[288] They dwelt, according to Ptolemy, along the southern banks of the Jaxartes.
[289] Or the Mardi, a warlike Asiatic tribe. Stephanus Byzantinus, following Strabo, places the Amardi near the Hyrcani, and adds, “There are also Persian Mardi, without the a;” and, speaking of the Mardi, he mentions them as an Hyrcanian tribe, of predatory habits, and skilled in archery.
[290] D’Anville supposes that the Euchatæ may have dwelt at the modern Koten, in Little Bukharia. It is suggested, however, by Parisot, that they may have possibly occupied a valley of the Himalaya, in the midst of a country known as “Cathai,” or the “desert.”
[291] The first extant notice of them is in Herodotus; but before him there was the poem of Aristeas of Proconnesus, of which the title was ‘Arimaspea;’ and it is mainly upon the statements in it that the stories told relative to this people rest—such as their being one-eyed, and as to their stealing the gold from the Gryphes, or Griffins, under whose custody it was placed. Their locality is by some supposed to have been on the left bank of the Middle Volga, in the governments of Kasan, Simbirsk, and Saratov: a locality which is sufficiently near the gold districts of the Uralian chain to account for the legends connecting them with the Gryphes, or guardians of the gold.
[292] The former reading was, “The Napæi are said to have perished as well as the Apellæi.” Sillig has, however, in all probability, restored the correct one. “Finding,” he says, “in the work of Diodorus Siculus, that two peoples of Scythia were called, from their two kings, who were brothers, the Napi and the Pali, we have followed close upon the footsteps of certain MSS. of Pliny, and have come to the conclusion that some disputes arose between these peoples, which ultimately led to the destruction of one of them”.
[293] Of the Caspian Sea.
[294] Said on the supposition that it is a bay or gulf of the Scythian or Septentrional Ocean.
[295] Ansart suggests that this is the modern Rocsha.
[296] From the Oxus.
[297] Ansart suggests that this island is that now called Idak, one of the Ogurtchinski group.