s, and Claudiopolis, which the
Emperor Claudius Caesar established as a colony. For the city of Isauria,
which was formerly too powerful, was in ancient times overthrown as an
incurable and dangerous rebel, and so completely destroyed that it is
not easy to discover any traces of its pristine splendour.

3. The province of Cilicia, which exults in the river Cydnus, is
ornamented by Tarsus, a city of great magnificence. This city is said to
have been founded by Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae; or else, and
more probably, by a certain emigrant who came from Ethiopia, by name
Sandan, a man of great wealth and of noble birth. It is also adorned by
the city of Anazarbus, which bears the name of its founder; and by
Mopsuestia, the abode of the celebrated seer Mopsus, who wandered from
his comrades the Argonauts when they were returning after having carried
off the Golden Fleece, and strayed to the African coast, where he died a
sudden death. His heroic remains, though covered by Punic turf, have
ever since that time cured a great variety of diseases, and have
generally restored men to sound health.

4. These two provinces being full of banditti were formerly subdued by
the proconsul Servilius, in a piratical war, and were passed under the
yoke, and made tributary to the empire. These districts being placed, as
it were, on a prominent tongue of land, are cut off from the main
continent by Mount Amanus.

5. The frontier of the East stretching straight forward for a great
distance, reached from the banks of the river Euphrates to those of the
Nile, being bounded on the left by the tribes of the Saracens and on
the right by the sea.

6. Nicator Seleucus, after he had occupied that district, increased its
prosperity to a wonderful degree, when, after the death of Alexander,
king of Macedonia, he took possession of the kingdom of Persia by right
of succession; being a mighty and victorious king, as his surname
indicates. And making free use of his numerous subjects, whom he
governed for a long time in tranquillity, he changed groups of rustic
habitations into regular cities, important for their great wealth and
power, the greater part of which at the present day, although they are
called by Greek names which were given them by the choice of their
founder, have nevertheless not lost their original appellations which
the original settlers of the villages gave them in the Assyrian
language.

7. After Osdroene, which, as I