River
Fl. Caicus
Bakır Çay
Listen to the story
The river Caicus, now the Bakır Çay in western Turkey, runs across the map without a name, and scholars identify it by its course, with some caution. The Greek poet Hesiod already counted it among the great rivers. On the map it rises at an unnamed three-peaked mountain sign, standing for the Temnos range. In reality it flowed past Pergamon through a fertile plain and reached the sea between Elaea and Pitane, but the map lets it enter the gulf far too early, near Adramyttium, a town that lay much further north. An ancient lexicon made the same mistake.