NOTES. xlv 



( 211 ) p. 150. Droysen, Gesch. Alexanders des Grossen, S. 544 ; the same 

 in his Gesch. der Bildung des hellenistischen Staatensystems, S. 23 34, 

 588592, 748755. 



( 21G ) p. 150. Aristot. Polit. VII. vii. p. 1327, Bekker. (Compare also 

 III. xvi., and the remarkable passage of Eratosthenes in Strabo, lib. i. p. 66 

 and 97, Casaub.) 



0^) p. 151. Stahr, Aristotelia, Th. ii. S. 114. 



t 218 ) p. 151. Ste. Croix, Examen critique des historiens d' Alexandra, 

 p. 731. (Schlegel, Ind. Bibliothek, Bd. i. S. 150.) 



C 2 ' 9 ) p. 153. Compare Schwanbeck " de fide Megasthenis et pretio," im 

 his edition of that writer, p. 59 77. Megasthenes often visited Palibothra, 

 the court of the King of Magadha. He was fully initiated in the system of 

 Indian chronology, and relates "how, in the past, the All had three times 

 come to freedom ; how three ages of the world had run their course, and in 

 his own time the fourth had begun." (Lassen, indische Alterthumskunde, 

 Bd. i. S. 510.) The Hesiodic doctrine of four ages of the world, connected 

 with four great elementary destructions, which together occupy a period of 

 18028 years, existed also among the Mexicans. (Humboldt, Vues desCor- 

 dilleres et Monumens des peuples indigenes de I'Amerique, T. ii. p. 119 129.) 

 In modern times a remarkable proof of the accuracy of Megasthenes has been 

 afforded by the study of the Rigveda and the Mahabharata. Consult what 

 Megasthenes says respecting " the land of the long-living happy persons" in 

 the extreme north of India, the land of Uttara-kuru (probably north of 

 Kashmeer, towards Belurtagh), which, according to his Grecian views, he con- 

 nects with the supposed " thousand years of life of the Hyperboreans." (Las- 

 sen, in the Zeitschrift fiir dieKande des Morgenlandes, Bd. ii. S. 62.) We 

 may notice, in connection with this, a tradition mentioned in Ctesias, of a 

 sacred place in the Northern Desert. (Ind. cap. viii. ed. Baehr, p. 249 and 

 285.) Ctesias has been long too little esteemed : the martichoras mentioned 

 by Aristotle (Hist, de Animal. II. iii. 10 ; T. i. p. 51, Schneider), the grif. 

 fin, half eagle half lion, the kartazonon spoken of by ^Elian, and a one-horned 

 wild ass, are indeed referred to by him as real animals ; but this was not an 

 invention of his own, but arose, as Heeren and Cuvier have remarked, from 

 his taking pictured forms of symbolical animals, seen on Persian monuments, 

 for the representation of strange beasts still living in India. The acute 

 Guiguaut has, however, noticed that there is much difficulty in identifying the 

 martichoras with Persepolitan symbols. (Creuzer, Religions de 1'Antiquite ; 

 notes et ecliiircissements, p. 720-^ 



