Tztetzes on the Naming and Founding of Antioch

In John (Ioannes)  Tzetzes' work,  Chiliades 7.167  we have related a story (sourced from Pausanias) on the founding, naming and initial construction at the Antioch site: 

ὡς Παυσανίας γράφει μὲν ᾽Αντιοχείας κτίσει, / κτίζεται ᾽Αντιόχεια Νικάτορι Σελεύκωι, / κατά τινας εἰς ὄνομα πατρὸς σφοῦ ᾽Αντιόχου, / (170) Λουκιανῶι δ᾽ εἰς ὄνομα υἱέος ᾽Αντιόχου, / τὸν ὃν Σωτῆρα ἔλεγον ... / (174) ταύτην τὴν ᾽Αντιόχειαν Σέλευκος κτίζει πόλιν, / καὶ ἄλλας ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ τέσσαρας δὲ πόλεις. / τοὺς δ᾽ ἀμαθῶς ᾽Αντίοχον λέγοντας ταύτην κτίσαι / ᾽Ατταῖός τε καὶ Περιττᾶς, ᾽Αναξικράτης ἅμα / ἐλέγξουσι σαφέστατα καὶ δείξουσι ληροῦντας, / σὺν οἷς ᾽Ασκληπιόδωρος δὲ οἰκέτης τυγχάνων, / (180) οὓς τότε Σέλευκος ποιεῖ κτισμάτων ἐπιστάτας.

"As Pausanias writes on the foundation of Antioch, Antioch was founded by Seleukos Nikator,/according to some, as the namesake of his own father Antiochos,/(170) but according to Lucian, as the namesake of his son Antiochos, the one whom they called Soter . . . /(174) Seleukos founded that city of Antioch as well as seventy-four other cities./But as for those who foolishly claim that it was Antiochos who founded the city,/Attaios and Perittas, as well as Anaxikrates/will refute them most wisely and will expose them to be nonsensical,/(alongside whom Asklepiadoros happened to be a fellow-slave/ (180) and whom at the time Seleukos made the supervisors of his buildings)".

The Elusive Dom(n)inos

Oh the frustration! Should one search for the scantily recorded historian of Antioch called variously Domninos or Dominos (and try to narrow down the search by adding Antioch), one is veritably deluged with returns on virtually every branch of the similarly named pizza chain within a significant radius of Antioch, California. Is this the final indignity of this poor man?!

I must confess that I had never heard of him before now either. However, while reading the journal Greek, Roman and Byzantium Studies, Vol 50, No 3 (2010) The Introduction of the Antiochene Olympics: A Proposal for a New Date by Sofie Remijsen when I stumbled across the passage:

"... focus reflects Malalas’ own attachment to the place and his main source, the otherwise unknown Domninos, fourth- or fifth-century author of a work on Antiochene history". 

The reference to this source comes from:

 E. Jeffreys, “Malalas’ Sources,” in E. Jeffreys (ed.), Studies in John Malalas (Sydney 1990) 167–216, esp. 178–179, 203–205.

which I tracked down... here is what Jeffreys had to say:

"Domninos: unidentified historian. [See: Bourier, 1899, passim.]

Preface: included in the list of authorities consulted; IV §24, Bo 88: Phaidra's affair took place 52 years after Pasiphae's death; V §67, Bo 142: on the statue of Orestes, The Runaway'; §25, Bo 208: Antioch's walls rebuilt 122 years after the city's foundation; X §10, Bo 235: Dornninos recorded Tiberius' building activity in Antioch; X §51, Bo 266: on the length of Apollonios of Tyana's life (and all his other activities?); X[ §4, Bo 273: on the rituals on Trojan's arrival at Antioch; XII §9, I3o 287: on the amphithales at Antioch; XII §26, Bo 297: on Valerian's Persian Wars (contrasted with Philostratos' account); XII §44, Bo 310: Domninos on Diocletian and the Olympic festival.

