When Alexander arrived at the river Indus, he found a bridge made over it by Hephaestion, and two thirty-oared galleys, besides many smaller craft.[633] He moreover found that 200 talents of silver,[634] 3,000 oxen, above 10,000 sheep for sacrificial victims, and thirty elephants had arrived as gifts from Taxiles the Indian; 700 Indian horsemen also arrived from Taxiles as a reinforcement, and that prince sent word that he would surrender to him the city of Taxila,[635] the largest town between the rivers Indus and Hydaspes.[636] Alexander there offered sacrifice to the gods to whom he was in the habit of sacrificing, and celebrated a gymnastic and horse contest near the river. The sacrifices were favourable to his crossing.
CHAPTER IV.
Digression about India.
The following are statements about the river Indus which are quite unquestionable, and therefore let me record them. The Indus is the largest of all the rivers in Asia and Europe, except the Ganges,[637] which is also an Indian river. It takes its rise on this side mount Parapamisus, or Caucasus, and discharges its water into the Great Sea which lies near India in the direction of the south wind. It has two mouths, both of which outlets are full of shallow pools like the five outlets of the Ister (or Danube).[638] It forms a Delta in the land of [271]the Indians resembling that of Egypt[639]; and this is called Pattala in the Indian language. The Hydaspes, Acesines, Hydraotes, and Hyphasis are also Indian rivers,[640] and far exceed the other rivers of Asia in size; but they are not only smaller but much smaller than the Indus, just as that river itself is smaller than the Ganges. Indeed Ctesias[641] says (if any one thinks his evidence to be depended upon), that where the Indus is narrowest, its banks are forty stades apart; where it is broadest, 100 stades; and most of it is the mean between these breadths.[642] This river Indus Alexander crossed at daybreak with his army into the country of the Indians; concerning whom, in this history I have described neither what laws they enjoy, nor what strange animals their land produces, nor how many and what sort of fish and water-monsters are produced by the Indus, Hydaspes, Ganges, or the other rivers of India. Nor have I described the ants which dig up the gold for them,[643] nor the guardian griffins, nor any of the other tales that have been composed rather to amuse than to be received as [272]the relation of facts; since the falsity of the strange stories which have been fabricated about India cannot be exposed by any one.[644] However, Alexander and those who served in his army exposed the falsity of most of these tales; but there were even some of these very men who fabricated other stories. They proved that the Indians whom Alexander visited with his army, and he visited many tribes of them, were destitute of gold; and also that they were by no means luxurious in their mode of living. Moreover, they discovered that they were tall in stature, in fact as tall as any men throughout Asia, most of them being five cubits in height, or a little less. They were blacker than the rest of men, except the Ethiopians[645]; and in war they were far the bravest of all the races inhabiting Asia at that time. For I cannot with any justice compare the race of the ancient Persians with those of India, though at the head of the former Cyrus, son of Cambyses, set out and deprived the Medes of the empire of Asia, and subdued many other races partly by force and partly by voluntary surrender on their own part. For at that time the Persians were a poor people and inhabitants of a rugged land, having laws and customs very similar to the Laconian discipline.[646] Nor am I able with certainty to conjecture whether the defeat sustained by the Persians in the Scythian land was due to the difficult nature of the country invaded or to some other error on the part of Cyrus, or whether the Persians were really inferior in warlike matters to the Scythians of that district.
CHAPTER V.
Mountains and Rivers of Asia.
But of the Indians I shall treat in a distinct work,[647] giving the most credible accounts which were compiled by those who accompanied Alexander in his expedition, as well as by Nearchus,[648] who sailed right round the Great Sea which is near India. Then I shall add what has been compiled by Megasthenes[649] 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[650] is of the same. For this reason I have on a previous occasion called this range Caucasus, and by the same [274]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,[651] or into the sea called Hyrcanian, which in reality is a gulf of the Great Sea.[652] 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[653] does.