The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Geography of Strabo, Vol. III., translated by H. C. Hamilton.

[256] Strabo means to say, that the coast, from the part opposite Rhodes, runs E. in a straight line to Tarsus, and then inclines to the S.E.; that afterwards it inclines to the S., to Gaza, and continues in a westerly direction to the Straits of Gibraltar.

[257] The translation follows the reading proposed by Groskurd, παχυνευροῦσι καὶ ῥοïζομένοις καὶ ποδαγριζομένοις, who quotes Vitruv. viii. 3, and Pliny xxxi. 8.

[258] Kramer does not approve of the corrections proposed in this passage by Groskurd. The translation follows the proposed emendation of Falconer, which Kramer considers the least objectionable.

[260] Groskurd, with some probability, supposes the name of Achilles to be here omitted.

[262] Dschehan-tschai.

[266] The ridge extending N. E., the parts of which bear various names, Missis, Durdan-dagh, &c.

[270] Its name under the Byzantine empire was corrupted to Mampsysta, or Mamista; of which names the modern Mensis appears to be a further corruption.—Leake.

[271] The passage is defended by the fortress of Merkes.

[274] Groskurd is desirous of reading Tarsus for Issus. See above, c. v. § 11. But Strabo is here considering the two opinions held respecting the isthmus.

[275] Scymnus of Chios counts fifteen nations who occupied this peninsula, namely, three Greek and twelve barbarian. The latter were Cilicians, Lycians, Carians, Maryandini, Paphlagonians, Pamphylians, Chalybes, Cappadocians, Pisidians, Lydians, Mysians, and Phrygians. In this list the Bithynians, Trojans, and Milyæ are not mentioned; but in it are found the Cappadocians and Lydians—two nations whom, according to Strabo, Ephorus has not mentioned. This discrepancy is the more remarkable as Scymnus must have taken the list from Ephorus himself.

[277] Apollodorus, like Scymnus, had probably found the Lydians mentioned in the list of Ephorus, as also the Cappadocians.

[278] Kramer says that he is unable to decide how this corrupt passage should be restored. The translation follows the conjectures of Coray.

[282] Euphorion acquired celebrity as a voluminous writer. Vossius, i. 16, gives a catalogue of his works. According to Suidas, he was born in Chalcis, in Negropont, at the time Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was defeated by the Romans. He acquired a considerable fortune by his writings and by his connexion with persons of eminent rank. He was invited to the court of Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, who intrusted him with the care of his library. According to Sallust, (Life of Tiberius,) he was one of the poets whom Tiberius took as his model in writing Greek verse. Fecit et Græca poemata, imitatus Euphorionem, et Rhianum et Parthenium.

[283] The Clides, off Cape Andrea.

[285] Dschehan-Tschai.

[288] Near Artemisi.

[289] To the north of Tamagousta.

[291] Lissan el Cape, in Cilicia.

[292] Near the present Larnaka.

[299] Point Zephyro.

[302] The Indian Ocean.

[303] Behul or Jelum.

[305] The island Cos, or Stanco, one of the earlier names of which was Meropis.

[306] ἢ κατ’ ἄλλους for καὶ ἄλλου.—Groskurd.

[307] See ch. i. § 73.

[309] It is evident that the name Pillars misled Megasthenes or the writers from whom he borrowed the facts; for it is impossible to suppose that Tearcho, who reigned in Arabia, or that Nabuchodonosor, who reigned at Babylon, ever conducted an army across the desert and through the whole breadth of Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar, to which place nothing invited them, and the existence of which, as well as that of the neighbouring countries, must have been unknown. The Egyptians, Arabians, and Babylonians directed their invasions towards the north, to Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Iberia, and Colchis. This was the line of march followed by Sesostris.

Ptolemy indicates the existence of “Pillars,” which he calls “the Pillars of Alexander,” above Albania and Iberia, at the commencement of the Asiatic Sarmatia. But as it is known that Alexander never penetrated into these regions, it is clear that the title “of Alexander” was added by the Greeks to the names of mountains, which separated a country partly civilized from that entirely occupied by hordes of savages. Everything therefore seems to show, that these Pillars near Iberia in Asia, and not the Pillars of Hercules in Europe, formed the boundary of the expeditions of Sesostris, Tearcho, and Nabuchodonosor.—Gossellin.

[310] As the Oxydraci are here meant, Groskurd adopts this name in the text. They were settled in Sagur and Outch, of the province of Lahore.

[311] Eurip. Bacchæ, v. 13.—Wodehull.