Domninos is an otherwise unknown historian, considered by Bourier to be one of Malalas' main sources. His work clearly dealt with Antiochene history, with especial emphasis on its legendary past (as exemplified by the narratives on Orestes). He is interested in the buildings and statues of Antioch (e.g. his account of 'The Runaway' and Apollonios' talismans). It is tempting to attribute the narrative earlier in the chronicle on Amphion and Zethos to Domninos on the grounds that the statues of these two are mentioned under Trojan. He is also concerned with _civic rituals, e.g. the Olympic games, the welcome to Trajan, the role of the amphithales. His work would seem to have given some information on military history (e.g. on Valerian's campaigns), perhaps on that which particularly affected Antioch. Some of his sources, e.g. Pausanias, can be shown to be embedded in material which must be derived from Domninos (13ourier, 1899). Bourier assumes that Domninos' history was available to the end of XIV (cf. the table on p. 198 below), but we must remember that Malalas' last citation of Domninos Occurs in XII. Though perhaps if Domninos is to be associated with references to Antiochene buildings then as the last significant notice is to the Basilica of Anatolius, at XIV §13, Bo 360, this may be an indication that the work extended at least to the reign of Theodosius IL Since nothing else is known of Domninos, assimilation to the bishop named DOMTIOS in the mid-fifth century is pure guesswork. Domnos would represent the conflict between pagan/Hellenic views and Christianity that is a leit-motif of Malalas' chronicle, but this does not in fact advance our understanding of the situation very much. It might also be suggested, following an inspection of PLRE 2 (cf. PW 5, cols. 1521-5), that the Domninos who came from Larissa not far from Antioch and was a philosopher in Athens in the mid-fifth century might be an attractive candidate; this writer's extant works, however, and the references to him elsewhere show that his interests lay entirely with mathematics and he would seem to have nothing in common with the homonymous Antiochene historian. Note that Patzig (1901) wanted to coalesce Domninos and Nestorianos into one; this, however, simply means removing the question of the structure of the chronicle away from Malalas and back one generation, still leaving the same of rationale to be answered. On the question of the substantial amount of material on the Trojan war, which Bourier attributes to Domninos - might it not be more logical to attribute to Domninos only the Orestian narrative, based largely on Euripides (from V §65 onwards) and with a strong Syrian connection, leaving the DiktysiSisyphos sections to have been added by Malalas? However shadowy Domninos remains, it must nevertheless be accepted that an Antiochene history attributed to him lies behind much of the early books of Malalas".

In the book, Untersuchungen zur römischen Kaisergeschichte, Volumes 1-3 edited by Max Büdinger, there is some more elaboration with references to "Die Chronographie des Domninos, seine Universalegeschichte mit Antiochenischem horizont und einseitiger Berucksichtigung der antiochenishen Stadtchronik".

In the book, La littérature grecque by Pierre Batiffol, Lecoffre, 1901, the author makes the following comments: 

"Domninos est cité par Jean Malalas (PG, t. xcvu, p. 172, 324, 361, 404, 433), lui encore comme un « très sage chronographe ». L'antiquité grecque et romaine et l'histoire de l'empire marquent seules dans les citations faites par Malalas. Il était probablement d'Antioche (p. 241 et 413), mais il ne semble pas qu'il ait été chrétien".

Coming right out of left-field there is some potential that Domninos was a fiction of Malalas. Sulochana R. Asirvatham her Jacoby entry on Pausanias of Antioch comments: "Of the seventy-five sources whom Malalas cites, those whom we possess are misrepresented frequently enough to suggest that Malalas was paraphrasing at best. Even worse is the apparent presence of a number of fictional authors in his text: for example, five universal histories that Malalas quotes repeatedly but which are not attested elsewhere, in addition to Eustathius whom he mentions infrequently. One of the unattested universal historians deemed fictional by Treadgold is ‘Domninus’, whom H. Bourier saw as one of Malalas’s main authors (believing in fact much of fragments 10 and 11 belonged to Domninus and not Pausanias (H. Bourier, Uber die Quellen der ersten vierzehn Bücher des Johannes Malalas (Augsburg 1899-1900), 9-12)".

The source for Treadgold is  W. Treadgold, The Early Byzantine Historians (New York, NY 2007), 235-56.

It seems that this lost work (if it ever existed) would be a major addition to our Antioch knowledge should it ever resurface in all or part. 

More on Pausanias

I have previously written on Pausanias and his lost work back in 2010 here. While reading Glanville Downey's magisterial work on the history of the city, A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest, Princeton University Press, 1974, I found that he had dedicated  a few pages to the subject of lost sources including Pausanias. This is what he has to say on Pausanias: 

