Beaufort reports the existence at Selefkeh of many ruins on the west side of the river, and, especially, of an enormous reservoir lined with hard cement (the “opus Signinum” or “Coccio pesto” of the Roman aqueducts). This structure is 150 feet long by 75 feet broad and 35 feet deep, and could, therefore, have held nearly 10,000 tons of water. A little further on is a place called Korghoz, possibly, the Corycus of antiquity, and the site of the Corycian cave, in mythology, the fabled abode of the giant, Typhôs;[[92]] but, more probably, the crater of an extinct volcano. Strabo says it was a deep and broad circular valley, the lower part rugged, but covered with shrubs and evergreens, and, especially, with saffron, which was abundant here. From an internal cavity gushed forth a copious stream, which, for a while lost, after a brief course, reappeared near the sea, which it joined. This was called the “bitter water.” Beaufort found two places bearing the name of Korgho Kalaler (castles), there being many signs in the neighbourhood of the former existence of a city of considerable size:—“A mole of great unhewn rocks projects at one angle from the fortress about 100 yards across the bay, terminated by a solid building twenty feet square.”[[93]] Can this be the remains of an ancient pharos or lighthouse? We should add that the places, hitherto described, belong to what was usually called Cilicia Tracheia; those we shall now notice, belonging, on the other hand, to the plain country.
[92]. Pind. Pyth. i. 31, thus speaks of him and of his home:—
Τυφὼς ἑκατὸν κάρανος· τὸν ποτὲ
Κιλίκιον θρέψεν πολυώνυμον
ἅντρον.
He is also called, Pyth. viii. 26,
Τυφὼς Κίλιξ ἑκατόγκρανος.
Æschylus, too, gives him the same epithet of “hundred-headed.”—Prom. Vinct. 350.
[93]. Pomponius Mela (i. 13) gives an even fuller description of this famous cave, probably from the same original author, Callisthenes.
Of these we take first, Soli, a colony (Strabo tells us) from Lindus, a relationship the Solians did not forget during subsequent negotiations with the Romans. Soli is first mentioned in Xenophon’s Anabasis, and must, in the following seventy years, have rapidly increased, as Alexander the Great fined the people 200 talents for their attachment to the Persian empire. After having been destroyed by Tigranes, Pompey placed there some of the Cilician pirates whom he had spared; at the same time changing the name of the city to Pompeiopolis. Most of the existing remains are, therefore, Roman. “The first object,” says Beaufort, “which presented itself on landing was a beautiful harbour or basin, with parallel sides and circular ends; it is entirely artificial, being formed by surrounding moles or walls fifty feet in thickness and seven feet in height.... Opposite to the entrance of the harbour a portico rises from the surrounding quay, and opens to a double row of two hundred columns which, crossing the town, communicates with the principal gate towards the country; and from the outside of that gate a paved road continues, in the same line, to a bridge over a small river.... Even in its present state of wreck, the effect of the whole is so imposing, that the most illiterate seaman in the ship could not behold it without emotion.” The actual execution of these columns is, however, poor; and, of the original two hundred, only forty-four are now standing.[[94]] Soli was the birthplace of Chrysippus, Philemon, and Aratus.