plint's natural histoet. 
[BookY. 
way even amidst these barriers ; and victorious after all, it 
then escapes with its sinuous course to the kindred chain 
of the Riphsean mountains. Numerous are the names 
which it bears, as it is continuously designated by new ones 
throughout the whole of its course. In the first part of its 
career it has the name of Imaus\ after which it is known 
successively by the names of Emodus, Paropanisus, Circius, 
Gambades, Paryadres, Choatras, Oreges, Oroandes, Niphates, 
Taurus, and, where it even out-tops itself, Caucasus. Where 
it throws forth its arms as though every now and then it 
would attempt to invade the sea, it bears the names of Sar- 
pedon, Coracesius, Cragus, and then again Taurus. Where 
also it opens and makes a passage to admit mankind, it still 
claims the credit of an unbroken continuity by giving the 
name of " Gates" to these passes, which in one place are 
called the " Grates of Armenia^," in another the " Grates of the 
Caspian," and in another the " Grates of Cilicia." In addition 
to this, when it has been cut short in its onward career, it 
retires to a distance from the seas, and covers itself on the 
one side and the other with the names of numerous nations, 
being called, on the right-hand side the Hyrcanian and the 
Caspian, and on the left the Paryadrian^, the Moschian, the 
Amazonian, the Coraxican, and the Scythian chain. Among 
the Greeks it bears the one general name of Ceraunian^. 
^ " The name of Imaiis was, in the first instance, apphed by the Grreek 
geographers to the Hindu- Kush and to the chain parallel to the equator, 
to which the name of Himalaya is usually given at the present day. The 
name was gradually extended to the intersection running north and south, 
the meridian axis of Central Asia, or the Bolor range. The divisions of 
Asia into ' intra et extra Imaum,' were unknown to Strabo and Pliny, 
though the latter describes the knot of mountains formed by the inter- 
sections of the Himalaya, the Hindu- Kush, and Bolor, by the expression 
'quorum (Montes Emodi) promontorium Imaiis vocatur.' The Bolor 
chain has been for ages, with one or two exceptions, the boundary be- 
tween the empires of Cliina and Turkestan." — Dr. Smith's Dictionary of 
A.ncient Geography, 
2, The Gates of Armenia are spoken of in B. vi. c. 12, the Grates of the 
Caspian in C. 16 of the same Book, and the Gates of Cilicia in C. 22 of 
the present Book. ^ See C. ix. of the next Book. 
'* " Strabo gives this name to only the eastern portion of the Cauca- 
sian chain which overhangs the Caspian Sea and forms the northern 
boundary of Albania, and in which he places the Amazons. Mela seems 
to apply the name to the whole chain which other writers call Caucasus, 
confining the latter term to a part of it. Pliny (B. v. c. 27 &B. vi. c. 11) 
