Book 2
1.3
But there is another method (says Eratosthenes) of proving this. The distance from the Gulf of Issus to the Euxine, proceeding in a northerly direction towards AmisusSamsun. and Sinope,Sinub. is about 3000 stadia, which is as much as the supposed extent of the mountains [of the Taurus].The great chain of the Taurus was supposed to occupy the whole breadth of Asia Minor, a space of 3000 stadia. Eratosthenes is here attempting to prove that these mountains occupy a like space in the north of India. The traveller who directs his course from Amisus due east,Lit. to the equinoctial rising. arrives first at Colchis, then at the high lands by the Hyrcanian Sea,Another designation of the Caspian. afterwards at the road leading to Bactra,Balk and beyond to the Scythians; having the mountains always on the right. The same line drawn through Amisus westward, crosses the Propontis and Hellespont. From Meroe to the Hellespont there are not more than 18,000 stadia.Read 18,100 stadia. The distance is just the same from the southern extremity of India to the land of Bactria, if we add to the 15,000 stadia of that country the 3000 which its mountains occupy in breadth.
1.4
Hipparchus tries to invalidate this view of Eratosthenes, by sneering at the proofs on which it rests. Patrocles, he says, merits little credit, being contradicted by the two writers Deimachus and Megasthenes, who say that the distancei. e. The breadth of India. taken from the southern ocean, is in some places 20,000, in others 30,000 stadia; that in this assertion they are supported by the ancient charts, and he considers it absurd to require us to put implicit faith in Patrocles alone, when there is so much testimony against him; or that the ancient charts should be corrected; but rather that they should be left as they are until we have something more certain on the subject.
