Geography

​Come now, let us descend to the country lying opposite the Cinnamon-producing land and situated on the same parallel toward the east. This is the region around Taprobane. And Taprobane is strongly believed to lie off India in the open sea as a large island towards the south, and to extend towards Ethiopia for more than five thousand stadia, as they say, from which also much elephant cargo is brought to the Indian emporia, as well as tortoise-shell and other cargo. Now, if to this island a width proportional to its length is added, and also the crossing to it from India, it would make a distance of not less than three thousand stadia—which was the distance from the boundary of the inhabited world to Meroe—if indeed the extremities of India are to lie opposite Meroe; and it is more plausible to assume even more than three thousand. If then one should add this to the thirty thousand stadia which Deïmachus says is the distance as far as the passes into the territory of the Bactrians and Sogdians, all these nations would fall outside the inhabited world and the temperate zone. Who, then, would dare to say this, when he hears both ancient and modern writers speaking of the mildness of climate and the fruitfulness, first of northern India, and secondly also of Hyrcania, Aria, and next Margiana and Bactriana? For all these regions are contiguous to the northern side of the Taurus, and Bactriana in particular is even close to the pass into India; and they enjoy such prosperity that they are very far removed from being uninhabitable. In Hyrcania, at any rate, they say that the vine yields a metretes of wine, and the fig tree sixty medimnoi, and that wheat grows again from the seed that falls from the stalk, and that bees make hives in the trees and honey flows from the leaves; which indeed happens also in Matiane in Media, and in Sakasene and Araxene in Armenia; but in these latter places it is not equally surprising, since they are further south than Hyrcania and excel the rest of the country in mildness of climate; but in Hyrcania it is more surprising. And in Margiana, they say that the trunk of the vine is often found to be so thick that it takes two men with outstretched arms to encircle it, and the cluster of grapes is two cubits long. They say that Aria is similar, but even surpasses it in the excellence of its wine, in which indeed the wine keeps for three generations in jars that are not pitched; and they say that Bactriana also, which lies close to Aria, produces everything except olive oil.

​And if there are also cold parts of these regions, namely those that are high and mountainous, there is no need to wonder; for even in the southern climates the mountains are cold, and in general the elevated lands, even if they are plains. At any rate, the parts of Cappadocia near the Euxine are much further north than those near the Taurus; yet Bagadania, a vast plain falling between Mount Argaeus and the Taurus, rarely produces any of the fruit-bearing trees, although it is three thousand stadia further south than the Pontic Sea, whereas the suburbs of Sinope and Amisus and most of Phanaroea are planted with olives. And they say that the Oxus also, which divides Bactriana from Sogdiana, is so easy to navigate that Indian cargo, after being carried over to it, is easily brought down to Hyrcania and the succeeding regions as far as the Pontus by means of the rivers.