Tanais is a river of Scythia, formerly called the Amazonian river,
because the Amazons bathed themselves therein; but it altered its name
upon this occasion. Tanais, the son of Berossus and Lysippe, one of
the Amazons, became a vehement hater of the female sex, and looking
upon marriage as ignominious and dishonorable, applied himself wholly
to martial affairs. This so offended Venus, that she caused him to
fall passionately in love with his own mother. True it is, at first he
withstood the force of his passion; but finding he could not vanquish
the fatal necessity of yielding to divine impulse, and yet desirous to
preserve his respect and piety towards his mother, he flung himself
into the Amazonian river, which was afterwards called Tanais, from the
name of the young man.
In this river grows a plant which is called halinda, resembling a
colewort; which the inhabitants bruising, and anointing their bodies
with the juice of it, find themselves in a condition better able to
endure the extremity of the cold; and for that reason, in their own
language they call it Berossus’s oil.
In this river grows a stone not unlike to crystal, resembling the shape
of a man with a crown upon his head. Whoever finds the stone when the
king dies, and has it ready against the time that the people meet upon
the banks of the river to choose a new sovereign, is presently elected
king, and receives the sceptre of the deceased prince;—as Ctesiphon
relates in his Third Book of Plants; and Aristobulus gives us the same
account in his First Book of Stones.
Near to this river also lies a mountain, in the language of the
natives called Brixaba, which signifies the _forehead of a ram_. And
it was so called upon this occasion. Phryxus having lost his sister
Helle near the Euxine Sea, and, as Nature in justice required, being
extremely troubled for his loss, retired to the top of a certain hill
to disburden himself of his sorrow. At which time certain barbarians
espying him, and mounting up the hill with their arms in their hands,
a gold-fleeced ram leaping out of a thicket, and seeing the multitude
coming, with articulate language and the voice of a man, awakened
Phryxus, who was fast asleep, and taking him upon his back, carried him
to Colchis. From this accident it was that the mountainous promontory
was called the ram’s forehead.
In this mountain grows an herb, by the barbarians called phryxa (which
being interpreted signifies _hating the wicked_), not unlike our common
rue. If the son of a former mother have it in his possession, he can
never be injured by his step-dame. It chiefly grows near the place
which is called Boreas’s Den, and being gathered, is colder than snow.
But if any step-dame be forming a design against her son-in-law, it
sets itself on fire and sends forth a bright flame. By which means they
who are thus warned avoid the danger they are in;—as Agatho the Samian
testifies in his Second Book of Scythian Relations.