two guard-houses: passing through Cilicia in three stations, a distance of 15 parasangs, you reach the border of Armenia which is formed by the Euphrates. The Euphrates is crossed by a ferry. In Armenia, which possesses much cattle, there are 15 stations provided with guard-houses, and 56-1/2 parasangs. Then follows the Tigris, and two other rivers bearing the same name (the Greater and the Lesser Zab); and finally the Gyndes, which Cyrus diverted from its channel: these have to be crossed in boats. From Armenia you pass to the Matieni, the neighbours of the Armenians; here there are 34 stations and 137 parasangs to be traversed; from the borders of the Matieni and the Cissians (_i.e._ the Susiani) to the Choaspes, where Susa is built upon it (this river has also to be crossed by a ferry), are 11 stations and 42-1/2 parasangs, making a total of 111 stations and 450 parasangs, or 13,500 stades (1687-1/2 miles). Hence if the royal road has been rightly measured, and a traveller makes 150 stades (five parasangs, 19 miles) a day, he goes from Sardis to Susa in 90 days, and to Ephesus (if we add in the distance from Ephesus to Sardis) in 93 days." From this description we see that the road has been accurately measured, well-kept, guarded, and provided with stations about every 15 miles, in which the travellers could find shelter. As Herodotus calls these inns very beautiful, we must assume that after the Persian fashion they were provided with plantations, and this is confirmed by other evidence. We are told that a station on the royal road in Cadusia, in a wholly bare and treeless region, was surrounded by a park of high pines and cypresses. The Indians also were accustomed to plant their roads and provide them with shady resting-places. The road from Sardis to Susa did not take the shortest route; the object was to escape the Syrian and Phrygian desert, and carry the road through regions which could support the army on the march. Hence it ran from Susa in the valley of the Tigris on the left bank of the river through Susiana and the native land of the Assyrians, for 600 miles in a north-westerly direction, to the mountains of Armenia. The region between the Tigris and the Zagrus to the north of the satrapy of Cissia (Susiana) is called by Herodotus the land of the Matieni, and he extends this name, which is elsewhere used only for the tribes dwelling round the Lake of Urumiah, to the Tigris. Armenia proper was then crossed by the road in a straight line from east to west, from the upper Tigris to the upper Euphrates. Of Cilicia it touched merely the north-east corner, and then cut through Cappadocia in a north-westerly direction to the Halys. It crossed the river in the neighbourhood of Pteria, passed in a south-westerly direction through Phrygia, leaving the desert to the south, and Lydia to Sardis.[353] From this great road to the west then branched off between the Gyndes (Diala)