Isidore of Charax’s Parthian Stations starts after the crossing of the Euphrates at Zeugma: the city is Apamea, then the village Daiara, three schoinoi from Apamea and the river. Then Charax of Sidon, which the Greeks call Anthemusias, five schoinoi; then Nicephorion on the Euphrates, a Greek city, a foundation of Alexander, five schoinoi; then Dura of Nicanor, a Macedonian foundation, which the Greeks call Europos. An island in the Euphrates held the treasury of Phraates, who slaughtered the concubines when Tiridates invaded as a fugitive. From Zeugma to Seleucia on the Tigris the total is 171 schoinoi; thus far Mesopotamia and Babylonia.
Athenaeus quotes Isidore’s Periegesis of Parthia for an island in the Persian gulf where most pearl is found: men on reed rafts dive twenty fathoms for double shells, and the pinna is said to conceive more when there is thunder. Lucian’s Macrobii cites him for an Artaxerxes who lived ninety-three years and was murdered by his brother.
The slot is that road-book, not a missing geographer.
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