268 GEOGRAPHY FROM AUGUSTUS TO TRAJAN. [CHAP.
"There is too the lake Arsene, which is also called Thopitis,
and this contains potash, and serves for cleansing
strabo's an(j fuu;ng Ci0thes: and for this reason also its
Account. °
water is not drinkable. Moreover the Tigris flows
through it, after rising in the mountain district over against
Niphates, and preserves its stream unmixed owing to its swiftness,
for among the Medes tigris means 'an arrow'; and whereas there
are many kinds of fish in the river, in the lake there is one kind
only. But at the extremity of the lake the river falls into a
chasm, and after running underground for a long distance rises
again in the district called Chalonitis1."
The lake which Strabo here calls Thopitis, and which by
Pliny and Ptolemy is more accurately called Thos-
Pites or Thospitis2*is undoubtedly the lake of Van,
for this is called by Armenian writers Lake of
Dosp, from its being situated in the province of Dosp, of which
the city of Van was the capital. The features of that piece of
water are sufficiently noteworthy to have aroused the interest of
the learned, as soon as it came within the range of their obser-
vation, for its water is salt, its extreme length is ninety miles, and
it is more than five thousand feet above the level of the sea. Its
conformation also is peculiar, for whereas the greater part of its
surface forms an irregular oblong, at its north-eastern angle it
throws off a long arm, which is in so many respects a separate
piece of water, that it might easily be distinguished from the rest
Criticisms °^ ^e kke- ^his w^ account f°r Pliny's error,
of the Ancient when he speaks of two lakes at some distance from
Accounts. . .
one another, and confines to the easternmost of
the two, which he calls Aretissa, the special features which Strabo
attributes to the lake Thopitis. Here again the names come to
our aid, for that of Arsene, which Strabo gives as an alternative
name for Thopitis, is shewn to be the Aretissa of Pliny by the
intermediate form Arsissa, which is found in Ptolemy8, so that
we may conclude that the application of this was originally
restricted to the eastern arm of the Lake of Van. At the present
day this arm is called the Lake Ardjish, from a town of that name
1 Strabo. TT. T< 8 * t>*~i _ .. -