The Anabasis of Alexander/Book VII/Chapter XVI
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.[1] 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.[2] For the sources of the Caspian Sea had not yet been discovered, although many nations dwell around it, and navigable rivers discharge their waters into it. From Bactria, the Oxus, the largest of Asiatic rivers, tbose of India excepted, discharges itself into this sea[3]; and through Scythia flows the Jaxartes.[4] The general account is, that the Araxes also, which flows from Armenia, falls into the same sea.[5] These are the largest; but many others flow into these, while others again discharge themselves directly into this sea. Some of these were known to those who visited these nations with Alexander; others are situated towards the farther side of the gulf, as it seems, in the country of the Nomadic Scythians, a district which is quite unknown.
When Alexander had crossed the river Tigres with his army and was marching to Babylon, he was met by the Chaldaean philosophers[6]; who, having led him away from his Companions, besought him to suspend his march to that city. For they said that an oracular declaration had been made to them by the god Belus, that his entrance into Babylon at that time would not be for his good. But he answered their speech with a line from the poet Euripides to this effect: " He the best prophet is that guesses well."[7] But said the Chaldaeans:—"O king, do not at any rate enter the city looking towards the west nor leading the army advancing in that direction; bat rather go right round towards' the east." But this did not turn out to be easy for him, on account of the difficulty of the ground; for the deity was leading him to the place where entering he was doomed soon to die. And perhaps it was better for him to be taken off in the very acme of his glory as well as of the affection entertained for him by men, before any of the vicissitudes natural to man befell him. Probably this was the reason Solon a.dvised Croesus to look at the end of a long life, and not before pronounce any man happy.[8] Tea indeed, Hephaestion's death had been no small misfortune to Alexander; and I think he would rather have departed before it occurred than have been alive to experience it; no less than Achilles, as it seems to me, would rather have died before Patroclus than have been the avenger of his death.
- ↑ These are what Hirtius (Bell. Alex. 11) calls " naves apertas et constratas."
- ↑ See p. 155, note 6.
- ↑ See p. 199, note 1. Strabo (xi.7) says that Aristobulus declared the Oxus to be the largest river which he had seen except those in India.
- ↑ See p. 198, note 3. The Oxus and Jaxartes really flow into the Sea of Aral, or the Palus Oxiana, which was first noticed by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiii. 6, 59) in the 4th century a.d. Ptolemy, however, mentions it as a small lake, and not as the recipient of these rivers. Of. Pliny, vi. 18.
- ↑ The Araxes, or Aras, joins the Cyrus, or Kour, and falls into the Caspian Sea. It is now called Kizil-Ozan, or Yellow River. Its Hebrew name is Chabor (2 Kings xvii. 6). Pontem indignatus Araxes (Vergil, Aeneid, viii. 728). See Aeschylus (Prometheus, 736), Dr. Paley's note.
- ↑ As to the Chaldaeans, see Cicero (De Div., i. 1) and Diod. (ii. 29-31).
- ↑ This is a verse from one of the lost tragedies of Euripides. It is
- ↑ See Herodotus (i. 32); Plutarch (Solon, 27).