"The best known ancient account of the foundation of Antioch is the lost Αντιοχειασ Κτισιζ of Pausanias, which was used and mentioned by later writers. The quotations seem to suggest that Pausanias' work included a history of Antioch, whether as a part of the Κτισιζ or as a separate composition is not clear. There were a number of writers named Pausanias in antiquity, and modern scholars were for some time uncertain whether the Pausanias who wrote on Antioch was to be identified with the much better known Pausanias the periegete, whose work is preserved. The evidence seemed to most students to indicate that these two writers named Pausanias were not identical, but then the question arose as to whether the writer on Antioch was the Pausanias who was called Pausanias of Damascus. Opinion on this question varied, and indeed the evidence is very slender." A recent study by Aubrey Diller of the whole problem of the authors named Pausanias, based on a much better collection of material than was previously assembled, has shown that the writer on Antioch is to be separated from Pausanias of Damascus, and that he is not to be identified with the other writers so named who are known in other connections. While  the evidence is not extensive, it appears that Pausanias' work on Antioch is to be dated either in the second or the fourth century after Christ".

A periegete, by the way, is a wanderer or voyager. 

Downey also notes that Malalas quotes Pausanias (38.15; 197.17; 203.22; 204.2, 8; 248.15), as he does many other writers, but this does not necessarily mean that Malalas used Pausanias directly. he contends that Malalas may have taken the information from an intermediate source, while giving the impression that he was making a direct quotation. 

Richard Forster, cites passages which, he states, prove that Libanius made use of Pausanias' work in writing his oration, In praise of Antioch, the Antiochikos. Downey states that it is likely that Libanius did derive some of his material from Pausanias, whether directly or indirectly; but the passages cited by Forster are of such a generalized character that it may be doubted whether they are by themselves as convincing as Forster believed.

Aubrey Diller's work, "The Authors Named Pausanias," TAPA 86 (1955) 268-279, through the wonders of someone lifting it from JSTOR and putting it online, is now available for general reading only 57 years after first being published. It is an interesting piece, as it discusses the many (or maybe not so many) different personages that may have been called Pausanias and written his major work. 

Interestingly Diller did not cite a previous work which like his own tried to enumerate the various Pausanias characters in the ancient world. This work, The topography of Athens and the Demi, Volume 1, by William Martin Leake, published by J Rodwell in 1841 contains an Appendix IV (pages 475-76) dedicated to the Pausanias alternatives. It is available on Google Books (which Diller obviously did not have access to...).

Leake states: "Again, I. Tzetzes and I. Malala refer, as well as Stephanus, to a Pausanias who wrote a work on the foundation of Antioch (Αντιοχειασ Κτισιζ ) which agrees with the mention of Antioch, the Orontes, and Daphne, by the Periegetes of Greece; the article Δωποζ in Stephanus accords equally with his notice of some of the most remarkable places in Judaea. Malala describes Pausanias as a χπονογραφοζ which concurs with the references in Tzetzes and Stephanus, to the extent of shewing that the work on Syria was chiefly historical".

The Sources for Malalas

Glanville Downey regards Malalas as one of the most informative later sources on Antioch. In his book he dedicates a sub-section specifically to the sources that Malalas used. One of these, Domninus, we have discussed previously here. On the sources, Downey has this to say:

"The acta urbis. The sixth-century chronicler loannes Malalas, ..........., cites among his sources the names of four writers, all of whose works are lost, namely Pausanias (already discussed), Domninus, Timotheus, Theophilus. Our information concerning these writers is very scanty; according to the citations in Malalas, Domninus, and Pausanias each wrote a chronicle that was largely or primarily concerned with Antioch, while the others seem to have composed world-chronicles in which Antioch was mentioned. Malalas' citations sound as though he used these sources directly, but it is possible that he drew upon them only at second hand. Malalas also quotes the acta urbis (τα ακτα τηζ ρολεωζ, 443.20) as a source of his information concerning the earthquake of A.D. 528, and it is clear in any case that some of his information could well have come from local official records, though we are not sure precisely how the information would have reached him. We have not enough information to know whether there were acta urbis at Antioch for the whole of the Roman period, and we do not know know which kind of official records of local events might have been kept during the Seleucid period".  


A more expansive examination of Malalas' sources is given by Peter van Nuffelen in his paper:

Malalas and the chronographic tradition

in L. Carrara, M. Meier, C. Radtki, eds., Die Weltchronik des Johannes Malalas – Quellenfragen, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017, 261-272

which is available on academia.edu here.   

