8.

The position of the southern side of Ariana is thus situated, with reference to the sea-coast, the country of the Gedrosii and the Oritæ lying near and above it. A great part of Gedrosia extends into the interior until it touches upon the Drangæ, Arachoti, and Paropamisadæ, of whom Eratosthenes speaks in the following manner: we cannot give a better description. “Ariana,” he says, “is bounded on the east by the Indus, on the south by the Great Sea, on the north by the Paropamisus and the succeeding chain of mountains as far as the Caspian Gates, on the west by the same limits422 by which the territory of the Parthians is separated from Media, and Carmania from Parætacene and Persia.

The breadth of the country is the length of the Indus, reckoned from the Paropamisus as far as the mouths of that river, and amounts to 12,000, or according to others to 13,000, stadia. The length, beginning from the Caspian Gates, as it is laid down in Asiatic Stathmi,423 is estimated in two different ways. From the Caspian Gates to Alexandreia among the Arii424 through Parthia is one and the same road. Then a road leads in a straight line through Bactriana, and over the pass of the mountain to Ortospana,425 to the meeting of the three roads from Bactra, which is among the Paropamisadæ. The other branch turns off a little from Aria towards the south to Prophthasia in Drangiana; then the remainder leads as far as the confines of India and of the Indus; so that the road through the Drangæ and the Arachoti is longer, the whole amounting to 15,300 stadia. But if we deduct 1300 stadia, we shall have the remainder as the length of the country in a straight line, namely, 14,000 stadia; for the length of the coast is not much less, although some persons increase this sum by adding to the 10,000 stadia Carmania, which is reckoned at 6000 stadia. For they seem to reckon it either together with the gulfs, or together with the Carmanian coast within the Persian Gulf. The name also of Ariana is extended so as to include some part of Persia, Media, and the north of Bactria and Sogdiana; for these nations speak nearly the same language.426