LIBER V · CAPUT 25
SYRIA UPON THE EUPHRATES
Latine · Mayhoff 1906
Palmyra, urbs nobilis situ, divitiis soli et aquis amoenis, vasto undique ambitu harenis includit agros ac, velut terris exempta a rerum natura, privata sorte inter duo imperia summa Romanorum Parthorumque est, prima in discordia semper utrimque cura. abest ab Seleucia Parthorum, quae vocatur Ad Tigrim, CCCXXXVII p., a proximo vero Syriae litore CCIII et a Damasco XXVII propius.
English · Bostock & Riley 1855–57
Palmyra is a city famous for the beauty of its site, the riches of its soil, and the delicious quality and abundance of its water. Its fields are surrounded by sands on every side, and are thus separated, as it were, by nature from the rest of the world. Though placed between the two great empires of Rome and Parthia, it still maintains its independence; never failing, at the very first moment that a rupture between them is threatened, to attract the careful attention of both. It is distant 337 miles from Seleucia of the Parthians, generally known as Seleucia on the Tigris, 203 from the nearest part of the Syrian coast, and twenty-seven less from Damascus.