Lost Sources (besides Pausanias)

Also in Downey's book are mentioned lost sources besides Pausanias. Of these he says: 

"In the preserved literature we encounter traces of several other books concerned with Antioch or Syria. One of the early works is the ιστορικα υρομνηματα of Euphorion of Chalcis (born ca. 275 B.c.), who was a librarian of the royal library at Antioch under Antiochus the Great (224-187 B.C.); this apparently dealt with the history of Antioch and the Seleucid kings. Euphorion's work seems to have been a forerunner of the great history of Posidonius of Apamea, in fifty-two books (now lost), which was a source of material (including information about Antioch) for the geographer Strabo. Another great historical work in which Antioch played a part was the compilation of Nicolaus of Damascus. In the time of Antiochus IV (176-146 B.c.) Protagorides of Cyzicus wrote a treatise "On the Festivals in Daphne" The work of Athenaeus of Naucratis "On the Kings of Syria" doubtless contained material on Antioch." 

The Greek title of Protagorides' work is  Περὶ Δαφνικω̂ν ἀγώνων. He appears to be known only because of Athenaeus of Naucratis's mentions of him. In fact he says: "But Protagorides of Cyzicus, in the second book of his  treatise on the Assemblies in Honour of Daphne, says, "He touched every kind of instrument, one after another, castanets, the weak-sounding pandurus, but he drew the sweetest harmony from the sweet monaulos". This implies that Protagorides wrote more than one volume on the subject of Daphne.

I have discussed Euphorion previously here. 

An academic paper on the note "On the Kings of Syria" by Paola Ceccarelli can be found here.  

Donald Wilber - Spy/Archaeologist

A topic that has recently been gaining more attention in recent years has been the role of archaeologists and academics in intelligence work (read spying). One of the prominent members of the 1930s' expeditions of the Committee for the Excavation of Antioch was Donald Wilber. He has been mentioned in this blog chiefly for his role in drawing what is commonly used as the definitive map of Ancient Antioch (though we are quite partial to the versions of Poccardi and Uggeri). What other skills Wilber brought to the expedition we do not know, but he was definitely attached for many years to Princeton University which long had a history of providing intelligence personnel to the US government. As anyone who has seen the film, "The English Patient" knows archaeologists that can draw maps have other uses in tense international situations. 

Where exactly did Wilber fit in? Well it should be remembered that while the US did not receive a "piece" on Turkey in the initial carve-up of the Ottoman Empire, it was very involved in the process and had almost ended up as the most favoured party to block out European powers. Moreover, the Alexandretta Mandate that the French held remained one of the most unstable parts of the region, as Turkey gradually consolidated and the French and British entrenched themselves in Syria/Lebanon and Irak respectively. Thus the issue is whether the US would be interested in having someone on the ground taking notes. Such interest was proved useful when eventually Turkish agitation resulted in the "plebiscite" of 1938 by which the Mandate (with its Alawite majority) was passed from France to Turkey. This was the last diplomatic coup for Ataturk on the eve of his death.

Donald Newton Wilber was born on November 14, 1907 in Wisconsin and died on February 2, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey.  Wilber's specialties were the ancient and modern Middle East. He received his A.B. (1929), M.F.A., and Ph.D. (1949) from Princeton University, where he was the first student to receive a doctorate in architectural history. Wilber wrote histories, travelogues and commentaries on Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. 

His book Iran Past and Present, was published in nine editions. Wilber also collected oriental rugs, and was president of the Princeton Rug Society for many years.  His book on Timurid architecture is regarded a major work. Wilber was a founder of the Princeton Rug Society. Wilber had a long association with and a financial interest in Oriental Rug Review.  

Meanwhile pursuing these academic interests, Wilber served as a United States intelligence officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and was an active participant in the power struggles of nations, especially during the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union in Iran after World War II. He is best known as the architect of the CIA project "Operation Ajax", a successful plot to overthrow the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. The plot replaced Iran's first democratically elected leader with the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

His memoir, which partially recounts his role in the coup, is titled: Adventures in the Middle East and Iran, Past and Present and Iran Past.  As the principle planner of Operation Ajax, Wilber deeply resented the way he was treated in Kim (well really, Kermit) Roosevelt's book, Counter Coup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran. In 1957, Wilber founded Middle East Research Associates, meant to be a vehicle for Don to cash in on his knowledge of the oil region. This was not known to be a CIA front. However, the venture was never a great success (which probably proves it wasn't a CIA front!). 

Don Wilber was definitely a renaissance man, combining author, scholar, adventurer and spy.  It is interesting to contrast this type of deep knowledge of the "target" location with the slipshod way that intelligence is conducted these days with technology expected to mask real knowledge of the location in which the spy operates. This is only recently evidenced again by the US diplomat with the "bad wig" incident that caused another ruction in Moscow. 

