River
Fl. Orontes
Listen to the story
The river Orontes runs across the map as a drawn line with no name beside it, yet two road stations betray it: one simply called after the river, the other Ad Orontem, 'at the Orontes'. The Greek geographer Strabo says it was once called Typhon. It rises in the Antilebanon near Heliopolis, flows underground for a stretch, passes Emesa and Apamea and forms a lake. At Antioch it swings abruptly towards the south-west, becomes navigable and reaches the sea after fifteen Roman miles, about twenty-two kilometres. Today it is the Asi.