Geography

​And Megasthenes, with a few others, considers the reports about Heracles and Dionysus to be trustworthy, but most of the others, among whom is Eratosthenes, consider them untrustworthy and mythical, just like those among the Greeks. For Dionysus in Euripides’ Bacchae boasts in this way: “Leaving the golden lands of the Lydians, and the sun-struck plains of the Phrygians and the Persians, and the Bactrian walls, and the harsh land of the Medes, I traversed happy Arabia and all Asia.” And in Sophocles, someone is praising Nysa as the mountain consecrated to Dionysus: “whence I looked down upon the renowned Nysa, filled with Bacchic frenzy for mortals, which the bull-horned Iacchus assigns as the sweetest nurse to himself, where what bird does not sing?” And so on. And the poet says of Lycurgus the Edonian thus: “who once chased the nurses of the frenzied Dionysus down the sacred Nyseion.” Such are the stories about Dionysus. But concerning Heracles, some record only as far as the western limits in the opposite direction, while others record both directions.

​On such grounds, they called certain people by the ethnic name of Nysaeans, and their city Nysa, a foundation of Dionysus, and the mountain above the city Meros, alleging as their reason both the ivy and the vine there, even though the latter does not bring its fruit to maturity, since the clusters of grapes fall off before turning dark because of the excessive rains. They also declared the Sydracae to be descendants of Dionysus, from the vine in their country and their luxurious processions, the kings making their military expeditions and other public appearances in a Bacchic manner with the beating of drums and with flowered robes, a custom which is also prevalent among the other Indians. And when Alexander took at the first assault a certain rock called Aornos, the foot of which the Indus flows past near its sources, they said, exaggerating the achievement, that Heracles had assaulted this rock three times and had been repulsed three times. They also said that the Sibae were descendants of those who had shared in his expedition, preserving symbols of their origin in wearing skins like Heracles, carrying clubs, and having a club branded on their oxen and mules. And they confirm this myth also from the stories about the Caucasus and Prometheus; for they transferred these legends from the Pontus to this place on a slight pretext, having seen a sacred cave in the country of the Paropamisadae; for they declared this to be the prison of Prometheus, and that Heracles had come there for the liberation of Prometheus, and that this was the Caucasus which the Greeks had declared to be the prison of Prometheus.

​That these are the fabrications of those who flattered Alexander is clear, first, from the fact that the historians do not agree with one another, but some tell them while others do not even mention them at all; for it is not likely that stories so famous and full of vanity were not heard of, or, if heard of, were not considered worthy of mention, and that too by the most trustworthy of them. Secondly, it is clear from the fact that not even the intermediate nations, through whose country the arrival of Dionysus and Heracles in India must have taken place, have any evidence to show of their passage through their land. And the costume of Heracles, such as it is, is much more recent than the memory of the Trojan War, being a fabrication of those who composed the Heracleia, whether it was Peisander or someone else; for the ancient wooden images are not fashioned in that manner.