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52.
Now the nature of this road1 is as I will show. All along it are the king's road stations and very good resting places, and the whole of it passes through country that is inhabited and safe. Its course through Lydia and Phrygia is of the length of twenty stages, and ninety-four and a half parasangs.
[2]
Next after Phrygia it comes to the river Halys, where there is both a defile which must be passed before the river can be crossed and a great fortress to guard it. After the passage into Cappadocia, the road in that land as far as the borders of Cilicia is of twenty-eight stages and one hundred and four parasangs. On this frontier you must ride through two defiles and pass two fortresses.
[3]
Ride past these, and you will have a journey through Cilica of three stages and fifteen and a half parasangs. The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river, the name of which is the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen resting-stages and fifty-six and a half parasangs. Here too there is a fortress. From Armenia the road enters the Matienian land, in which there are thirty-four stages and one hundred and thirty-seven parasangs.
[4]
Through this land flow four navigable rivers which must be passed by ferries, first the Tigris, then a second and a third of the same name, yet not the same stream nor flowing from the same source. The first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenians and the second from the Matieni.
[5]
The fourth river is called Gyndes, that Gyndes which Cyrus parted once into three hundred and sixty channels.2
[6]
When this country is passed, the road is in the Cissian land, where there are eleven stages and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as yet another navigable river, the Choaspes, on the banks of which stands the city of Susa.
1 “The royal road from Sardis to Susa is far older than the Persian empire,” say How and Wells. Evidence points to the existence of a Hittite capital in Cappadocia, to connect which with Sardis on the one hand and Assyria on the other was the purpose of the road.
2 Cp. Hdt. 1.189.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (26 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(12):
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), MA´NSIO
- A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), VIAE
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), ARME´NIA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CHOASPES
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CILI´CIA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), GYNDES
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), MATIA´NA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), MATIE´NI MONTES
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), PHRY´GIA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), SUSA
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), TIGRIS
- Smith's Bio, Memnon
- Cross-references in notes to this page
(1):
- Herodotus, The Histories, Hdt. 7.26
- Cross-references in notes from this page
(1):
- Herodotus, Histories, 1.189
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(12):
- LSJ, διαλαμβάνω
- LSJ, διαπορθμ-εύω
- LSJ, διεξ-ελαύνω
- LSJ, διεκ-περάω
- LSJ, ἔπειμι
- LSJ, φυ^λα^κ-τήριον
- LSJ, κατά-λυ^σις
- LSJ, ναυσι-πέρα_τος
- LSJ, πολίζω
- LSJ, πύλη
- LSJ, σοῦσον
- LSJ, σταθμός
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