While Wilber's later role in Iran is well documented it would be very interesting to know more about what exactly he was doing in Antakya between the wars. 

Mithra(s) in Antioch

I have written in the past of the possibility of a Mithraic shrine in Antioch here. As the city was a major military base it makes sense that there should be one of more Mithraeums in the vicinity. 

In thinking about the theme some more I went back to the most extensive research on the theme of temples and cults in the city, namely Fred Norris' masterwork "Antioch as a Religious Center. I. Paganism before Constantine" published in ANRW, Teil II, Band 18, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1990.

In this work he has to say:"Libanius has a legend which credits Cambyses with setting up a shrine to Mithra in Antioch. In accordance with the plan of his treatise, he most likely knew of the influence of the god in the city, and wanted to give it a proper place in his oration of praise to Antioch. Unfortunately this is the only reference to Mithra in the Antiochene literature. Since the Campus Martius was not thoroughly excavated, we can only suggest by analogy that Roman troops worshiped Mithra in Antioch as they did elsewhere.".

Antioch and its Lake

An important feature (and economic engine) of Ancient Antioch was its lake. The Lake of Antioch (Turkish: Amik Gölü) was a large freshwater lake in the basin of the Orontes River, located to the north-east of the ancient city. The lake was drained during a period from the 1940s-1970s and now is the site of cotton farms and Hatay's airport.

The water body was located in the centre of Amuq Plain on the northernmost part of the Dead Sea Transform and historically covered an area of some 300-350 square kilometres, increasing during flood periods. It was surrounded by extensive marshland. The 14th century Arab geographer Abu al-Fida described the lake as having sweet water and being twenty miles (32 km) long and seven miles wide.

Sedimentary analysis has suggested that the lake was formed, in its final state, in the past 3000 years by episodic floods and silting up of the outlet to the Orontes. This dramatic increase in the lake's area had displaced many settlements during the classical period; the lake became an important source of fish and shellfish for the surrounding area and the city of Antioch.

As Scott Redford notes in his paper, Trade and Economy in Antioch and Cilicia in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks: "The extensive canal system in the Amuq Plain that had contributed so much to the wealth of Roman Antioch declined in the early Byzantine era, although some canals seem to have been in use through the early Islamic period. But the lush riverine environments of the medieval Amuq contributed to a thriving pisciculture. Several freshwater bodies of water were used to farm eels - indeed the export of dried eels from Antioch under the principality was so profitable that their sale was given as a gift to monasteries".   

Once again we have a story of disaster brought about by Turkey's mistaken grasp of modernisation. Draining and reclamation of areas around the lake commenced in 1940, in order to free land for growing cotton and to eliminate malaria. A major drainage project, channeling the lake's tributary rivers (the Karasu, the ancient Labotas, and the 'Afrin, the ancient Arceuthus/Arxeuthas) directly to the Orontes was undertaken from 1966 by the State Hydraulic Works, with further works completed by the early 1970s; by this time the lake had been completely drained, and its bed reclaimed for farmland with the Hatay Airport having been constructed in the centre of the lakebed.

There have increasingly been reports that the draining has caused severe environmental damage. Reclaimed and irrigated land has been affected by increasing soil salinity, and productivity has fallen. Despite the drainage works, many areas still regularly flood, requiring constant maintenance of drainage canals and further decreasing the productivity of the reclaimed farmland, while the water table has fallen dramatically. The fall in underground water levels has been implicated in causing an increasing amount of subsidence and serious damage to buildings.

Changing the environment and bringing about unexpected side-effects is not only a modern problem. As Redford notes: "In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, expansion of olive and wine cultivation into the foothills of the Jabal Aqra, and to a  lesser extent the Amanos, had led to massive deforestation around Antioch. As the population declined in the late fifth to sixth centuries, settlement retreated to the Amuq plain, where increased alluviation caused by the deforestation had earlier encouraged the development of a large new lake in the middle of the Amuq. This deforestation also resulted in the landslides and floods that have led some to misperceive Antioch as a "lost city" buried under the alluvium". 

However, we would be amongst those that perceive Antioch as a "lost city" as the depth of overburden and accumulated layers in the centre of the old city is 11 metres at least and material descending from the mountains clearly has played a part in entombing the ancient city so deep as to be well-nigh inaccessible.  

The loss of the lake had bigger effects than just subsidence though as it destroyed significant bird breeding grounds and a migratory stop-over/destination. If it hadn't been for the airport being sited there the best thing would have been to let the lake reappear and submerge the cotton farms.  

