CHAPTER III.
Incredulity of Eratosthenes.—Passage of the Indus.
Any one who receives these stories may believe or disbelieve them as he pleases. But I do not altogether agree with Eratosthenes the Cyrenaean,[1] who says that everything which was attributed to the divine agency by the Macedonians was really said to gratify Alexander by their excessive eulogy. For he says that the Macedonians, seeing a cavern in the land of the Parapamisadians,[2] and hearing a certain legend which was current among the natives, or themselves forming a conjecture, spread the report that this forsooth was the cave where Prometheus had been bound, that an eagle frequented it to feast on his inward parts, that when Heracles arrived there he killed the eagle and set Prometheus free from his bonds. He also says that by their account the Macedonians transferred Mount Caucasus from the Euxine Sea to the eastern parts of the earth, and the land of the Parapamisadians to that of the Indians;[3] calling what was really Mount Parapaniisus by the name of Caucasus, in order to enhance Alexander's glory, seeing that he forsooth had gone over the Caucasus. He adds, that when they saw in India itself some oxen marked with the brand of a club, they concluded from this that Heracles had penetrated into India. Eratosthenes also disbelieves the similar tale of the wandering of Dionysus. Let me leave the stories about these matters undecided as far as I am concerned.
When Alexander arrived at the river Indus, he found a bridge made over it by Hephaestion, and two thirty-
- ↑ The celebrated Geographer and Mathematician, who was born B.C. 276 and died about B.C. 196. His principal work was one on geography, which was of great use to Strabo. None of his works are extant. He was made president of the Alexandrian library, b.c. 236.
- ↑ Cf. Arrian (Indica, v. 11).
- ↑ The earliest mention of India which has descended to our times is in Aeschylus (Suplices, 284).
