Note 314 — BOOK VI. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST, OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

In the geographical work which Patrocles seems to have published, he is supposed to have given some account of the countries bordering on the Caspian Sea, and there is little doubt that, like other writers of that period, he regarded that sea as a gulf or inlet of the Septentrional Ocean, and probably maintained the possibility of sailing thither by sea from the Indian Ocean. This statement, however, seems to have been strangely misinterpreted by Pliny in his present assertion, that Patrocles had himself accomplished this circumnavigation.