12.

Writers of the present day can describe with more certainty [than formerly] the Britons, the Germans, and the dwellers on either side of the Danube, the Getæ,732 the Tyrigetæ, the Bastarnæ,733 the tribes dwelling by the Caucasus, such as the Albanians and Iberians.734 We are besides possessed of a description of Hyrcania735 and Bactriana in the Histories of Parthia written by such men as Apollodorus of Artemita,736 who have detailed the boundaries [of those countries] with greater accuracy than other geographers.

The entrance of a Roman army into Arabia Felix under the command of my friend and companion Ælius Gallus,737 and the traffic of the Alexandrian merchants whose vessels pass up the Nile and Arabian Gulf738 to India, have rendered us much better acquainted with these countries than our predecessors were. I was with Gallus at the time he was prefect of Egypt, and accompanied him as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and I found that about one hundred and twenty ships sail from Myos-hormos739 to India, although, in the time of the Ptolemies, scarcely any one would venture on this voyage and the commerce with the Indies.