Orontes
Eth. Orontes a people of ancient Assyria, described by Pliny as being to the east of Gaugamela (6.26. s. 30). There can be no doubt that these are the present Rowándi, a tribe living, as in ancient times, about the great mountain Rowándiz, in Kurdistán, and doubtless connected with the Orontes of Ptolemy (6.2.4). They derive, their name from Erwend, a pure old Persian root, which was usually Hellenized into Orodes or Orontes. (Rawlinson, Journ. of Geog. Soc. x. p. 73.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.