Strabo · c. 20 CE (Books I–VI likely composed/available by this period)
primary
passage 61 of 384 · BOOK I. (7/23)
↪ you wandered here via “false conception Caspian gulf” — the connecting lines are tinted below
we have shown that their temperature is not so low as Amisus, Sinope, Byzantium, and Marseilles, which are universally acknowledged to be 3700 stadia south of the Dnieper and Keltica.
- If the followers of Deimachus add to the 30,000 stadia the distance to Taprobane and the boundaries of the torrid zone, which cannot be reckoned less than 4000 stadia,[523] they will then remove Bactria and
Aria from their actual localities and place them 34,000 stadia from the torrid zone, a distance equal to that which Hipparchus states to be between the equator and [the mouth of] the Dnieper, and the two countries will therefore be removed 8800 stadia north of [the mouth of]
the Dnieper and Keltica; for there are reckoned to be 8800 stadia from the equator to the parallel of latitude which separates the temperate from the torrid zone and which crosses the Cinnamon Country.[524] We have proved that the regions not more than 5000 stadia north of Keltica, as far as Ierne,[525] are scarcely habitable, but their reasoning leads to the conclusion that there is another circle fitted for the habitation of man, although 3800 stadia north of Ierne.[526] And that Bactra is still farther north than the mouth of the Caspian or Hyrcanian Sea, which is distant about 6000 stadia from the recess of the Caspian and the mountains of Armenia and Media, and which appears to be the most northerly point of the whole coast as far as India, with a sea navigable to India all the way, as Patrocles, who had the government of these regions, affirms. Now Bactriana stretches 1000 stadia farther north.
Beyond this the Scythians occupy a much larger territory, bounded by the
Northern Ocean: here they dwell, though to be sure theirs is a nomade life. But we ask how they could exist here at all, supposing even Bactra to be beyond the limits of the habitable globe. The distance from the
Caucasus to the Northern Sea through Bactra would be rather more than
4000 stadia.[527] This being added to the number[528] of stadia north of
Ierne[529] above-mentioned, will give us the whole amount of uninhabitable land from Ierne northward 7800 stadia, and even omitting the 4000 stadia altogether, those parts of Bactriana next the Caucasus will still be 3800 stadia farther north than Ierne, and 8800 farther north than Keltica,[530] and [the mouth] of the Dnieper.
HKB