5.52.2
Next after Phrygia it comes to the river Halys, where there is both a defile which must be passed before the river can be crossed and a great fortress to guard it. After the passage into Cappadocia, the road in that land as far as the borders of Cilicia is of twenty-eight stages and one hundred and four parasangs. On this frontier you must ride through two defiles and pass two fortresses.
5.52.3
Ride past these, and you will have a journey through Cilica of three stages and fifteen and a half parasangs. The boundary of Cilicia and Armenia is a navigable river, the name of which is the Euphrates. In Armenia there are fifteen resting-stages and fifty-six and a half parasangs. Here too there is a fortress. From Armenia the road enters the Matienian land, in which there are thirty-four stages and one hundred and thirty-seven parasangs.
5.52.4
Through this land flow four navigable rivers which must be passed by ferries, first the Tigris, then a second and a third of the same name, yet not the same stream nor flowing from the same source. The first-mentioned of them flows from the Armenians and the second from the Matieni.
5.52.5
The fourth river is called Gyndes, that Gyndes which Cyrus parted once into three hundred and sixty channels. note
5.52.6
When this country is passed, the road is in the Cissian land, where there are eleven stages and forty-two and a half parasangs, as far as yet another navigable river, the Choaspes, on the banks of which stands the city of Susa.
ch. 53
5.53.1
Thus the sum total of stages is one hundred and eleven. So many resting-stages, then, are there in the journey up from Sardis to Susa. If I have accurately counted the parasangs of the royal road, and the parasang is of thirty furlongs' length, which assuredly it is, then between Sardis and the king's abode called Memnonian note there are thirteen thousand and five hundred furlongs, the number of parasangs being four hundred and fifty. If each day's journey is one hundred and fifty furlongs, then the sum of days spent is ninety, neither more nor less.
ch. 54
5.54.1
Aristagoras of Miletus accordingly spoke the truth to Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian when he said that the journey inland was three months long. If anyone should desire a more exact measurement, I will give him that too, for the journey from Ephesus to Sardis must be added to the rest.
5.54.2
So, then, from the Greek sea to Susa, which is the city called Memnonian, it is a journey of fourteen thousand and forty stages, for there are five hundred and forty furlongs from Ephesus to Sardis. The three months' journey is accordingly made longer by three days.
ch. 55