[312] Many cities and mountains bore the name of Nysa; but it is impossible to confound the mountain Nysa, spoken of by Sophocles, with the Nysa of India, which became known to the Greeks by the expedition only of Alexander, more than a century after the death of the poet.

[313] Probably interpolated.

[314] Il. vi. 132. Nysa in India was unknown to Homer, who here refers to Mount Nysa in Thrace.

[315] Strabo takes for the source of the Indus the place where it passes through the mountains to enter the Punjab. The site of Aornos seems to correspond with Renas.—Gossellin.

[316] The Sibæ, according to Quintus Curtius, who gives them the name of Sobii, occupied the confluent of the Hydaspes and the Acesines. This people appear to have been driven towards the east by one of those revolutions so frequent in all Asia. At least, to the north of Delhi, and in the neighbourhood of Hardouar, a district is found bearing the name of Siba.

[317] That is, the Macedonians transferred the name of the Caucasus, situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian, to the mountains of India. The origin of their mistake arose from the Indians giving, as at present, the name of Kho, which signifies “white,” to the great chain of mountains covered with snow, from whence the Indus, and the greater part of the rivers which feed it, descend.

[318] This people occupied the Paropamisus, where the mountains now separate Candahar from Gaour.

[319] Book ii. c. i. 2.

[320] Under the name of Ariana, the ancients comprehended almost all the countries situated between the Indus and the meridian of the Caspian Gates. This large space was afterwards divided by them according to the position of the different nations which occupied it.—Gossellin. There can be no doubt the modern Iran represents the ancient Ariana. See Smith, art. Ariana, and b. ii. c. v. § 32, vol. i. p. 196, note⁹⁰³.

[321] Eratosthenes and Strabo believed that the eastern parts of Asia terminated at the mouth of the Ganges, and that, consequently, this river discharged itself into the Eastern Ocean at the place where terminated the long chain of Taurus.

[322] According to Major Rennell, Emodus and Imaus are only variations of the same name, derived from the Sanscrit word Himmaleh, which signifies “covered with snow.”

[323] In some MSS. the following diagram is to be found.

The River Indus.

the river Indus

[324] The extremity of India, of which Eratosthenes speaks, is Cape Comorin, which he placed farther to the east than the mouth of the Ganges.

[325] Patelputer or Pataliputra near Patna, see b. ii. ch. i. §9.

[326] The reading is σχοινίοις, which Coraÿ changes to σχοίνοις, Schœni: see Herod. i. 66. The Schœnus was 40 stadia. B. xii. ch. ii. §12.

[327] Athenæus (b. xi. ch. 103, page 800, Bohn’s Classical Library) speaks of Amyntas as the author of a work on the Stations of Asia. The Stathmus, or distance from station to station, was not strictly a measure of distance, and depended on the nature of the country and the capability of the beasts of burthen.

[328] The reading Coliaci in place of Coniaci has been proposed by various critics, and Kramer, without altering the text, considers it the true form of the name. The Coliaci occupied the extreme southern part of India. Cape Comorin is not precisely the promontory Colis, or Coliacum, which seems to answer to Panban, opposite the island Ramanan Kor.

[329] The Indian Caucasus.

[330] Book ii. ch. i. § 3.

[331] λίνον, probably the λίνον τὸ ἀπὸ δενδρέων, or cotton, of Arrian.

[332] βόσμορον. § 18.

[334] The voyage from the Ganges to Ceylon, in the time of Eratosthenes, occupied seven days, whence he concluded that Ceylon was seven days’ sail from the continent.

[335] Groskurd reads 5000 stadia. B. ii. c. i. § 14.

[336] εἰδοποιήσουσι. Coraÿ.

[337] The text is, as Coraÿ observes, obscure, if not corrupt. The proposed emendations of Coraÿ and Kramer are followed.

[339] At the beginning of autumn.

[340] At the beginning of winter.

[341] Taxila seems to have been situated at some distance to the east of Attock.

[342] At the delta formed by the Indus.

[343] Towards the end of summer.

[345] The district between Moultan and the mountains.

[346] Herod. ii. 86. Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres? Virg. Geor. ii. 121.

[347] Cloth of silk.

[348] The sugar-cane.

[350] The Banyan tree.

[351] Probably the Caroubba (Lotus Zizyphus), but it does not produce the effect here mentioned.

[353] Arist. Hist. An. vii. 4, who speaks however of five only.

[354] πεπλησμένως. Coraÿ.

[356] That is to say, he crossed the Paropamisus, or Mount Ghergistan, from the western frontier of Cabul, by the pass of Bamian, to enter the district of Balk.

[358] The river of Cabul.

