[531] Racca.
[532] B. C. 51.
[533] Gordyæa was the most northerly part of Assyria, or Kurdistan, near the lake Van. From Carduchi, the name of the inhabitants, is derived the modern name Kurds.
[534] Pliny, x. c. iii. and xxxvi. c. xix., calls it “Gagates lapis;” a name derived, according to Dioscorides, from a river Gagas in Lycia.
[535] Herod. vi. 199.
[536] These appear to be the rivers found in the neighbourhood of Roha or Orfa, the ancient Edessa. One of these rivers bears the name of Beles, and is perhaps the Basileios of Strabo. Chabur is the Aborrhas.
[537] Probably an interpolation.
[538] The passage of the Euphrates here in question was effected at the Zeugma of Commagene, called by Strabo the present passage. On passing the river you entered Anthemusia, a province which appears to have received, later on, the name of Osroene. It extended considerably towards the north, for in it the Aborrhas, according to Strabo, had its source; but it is doubtful whether it extended to the north of Mount Masius, where the latitudes, as given by Ptolemy, would place it. I do not exactly know whether Strabo intends to speak of a city or a province, for the position of the city is unknown; we only learn from a passage in Pliny, vi. c. xxvi., that it was not on the Euphrates. The word τόπος is not, I think, so applicable to a province as to a city, and in this last sense I have understood it, giving also to κατὰ the meaning of latitude, in which it is so often applied by Strabo; strictly speaking, the sense of “vis-à-vis,” “opposite to,” might be given to it.—Letronne.
[539] This is an error of the author or of the copyist. Edessa (now Orfa) is not to be confounded with Bambyce (Kara-Bambuche, or Buguk Munbedj) of Cyrrhestica in Syria, which obtained its Hellenic name from Seleucus Nicator.
[540] B. C. 54.