560 COSMOS. 



ledge of the complete insulation of the Caspian Sea as one of 

 the most important results of these relations, but it was not 

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

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

 totle entertained correct views regarding this subject, and the 

 latter fortunately wrote his Meteorologica 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, be- 

 tween Cuma, the Volga (Rha), and the Jaik (Ural), but 

 there were no indications that could lead to the supposition 

 of its connection with the Icy Sea. Very different causes 

 led to the deception of Alexander's army, when passing 

 through Hecatompylos (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 favourable to the advance of geogra- 

 phical knowledge, nevertheless 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 expedi- 

 tions of the Aorsi, whose camels brought Indian and Babylonian 

 goods to the Don and the Black Sea,f to obtain accurate 

 knowledge of the countries which immediately surrounded the 

 Caspian (as, for instance, Albania, Atropatene, and Hyrca- 

 nia). 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 con- 

 tinuation of Agathias. J 



* See my Examen crit. de I'Hist. de la Geographic, t. ii. pp. ,147-188. 



t Strabo, lib. xi .p. 506. 



J Menander, de Legationibus Barbarorum ad Romanos, et Roma* 



