Book 3

Concerning the Hyphasis, and how far it runs across India, and what marvel attaches to it, these are the things one ought to know. Its springs gush up out of a plain, navigable from the very source; but as the river goes on it becomes impassable even to boats. For sharp ridges of rock rise up alternately out of the water, around which the current is forced to wind, and this makes the river unnavigable. In breadth it is the equal of the Ister, which is held to be the greatest of the rivers that flow through Europe. Trees grow along its banks much like those of the Ister, and from these trees there is also distilled a kind of myrrh, which the Indians use as a marriage unguent; and unless those who gather for the wedding sprinkle the bridal pair with this myrrh, the union is thought incomplete and not joined in a way pleasing to Aphrodite. They say that both the grove about the river and the peacock-fish, which this river alone breeds, are sacred to this goddess. They have named them after the bird, since their crests are dark blue, their scales spotted, and their tails golden, and they unfold them whenever they please. There is also in this river a certain creature resembling a white worm. From this, by melting it down, they make an oil, and from this oil there comes forth a fire which nothing can contain except glass. This creature may be caught only by the king, and it is used for the taking of walls. For whenever the fat touches the battlements, it calls up a fire too strong for any of the extinguishers that men have devised against incendiaries.

They say too that wild asses are caught in these marshes, and that these beasts have a single horn upon the forehead, with which they fight after the manner of bulls and not without spirit; and that the Indians make a drinking-cup of this horn. For whoever drinks from it that day will fall into no sickness, nor feel pain if wounded; he may pass through fire, and is proof against all the poisons that men drink to do harm. This cup belongs to kings, and to the king alone the hunting of the beast is reserved. Apollonius said that he had seen the creature and admired its nature; and when Damis asked him whether he accepted the story about the cup, he said: "I will accept it, if I learn that the king of these Indians here is immortal. For a man who can offer to me, or to anyone, a draught so free of sickness and so wholesome — why should he not rather pour it out for himself, and drink daily from this horn even to drunkenness? For no one, I imagine, would find fault with him for being drunk on that.

Here too they say they met with a woman who was black from the head to the breasts, but from the breasts to the feet all white; and that the others fled from her as from some terror, but that Apollonius took the woman by the hand and understood what she was. For such a woman is consecrated to Aphrodite among the Indians, and a dappled woman is born to the goddess, just as the bull Apis is born to the Egyptians.

From there, they say, they crossed the spur of the Caucasus that stretches down to the Red Sea, and it was thickly overgrown with groves of fragrant trees. The crests of the mountain bear cinnamon, which resembles young vine-shoots, and the goat is the test of this spice; for if a man holds out cinnamon to a goat, it will whimper towards his hand like a dog, and follow him as he goes, pressing its nose against it; and if the goatherd drags it away, it will lament as if torn from the lotus. On the cliffs of the mountain there grow tall frankincense-trees and many other kinds, and the pepper-trees, whose cultivators are the apes. Nor shall I pass over what the pepper-tree resembles, nor the manner of its cultivation, which I will set forth. The pepper-tree resembles the agnus castus of the Greeks in other respects and especially in the cluster of its fruit; but it grows on sheer crags inaccessible to men, where it is said that a community of apes dwells in the recesses of the mountain and in whatever is hollow of it. These apes the Indians count of great worth, since they harvest the pepper for them; and so they keep the lions off them with dogs and weapons. For a lion attacks an ape, when he is sick, for the sake of a remedy — for the flesh of the apes checks his disease — and when he is old, for the sake of food; for being now past their prime for the hunting of deer and boar, they devour the apes, using upon this the strength that is left them. But the men do not look on idly; rather, holding these beasts to be their benefactors, they take up arms against the lions on their behalf. For the way they deal with the pepper-trees is this. The Indians go up to the lower trees, cut off the fruit, and make little threshing-floors about the trees, into which they heap the pepper as though casting it away — as though it were some worthless thing of no concern to men. The apes, watching this from above and from their inaccessible heights, when night comes imitate the work of the Indians: they strip off the clusters from the trees and carry them, casting them down, into the floors; and at daybreak the Indians take up heaps of the spice without having toiled at all, but at their ease and asleep.

When they had passed over the mountain, they say they saw a smooth plain cut up with trenches full of water. Some of these ran crosswise, others straight, drawn off from the river Ganges; and they served both as boundaries of the land and as channels for the plains, whenever the earth was thirsty. They say that this land is the best in India and the largest of all the territories there, fifteen days' journey in length to the Ganges, and eighteen from the sea to the mountain of the apes, along which it lies. The whole country is level, black, and fruitful of all things. For in it one may see ears of grain standing as tall as reeds, and beans three times the size of the Egyptian, with sesame and millet of vast growth. Here too they say grows the coconut, many of which are dedicated in the temples in these parts as a marvel. The vines grow small, like those of the Lydians and Maeonians, but their wine is drinkable and fragrant from the very vintage. Here too they say they met a tree resembling the laurel, on which grows a calyx like a great pomegranate, and within the calyx is set an apple, dark blue like the cup of the hyacinth, and the sweetest of all the fruits the seasons bring.

As they came down the mountain, they say they fell in with a hunt of dragons, of which I must speak. For it would be quite absurd, when much has been said about the hare and how it is caught and may be caught, by those who give their minds to such things, that we should pass over an account of a noble and divine hunt, which was not omitted even by the man for whose sake I have written these things. For all the land of India is girdled with dragons of measureless length; the marshes are full of them, the mountains are full of them, and no hill is without one. Those of the marshes are sluggish and thirty cubits long, and have no upraised crest, but are like the female dragons, sufficiently black on the back and less scaly than the rest. And Homer has touched on these creatures more wisely than the common run of poets; for he called the dragon that dwelt at Aulis beside the spring "blood-red on the back," whereas the other poets say that the one of like kind in the grove of Nemea had a crest also, which we should not find among the marsh-dragons.

But those that haunt the foothills and the ridges go down into the plains to hunt, and they surpass the marsh-dragons in every way; for they grow to a greater length and move swifter than the swiftest rivers, and nothing escapes them. These have a crest also, moderate while they are young, but growing and rising high as they reach their full size, when they become red and saw-backed. These too grow beards, and lift their necks aloft, and their scales glitter like silver, while the pupils of their eyes are a fiery stone; and their strength, they say, is irresistible for many hidden things. The plain-dragon becomes a prize to the hunters whenever it draws down one of the elephants; for this destroys both beasts together. And to those who take dragons there come as gain the eyes, the skin, and the teeth. In other respects these teeth are like those of the largest swine, but slenderer and twisted, and unworn at the point, like the teeth of great fishes.

