River
Fluvius Hermon
Gediz Çay
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Fluvius Hermon is the river now called the Gediz Çay in western Turkey, which reaches the sea in the bay of Izmir, ancient Smyrna. Everywhere else in ancient writing it is the Hermus, and the form Hermon appears nowhere but here. Perhaps a mapmaker confused two grammatical cases of the familiar name, or the copyist of around 1200 was thinking of the biblical Mount Hermon. The poet Virgil called it the Hermus thick with gold, though the gold really came from its tributary, the Pactolus. The map also turns its course: in reality the river flows from east to west.