192 COSMOS. 



until after a period of five hundred years that the accuracy ot 

 the fact was re-estabUshed by Ptolemy. Herodotus and Aris- 

 totle entertained correct views regarding this subject, and the 

 latter fortunately wrote his Metem-ologica before the Asiatic 

 campaigns of Alexander. The Olbiopolites, from whose lips 

 the father of history derived his information, were well ac- 

 quainted with the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, between 

 Cuma, the Volga (Rha), and the Jaik (Ural), but there were 

 no indications that could lead to the supposition of its connec- 

 tion with the Icy Sea. Very different causes led to the de- 

 ception of Alexander's army, when, passing through Hecatom- 

 pylos (Damaghan) to the humid forests of Mazanderan, at 

 Zadrakarta, a little to the west of the present Asterabad, they 

 saw the Caspian Sea stretching northward in an apparently 

 boundless expanse of waters. This sight first gave rise, as 

 Plutarch remarks in his Life of Alexander, to the conjecture 

 that the sea they beheld was a bay of the Euxine.* The 

 Macedonian expedition, although, on the whole, extremely 

 favorable to the advance of geographical knowledge, neverthe- 

 less gave rise to some errors which long held their ground. 

 The Tanais was confounded with the Jaxartes (the Araxes 

 of Herodotus), and the Caucasus with the Paropanisus (the 

 Hindoo-Coosh). Ptolemy was enabled, during his residence 

 in Alexandria, as well as from the expeditions of the Aorsi, 

 whose camels brought Indian and Babylonian goods to the 

 Don and the Black Sea,t to obtain accurate knowledge of the 

 countries which immediately surrounded the Caspian (as, for 

 instance, Albania, Atropatene, and Hyrcania). If Ptolemy, 

 in contradiction to the more correct know^ledge of Herodotus, 

 believed that the greater diameter of the Caspian Sea inclined 

 from west to east, he might, perhaps, have been misled by a 

 vague knowledge of the former great extension of the Scythian 

 gulf (Karabogas), and the existence of Lake Aral, the earliest 

 definite notice of which we find in the work of a Byzantine 

 author, Menander, who wrote a continuation of Agathias.$ 



It is to be regretted that Ptolemy, who had arrived at so 

 correct a knowledge of the complete insulation of the Caspian 

 (after it had long been considered to be open, in accordance 

 with the hypothesis of four gulfs, and even according to sup- 



* See my Examen Crit. de VHist. de la Giographie, t. ii., p. 147-188 



t Strabo, lib. xi., p. 506. 



X MeBander, De Legationibus Barbarorum ad Romanos, et Romano- 

 rum ad Gentes, e rec. Bekkeri et Niebuhr, 1829, p. 300, 619, 623, and 

 628. 