The mountain-dragons have scales that gleam like gold, and they are longer than those of the plain; they have beards like clusters, golden also, and their brows overhang more than those of the plain-dragons, and beneath the brow lies an eye terrible and fierce in its gaze. They carry a sound like the clash of bronze when they move along the ground, and from their crests, which are flame-coloured, there flashes a fire brighter than a torch. These take elephants also, and are themselves caught by the Indians in this way. Upon a scarlet cloak they weave golden letters, and lay it before the dragon's lair, having charmed the letters with a spell that brings sleep, by which the eyes of the dragon, otherwise unblinking, are overcome; and they chant over it much of their secret wisdom, by which it is drawn on, and stretching its neck out of the lair it falls asleep upon the letters. Then the Indians, falling upon it as it lies, drive their axes into it, and cutting off the head carry off the stones within it. In the heads of the mountain-dragons, they say, there lie hidden stones of flowery hue, flashing back all colours, and of unspeakable power, like the ring which they say came to Gyges. But often the Indian, axe and skill and all, is seized by the dragon and carried off into its lair, all but shaking the mountain. These dragons are also said to dwell in the mountains about the Red Sea; and a terrible hissing is heard from them, and when they go down to the sea they swim far out into the deep. As to the length of years of this creature, it is impossible to know and incredible to tell. So much I know about dragons.

The city beneath the mountain, which is very great, they say is called Paraca, and in the midst of it are dedicated very many heads of dragons, since the Indians of that place train themselves in this hunting from their youth. They are said also to understand the speech and counsels of animals, by feeding, some on the heart, some on the liver, of a dragon. As they went on, they say they heard a flute, as of some herdsman ordering his flock; and it was white deer being pastured, which the Indians milk, holding the milk from them to be very nourishing.

From there, journeying four days through a happy and well-tilled country, they say they came near to the tower of the sages. Their guide bade the camel kneel, and leapt down from it, full of fear and sweat. Apollonius understood where he had come, and laughing at the Indian's terror said, as it seems to me: "This man, even if after measuring out some great stretch of sea he had put into a long-sought harbour, would still be vexed at the land and afraid of being in port." And saying this he bade his camel kneel — for by now he was used to such things. But what so frightened the guide was the coming near to the sages; for the Indians fear these men more than their own king, since the king himself, under whom the country lies, asks these men about all that he must say and do, as those who send to an oracle of a god; and they signify what is better for him to do, and what is not better they forbid and warn against.

As they were about to halt in the village near by — it is not yet a stade distant from the hill of the sages — they say they saw a youth running towards them, the blackest of all the Indians, with a crescent gleaming faintly between his brows. This same thing I hear told in later times of Memnon, the foster-child of Herodes the sophist; he was of Ethiopian stock, and in his boyhood this gleam was thought to shine, but as he grew to manhood it faded and vanished together with his youthful bloom. The Indian, they say, carried a golden anchor, which the Indians use as a herald's wand, signifying that he can stay all things.

Running up to Apollonius, he addressed him in the Greek tongue; and this seemed no great marvel, since all in the village also spoke Greek. But the words "Hail, So-and-so" — addressing him by name — astonished the rest, and gave the man confidence as to the purpose of his coming. For looking at Damis he said: "We have come, in plain truth, to men who are wise; for they seem to have foreknowledge." And at once he asked the Indian what he ought to do, longing now for the meeting. The Indian said: "These must halt here, but you must come as you are; for they themselves command it.

The word "they themselves" seemed at once Pythagorean to Apollonius, and he followed gladly. The hill on which the sages have their dwelling is, they say, in height the equal of the Acropolis of the Athenians, and it rises straight up from the plain; and a natural rock, equally well-formed, fortifies it, running round it in a circle, on which in many places one may see cloven footprints, and the marks of beards and faces, and here and there backs, as of men who had slipped off. For when Dionysus, together with Heracles, made trial of the place, they say he bade the Pans assail it, as being mighty against earthquakes; but the sages thunderstruck them, and they fell, one this way, one that, and the rocks were as it were stamped with the figures of their failure. About the hill they say they saw a cloud, in which the Indians dwell, visible and invisible, and whatever else they will. Whether there were other gates to the hill, they could not tell; for the cloud about it allowed it to appear neither unbarred nor barred.

He himself went up by the southern side of the hill, following the Indian; and first he saw a well four fathoms deep, from which a light, of the deepest blue, was sent up to the mouth; and when the noonday sun stood over it, the light was drawn up from the ray and rose, presenting the appearance of a warm rainbow. He learned afterwards about the well, that the earth beneath it was of red arsenic, and that they held the water to be sacred, and no one drank of it or drew it up, but it was reckoned an oath by all the Indians round about. Near it was a crater of fire, from which there rose a leaden-coloured flame, but no smoke darted from it, nor any odour; nor did this crater ever overflow, but it gave forth just so much as not to brim over the pit. Here the Indians purify themselves of their involuntary offences, and so the sages call the well the "well of testing," and the fire the "fire of pardon." And they say they saw two jars of black stone, of the rains and of the winds. The jar of the rains, if India is oppressed by drought, when opened sends up clouds and waters all the earth; but if the rains are excessive, it checks them by being shut. The jar of the winds does the same, I think, as the bag of Aeolus; for opening the jar a little they let one of the winds blow forth in its season, and from this the earth is strengthened. They say also that they came upon statues of gods; and if of Indian or Egyptian gods, no marvel; but the most ancient of the Greek images, that of Athena Polias, and of Apollo of Delos, and of Dionysus of the Marsh, and of Apollo of Amyclae, and all that are thus ancient — these the Indians set up and worship after Greek usage; and they say they dwell in the very midst of India. And they make the hill the navel of this height, and upon it perform the rites of fire, which they say they themselves draw from the sun's rays; to this they also sing a hymn the whole day long, at noon.

