IV. Ganges.
Ganges is a river in India, so called for this reason. A certain Calaurian nymph had by Indus a son called Ganges, conspicuous for his beauty. Who growing up to manhood, being once desperately overcome with wine, in the heat of his intoxication lay with his mother. The next day he was informed by the nurse of what he had done; and such was the excess of his sorrow, that he threw himself into a river called Chliarus, afterwards called Ganges from his own name.
In this river grows an herb resembling bugloss, which the natives bruise, and keep the juice very charily. With this juice in the dead of the night they go and besprinkle the tigers’ dens; the virtue of which is such, that the tigers, not being able to stir forth by reason of the strong scent of the juice, are starved to death;—as Callisthenes reports in his Third Book of Hunting.
Upon the banks of this river lies the mountain called the Anatole for this reason. The Sun, beholding the nymph Anaxibia innocently spending her time in dancing, fell passionately in love with her, and not able to curb his loose amours, pursued her with a purpose to ravish her. She therefore, finding no other way to escape him, fled to the temple of Orthian Diana, which was seated upon the mountain called Coryphe, and there immediately vanished away. Upon which the Sun, that followed her close at the heels, not knowing what was become of his beloved, overwhelmed with grief, rose in that very place. And from this accident it was that the natives called the top of that mountain Anatole, or the rising of the Sun;—as Caemaron reports in his Tenth Book of the Affairs of India.