join it and among them the Arsinus, whose copious
stream flows down from the land of the so-called Persarmenians, it
becomes naturally a great river, and flows into the land of the people
anciently called White Syrians but now known as the Lesser Armenians,
whose first city, Melitene, is one of great importance. From there it
flows past Samosata and Hierapolis and all the towns in that region as
far as the land of Assyria, where the two rivers unite with each other
into one stream which bears the name of the Tigris. The land which lies
outside the River Euphrates, beginning with Samosata, was called in
ancient times Commagene, but now it is named after the river[22]. But
the land inside the river, that namely which is between it and the
Tigris, is appropriately named Mesopotamia; however, a portion of it is
called not only by this name, but also by certain others. For the land
as far as the city of Amida has come to be called Armenia by some, while
Edessa together with the country around it is called Osroene,