Note 85 — Chapter V · —The rivers and mountains of Asia

Regarding the Maiôtic Lake, now generally called the Sea of Azof, the ancients entertained very hazy and inaccurate notions. They supposed it to be situated in the remotest regions of the earth (Aisch. Prom. 427), and to be almost equal in size to the Euxine (Herod, iv. 86). Arrian, who might have known better, seems here to have adopted the crude notion current in Alexander’s time that the Jaxartes (which they confounded with the Tanais or Don) entered by one arm the Hyrkanian or Kaspian Sea, and by another the Maiôtic Lake. The Kaspian itself was taken to be a gulf of the Great Eastern Ocean. Herodotos, however, is guiltless of this geographical heresy.