192 PROFESSOR G. B. AIRY ON THE ECLIPSES 
The persons who brought them together were Syennesis the Cilieian and Labyxetus 
the Babylonian.” ^ 
34 It is to be remarked that this war was one of a different character from that 
which was subsequently undertaken by Cbcesos and which ended m his rum. The 
war of Alyattes was a struggle between two nations, in which the Medes apparently 
made the first movement; and though it is impossible to say how far in so long a 
time the places of conflict may have been shifted, yet it is likely that they won 
always have reference to the great lines of military communication between the 
two warring countries. The war of Criesds, on the other hand, was undertaken to 
obtain possession of the province of Cappadocia. It must he remembered that the 
limits of this province, in the geography of Herodotus, were very different from 
those assigned to it in later times, and which are generally traced in oui- maps. 
With him, the province (then an independent kingdom) of Cilicia included bot 
banks of the upper part of the Halys (and therefore extended very much further 
north than in later times) ; then the Matieni occupied the right bank of the river, 
and the Phrygians the left ; then, from their boundary to the mouth of the Halt s, 
the Cappadocians (who he says were called Syrians by the Greeks) occupied the right 
bank of the Halys (thus including what was afterwards the kingdom of Pontus) an 
the Paphlagonians the left. Thus, in the Cappadocian enterprise of Criesus (which, 
as the attack on Pteria shows, was principally directed against the inhabitan^ o t e 
coast), it was necessary to pass the Halys near its mouth, and with the difficulties 
described bv Herodotus ; but in the Median war of Alyattes there was not neces- 
sarily any movement so far north. The circumstance that the armies in this eclipse- 
battle were accompanied by the forces of their principal allies, and that the kings 
were present in person ready to make a treaty, shows that it was no skirmish of 
detachments, but a meeting of the main armies. It will be well therefore to consider 
in what part of the country such armies were likely to meet. I am indebted t 
M. Pierre de Tchihatcheff and W. J. Hamilton, Esq., for much of the information 
on which the following remarks are founded. i ^ f 
35 Asia Minor is bounded on its eastern side by a wide-spreading cluster ot 
mountains, which, apparently, presents to the west an unbroken front, extending from 
the Euxine Sea to the Gulf of Issus ; and on its southern side by a narrow range ot 
mountains joining the former near Issus. The difficulties of passing the eastern 
mountains appear to be great. There is one road leading from Erzeroum by Sebas e 
or Sivas towards Ciesarea, and another road nearly parallel to this, thirty or forty 
miles S.E. of it; but both are rough and pass through very extensive tracts which 
provide little food. A rough road leads in the S.E. direction from Coesarea by E 
Bostan. The best road appears to be that which leads from Sivas to Guroiin, an 
then accompanies one of the feeders of the Euphrates by Melitene or Malatieh. In 
the southern mountains, the best pass towards the shore of the Mediterranean is that 
of Tarsus, leading thence by Issus to Antioch or Aleppo. Mesopotamia has only 