What manner of men these sages are, and how they dwell upon the hill, the man himself sets forth. For in one of his discourses to the Egyptians he says: "I saw Indians, Brahmans, dwelling upon the earth and not upon it, walled without walls, and possessing nothing yet possessing all things." This he wrote rather riddlingly; but Damis says that they sleep upon the ground, and strew beneath them such grasses as they themselves choose; and that he saw them walking on air, two cubits above the ground — not for the sake of working wonders, for these men disdain such ambition, but because, in whatever they do together with the Sun as they rise from the earth, they reckon they are doing what is acceptable to the god. The fire which they draw from the ray, although it is bodily, they neither burn upon an altar nor keep in furnaces, but, like the beams that are reflected from sun and water, so it is seen aloft and quivering in the upper air. By day they pray to the Sun on behalf of the seasons over which he presides, that they may come in due time to the earth and that India may prosper; but by night they beseech the ray not to take it amiss that it is night, but to remain as it was led down by them. Such is the meaning of Apollonius' saying that the Brahmans are upon the earth and not upon the earth. The phrase "walled without walls" signifies the air under which they live; for though they seem to lodge in the open, they raise a shadow over themselves, and are not wetted when it rains, and are in the sunshine whenever they will. The phrase "possessing nothing, having all things" Damis explains thus: all the springs that leap up from the earth for the Bacchants, whenever Dionysus shakes them and the earth, come also to these Indians as they feast and give feasts; so that, reasonably, Apollonius says that those who provide what they wish without preparation, but on the spur of the moment, possess what they do not possess. They let their hair grow, as the Lacedaemonians did of old, and the Thurians and Tarentines and Melians, and all who held Laconian ways in honour; they bind on a white turban, walk barefoot, and shape their dress much like the workman's tunic. The material of their dress is a wool of native growth which the earth itself brings forth, white like that of Pamphylia, but softer in its bearing, and a fat like oil drips from it. This they make into sacred raiment; and if anyone but these Indians tries to draw it up, the earth will not let go the wool. As for the power of the ring and the staff, both of which they wear, all things are within their power, but two are honoured in silence as unspeakable.

As Apollonius drew near, the other sages welcomed him, greeting him with their hands; but Iarchas sat upon a high seat — it was of black bronze, adorned with golden figures, while the seats of the others were of bronze too, but plain and less high, for they sat below Iarchas. When he saw Apollonius, he greeted him in the Greek tongue and asked for the Indian's letter. When Apollonius marvelled at his foreknowledge, he said that one letter, a delta, was wanting in the epistle, which had been passed over in the writing; and so it proved. When he had read the letter, he said: "What do you think of us, Apollonius?" "What," he said, "but as the very distance I have come for your sake shows — a journey such as none of the men of my country has yet made?" "And what do you suppose we know more than you do?" "I," he said, "hold your knowledge to be wiser and far more divine; and if I find among you nothing beyond what I know, then at least I shall have learned that there is nothing more for me to learn." The Indian answered: "Others ask those who come to them whence they come and on what errand; but with us the first proof of wisdom is not to be ignorant of him who has come. Test this first." And saying this he recounted Apollonius' lineage on his father's and mother's side, and all that had passed at Aegae, and how Damis had come to him, and whatever they had been earnest about on the road, or had seen of another's earnestness; all this the Indian set forth without drawing breath and clearly, as though he had shared their journey. When Apollonius was astonished and asked whence he knew it, the Indian said: "You too have come a partaker of this wisdom, but not yet of all of it." "Will you then teach me," he said, "all the wisdom?" "Yes, and ungrudgingly," he said; "for this is wiser than to grudge and hide what is worth earnest study. And besides, Apollonius, I see you full of Memory, which we love above all the gods." "Have you then seen," he said, "what my nature is?" "We," he said, "Apollonius, see all the forms of the soul, tracing them out by countless signs. But since noon is near, and we must prepare what is fitting for the gods, let us now perform this; and afterwards let us discourse on whatever you wish, and be present at all that is done." "By Zeus," said Apollonius, "I should wrong the Caucasus and the Indus, which I have crossed to come to you, if I did not fill myself with all that you do.

"Fill yourself," he said, "and let us go." So they came to a certain spring of water, which Damis says, on seeing it later, was like the Dirce in Boeotia. First they stripped, then anointed their heads with an amber-like drug, which so warmed the Indians that their bodies steamed and the sweat poured down in streams, as from those who bathe in fire; then they threw themselves into the water, and having so bathed they walked to the temple crowned and full of the hymn. Standing round in the figure of a chorus, with Iarchas as their leader, they struck the earth with their upright staves, and it, swelling up like a wave, lifted them two cubits into the air. And they sang a song like the paean of Sophocles which is sung to Asclepius at Athens. When they had come down to the ground, Iarchas called the youth who bore the anchor and said: "Take care of Apollonius' companions." And he, having gone and returned far swifter than the swift among birds, said: "I have taken care." So when they had performed most of the rites, they rested upon their seats; and Iarchas said to the youth: "Bring out for the wise Apollonius the throne of Phraotes, that he may sit upon it and discourse.

When he had taken his seat, Iarchas said: "Ask what you will; for you have come to men who know all things." Apollonius asked whether they knew themselves also, supposing that, like the Greeks, he held self-knowledge to be hard. But the other, contrary to Apollonius' opinion, said: "We know all things, since first of all we know ourselves; for none of us would come to this philosophy who did not first know himself." Apollonius, remembering what he had heard from Phraotes, and how he who is to be a philosopher must first test himself before setting out, agreed with this saying, for of himself too he was persuaded of it. Then he asked again what they held themselves to be; and the other said "gods." When he asked why, "Because," he said, "we are good men." This seemed to Apollonius so full of good breeding that he spoke of it afterwards even to Domitian, in his defence of himself.

Taking up the question again, he said: "And of the soul, what do you think?" "What," said the other, "Pythagoras delivered to you, and we to the Egyptians." "Would you then say," he asked, "as Pythagoras declared himself to have been Euphorbus, that you too, before coming into this body, were some Trojan or Achaean, or such a one?" The Indian said: "Troy perished by the Achaeans who sailed against it then, but you Greeks have been undone by the tales told about it. For thinking that those alone were men who fought against Troy, you neglect more men and more divine, whom both your land and that of the Egyptians and of the Indians have borne. Since, then, you ask me about my former body, tell me which of those who came against Troy, or in its defence, you hold most admirable." "I hold Achilles," he said, "the son of Peleus and Thetis; for he is hymned by Homer as the fairest and, beyond all the Achaeans, the greatest, and great deeds are known of him; and he counts as great the Ajaxes and Nireus, who after him are sung as fair and noble." "To him, Apollonius," he said, "look, and to my ancestor, or rather to my ancestral body; for this Pythagoras held to be Euphorbus.

"There was a time," he said, "when Ethiopians dwelt here, a race of India, and Ethiopia did not yet exist, but Egypt was bounded beyond Meroe and the Cataracts — Egypt itself supplying both the springs of the Nile and ending where its mouths end. So long as the Ethiopians dwelt here, subject to king Ganges, the land nourished them sufficiently and the gods cared for them; but when they slew this king, they were thought unclean by the rest of the Indians, and the land would not suffer them to remain. For the seed they sowed in it, before it came to the ear, it destroyed; the births of the women it made imperfect; and it fed the flocks ill.

