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1. In the summer our travellers, together with their guide, left Babylon and started out, mounted on camels; and the king had supplied them with the camel-driver, and plenty of provisions, as much as they wanted. The country through which they travelled was fertile; and the villages received them very respectfully, for the leading camel bore upon his forehead a chain of gold, to intimate to all who met them that the king was sending on their way some of his own friends. And as they approached the Caucasus they say that they found the land becoming more fragrant.
2. We may regard this mountain as the beginning of the Taurus, which extends through Armenia and Cilicia as far as Pamphylia and Mycale, and it ends at the sea on the shore of which the Carians live, and we may regard this as the extreme end of the Caucasus, and not as its beginning, as some people say. For the height of Mycale is not very great, whereas the peaks of the Caucasus are so lofty that the sun is cloven asunder by them. And it encompasses with the rest of the Taurus the whole of Scythia which borders on India, and skirts Maeotis and the left side of the Pontus, a distance almost of 20,000 stades; for no less than this is the extent of land enclosed by the elbow of the Caucasus.
As to the statement made about such part of the Taurus as is in our country, to the effect that it projects beyond Armenia, -it was long disbelieved, but has received definite confirmation from the conduct of the leopards, which I know are caught in the spice-bearing region of Pamphylia. For these animals delight in fragrant odours, and scenting their smell from afar off they quit Armenia and traverse the mountains in search of the tear or gum of the Styrax, whenever the winds blow from its quarter and the trees are distilling.
And they say that a leopard was once caught in Pamphylia which was wearing a chain round its neck, and the chain was of gold, and on it was inscribed in Armenian lettering:
"The king Arsaces to the Nysian god."
Now the king of Armenia was certainly at that time Arsaces, and he, I imagine, finding the leopard, had let it go free in honour of Dionysus because of its size. For Dionysus is called Nysian by the Indians and by all the Oriental races from Nysa in India.
And this animal had been for a time under the restraint of a man, and would let you pat with your hand and caress it; but when it was goaded to excitement by the springtime, for in that season leopards begin to rut, it would rush into the mountains, from longing to meet the male, decked as it was with the ring; and it was taken in the lower Taurus whither it had been attracted by the fragrance of the gum.
And the Caucasus bounds India and Media, and stretches down by another arm to the Red Sea.
3. And legends are told of this mountain by the barbarians, which also have an echo in the poems of the Greeks about it, to the effect that Prometheus, because of his love of man, was bound there, and that Heracles -another Heracles, for of course the Theban is not meant- could not brook the ill-treatment of Prometheus, and shot the bird which was feeding upon his entrails. And some say that he was bound in a cave, which as a matter of fact is shown in a foot-hill of the mountain; and Damis says that his chains still hung from the rocks, though you could not easily guess at the material of which they were made, but others say that they bound him on the peak of the mountain; and it has two summits, and they say that his hands were lashed to them, although they are distant from one another not less than a stade, so great was his bulk.
But the inhabitants of the Caucasus regard the eagle as a hostile bird, and burn out the nests which they build among the rocks by hurling into them fiery darts, and they also set snares for them, declaring that they are avenging Prometheus; to such an extent are their imaginations dominated by the fable.
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