Page:The geography of Strabo (1854) Volume 2.djvu/251

 B. xi. c. vii. 3, 4. HYRCANIA. 243 possessions. Aristobulus says that Hyrcania has forests, and produces the oak, but not the pitch pine, 1 nor the fir, 2 nor the pine, 3 but that India abounds with these trees. Nessea 4 belongs to Hyrcania, but some writers make it an independent district. 3. Hyrcania is watered by the rivers Ochus and Oxus as far as their entrance into the sea. The Ochus flows through Nessea, but some writers say that the Ochus empties itself into the Oxus. Aristobulus avers that the Oxus was the largest river, ex- cept those in India, which he had seen in Asia. He says also that it is navigable with ease, (this circumstance both Aristobulus and Eratosthenes borrow from Patrocles,) and that large quantities of Indian merchandise are conveyed by it to the Hyrcanian Sea, and are transferred from thence into Albania by the Cyrus, and through the adjoining countries to the Euxine. The Ochus is not often mentioned by the an- cients, but Apollodorus, the author of the Parthica, frequently mentions it, [and describes it] as flowing very near the Par- thians. 4. Many additional falsehoods were invented respecting this sea, to flatter the ambition of Alexander and his love of glory ; for, as it was generally acknowledged that the river Tana'is separated Europe from Asia throughout its whole course, and that a large part of Asia, lying between this sea and the Tana'is, had never been subjected to the power of the Macedonians, it was resolved to invent an expedition, in order that, according to fame at least, Alexander might seem to have conquered those countries. They therefore made the lake Mseotis, which receives the Tana'is, and the Caspian Sea, which also they call a lake, one body of water, affirming that there was a subterraneous opening between both, and that one was part of the other. Polycleitus produces proofs to show that this sea is a lake, for instance, that it breeds ser- pents, and that the water is sweetish. 6 That it was not a dif- 1 irevtcrj. 2 sXarij. 3 Trirvg. 4 The country here spoken of appears to be that celebrated from the earliest times for its breed of horses to which the epithet Nessean was applied by ancient writers. See c. xiii. 7. 6 The same statement was made to Pompey, when in these regions in pursuit of Mithridates. .,
 * The modern name is uncertain.