"And I should tell more of the man, were I not loath to set myself to my own praise; for I am he. This I made plain when I was four years old; for once, when Ganges had fixed seven adamantine swords in the earth, that no terror might come near the country, and the gods commanded those who came to sacrifice where these were fixed, but did not declare the place in which they had been set — I, a mere child, led the interpreters to a trench and bade them dig there, saying that the swords had been laid in that spot.

"And do not yet marvel at me, if I have passed from one Indian into another. For this one" — and he pointed to a youth of some twenty years — "is by nature fitted for philosophy beyond all men, and is sound, as you see, and nobly built in body, and endures fire and every cutting; yet, being such, he is at enmity with philosophy." "What then," said Apollonius, "Iarchas, is the youth's affliction? For it is a strange thing you tell, if one so framed by nature does not embrace philosophy, nor love learning, and that too while living among you." "He does not live with us," he said, "but, like the lions, he has been caught against his will, and is shut in, but looks askance at us as we tame and stroke him. This youth, then, was Palamedes at Troy, and he had as his bitterest enemies Odysseus and Homer — the one who contrived against him the arts by which he was stoned to death, the other who did not deem him worthy even of a verse. And since neither did the wisdom he had profit him at all, nor did he meet with Homer as his praiser — by whom many even of the undistinguished were brought to fame — and since he was overcome by Odysseus though he did no wrong, he is set against philosophy and bewails his fate. And this is Palamedes, who writes also though he never learned letters.

As they were discoursing thus, a messenger came to Iarchas and said: "The king will come about the first watch of the afternoon to confer with you about his affairs." "Let him come," he said; "for he too would go away the better for knowing a Greek." And saying this he took up again the former discourse. So he asked Apollonius: "Would you tell of your first body, and who you were before the one you have now?" He said: "Since that was an inglorious thing, I remember little of it." Iarchas took him up: "Do you then think it inglorious to have been the pilot of an Egyptian ship? For I see that this is what you were." "True," he said, "Iarchas; for this is in plain truth what I was; but I hold it not only inglorious but base, and, though as worthy among men as ruling or commanding an army, ill spoken of by those who slander the sea. At any rate, the noblest of my deeds no one then thought worthy even of praise." "And what noble deed will you say you did, save the doubling of Malea and Sunium, when you reined in the ship as it ran wild, and clearly distinguished, at stern and prow, from what quarter the winds would break, and lifted the vessel over the reefs in the hollow of Euboea, where many headlands stand up?

Apollonius said: "Since you set me on the pilot's theme, hear what I think I then did soundly. The sea was once beset by Phoenician pirates, and they went round the cities learning who carried what. The pirates' agents, seeing the rich cargo of my ship, drew me aside and asked how large a share of the fare I would take. I said a thousand, since four of us were piloting the ship. 'And have you a house?' they asked. 'A poor hut,' I said, 'about the island of Pharos, where once Proteus dwelt.' 'Would you then,' they asked me, 'have land instead of sea, and a house instead of the hut, and ten times this fare, and escape the ten thousand evils which the swollen sea brings upon pilots?' 'I should wish it,' I said, 'but I do not think myself fit for piracy, now that I have grown wiser than I was and have been deemed worthy of crowns by my craft.' As they went on and said they would give me purses of ten thousand drachmas if I would become for them what they wished, I urged them to speak out, saying that I would fall in no way short of being wholly their man. So they said they were agents of pirates, and begged me not to deprive them of taking the ship, nor to sail out to the town when I should weigh anchor from there, but to bring to under the headland — for the pirate ships were lying in wait round about it. And they wished to swear to me that they would neither kill me themselves nor refuse to spare the death of any whom I should beg off. Now I did not think it safe for myself to reprove them, fearing that, falling into despair, they might attack the ship while she was on the high sea, and we should perish somewhere in the deep; so, promising to do their bidding, I said they must swear that they would in very truth keep faith. When they had sworn — for they were talking in a temple — 'Go,' I said, 'to the pirate craft, for we shall set out by night.' And I seemed the more convincing in still discussing the money, that it should be counted out to me good coin, and not before they had taken the ship. So they went off, but I put out to the open sea, doubling the headland." "And this," said Iarchas, "Apollonius, you hold to be a work of justice?" "Yes, and of humanity besides," he said; "for not to sell men's lives, nor to traffic away the merchants' goods, and to prove oneself, sailor though one is, stronger than money — this I think gathers up many virtues in one.

The Indian laughed and said: "You seem to think that not doing wrong is justice; and this, I imagine, all Greeks think. For as I once heard from Egyptians who came here, governors come to you from Rome with the axe bared against you, not yet knowing whether they will rule worthy men or base; and you, if these do not sell their verdicts, call them just. This too I hear the slave-dealers do there: if they come bringing you Carian slaves and interpret their character to you, they make it the praise of the slaves that they do not steal. Such you deem worthy the rulers to whom you say you are subject, and brightening them with the praises you give to slaves, you send them off enviable, as you think. But your wisest poets do not grant you to be just and good even if you wish it. For Minos, who surpassed all men in cruelty and enslaved with his ships those upon the sea and in the sea, they honour with the sceptre of justice and set in Hades to judge the souls; while Tantalus, because he was good and shared with his friends the immortality given him by the gods, they shut off from drink and food, and there are some who even hang stones over him and heap terrible insults on a divine and good man — whom I should rather wish to have a lake of nectar welling round him, since he poured it out humanely and ungrudgingly." And as he said this he pointed to a statue on the left, on which was inscribed TANTALUS. The statue was four cubits high, and was like a man of fifty years, and was clothed in Argive fashion, but wore the cloak differently, like the Thessalians; and it held out a bowl sufficient for one thirsty man, in which a draught of pure liquor bubbled without overflowing the bowl. What they take it to be, and why they drink from it, I shall presently show. But one must hold that Tantalus did not sin with his tongue, but, because he shared the nectar with men, is driven by the poets, and is not at enmity with the gods; for if he were hateful to the gods, he would never have been judged good by the Indians, who are most dear to the gods and do nothing outside the divine.

As they were busy with this discourse, an uproar from the village fell upon them; for the king had arrived, decked out in Median fashion and full of pomp. Iarchas was vexed, and said: "If it were Phraotes who was halting here, you would see everything full of silence, as in a mystery." From this Apollonius understood that this king fell short of Phraotes not in a small degree but in all philosophy. And seeing the sages at ease and preparing nothing of what the king needed, who was coming after noon, he asked: "Where will the king lodge?" "Here," they said; "for the matters for which he comes we discuss by night, since the time is better for counsel." "And will a table be set for him on his arrival?" "By Zeus," they said, "a rich one, with all that is to be had here." "Do you then live richly?" he asked. "We," they said, "live frugally; for though we might eat more, we delight in little. But the king needs much, for he wishes it. Yet he will eat no living thing, for that is not lawful here, but sweetmeats and roots and the fruits of the season, all that India now has, and all that the coming seasons will give.

