[643] See Strabo, xv. 1; xvi. 4; Herod., iii. 102, with Dean Blakesley’s note.
[644] οὐδαμῶν is the Ionic form for οὐδένων.
[645] The Greek name Αἴθιοψ means sunburnt. The Hebrew name for Aethiopia is Cush (black). In ancient Egyptian inscriptions it is called Keesh. It is the country now called Abyssinia. Aethiopas vicini sideris vapore torreri, adustisque similes gigni, barba et capillo vibrato, non est dubium. (Pliny, ii. 80).
[646] Cf. Xenophon (Cyropaedia, vii. 5, 67).
[647] Called the Indica, a valuable little work in the Ionic dialect, still existing.
[648] 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.
[649] Megasthenes was sent with the Plataean Dēimachus, by Seleucus Nicator, the king of Syria and one of Alexander’s generals, as ambassador to Sandracotus, king of the country near the Ganges. He wrote a very valuable account of India in four books.
[650] Taurus is from the old root tor meaning high, another form of which is dor. Hence Dorians = highlanders.
[651] 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 Oxus 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.
[652] 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.