[13]
It is thought that the Araxes was given the same name as the Peneius by Armenus and his followers because of its similarity to that river, for that river too, they say, was called Araxes because of the fact that it "cleft"1 Ossa from Olympus, the cleft called Tempe. And it is said that in ancient times the Araxes in Armenia, after descending from the mountains, spread out and formed a sea in the plains below, since it had no outlet, but that Jason, to make it like Tempe, made the cleft through which the water now precipitates2 itself into the Caspian Sea, and that in consequence of this the Araxene Plain, through which the river flows to its precipitate3 descent, was relieved of the sea. Now this account of the Araxes contains some plausibility, but that of Herodotus not at all; for he says that after flowing out of the country of the Matieni it splits into forty rivers4 and separates the Scythians from the Bactrians. Callisthenes, also, follows Herodotus.
1 "ap-arax-ae" is the Greek verb.
2 "cat-arax-ae."
3 Again a play of the root "arax."
4 "The Araxes discharges through forty mouths, of which all, except one, empty into marshes and shoals. . . . The one remaining mouth flows through a clear channel into the Caspian sea" (Herod. 1. 202)
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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