CA´RMALAS
CA´RMALAS (
Καρμάλας), a Cappadocian river. Strabo (p. 537) says that in Cataonia there is a hill fort, Dastarcum, round which the river Carmalas runs. Then he says, in Sargarausene of Cappadocia, there is a small town Herpa, and a river Carmalas, “which
also flows into Cilicia;” that is like the Pyramus, which he has described a little before. And again, king Ariarathes dammed up the Carmalas, but it burst the dike and damaged some land about Mallus in Cilicia, which is near the coast (p. 539).
There is great confusion here, for Sargarausene is one of the northern divisions of Cappadocia.
In another passage (p. 663) Strabo fixes a place called Herphae, which seems to be the same name as Herpa, in Melitene, near the Euphrates. Finally, Ptolemy (
5.6,
7) places a town Carmala in Melitene and near the junction of the Melas and the Euphrates. Some geographers have assumed from this that the Carmalas and the Melas are the same river; and that Strabo is mistaken about the Carmalas flowing into Cilicia.
This cannot be admitted, though it is true that there is confusion in the passages quoted from Strabo. If the Carmalas is a river of Cataonia, it must be a branch of the Pyramus, and one of the branches of the Pyramus is marked
Charma Su in some maps.
[
G.L]