"But look," he said, "here he is." For the king was advancing, together with his brother and his son, flashing with gold and jewels. As Apollonius rose, Iarchas held him in his seat, for this was not their custom. Damis says he himself was not present at this, since on that day he was lodging in the village, but that having heard it from Apollonius he wrote it into his own account. He says, then, that while they sat, the king stretched out his hand to the men as if in prayer, and they nodded as though agreeing to what he asked, and he rejoiced greatly at the promise, as one who had come to a god. But the king's brother, and his son, a most beautiful youth, were regarded as no better than if they had been slaves of these attendants. After this the Indian rose and, uttering his voice, bade him touch food; and when the king accepted this most gladly, four Pythian tripods came forth of themselves, like those of Homer, advancing, and beneath them cup-bearers of black bronze, like the Ganymedes and Pelopses among the Greeks. The earth strewed beneath them grasses softer than couches. Sweetmeats and loaves and herbs and the ripe fruits of the season came in, all set out in order more pleasingly than if cooks had prepared them; and of the tripods two flowed with wine, while of the other two one gave a spring of hot water, the other of cold. The stones that come from India are among the Greeks set into necklaces and rings because of their smallness, but among the Indians they become wine-coolers and ice-pails because of their size, and bowls large enough to fill four thirsty men in the season of the year. The bronze cup-bearers, he says, drew wine and water in due measure, and passed the cups round, as at drinking-parties. And they reclined as at a common feast, yet not with the king set above the rest — that which among Greeks and Romans is of much account — but as it chanced, where each had a mind.

As the drinking went on, "I pledge you," said Iarchas, "O king, a Greek," pointing to Apollonius reclining below him, and signifying with his hand that he was noble and divine. The king said: "I heard that this man and those who lodge in the village belong to Phraotes." "Rightly and truly you heard," he said, "for he entertains him here too." "What is his pursuit?" he asked. "What else," he said, "but that of Phraotes?" "You have told me nothing strange," he said, "in saying that he embraces a pursuit which did not allow even him to become noble." Then Iarchas said: "Think more soberly, O king, of philosophy and of Phraotes; for while you were a youth, your youth allowed you such things, but now that you are passing into manhood, let us spare ourselves what is foolish and easy-going." But Apollonius, while Iarchas interpreted, said: "And you, O king — what has not being a philosopher given you?" "To me," he said, "all virtue, and to be one with the Sun." But the other, to curb his vanity, said: "If you were a philosopher, you would not think these things." "And you," said the king, "since you are a philosopher, my good man, what do you think of yourself?" "That I am held a good man," he said, "if I am a philosopher." Then stretching out his hand to heaven, "By the Sun," he said, "you have come full of Phraotes." But the other took this as a windfall and said: "My journey has not been in vain, if I have become full of Phraotes; and if you should meet him now, you would say he was full of me. He wished to write to you on my behalf, but since he said you were a good man, I begged off the trouble of the letter, seeing that no one wrote to him on my behalf either.

Here the king's first drunken outburst ended; for hearing himself praised by Phraotes, he forgot his suspicion, and slackening his tone said: "Hail, good stranger." And Apollonius said: "And to you, O king; for you seem now to have arrived." "Who," said the king, "brought you to us?" "These gods," he said, "and wise men." "And concerning me," he said, "stranger, what report is there among the Greeks?" "As great," he said, "as the report of the Greeks here." "I," he said, "deem nothing among the Greeks worthy of report." "I will tell them this," he said, "and they will crown you at Olympia.

And leaning towards Iarchas he said: "Let this man be drunk; but tell me why you do not deem these about him, his brother, as you say, and his son, worthy of a common table, nor of any other honour." "Because," he said, "they think they will one day be kings, and it is needful that they should be looked down upon, that they may learn not to look down on others." Seeing that the sages were eighteen, he asked Iarchas again what their being so many meant; "for the number," he said, "is not one of the squares, nor of those esteemed and honoured, like the ten, the twelve, the sixteen, and such." The Indian answered: "We are not slaves to number, nor is number our master, but we are esteemed by wisdom and virtue; and at one time we are more than now, at another fewer. My own grandfather, I hear, was reckoned among seventy wise men, being the youngest of them, but living to a hundred and thirty years was left alone here, since none of those others survived, nor was there then anywhere in India a philosophic or noble nature. The Egyptians wrote of him among the most fortunate, since he alone for four years presided over this throne, and he bade them cease to reproach the Indians with a scarcity of sages. And we, Apollonius, hearing the Egyptians tell of the Elean customs and of the Hellanodicae, who preside over the Olympics, being ten, do not praise the law laid down concerning them; for they leave the choice to the lot, which provides nothing, and even one of the meaner men might be chosen by the lot. But if they chose the men by merit or by vote, would they not err alike? For the number ten, being inexorable, would, if there were more just men, deprive some of being honoured for it; and if there were not ten just men, no one would seem to be just. So the Eleans would be far wiser to be at one time more, at another fewer in number, but the same in justice.

While they were earnest about this, the king tried to break in, dividing them from all discourse and ever saying something witless and ignorant. So again he asked what they were earnest about, and Apollonius said: "We are discoursing of great things, and of those most esteemed among the Greeks; but you would think these small, for you say you are set against the affairs of the Greeks." "I am indeed set against them," he said, "yet I wish to hear all the same; for you seem to me to be speaking on behalf of the Athenians, the slaves of Xerxes." Apollonius said: "We are discoursing of other matters; but since you have made mention of the Athenians strangely and falsely, tell me this: have you slaves, O king?" "Twenty thousand," he said, "and I have bought not one of them, but they are all home-born." Again he asked, through Iarchas as interpreter, whether the king ran away from his own slaves, or the slaves from him; and the king, insulting him, said the question was slavish, "but nevertheless I answer: he who runs away is a slave and otherwise bad, but a master would not run from one whom he may rack and flog." "Then, O king," he said, "Xerxes is by your own showing declared to be a slave of the Athenians, and a bad slave, for he ran from them; since, beaten by them in the sea-fight at the straits, and fearing for his bridges over the Hellespont, he fled in a single ship." "And yet," said the king, "he burned Athens with his own hands." Apollonius said: "For this daring deed, O king, he paid such a penalty as no other man ever paid; for those whom he thought to have destroyed, from these he fled away. And I, when I consider Xerxes' purpose, by which he made his expedition, should hold him worthy to be reckoned by some, as he was, a Zeus; but for his flight I count him the most ill-fated of men. For had he died in the hands of the Greeks, what man would have been deemed worthy of more splendid words? What greater tomb would the Greeks have raised over him? What contest in arms, what contest in music, would not have been founded in his honour? For if Melicertes and Palaemon, who died still at the breast, and Pelops the Lydian incomer, who enslaved Arcadia and Argolis and all within the Isthmus, were raised by the Greeks to divine remembrance, what would not have befallen Xerxes at the hands of men who by nature love virtues and count it their own praise to praise those whom they conquer?

