Book 14
8.4
These two provinces, crowded with bands of brigands, were long ago, during the war with the pirates, sent under the yoke by the proconsul ServiliusP. Servilius Isauricus, in 74 B.C. and made to pay tribute. And these regions indeed, lying, as it were, upon a promontory, are separated from the eastern continent by Mount Amanus.
8.5
But the frontier of the East, extending a long distance in a straight line, reaches from the banks of the Euphrates to the borders of the Nile, being bounded on the left by the Saracenic races and on the right exposed to the waves of the sea. Of this district Nicator Seleucus took possession and greatly increased it in power, when by right of succession he was holding the rule of Persia after the death of Alexander of Macedon; and he was a successful and efficient king, as his surname Nicator indicates.
8.6
For by taking advantage of the great number of men whom he ruled for a long time in peace, in place of their rustic dwellings he built cities of great strength and abundant wealth; and many of these, although they are now called by the Greek names which were imposed upon them by the will of their founder, nevertheless have not lost the old appellations in the Assyrian tongue which the original settlers gave them.
