Armenia in the 1st century BC formed a mountainous region in eastern Anatolia, bounded to the south by Syria and Mesopotamia and to the east by that part of Media known as Media Atropatene, which represents modern day Azerbaijan and the Euphrates River. To the west lay Cappadocia and Commagene. It included the area around Lake Van, the Araxes valley (emptying into the Caspian Sea), and reached north to Lake Sevan as far as Iberia in the lower Caucasus. The Armenian highlands were geographically separated from the Mesopotamian plains, and was approached through Sophene to the south west and across the Euphrates at Tomisa in Cappadocia. The horses bred on the Armenian lands made it attractive to its neighbours.