Kitap fragments
20
Cappadocia extends from Mount Taurus and Lycaonia up to the Pontic Sea. The name is Persian and arose thus. A certain Persian [named Cappadocus?] was present at a hunt with Artaxerxes, or some other king, when a lion sprang upon the king’s horse. This Persian happened to be in that part of the hunting company, and drawing his sword rescued the king from his imminent danger and killed the lion. This Persian therefore ascending the highest mountain in the neighbourhood received as a gift from the king as much territory as the human eye could take in, looking east, west, north, and south.From Constantine Prophyrogenneta de thematis, p. 18, ed. Bonnensis (Hultsch). He says that there are two Cappadocias, great and little. Great Cappadocia extending from Caesarea (Neo-Caesarea), and Mount Taurus to the Pontus, bounded on the south-west by the Halys and on the east by Melitene.
21
The Celtiberians have a peculiar manœuvre in war. When they see their infantry hard pressed, they dismount and leave their horses standing in their places. They have small pegs attached to their leading reins, and having fixed them carefully into the ground, they train their horses to keep their places obediently in line until they come back and pull up the pegs.
22
The Celtiberians excel the rest of the world in the construction of their swords; for their point is strong and serviceable, and they can deliver a cut with both edges. Wherefore the Romans abandoned their ancestral swords after the Hannibalian war and adopted those of the Iberians. They adopted, I say, the construction of the swords, but they can by no means imitate the excellence of the steel or the other points in which they are so elaborately finished.See 6, 23. The excellence of Spanish steel has never perhaps been surpassed even to our day.