Some Commentary on Antioch (and Daphne) by Ioannis Phocas

As I have noted frequently  eyewitness reports of Ancient Antioch are rare things indeed. I stumbled upon one a while back and didn't post on it because we weren't sure exactly how valuable it is. I am not even sure how I wandered some serendipitous path to get to it.

However, it is probably worth placing a record here in readable script. The piece in question is  Ioannis Phocae's Compendiaria descriptio castrorum et urbium. Unlike my usual practice I didn't write down the source when I found it but I suspect that it is Migne, Patrologia graeca, tom. 133. The original is in Greek with a Latin side-by-side translation.  

The full title of the work is Compendiaria Descriptio: Castrorum & Urbium, ab urbe Antiochia usque Hierosolymam; nec non Syriae, ac Phoeniciae, & in Palestina sacrorum locorum. As we can tell from this title, the work covers not just Antioch, but really the whole Eastern Coast on the Mediterranean. John Phocas was apparently a Cretan monk who went on a pilgrimage to Palestine in the year 1177.   

We have extracted here only the part until the author heads off to cover Laodicea.

"II, Extabat, tum cum erat ad Orontam Antiochi Theopolis, theatrorum magnitudine, stoarii splendoribus, templorum structuris, copia item civium, & divitiarum magnificentia, superba ac tumens lateque caeteras fere orientales urbes exsuperabat: sed tempus, ac vis barbara, beatitatem illius exhausit; licet conspicua adhuc sit, & turrium altitudine, & propugnacolorum validitate; & pratorum ac florum omnigena foecunditate, & in plures partes sese dividentitium aquarum sibilis; cum placide fluvius circumfluat urbem & cingat, & molli tactu ejus turres circumplectatur in super e Castilli fontis fluentis egregie irrigatur, cujus aquae, torrentium instar, pelluntur, & frequentibus fulcorum rivis urbem universam perfundunt, eamque fluxibus aspergunt; operarum copia, & conditoris magnificentia, ex illius fontibus per montes ad ipsani civitatem laticibus corrivatis. Hic fama per orbem vulgatum Daphnes suburbium, proceris omne genus arboribus exornatum, & mons est maxime nobilis; quem admirandus Simeon in habitationem adaptavit. Hisce finitimus est mons Maurus & Scopulus, in quibus antiquitus multi Deo addictissimi viri, Deum conquierentes, invenerunt, & ad haec tempora perdurant, &, laudatorum montium pulchritudine pellecti, silvas inhabitant. Castalius fons, inter duos colles exiliens, ex ejus, qui in mare procurrit, ima parte, eximia quaedam aquarum irrigua evomit, in quo praegandis assurgit porticus, cursum fontis concamerans; hinc aquae affluenter prolienetes, in duos rivos dividuntur; earum una pars per altissimos ductus, veluti fulcos, corrivata, aeque ac aerus fluvius ex parte dextra superiorique in Urbem influit, altera, sinistris fonti locis campestribus exundans, in paliudibus superstgnat, universaq, Daphnes prata irrorat; demum laevis Orontis fluentis immiscetur. Mons vero admirandus inter urbem & mare elatus, res egregia ac sectabilis, & advenientium oculis deliciu, conspicitur namque urbi Rosoque conterminus, utrisque e partibus, monte, scopulo, Caucasoque constringitur. Orontes fluvius innumeris inflexionum vorticibus ad pedes montis profluit, & in mare aquas immittit. In montis hujusce vertice magnus ille vir, tranquille vitam agens, & in corde ascensiones disponens, corpore sublimis extollitur, & cum ipso corpore aethereus fieri, interque Deum & homines medius esse, contendit. At qua ratione Deo dedito viro ista res admiratione digna evenerit, ipse dicam. Lapidacrum opera summitate montis admirandi alte excavata, Monasterium ex uno conflatum compaginatumque lapide exstruxit: in media Monasterii inter excisos lapides sua sponte nata columna gradus appinxit, super petram, ut sacro eloquio traditur, pedibus firmatis, versus exorientem solem Templum pulcherrimum Deo erexit, in quod discipulos convocabat: atque ita sub dio ipse commorans, illi tota nocte in templo stantes, ut decebat sanctos, debitum Deo cultum offerebant." 

Interesting things in this text are the description of Daphne and comments on the water situation in general. He seems very impressed by the aqueducts.

The most novel thing though is the reference to the names of the mountains at Daphne as Maurus and Scopulus, mentions that we have not seen in any other source.