wagons pass over the place in great numbers every day, but they are wholly insufficient to shake the bog or to find a weak spot in it at any point.  The natives burn the reeds every year, to prevent the roads being stopped up by them, and once, when an exceedingly violent wind struck the place, it came about that the fire reached the extremities of the roots, and the water appeared at a small opening; but in a short time the ground closed again, and gave the spot the same appearance which it had had before.  From there the river proceeds into the land called Celesene, where was the sanctuary of Artemis among the Taurians, from which they say Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, fled with Orestes and Pylades, bearing the statue of Artemis.  For the other temple which has existed even to my day in the city of Comana is not the one “Among the Taurians.”  But I shall explain how this temple came into being.

When Orestes had departed in haste from the Taurians with his sister, it so happened that he contracted some disease.  And when he made inquiry about the disease they say that the oracle responded that his trouble would not abate until he built a temple to Artemis in a spot such as the one among the Taurians, and there cut off his hair and named the city after it.  So then Orestes, going about the country there, came to Pontus, and saw a mountain which rose steep and towering, while below along the extremities of the mountain flowed the river Iris.  Orestes, therefore, supposing at that time that this was the place indicated to him by the oracle, built there a great city and the temple of Artemis, and, shearing off his hair, named after it the city which even up to the present time has been called Comana.  The story goes on that after Orestes had done these things, the disease continued to be as violent as before, if not even more so.  Then the man perceived that he was not satisfying the oracle by doing these things, and he again went about looking everywhere and found a certain spot in Cappadocia very closely resembling the one among the Taurians.  I myself have often seen this place and admired it exceedingly, and have imagined that I was in the land of the Taurians.  For this mountain resembles the other remarkably, since the Taurus is here also and the river Sarus is similar to the Euphrates there.  So Orestes built in that place an imposing city and two temples, the one to Artemis and the other to his sister Iphigenia, which the Christians have made sanctuaries for themselves, without changing their structure at all.  This is called even now Golden Comana, being named from the hair of Orestes, which they say he cut off there and thus escaped from his affliction.  But some say that this disease from which he escaped was nothing else than that of madness which seized him after he had killed his own mother.  But I shall return to the previous narrative.