Location information

The Syrian river Orontes

ORONTES (River) SYRIA
The Syrian river Orontes does not flow its whole course to the sea on a level, but meets a precipitous ridge with a slope away from it. The Roman emperor (Tiberius) wished ships to sail up the river from the sea to Antioch. So with much labour and expense he dug a channel suitable for ships to sail up, and turned the course of the river into this. But when the old bed had dried up, an earthenware coffin more than eleven cubits long was found in it, and the corpse was proportionately large, and human in all parts of its body. This corpse the god in Clarus, when the Syrians came to his oracle there, declared to be Orontes, and that he was of Indian race.

Perseus: Pausanias, Description of Greece, Arcadia
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=...