[2]
This country lies east of Armenia and Matiane, west of Greater Media, and north of both; and it lies adjacent to the region round the recess of the Hyrcanian Sea and to Matiane on the south. It is no small country, considering its power, as Apollonides1 says, since it can furnish as many as ten thousand horsemen and forty thousand foot soldiers. It has a harbor, Capauta,2 in which salts effloresce and solidify. These salts cause itching and are painful, but this effect is relieved by olive-oil; and the water restores weathered garments, if perchance through ignorance one should dip them in it to wash them. They have powerful neighbors in the Armenians and the Parthians, by whom they are often plundered. But still they hold out against them and get back what has been taken away from them, as, for example, they got back Symbace from the Armenians when the latter became subject to the Romans; and they themselves have attained to friendship with Caesar. But they are also paying court to the Parthians at the same time.
Strabo. ed. H. L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
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