Geography

​Therefore, those who live on the islands, having no arable land, eat roots and use wild fruits, and they clothe themselves in the bark of trees (for they do not even have flocks), and they drink by squeezing the fruit from the trees. On the other hand, those in the marshes eat fish, and they clothe themselves in the skins of seals that run up from the sea. The mountaineers also feed on wild fruits themselves; and they also have a few sheep, which they do not slaughter, sparing them for the sake of their wool and milk; and they dye their clothing with smeared pigments, having a color that is hard to wash out. But the plainsmen, although they have land, do not cultivate it, but live from sheep and fish in a nomadic and Scythian fashion. For there is indeed a certain common way of life for all such peoples, which I often mention, and their burials are similar, as well as their customs and their whole life; they are self-willed, uncouth, wild, and warlike, but in contracts they are simple and not business-minded.

​And to the nation of the Massagetae and the Sacae belong also the Attasii and the Chorasmii, to whom Spitamenes fled from the Bactrians and the Sogdians—he being one of the Persians who had escaped Alexander, just as Bessus did; and later, Arsaces, fleeing Seleucus Callinicus, withdrew to the Apasiacae. And Eratosthenes says that the Arachoti and the Massagetae lie adjacent to the Bactrians to the west along the Oxus, and that the Sacae and the Sogdians face India with their entire territories, while the Bactrians face it only a little; for the greater part of Bactria lies adjacent to the Paropamisus. And he says that the Jaxartes divides the Sacae and the Sogdians, and the Oxus divides the Sogdians and the Bactrians, and that the Tapyri live between the Hyrcanians and the Arians; and in a circle around the sea, after the Hyrcanians, live the Amardi, the Anariacae, the Cadusii, the Albani, the Caspii, and the Uitii, and perhaps also others as far as the Scythians, and on the other side of the Hyrcanians the Derbices, and that the Cadusii touch the Medes and the Matiani below the Parachoathras.

​And he states the distances as follows: from the Caspian to the Cyrus River about one thousand eight hundred stadia, and from there to the Caspian Gates five thousand six hundred, then to Alexandria in Ariis six thousand four hundred, then to the city of Bactra, which is also called Zariaspa, three thousand eight hundred and seventy, then to the Jaxartes River, to which Alexander came, about five thousand; in all, twenty-two thousand six hundred and seventy. And he also states the distances from the Caspian Gates to India as follows: they say it is one thousand nine hundred and sixty to Hecatompylos, and four thousand five hundred and thirty to Alexandria in Ariis, then to Prophthasia in Drangae one thousand six hundred, though some say one thousand five hundred, then to the city of the Arachoti four thousand one hundred and twenty, then to Ortospana at the three-way junction from Bactra two thousand, then to the borders of India one thousand; in all, fifteen thousand three hundred. And in a straight line with this distance, one must conceive the continuation, namely, the length of India from the Indus to the Eastern Sea. Such are the matters concerning the Sacae.