The Argonautica

the ship they went as Argestes blew close beside them.

Thereafter, swept all together by the swift-running breeze,

they left the Halys, left the Iris flowing near it,

and Assyria's alluvial land as well; that same day

they rounded the far Amazon headland, rich in harbors.

There Ares' daughter Melanippe once came forward,

and hero Heracles caught Melanippe in ambush; as her ransom

Hippolyte delivered the bright, many-colored war belt

for her sister; Heracles sent Melanippe back unharmed.

There in the headland's gulf, beside Thermodon's outflows,

they landed, for the sea rose rough against their passage.

No river's running course resembles Thermodon, nor pours

so many streams through branching channels across the land,

branching apart from itself: it would lack only four

of one hundred, counted by fives. One spring alone is true,

and the river descends swiftly from high mountains toward the mainland,

high peaks which mortals call Amazonian mountains.

From there it spreads straight over the steeper inland country;

and therefore all the river's pathways twist and turn.

Always one course and then another curls wherever

it chances on the lowest ground, one flowing from afar,

one near at hand; and many channels bear no name,

where channels drain away. But openly, joined with a few,

beneath the arching headland, it belches to the Inhospitable Sea.