[359] The Gandaræ were a widely extended people of Indian or Arianian origin, who occupied a district extending more or less from the upper part of the Punjab to the neighbourhood of Candahar, and variously called Gandaris and Gandaritis. See Prof. Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua.

[360] Aspasii. Coraÿ.

[361] Peucela, in Arrian iv. 22. Rennell supposes it to be Puckholi, or Pehkely.

[362] Abisarus was king of the mountainous part of India, and, according to the conjecture of Vincent, which is not without some probability, his territory extended to Cashmir.

[363] India is bordered to the north, from Ariana to the Eastern Sea, by the extremities of Taurus, to which the aboriginal inhabitants give the different names of Paropamisus, Emodon, Imaon, and others, while the Macedonians call them Caucasus. The Emodi mountains were the Western Himalaya. See Smith, art. Emodi Montes.

[364] The name of the modern city Lahore, anciently Lo-pore, recalls that of Porus. It is situated on the Hyarotis or Hydraotes (Ravee), which does not contradict our author; for, as Vincent observes, the modern Lahore represents the capital of the second Porus, whom Strabo will mention immediately; and the Lahore situate between the Hydaspes (the Behut or Jelum) and the Acesines (the Chenab), the exact position of which is unknown, was that of the first Porus. Probably these two districts, in which the two cities were situated, formed a single district only, one part of which was occupied and governed by Porus the uncle, and the other by Porus the nephew. It is probable, also, that these two princes took their name from the country itself, Lahore, as the prince of Taxila was called Taxiles, and the prince of Palibothra, Palibothrus.

[365] Strabo’s Bucephalia was on the Hydaspes, between Beherat and Turkpoor, not far from Rotas. Groskurd. The exact site is not ascertained, but the probabilities seem to be in favour of Jelum, at which place is the ordinary passage of the river, or of Jellapoor, about 16 miles lower down. Smith.

[367] Cercopitheces.

[368] Hence the Cathay of the Chinese and Modern Europe.

[369] So also Arrian, who takes the number from Megasthenes. Pliny says that nineteen rivers unite with the Indus.

[370] Probably an interpolation.

[371] The island Cos.

[372] B. xv. c. i. § 7.

[373] The Malli occupied a part of Moultan.

[374] The Sambus of Arrian. Porticanus is the Oxycanus of Arrian. Both Porticanus and Musicanus were chiefs of the cicar of Sehwan. Vincent’s Voyage of Nearchus, p. 133.

[375] This number is too large. There is probably an error in the text. Groskurd reads 20; but Kramer refers to Arrian’s expedition of Alexander, v. 20, and suggests that we may here read 100 (ρ) instead of 200 (σ).

[376] The Seres are here meant, whose country and capital still preserve the name of Serhend. It was the Serica India of the middle ages, and to this country Justinian sent to procure silkworms’ eggs, for the purpose of introducing them into Europe. Strabo was not acquainted with the Seres of Scythia, whose territory is now called Serinagar, from whence the ancients procured the wool and fine fabrics which are now obtained from Cashmir; nor was he acquainted with the Seres who inhabited the peninsula of India, and whose territory and capital have retained the name of Sera. Pliny is the only ancient author who seems to have spoken of these latter Seres. Gossellin. The passage in brackets is supposed by Groskurd to be an interpolation. Meineke would retain it, by reading καί τοι for καὶ γὰρ.

[377] The passage is corrupt, and for κήτη, “whales or cetaceous animals,” Groskurd proposes λέγει. The whole would therefore thus be translated, “and speaks of what he saw on it, of its magnitude,” &c.

[378] The exaggeration of Megasthenes is nothing in comparison of Ælian, who gives to the Ganges a breadth of 400 stadia. Modern observations attribute to the Ganges a breadth of about three quarters of a geographical mile, or 30 stadia.

[379] About 120 feet.

[381] B. ii. c. i. § 9.

[382] B. xvi. c. i. § 28.

[383] Herodotus iii. 102. The marmot?

[384] The passage is corrupt. Groskurd proposes to add the word ὥς before καὶ καμήλους, “as camels.” Coraÿ changes the last word to ἀχαλίνους, which is adopted in the translation. See below, § 53.

[386] κεστρεύς.

[387] καρίδες.

[388] In the text, μέχρι ὄρους, “to a mountain.” Coraÿ changes the last word to the name of a people, Οὔρων, but Strabo does not appear to have been acquainted with them; Groskurd, to ὀρῶν. The translation adopts this correction, with the addition of the article, which, as Kramer observes, is wanting if we follow Groskurd.