THE BIBLE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD. 149 



Assyria. They dwelt near Rhagae in classic time, as Josephiis 

 (a.d. 75) showed us — a great city which, as I have said, lay 

 midway along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Now at 

 that point there begins a chain of mountains which runs 

 eastwards along the shore of that sea, and far eastward beyond 

 it, forming a natural southern boundary to the territory of the 

 Bactrians and of the Sakai, who in the time of Herodotus 

 (a.d. 450) were spread over southern Turkestan, as the 

 Massagetae were over northern ;* and Ammianus Marcellinus 

 (the Emperor Julian's librarian and historian, who wrote about 

 A.D. 350), after saying that they came next to the Sogdians, who 

 dwelt on the march of the Oxus, further states that they were 

 overhung by the Ascanimian Mountain or range of mountains.f 

 Xow on their eastern border there could have been no 

 mountain, for all is flat up to the Caspian Sea ; and, again, the 

 range that lay north of them he names just afterwards by its 

 well known name of Imavian ; and the range that lay beyond 

 them to the west he is most unlikely to have used as a 

 boundary mark lor defining their position, even if he knew the 

 name of so remote an elevation : like other topographers, he, 

 of course, tried to help his readers to fix the position of the 

 country by mentioning its relation to some nearer object with 

 which they were familiar. We must therefore conclude that 

 he knew the long southern range aforesaid by the name of 

 Ascanimian. Again Strabo (about a.d. 1) speaks of irruptions 

 of these Sakai by which they " gained possession of Bactriana " 

 on one side of the Caspian and on the other, of "the best 

 district of all Armenia " which " took from them the iiame of 

 Sakasene."J 



We have thus a range of mountains called in classic times 

 Ascan\m\dA\ ending westward at Ehagae, around w^hich we know 

 dwelt descendants of Ashkenaz ; and we find at the outset of the 

 Christian era a little north of them, cut out of the neic^hbourino- 

 kingdom of Armenia and just south of the Caucasus Moun- 

 tains, a country called Sacasene. Whether Strabo be right or 

 wrong in stating this to be a colony of the Sakai (w^ho 

 are called by Herodotus a Scythian people, and who still dwelt 

 in Turkestan late in the fourth century, or long after the 



^ Cp. Her., I, 153, III, 93, VII, 64, with I, 204 and 205, the Araxes 

 here spoken of is really the Oxu.s probably called in full Rha Oxos. See 

 Eawlinson's Herodotus, I, 120. 



t Ascanimia Mons ; but the Apenniue Eange is called Mons Apenninus, 

 and so on. Amm. Marc, XXIII, 60. 



I Strabo, XI, viii, 4. 



