DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4679#0237
1. SITUATION AND SCENERY. 211
just as the real source of the Maeander is in the lake and fountains
of Aurocrene on the plateau behind Kelainai. The Lycos appears
after its underground course at several points. One is a small deep
marshy lake, called a duden1, fed by abundant springs. Another
is near Dere-Keui, where the stream issues from beneath the rock;
and, when Hamilton I p. 507 penetrated further up a chasm above
its exit, ' the sound of a subterranean river rushing along a narrow
bed or tumbling over precipices . . . was distinctly heard.'
Now there are united in Herodotus's account two points. (1) within
the very city of Colossai the Lycos enters a deep cleft in the ground :
(2) the Lycos issues from an underground channel and flows to the
Maeander. Each point is true, and each is stated by the eye-witness,
Strabo ; it is only the union of the two by Herodotus that is incorrect.
This is characteristic of the faithful repeater of evidence at second-
hand : his details are given literally as he heard them, but the total
effect produced by the union of the details in a formal description
is incorrect.
The only other authority which is worth quoting on this subject
is the passage of Pliny, where he says that the Lycos is one of those
rivers which go under the earth and again come forth2. But here
again we have the account of one who was not an eye-witness, but
reproduced in abbreviated form the accounts of others. There is
every probability that Pliny thought of a river which disappeared
beneath the earth at a point during its course and reappeared again
at some distance further on ; but it is also clear that an account like
that of Strabo might naturally suggest such an idea to the mind of
a reader who had not seen the actual localities. The one point that
we can regard as assured is that the Lycos was considered to be
a river flowing for some distance underground and then coming forth
to the surface 3.
1 Duden (like KarafioOpov) denotes have any independent value; they seem
either end of the underground channel to be mere inferences drawn by persons
of a river, where the river either dis- who had no actual knowledge of the
appears or reappears, and it also de- localities. The preceding account is
notes the underground channel as a written after long and dispassionate
whole. This Duden lies on the north consideration of everything that has
of the railway, immediately east of the been said on the subject by M. Bonnet
station Kodja-Bash, Big-Head-Source. (Narratio de mirac. Clionis patrato p.
2 NH II 225 Subeunt terras rursus- xxxf), M. Duchesne (Bull. Chit. 1890
que redduntur Lycus in Asia, Erasmus p. 441 f> l893 P- 164), M. Weber 1. c,
in Argolica, Tigris in Mesopotamia. Hamilton 1508, Arundel (Seven Churches
s None of the other references to the p. 64), and Laborde. See § 4.
natural features of Colossai seem to
P 2
just as the real source of the Maeander is in the lake and fountains
of Aurocrene on the plateau behind Kelainai. The Lycos appears
after its underground course at several points. One is a small deep
marshy lake, called a duden1, fed by abundant springs. Another
is near Dere-Keui, where the stream issues from beneath the rock;
and, when Hamilton I p. 507 penetrated further up a chasm above
its exit, ' the sound of a subterranean river rushing along a narrow
bed or tumbling over precipices . . . was distinctly heard.'
Now there are united in Herodotus's account two points. (1) within
the very city of Colossai the Lycos enters a deep cleft in the ground :
(2) the Lycos issues from an underground channel and flows to the
Maeander. Each point is true, and each is stated by the eye-witness,
Strabo ; it is only the union of the two by Herodotus that is incorrect.
This is characteristic of the faithful repeater of evidence at second-
hand : his details are given literally as he heard them, but the total
effect produced by the union of the details in a formal description
is incorrect.
The only other authority which is worth quoting on this subject
is the passage of Pliny, where he says that the Lycos is one of those
rivers which go under the earth and again come forth2. But here
again we have the account of one who was not an eye-witness, but
reproduced in abbreviated form the accounts of others. There is
every probability that Pliny thought of a river which disappeared
beneath the earth at a point during its course and reappeared again
at some distance further on ; but it is also clear that an account like
that of Strabo might naturally suggest such an idea to the mind of
a reader who had not seen the actual localities. The one point that
we can regard as assured is that the Lycos was considered to be
a river flowing for some distance underground and then coming forth
to the surface 3.
1 Duden (like KarafioOpov) denotes have any independent value; they seem
either end of the underground channel to be mere inferences drawn by persons
of a river, where the river either dis- who had no actual knowledge of the
appears or reappears, and it also de- localities. The preceding account is
notes the underground channel as a written after long and dispassionate
whole. This Duden lies on the north consideration of everything that has
of the railway, immediately east of the been said on the subject by M. Bonnet
station Kodja-Bash, Big-Head-Source. (Narratio de mirac. Clionis patrato p.
2 NH II 225 Subeunt terras rursus- xxxf), M. Duchesne (Bull. Chit. 1890
que redduntur Lycus in Asia, Erasmus p. 441 f> l893 P- 164), M. Weber 1. c,
in Argolica, Tigris in Mesopotamia. Hamilton 1508, Arundel (Seven Churches
s None of the other references to the p. 64), and Laborde. See § 4.
natural features of Colossai seem to
P 2