any mention of this embassy having been despatched to Alexander; nor of those who have written an account of Alexander's actions, has either Ptolemy, son of Lagus, or Aristobulus mentioned it. With these authors I am generally inclined to agree. Nor does it seem likely that the Roman republic, which was at that time remarkable for its love of liberty, would send an embassy to a foreign king, especially to a place so far away from their own land, when they were not compelled to do so by fear or any hope of advantage, being possessed as they were beyond any other people by hatred to the very nanie and race of despots.[1]
CHAPTER XVI.
Exploration of the Caspian.–The Chaldaean Sooth-sayers.
After this, Alexander sent Heraclides, son of Argaeus, into Hyrcania in command of a company of shipwrights, with orders to cut timber from the Hyrcanian mountains and with it to construct a number of ships of war, some without decks and others with decks after the Grecian fashion of ship-building.[2] For he was very desirous of discovering with what sea the one called the Hyrcanian or Caspian unites; whether it communicates with the water of the Euxine Sea, or whether the Great Sea comes right round from the Eastern Sea, which is near India and flows up into the Hyrcanian Gulf; just as he had discovered that the Persian Sea, which was called the Red Sea, is really a gulf of the Great Sea.[3] For the
