Chap. 15.] 
ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, ETC. 
25 
nations which dwell upon its banks, the two most famous of which 
are the Caspian and the Hyrcanian races. Clitarchus is of 
opinion that the Caspian Sea is not less in area than the Eux- 
ine. Eratosthenes gives the measure of it on the south-east, 
along the coast of Cadusia^^ and Albania, as five thousand four 
hundred stadia ; thence, through the territories of the Anariaci, 
the Amardi, and the Hyrcani, to the mouth of the river Zonus 
he makes four thousand eight hundred stadia, and thence to the 
mouth of the Jaxartes^^ two thousand four hundred; which makes 
in all a distance of one thousand five hundred and seventy-five 
miles. Artemidorus, however, makes this sum smaller by twen- 
ty-five miles. Agrippa bounds the Caspian Sea and the nations 
ground it, including Armenia, on the east by the Ocean of the 
Seres,'^^ on the west by the chain of the Caucasus, on the south 
by that of Taurus, and on the north by the Scythian Ocean ; and 
he states it, so far as its extent is known, to be four hundred 
and eighty miles in length, and two hundred and ninety in 
breadth. There are not wanting, however, some authors who 
state that its whole circumference, from the Straits, '^'^ is two 
thousand five hundred miles. 
Its waters make their way into this sea by a very narrow 
mouth,'^^ but of considerable length ; and where it begins to 
enlarge, it curves obliquely with horns in the form of a cres- 
cent, just as though it would make a descent from its mouth 
into Lake Meeotis, resembling a sickle in shape, as M. Yarro 
says. The first^* of its gulfs is called the Scythian Gulf; 
it is inhabited on both sides, by the Scythians, who hold com- 
munication with each other across the Straits, the ^NTomades 
being on one side, together with the Sauromatse, divided into 
The country of the Cadusii, in the mountainous district of Media 
Atropatene, on the south-west shores of the Caspian Sea, hetween the paral- 
lels of 390 and 370 north latitude. This district probably corresponds 
with the modern district of Gilan. 
^ Now the Syr-Daria or Yellow River, and watering the barren steppes 
of the Kirghiz- Cossacks. It really discharges itself into the Sea of Aral, 
and not the Caspian. 
21 The supposed Eastern Ocean of the ancients. 
22 The imaginary passage by which it was supposed to communicate ^th 
the Scythian Ocean. 
23 This being in reality the mouth of the Rha or Volga, as mentioned 
in Note 18, p. 24. 
On the eastern side. 
35 Across the mouths of the Volga. 
