The Anabasis of Alexander/Book V/Chapter V

by Arrian

Layout 2

CHAPTER V.

Mountains and Rivers of Asia.

But of the Indians I shall treat in a distinct work,^[1] giving the most credible accounts which were compiled by those who accompanied Alexander in his expedition, as well as by Nearchus^[2] who sailed right round the Great Sea which is near India. Then I shall add what has been compiled by Megasthenes^[3] and Eratosthenes, two men of distinguished authority. I shall describe the customs peculiar to the Indians and the strange animals which are produced in the country, as well as the voyage itself in the external sea. But now let me describe so much only as appears to me sufficient to explain Alexander's achievements. Mount Taurus divides Asia, beginning from Mycale, the mountain which lies opposite the island of Samos; then, cutting through the country of the Pamphylians and Cilicians, it extends into Armenia. From this, country it stretches into Media and through the land of the Parthians and Chorasmians. In Bactria it unites with mount Parapamisus, which the Macedonians who served in Alexander's army called Caucasus, in order, as it is said, to enhance their king's glory; asserting that he went even beyond the Caucasus with his victorious arms. Perhaps it is a fact that this mountain range is a continuation of the other Caucasus in Scythia, as the Taurus^[4] is of the same. For this reason I have on a previous occasion called this range Caucasus, and by the same name I shall continue to call it in the future. This Caucasus extends as far as the Great Sea which lies in the direction of India and the East. Of the rivers in Asia worth consideration which take their rise from the Taurus and Caucasus, some have their course turned towards the north, discharging themselves either into the lake Maeotis,^[5] or into the sea called Hyrcanian, which in reality is a gulf of the Great Sea.^[6] Others flow towards the south, namely, the Euphrates, Tigres, Indus, Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, Hyphasis, and all those that lie between these and the river Ganges. All these either discharge their water into the sea, or disappear by pouring themselves out into marshes, as the river Euphrates^[7] does.

1. Called the Indica, a valuable little work in the Ionic dialect, still existing.
2. Nearchus left an account of his voyage, which is not now extant. Arrian made use of it in writing the Indica. See that work, chapters xvii. to lxiii.
3. Megasthenes was sent with the Plataean Deimachus, by Seleuous Nicator, the king of Syria and one of Alexander's generals, as ambassador to Saudraootus, king of the country near the Ganges. He wrote a very valuable account of India in four books.
4. Taurus is from the old root tor meaning high, another form of which is dor. Hence Dorians=highlanders.
5. The ancient geographers thought that the Jaxartes bifurcated, part of it forming the Tanais, or Don, and flowing into the lake Maeotis, or Sea of Azov; and the other part falling into the Hyrcanian, or Caspian Sea. The Jaxartes and Oxua flow into the Sea of Aral, but the ancients thought that they fell into the Caspian, as there is indeed evidence to prove that they once did. Hyrcania is the Greek form of the old Persian Virkâna, that is Wolf's Land. It is now called Gurgân.
6. Herodotus (i. 203) states decidedly that the Caspian is an inland sea. Strabo (xi. 1), following Eratosthenes, says that it is a gulf of the Northern Ocean.
7. The Euphrates, after its junction with the Tigres, flows through the marshes of Lamlum, where its current moves less than a mile an hour.