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Alexander and the Aral1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. R. Hamilton
J. R. Hamilton
Affiliation:
University of Auckland,New Zealand
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Extract

In his illuminating discussion of ‘the Caspian question’ Sir William Tarn, basing his case mainly on Aristotle, Meteorologica, 2. 1. 10 and Strabo, 11. 7. 4, argued that Alexander knew of the existence of the Aral Sea. Tarn's conclusion, however, was soon challenged by Professor Lionel Pearson, who disagreed in particular with Tarn's interpretation of the passage in Strabo. But, although he undoubtedly succeeds in showing that some of Tarn's arguments are not valid, Pearson fails, as it seems to me, to disprove his main contention. Indeed, Pearson misunderstands the line of Strabo's argument and is led to propose an unnecessary emendation of the text.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , May 1971 , pp. 106 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1971

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References

page 106 note 2 Alexander the Great (Cambridge, 1948), ii. 5–15.Google Scholar

page 106 note 3 CQ.N.S. 1 (1950,80–4.Google Scholar

page 106 note 4 SeeThomson, J. O., History of Ancient Geography (Cambridge, 1948), 59.Google Scholar

page 106 note 5 Possibly ‘connected by an underground passage’, as H. L. Jones translates in the Loeb edition. Aristotle (Meteorologica, 1. 13) had thought of an underground connection between the Caspian and the Black Sea.

page 106 note 6 For the few surviving fragments see F. Jacoby, F. Gr. Hist, nm, no. 128. They do not help to decide whether Polycleitus was likely to have contributed to the ‘stratagem’ or not. There is an excellent discussion of the fragments in Pearson, L., The Lost Histories of Alexander (1960), 70–7.Google Scholar

page 108 note 1 I accept the punctuation suggested by Pearson, L. (CQ, 1951, 81 n. 1)Google Scholar. For a possible emendation of the text see below.

page 108 note 2 CQ, 1951,81.

page 108 note 3 To be consistent editors ought to print this clause in brackets, as they do őøεις τεγά κτλ

page 109 note 1 Op. cit. 83.

page 109 note 2 It is not possible to deduce from Strabo's criticism exactly what Polycleitus said about the two lakes, but it is not impossible that he thought not of the two lakes being identical, but of the ‘Caspian’ as forming part of the Maeotis. Plutarch's description of the Caspian as an overflow (άνακοΠή) from the Maeotis may well derive from Polycleitus. Ephorus (fr. 78, Mueller) writes that the Tanais had two mouths, and Polycleitus may have thought that one mouth entered that part of the lake known as the Caspian and the other that known as the Maeotis.

page 109 note 3 See Arrian, Anabasis, 4. 21. 3 and Strabo,15. i. 29 (from Aristobulus). Cf. Strabo, 11. 7. 2 (Aristobulus) for the abundance of firs in India.

page 109 note 4 Pearson, op. cit. 82–3; Tarn, op. cit. ii. 14.

page 109 note 5 Pearson, op. cit. 83.

page 109 note 6 This view is as old as Hecataeus (fr. 291 Jacoby ═ Athenaeus 2. 70 a). It was expressly contradicted by Herodotus (1. 202), and Aristotle (Meteorologica, 2. 1. 10), perhaps following him, also gave the correct version. But after Patrocles, the admiral of Antiochus I, in 284 or 283 b.c. ‘explored’ the Caspian and pronounced it a gulf, this erroneous view prevailed until the geographer Claudius Ptolemy restated the truth Meteorologica in the second century A.D. The ‘gulf theory’, however, soon prevailed again and held the field, with a few exceptions, until the fourteenth century. For references see Thomson, op. cit. 127–8, 163, 293–4, 390.

page 110 note 1 See Tarn, op. cit. ii. 7, and for the date, ibid. ii. 309–18. This document is preserved by Diodorus 18. 5. 4, who most probably {pace Tarn) took it from the reliable Hiero-nymus of Cardia.

page 110 note 2 Aristobulus ap. Arrian, Anabasis 3. 30. 7. See also Plutarch, Alexander, 45. 6, derived, as the form shows, from Aristobulus.

page 110 note 3 1. 202, 4. 40.

page 110 note 4 Meteorologica, 1. 13. 15.

page 110 note 5 See Herrmann in RE, 2. Reihe, iv. 2, 2162, s.v. ‘Tanais’. Mr. Griffith had already suggested to me that ‘Tanais’ was comparable, for Scythians, to Avon for Celts. See also J.R.S. 57 (1967), 1–8Google Scholar, esp. 3–4, where Dr. A. H. McDonald argues convincingly that at Livy 38. 38. 4 we should retain the reading of the best MS., ‘cis Taurum mon-tem usque ad Tanaim amnem’, and that the ‘Tanais’ is the name given to the R. Caly-cadnus in its upper reaches.

page 110 note 6 Polybius, 4. 42. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannaica (1963 ed.) the salinity of the Maeotis is 11 per cent, a figure very similar to that for the Aral: see below. Herodotus (4. 86) calls the Maeotis ‘not much smaller than the Black Sea’, while Pseudo-Scylax in his ‘Periplus’, written about the middle of the fourth century, makes it half as large, and Polybius (4. 39) and Strabo (2. 125, 7. 310) rather more than a third. In fact, it is only about one-twelfth of the size of the Black Sea. It is obvious that the Greeks had only a hazy notion of the Maeotis in the time of Alexander. Bunbury, E. H., A History of Ancient Geography (London, 1879) 390Google Scholar, remarks of the Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax that ‘his account of the northern shores of the Euxine (Black Sea) is indeed much less precise and full than that of the southern’.

page 110 note 7 2. 1. 10.

page 110 note 8 Op. cit. ii. 6 n. 3.

page 111 note 1 Op. cit. 82 n. 1.

page 111 note 2 Fr. 291 Jacoby ═ Athenaeus 2. 70 A.

page 111 note 3 1. 202–3.

page 111 note 4 As many scholars have thought. See, e.g., Thomson, op. cit. 86, and Bunbury, op. cit. 401 n. 2.

page 111 note 5 Pearson, op. cit. 83.

page 111 note 6 Op. cit. ii. 6.

page 111 note 7 Figures from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1963 ed.).

page 111 note 8 Op. cit. ii. 8. For Alexander's meeting with Pharasmanes in Bactria see Arrian, Anabasis 4. 15. 4