As Apollonius said this, the king was moved to tears, and said: "Dearest friend, what manner of men you show me the Greeks to be!" "Whence then, O king, were you so harsh towards them?" "They slander the Greek race, stranger," he said, "those who come here from Egypt, declaring themselves holy and wise and lawgivers of sacrifices and rites, all that the Greeks observe, but saying that the Greeks are nothing sound, but insolent, a rabble, full of all anarchy, tellers of tales and of marvels, and poor — yet showing this not as a thing of dignity but as an excuse for stealing. But now, hearing from you these things, and how ambitious and good they are, I make a truce henceforth with the Greeks, and grant them to be praised by me, and that I should pray for the Greeks all that I can, and that the Egyptians should be distrusted by me." And Iarchas said: "I too, O king, knew that your ears had been corrupted by these Egyptians, but I said nothing on behalf of the Greeks until you should meet with such a token. But since you have been made better by a wise man, let the loving-cup of Tantalus now be drunk by us, and let us sleep over the things for which we must be earnest by night; and of Greek discourses, which are the most numerous among men, I will fill you henceforth to your joy, whenever you come." And at once he led the way to his fellow-drinkers, being the first to stoop to the bowl, which gave drink enough to all, for the draught flowed ungrudgingly, as from welling springs; and Apollonius too drank, for this draught is found among the Indians as a pledge of friendship. And they make Tantalus its cup-bearer, since he was thought the most loving of men.

When they had drunk, the earth received them on couches which it strewed of itself. And when it was midnight, first they rose and hymned the ray aloft, as at noon, then they joined the king in all that he needed. Damis says that Apollonius was not present at what the king was earnest about, but supposes that the meeting was held concerning the secrets of his rule. So having sacrificed at daybreak, the king came to Apollonius and invited him to be his guest in the palace, saying he would send him back enviable to the Greeks. But Apollonius praised this, yet said he would not give himself to a man in no way like himself, and that, being abroad longer than was fitting, he was ashamed that his friends at home should seem to be slighted. When the king pressed him and now clung to him without dignity, Iarchas said: "The king wrongs the holy house in leading a man away from here against his will; and besides, being one of those with foreknowledge, this man knows that his meeting with you will not be for his good, nor perhaps will it have anything wholesome for you yourself.

So the king went down to the village, for the law of the sages did not allow the king to be with them above one day; and Iarchas said to the messenger and to Damis: "We deem him worthy of the secrets here; let him come, and do you take care of the rest in the village." When Damis came, they sat down together, as was their custom, and gave Apollonius leave to ask; and he asked of what they thought the cosmos was composed. They said, "of elements." "Of four, then?" he said. "Not of four," said Iarchas, "but of five." "And what fifth could there be," he said, "besides water and air and earth and fire?" "The ether," he said, "which one must hold to be the begetting of the gods; for all that draws the air is mortal, but all that draws the ether is immortal and divine." Again he asked which of the elements came first into being, and Iarchas said: "All at once; for a living creature is not born part by part." "Am I to hold the cosmos a living creature?" he said. "If you judge soundly," he said; "for it brings all things to life of itself." "Shall we call it female," he said, "or of the male and opposite nature?" "Of both," he said; "for being joined with itself, it does both the part of mother and of father to the bringing-forth of life, and it has for itself a love hotter than any one thing has for another, which fits it together and holds it firm; nor is it strange that it should grow together with itself. And as the movement of a living creature is the work of hands and feet and of the mind within it, by which it is impelled, so let us hold that the parts of the cosmos too, through its mind, offer themselves fit for all things born and conceived. For the afflictions that come from droughts come according to that mind, whenever, justice having fallen out among men, they fare dishonourably; and this living creature is shepherded not by one hand but by many and unspeakable hands, which it uses, unbridled because of its greatness, yet moved obedient and easily led.

"And I do not know what example will suffice for the argument, great as it is and beyond conception; but let there be supposed a ship, such as the Egyptians frame and send out to our sea, giving Egyptian goods in exchange for Indian cargoes. For an ancient law concerning the Red Sea, which king Erythras laid down when he ruled that sea, that the Egyptians should not sail into it with a long ship, but should use one round vessel, leads the Egyptians to devise a craft equal to many of others'; and planking it about with all the joinings that compose a ship, and raising it with sides and a mast and fixing on it several cabins such as are on the decks, many pilots sail in this ship under the eldest and wisest, and many commanders at the prow, the best and most skilful sailors, leaping to the sails; and there is in this ship a part that bears arms also, for against the barbarians of the gulf, who lie on the right of the entrance, the ship must draw up in line when they sail out to plunder it. Let us hold that it is so with this cosmos too, viewing it after the figure of a voyage. For the first and most perfect seat must be given to the god who begets this living creature; the next to the gods who steer its parts; and let us accept the poets when they say that many gods are in heaven, many in the sea, many in springs and streams, many about the earth, and that there are some beneath the earth. But the place beneath the earth, if it exists, since they sing of it as full of horror and destruction, let us set apart from the cosmos.

When the Indian had gone through this, Damis says he was beside himself with astonishment and cried aloud; for he would never have thought that an Indian man could come to such command of the Greek tongue, nor, even if he knew the tongue, could go through these things with such fluency and grace. And he praises his look and his smile and his not seeming to bring forth his opinions without divine help. And Apollonius too, who used his words gracefully and without din, yet improved, he says, after this Indian; and wherever he sat discoursing — and he did this often — he resembled Iarchas.

When the others praised the discourse together with the voice, Apollonius asked again whether they held the sea or the land to be greater; and Iarchas said: "If the land be measured against the sea, it will be greater, for it holds the sea; but if it be viewed against the whole watery substance, we should declare the land the less, for the water bears it up too.

