XII.] DESCRIPTION OF ASIA. 257
Taurus as its leading geographical feature, including under that
name the Himalaya and other mountains which run through it
from west to east; and then surveys, first the lands which lie
between the Euxine and the Caspian and to the eastward of the
last-named sea, and afterwards the more central regions of Parthia,
Media, and Armenia. In his general geography of Asia he adopts
Eratosthenes as his authority, while for the western part of the
area which is specially treated in this book he relies on the
historians of the Mithridatic wars, and for the eastern on Patrocles
and the companions of Alexander. We have already noticed the
fulness of his account of the districts of Iberia and Albania, and of
the tribes inhabiting them, which is borrowed from Theophanes;
and we are also indebted to him for an accurate description both
of the mountain system of Western Asia, and of the upper courses
of the Euphrates and Tigris. He represents the Taurus—here
using that term in its more restricted sense—as running through
the south of Asia Minor, and at the eastern extremity of that
country throwing off the Anti-Taurus to the north, and the Amanus,
the commencement of the chains of Syria and Palestine, to the
south; then, as it pursues its course towards the east, forming a
marked boundary between Armenia and Mesopotamia, into both
which countries it ramifies, and increasing in elevation until it
culminates in Mount Niphates, near the brackish lake Arsene1
(Lake of Van). As regards the rivers—Strabo was not aware of
the fact, which modern geography has taught us, that both the
Euphrates and the Tigris have two sources, and flow for a con-
siderable distance in two separate streams2: he confines the name
Euphrates to the western branch of that river, the modern Frat,
which rises near Erzeroum; and the only stream which he recognises
as the Tigris is its eastern branch, the river of Bitlis, with which
Xenophon also had identified it. But he rightly remarks, that the
Euphrates rises in the north, the Tigris in the south of the Taurtis,
i.t. of Armenia; and he carefully distinguishes the provinces—
Sophene, Cornmagene and others—between which the Euphrates
flows in this part of its course8.
1 II. 12. 2; II. 14. 8.
^ p. 114. * ix. w. 3*