So much for the parts of Asia west of the Persians. But what is beyond the Persians, and Medes, and Saspires, and Colchians, east and toward the rising sun, this is bounded on the one hand by the Red Sea, and to the north by the Caspian Sea and the Araxes river, which flows toward the sun's rising.
As far as India, Asia is an inhabited land; but thereafter, all to the east is desolation, nor can anyone say what kind of land is there.
For who is there in Athens so uncritical as to believe these allegations? There must have been attenders, gentlemen of the jury, with the carriage that conveyed the bride: first a muleteer and a guide, and then her escort of boys, and also Dioxippus.For Dioxippus, the athlete who accompanied Alexander to India （Diod. Sic. 17.100.2）, see Introduction to the speech. For he was in attendance, too, since she was a widow being given away in marria
is swift, with narrowness; and Geon for
Nile, what arises from the east,--we perhaps mistake him when we suppose
he literally means those four rivers; especially as to Geon or Nile, which
arises from the east, while he very well knew the literal Nile arises from
the south; though what further allegorical sense he had in view, is now,
I fear, impossible to be determined.
which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts.
And Phison, which denotes a multitude, running into India, makes its exit
into the sea, and is by the Greeks called Ganges. Euphrates also, as well
as Tigris, goes down into the Red Sea. By
the Red Sea is not here meant the Arabian Gulf, which alone we now call
by that name, but all that South Sea, which included the Red Sea, and the
Persian Gulf, as far as the East Indies; as Reland and Hudson here truly
note, from the old geographers.
Now the name Euphrates, or Phrath, denotes either a dispersion, or a flower:
by Tiris, or Diglath, is signified w
h color, are considered sacred to Asclepius, and are tame with men. These are peculiar to Epidauria, and I have noticed that other lands have their peculiar animals. For in Libya only are to be found land crocodiles at least two cubits long; from India alone are brought, among other creatures, parrots. But the big snakes that grow to more than thirty cubits, such as are found in India and in Libya, are said by the Epidaurians not to be serpents, but some other kind of creature.
As you go up to India and in Libya, are said by the Epidaurians not to be serpents, but some other kind of creature.
As you go up to Mount Coryphum you see by the road an olive tree called Twisted. It was Heracles who gave it this shape by bending it round with his hand, but I cannot say whether he set it to be a boundary mark against the Asinaeans in Argolis, since in no land, which has been depopulated, is it easy to discover the truth about the boundaries. On the Top of the mountain there is a sanctuary of Artemis Coryphaea （of the Peak）, of which TelesillaA famous lyric poetess. See p. 355. made mention in an ode.
On goi
he last. The daughters that were left had to wait until other suitors arrived and competed in another foot-race.
On this road the Lacedaemonians have, as I have already said, what is called the Booneta, which once was the house of their king Polydorus. When he died, they bought it from his widow, paying the price in oxen. For at that time there was as yet neither silver nor gold coinage, but they still bartered in the old way with oxen, slaves, and uncoined silver and gold.
Those who sail to India say that the natives give other merchandise in exchange for Greek cargoes, knowing nothing about coinage, and that though they have plenty of gold and of bronze.On the opposite side of the office of the Bidiaeans is a sanctuary of Athena. Odysseus is said to have set up the image and to have named it Keleuthea （Lady of the Road）, when he had beaten the suitors of Penelope in the foot-race. Of Keleuthea he set up sanctuaries, three in number, at some distance from each other.
Farther along th
end through the temples from above, and so bend outwards. My statement is not hearsay; I once saw an elephant's skull in the sanctuary of Artemis in Campania. The sanctuary is about thirty stades from Capua, which is the capital of Campania. So the elephant differs from all other animals in the way its horns grow, just as its size and shape are peculiar to itself. And the Greeks in my opinion showed an unsurpassed zeal and generosity in honoring the gods, in that they imported ivory from India and Aethiopia to make images.
In Olympia there is a woollen curtain, adorned with Assyrian weaving and Phoenician purple, which was dedicated by Antiochus,Probably Antiochus Epiphanes, who was king of Syria 175-164 B.C. who also gave as offerings the golden aegis with the Gorgon on it above the theater at Athens. This curtain is not drawn upwards to the roof as is that in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, but it is let down to the ground by cords.
The offerings inside, or in the fore-temple
this.
But when the old bed had dried up, an earthenware coffin more than eleven cubits long was found in it, and the corpse was proportionately large, and human in all parts of its body. This corpse the god in Clarus, when the Syrians came to his oracle there, declared to be Orontes, and that he was of Indian race. If it was by warming the earth of old when it was still wet and saturated with moisture that the sun made the first men, what other land is likely to have raised men either before India or of greater size, seeing that even to-day it still breeds beasts monstrous in their weird appearance and monstrous in size?
Some ten stades distant from the place named Depth is what is called Basilis. The founder of it was Cypselus, who gave his daughter in marriage to Cresphontes, the son of Aristomachus. To-day Basilis is in ruins, among which remains a sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter. Going on from here you will cross the Alpheius again and reach Thocnia, which is named after Thocnus,
nemies; all this is, I think, a false story that the Indians pass on from one to another owing to their excessive dread of the beast.
They were also deceived about its color, and whenever the tiger showed itself in the light of the sun it appeared to be a homogeneous red, either because of its speed, or, if it were not running, because of its continual twists and turns, especially when it was not seen at close quarters. And I think that if one were to traverse the most remote parts of Libya, India or Arabia, in search of such beasts as are found in Greece, some he would not discover at all, and others would have a different appearance.
For man is not the only creature that has a different appearance in different climates and in different countries; the others too obey the same rule. For instance, the Libyan asps have a different colors compared with the Egyptian, while in Ethiopia are bred asps quite as black as the men. So everyone should be neither over-hasty in one's judgments, nor
lion from Olympus, which then vanished.
Caranus, they assert, realized that it was a mistaken policy to incur the undying hatred of the non-Greeks dwelling around, and so, they say, the rule was adopted that no king of Macedonia, neither Caranus himself nor any of his successors, should set up trophies, if they were ever to gain the good-will of their neighbors. This story is confirmed by the fact that Alexander set up no trophies, neither for his victory over Dareius nor for those he won in India.
As you approach the city you see a common grave of the Thebans who were killed in the struggle against Philip. It has no inscription, but is surmounted by a lion, probably a reference to the spirit of the men. That there is no inscription is, in my opinion, because their courage was not favoured by appropriate good fortune.
Of the gods, the people of Chaeroneia honor most the scepter which Homer saysHom. Il. 2.101 foll. Hephaestus made for Zeus, Hermes received from Zeus and gave to Pelops,
the rope a painting of Ariadne. Seated on a rock she is looking at her sister Phaedra, who is on a swing grasping in either hand the rope on each side. The attitude, though quite gracefully drawn, makes us infer the manner of Phaedra's death.
Ariadne was taken away from Theseus by Dionysus, who sailed against him with superior forces, and either fell in with Ariadne by chance or else set an ambush to catch her. This Dionysus was, in my opinion, none other than he who was the first to invade India, and the first to bridge the river Euphrates. Zeugma （Bridge） was the name given to that part of the country where the Euphrates was bridged, and at the present day the cable is still preserved with which he spanned the river; it is plaited with branches of the vine and ivy.
Both the Greeks and the Egyptians have many legends about Dionysus. Underneath Phaedra is Chloris leaning against the knees of Thyia. He will not be mistaken who says that all during the lives of these women they remaine