In the midst of this discourse the messenger came before the sages, bringing Indians in need of help. And he led forward a woman entreating for her son, whom she said was sixteen years old and had been possessed by a demon for two years, and that the temper of the demon was mocking and lying. When one of the sages asked whence she said this, she said: "This son of mine is comely to look on, and the demon is in love with him and does not let him have his wits, nor suffer him to go to a teacher's or to an archer's, nor to be at home, but turns him aside into desert places; and the boy has not even his own voice, but speaks deep and hollow, as men do, and looks with other eyes than his own. And I weep over this and tear myself and admonish my son as is fitting, but he does not know me. And when I purposed this journey here — and I purposed it last year — the demon disclosed himself, using my son as his mouthpiece, and said that he was the ghost of a man who once died in war, and died loving his own wife; but when his wife outraged the marriage-bed by being wedded to another on the third day after he lay dead, he came thereby to hate the love of women, and passed over into this boy. And he promised, if I would not accuse him before you, to give the boy many good and excellent things. I was indeed moved by this, but he has now kept me off a long time and holds my house alone, with no moderate or true intent." So the sage asked again whether the boy were near, and she said no; "for I did much to make him come, but he threatens cliffs and chasms, and to kill my son for me, if I bring suit against him here." "Take heart," said the sage; "for he will not kill him when he has read this." And drawing a letter from his bosom he gave it to the woman; and the letter was addressed to the ghost, with threats and terrors.

And there came also a lame man, already thirty years old, a mighty hunter of lions, upon whom a lion had fallen, so that he had dislocated his hip and was otherwise crippled in the leg. But when the hands of the sages stroked his hip, the young man came to walk upright. And another, who had a flux of the eyes, went away with all the light in them restored; and another, who was powerless in the hand, went away with the use of it. And a woman who had borne seven children with hard labour was healed thus through her husband's entreaty: he bade the husband, when his wife was in travail, to bring into the room where she bore a live hare under his cloak, and going round her to let the hare go at once; for the womb would be cast out together with the child, unless the hare were straightway carried out of doors.

And when a certain father said that sons had been born to him, but had died as soon as they began to drink wine, Iarchas took him up and said: "And it was better that they died; for they would not have escaped going mad, being sprung, as it seems, of too hot a seed. Those born of you, then, must abstain from wine; but that they may never even fall into a desire for wine — if a child should be born to you again, and one has been born seven days ago, as I see — you must watch the owl, the bird, where she nests, and snatching her eggs give them to the babe to chew, boiling them in moderation; for if it eats any of these before it tastes wine, a hatred of wine will be bred in it, and it will be most temperate, being tempered only by the heat that is in its nature." So filling themselves with these things and amazed at the men's wisdom in all matters, they asked very many discourses every day, and many they were themselves asked.

In the dialectical converse both took part; but in the secret studies, by which they observed divination from the stars and were earnest about foreknowledge, and applied themselves to sacrifices and invocations in which the gods delight, Damis says that Apollonius alone shared the philosophy of Iarchas, and that from there he composed four books about divination by the stars, which Moeragenes also mentioned, and a book about sacrifices, and how one should sacrifice to each god fittingly and acceptably. As for the lore of the stars and all such divination, I hold it beyond the nature of man, and I do not even know whether anyone possesses it; but the work about sacrifices I found in many temples and many cities and many houses of wise men, and how should one interpret it, set down with such dignity and in the man's own ringing voice? Damis says too that Iarchas gave Apollonius seven rings named after the seven stars, which Apollonius wore one by one according to the names of the days.

Once, when their discourse was about foreknowledge, and Apollonius was devoted to this wisdom and turned most of his talk to it, Iarchas praised him and said: "Those who delight in divination, good Apollonius, become divine by it and work for the safety of men. For to discover by oneself what one would have to go to a god to find, and to foretell to others what they do not yet know — this I count the mark of one wholly blessed and of equal power with Apollo of Delphi. And since the art bids those who go to the god to be consulted come pure, or it will say to them, 'Depart from the temple,' it seems to me that the man who is to have foreknowledge must be sound in himself, and have neither stain clinging to his soul nor scars of sins stamped on his mind, but must prophesy purely, understanding himself and the tripod within his breast. For so he will deliver the oracles more clearly and more truly. Wherefore one need not marvel that you too have grasped the science, bearing so much ether in your soul.

And jesting with Damis at the same time, he said: "And you, Assyrian, do you foreknow nothing, and that too while keeping company with such a man?" "By Zeus," said Damis, "the things at least that I need myself; for when I first met this Apollonius, and he seemed to me full of wisdom and cleverness and temperance and right endurance, and when I saw memory in him too, most learned and a slave to love of learning, something divine came over me; and joining him I thought I should seem wise instead of a layman and unwise, and learned instead of a barbarian, and that, following and studying with him, I should see the Indians and see you, and mingle with the Greeks, become a Greek through him. Now your matters, being about great things, you may count Delphi and Dodona and what you will; but mine, since it is Damis who foreknows them, and he foreknows only on his own behalf, let them be the foreknowledge of some begging old woman who prophesies about sheep and such things.

At this all the sages laughed; and when the laughter had settled, Iarchas led back to the discourse on divination, and said it had wrought many goods for men, but the greatest was the gift of medicine; for the wise sons of Asclepius would never have come to knowledge of it, had not Asclepius, being a son of Apollo, and composing, after his oracles and divinations, the drugs suited to diseases, handed them down to his own children and taught his followers which herbs to apply to moist sores and which to dry and parched ones, and the measures of liquid drugs by which dropsies are drained off and blood is staunched and consumptions are stayed and the like wasting diseases. And who shall take from divination the remedies for venoms and the use of the very venoms against many diseases? For men, it seems to me, would never without the foreknowing wisdom have dared to mix the most deadly of all drugs with those that save.

And since this discourse too has been recorded by Damis, studied there concerning the beasts and springs and men told of in fable among the Indians, let it not be passed over by me either; for it would be a gain neither to believe nor to disbelieve all things. Apollonius asked: "Is there here a beast, the manticore?" And Iarchas said: "And what nature of this beast have you heard? For it is likely that something is told of its form too." "Great things and incredible are told," he said; "for they say it is four-footed, that its head is like a man's, but in size it is like a lion, and that the tail of this beast puts forth bristles a cubit long and thorny, which it shoots like arrows at those who hunt it." And when he asked also about the golden water which they say wells up from a spring, and about the stone which acts like the magnet, and about men who dwell underground, and pygmies again and shadow-foots, Iarchas took him up and said: "Of beasts or plants or springs, which you have seen on coming here, why should I tell you? For it is now for you to set them forth to others; but of a beast that shoots arrows, or springs of golden water, I have not yet heard here.

"But concerning the stone that draws to itself and binds other stones, one must not disbelieve; for you may see the stone yourself and marvel at all that is in it. The largest is the size of this finger-nail" — and he pointed to his own thumb — "and it is conceived in the hollow earth, four fathoms deep; and there is so much breath in it that the earth swells and is rent in many places as the stone is conceived in it. To seek it out is permitted to none, for it flees away unless it be drawn up with a spell; but we alone, partly by deeds, partly by words, take up the pantarbe — for this is its name. By night it makes day appear, like fire, for it is fiery and ray-like; but if it be seen by day it strikes the eyes with countless flashings. The light within it is a breath of unspeakable strength, for it takes to itself everything near. Why do I say 'near'? You may sink as many stones as you wish anywhere in the rivers or in the sea, and not near one another but scattered and as it chanced; and the pantarbe, let down among them, gathers them all by the diffusion of its breath, and the stones lie beneath it in clusters, like a swarm.

