Ταρσός

Tarsos: a most distinguished city in Kilikia. They called it 'Tersos', with ε, deriving it from the form 'tersthenai', that is, 'to be dried out'. For they say that, when the waters at the first formation moved out into what is now the sea, the Tauric Mountains were the first to appear. Dionysios the Thracian, in his On Rhodes, derives the name from the fall of Bellerophon: for a certain part of the foot is called the 'tarsos', and the ancients made it a memorial of his lameness. Alexander Polyhistor, however, says it was because the horse Pegasos broke his 'tarsos' there and Bellerophon wandered on the Aleian Plain. Others say it was because, after the flood, these parts of Kilikia were the first to appear and dry out, and hence the city was also named Tersia. Eratosthenes [says that the city’s name derives from Zeus Tersios, as he is called by the people there. Others say] 'Tersos' because formerly, when their fruits were perishing while still green as they passed their prime, these people were the first to gather and dry them and store up their food for the winter. From this city came Hermogenes, who wrote on rhetoric. It was also called Tharsos, and the Kilikians were called 'Tharseis', as per Josephos in his Archaeology. It was also called Krania, after a skull. It was also called Hiera, and it was also called Antiocheia after Antiochos Epiphanes. It is a colony of Argives, a foundation of Sardanapallos. The river Kydnos, cold and clear, flows through its centre. A citizen is a 'Tarseus', as in 'Halikarnasseus'. Eratosthenes also gives 'Tarsenos'. There is also another Tarsos in Bithynia. Its ethnonyms are 'Tarsios' and 'Tarsia'. Demosthenes, in book 2 of his Bithyniaka, knows the city as 'Tarseia', with the diphthong ει. The ethnonym is 'Tarseios'. [There is also a locality in Bithynia called Tarsos.] There is also Tarsa, a village on the Euphrates, as per Kouadratos in book 3 of his Parthika: ‘For one travelling downstream from Samosata, after about one hundred and fifty stadia, there was a populous village, Tarsa, situated fifteen stadia above the river.’ The ethnonym is 'Tarsenos'.