And saying this he showed the stone itself and all it does. As for the pygmies, they dwell underground, and they lie beyond the Ganges, living in the manner that has been told by all. But shadow-footed men, or long-heads, or all that the writings of Scylax sing of these, neither live anywhere else on earth nor among the Indians.

The gold which the griffins dig up is in rocks spotted as it were with sparks by the drops of gold, which this beast quarries by the strength of its beak. For these beasts exist among the Indians and are held sacred to the Sun, and those who paint the Sun among the Indians yoke a team of four of them to his image; and in size and strength they are like lions, but with the advantage of their wings they set upon these very lions, and are mightier than elephants and dragons. They cannot yet fly far, but only as far as short-flighted birds; for they are not feathered as is natural to birds, but their feet are webbed with red membranes, so that they can wheel and fly and fight from aloft. The tiger alone is proof against them, since its swiftness makes it the equal of the winds.

And the phoenix, the bird that comes once in five hundred years to Egypt, flies during this time in India, and is one only, sprung from the sun's rays and shining with gold, in size and form like an eagle, and it settles in the nest which it makes for itself out of spices by the springs of the Nile. And what the Egyptians sing of it, that it comes to Egypt, the Indians also bear witness, adding to the tale that the phoenix, as it melts away in its nest, sings funeral hymns over itself. This too they say the swans do, who hear of it more wisely than the rest.

Such were the meetings Apollonius had with the sages, after he had spent four months there and gathered up all discourses both open and secret. When he wished to depart, they persuaded him to send back the guide and the camels to Phraotes with a letter, and themselves, giving him another guide and camels, escorted him on his way, counting both themselves and him happy. And greeting Apollonius, and saying that he would seem a god to the many, not only when dead but while living, they turned back to their place of meditation, often turning towards the man and showing that they parted from him unwillingly. And Apollonius, with the Ganges on his right and the Hyphasis on his left, went down to the sea, a journey of ten days from the holy hill. As they went down, many ostriches appeared, and many wild oxen, and many asses and lions and leopards and tigers, and a kind of ape different from those in the pepper-trees, for they were black and shaggy and dog-faced in their forms and equal to small men. Discoursing of what they saw, as was their wont, they came to the sea, on which were built small trading-towns, and in them lay at anchor passage-boats much like the Etruscan. The Red Sea is, he says, the deepest blue, and was named, as I said, after King Erythras, who gave that sea his own name.

Having come here, he sent the camels back to Iarchas with a letter: "Apollonius to Iarchas and the other sages, greeting. I came to you on foot, and you gave me the sea; but sharing with me the wisdom that is in you, you have given me to journey even through the heavens. I will remember these things among the Greeks, and will share discourse with you as though you were present, if I have not drunk of Tantalus in vain. Farewell, good philosophers.

He himself, embarking on a ship, was borne along by a smooth and favouring wind, marvelling at the mouth of the Hyphasis, how terribly it pours out through it; for at its end, as I said, it falls into rocky and narrow places and over crags, through which, breaking down into the sea by a single mouth, it seems dangerous to those who keep too close to the land.

They say they saw also the mouth of the Indus, and that upon it lies the city Patala, surrounded by the Indus, to which the fleet of Alexander came, over which Nearchus was set as admiral, no novice in sea-array. What Orthagoras has said of the Red Sea, that the Bear does not appear in it, nor do those who sail mark the south, and that the conspicuous stars shift from their proper order, Damis too thinks true, and one must believe that these things are said soundly and according to the heaven there. They make mention also of a small island named Biblus, on which the mussels and oysters and the like grow fast to the rocks, ten times the size of the Greek; and a pearl-stone too is caught there, in a white shell, holding the place of a heart in the oyster.

They say they put in also at Pegadae in the country of the Oreitae; and the Oreitae have rocks of bronze, and bronze sand, and the rivers carry down bronze dust. They count the land to be auriferous because of the nobility of its bronze.

They say they met also the Fish-eaters, whose city is Stobera; and these wear coats of the skins of the greatest fishes, and the flocks there are fishy and strange to eat, for the shepherds feed them on fish, as in Caria they feed them on figs. The Carmanians, an Indian race and gentle, pasture a sea so rich in fish that they do not even store the fish away, nor, like the Pontus, salt them, but sell a few of them and give back the most, still gasping, to the sea.

They say they sailed also to Balara; and Balara is a trading-town full of myrtles and palms, and they saw bays in it, and the place was watered by springs. Gardens of all kinds of edibles, and gardens of flowers, abound there, and there are harbours full of calm within it. Before this place lies a sacred island, called Selera, a hundred stades distant by the strait, and in it dwells a Nereid, a dread spirit; for she seizes many of those who sail, and does not even suffer ships to throw out a cable from the island.

It is worth while not to pass over the account of the other pearl-fishing either, since it did not seem childish to Apollonius, but is fashioned most pleasantly and is the most wonderful of the works of the sea. For the parts of the island that face the open sea have a boundless depth of sea, and it bears an oyster in a white shell full of fat, for it grows no stone at all. Watching for a calm, and themselves smoothing the sea — which the pouring of oil effects — one dives for the catch of the oyster, equipped in other respects like those who cut sponges, but he has also an iron tablet and an alabaster box of myrrh. Sitting beside the oyster, the Indian makes the myrrh a bait for it, and it opens and is made drunk by it; and pierced with a goad it spits out its juice, which he receives in the tablet hollowed into moulds. From this it turns to stone and is shaped, like the natural pearl; and the pearl is white blood from the Red Sea. The Arabians too, who dwell opposite, attack this fishing, they say. From there on the whole sea is full of beasts, and the sea-monsters herd in it, and the ships, as a defence against this, carry bells at stern and prow, and the sound frightens the beasts and does not let them come near the ships.

Having sailed down to the mouths of the Euphrates, they say they sailed up by it to Babylon, to Bardanes, and finding him such as they knew, came again to Ninus; and since Antioch was insolent after its wont and earnest about nothing Greek, they went down to the sea at Seleucia, and chancing upon a ship sailed to Cyprus, to Paphos, where stands the seat of Aphrodite, which being symbolically set up Apollonius admired; and having taught the priests much concerning the holiness of the temple, he sailed to Ionia, much admired and deemed worthy of great things among those who honour wisdom.