Ἰνδική 33.5

33.5

ἐνθαῦτα ἄνθρωπός σφισιν ὤφθη χλαμύδα τε φορέων Ἑλληνικὴν καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ὡς Ἕλλην ἐσκευασμένος, καὶ φωνὴν Ἑλλάδα ἐφώνεε. τοῦτον οἱ πρῶτοι ἰδόντες δακρῦσαι ἔλεγον· οὕτω τι παράλογόν σφισι φανῆναι ἐκ τῶν τοσῶνδε κακῶν Ἕλληνα μὲν ἄνθρωπον ἰδεῖν, Ἑλλάδος δὲ φωνῆς ἀκοῦσαι.

He feared, moreover, since the headland stretched towards the south, lest they should find the country there a parched desert destitute of water and insufferably hot. This argument prevailed, and it appears to me that by this counsel Nearkhos saved the expedition, for all accounts represent this cape and the parts adjacent as an arid waste where water cannot possibly be procured. On resuming the voyage they sailed close to land, and after making about 700 stadia anchored on another shore called Neoptana. From this they weighed next day at dawn, and after a course of 100 stadia anchored at the mouth of the river Anamis in a country called Harmozeia. Here at last they found a hospitable region, one which was rich in every production except only the olive. Here accordingly they landed, and enjoyed a welcome respite from their many toils—heightening their pleasure by calling to remembrance what miseries they had suffered at sea and in the Ikhthyophagi country, where the shores were so sterile, and the natives so brute-like, and where they had been reduced to the last extremities of want. Here, also, some of them in scattered parties, leaving the encampment on the shore, wandered inland searching for one thing and another that might supply their several requirements. While thus engaged, they fell in with a man who wore a Greek mantle, and was otherwise attired as a Greek and spoke the Greek language.

Those who first discovered him declared that tears started to their eyes, so strange did it appear, after all they had suffered, to see once more a countryman of their own, and to hear the accents of their native tongue. They asked him whence he came, and who he was. He replied that he had straggled from the army of Alexander, and that the army led by Alexander in person was not far off. On hearing this they hurry the man with shouts of tumultuous joy to the presence of Nearkhos, to whom he repeated all that he had already said, assuring him that the army and the king were not more than a 5 days’ march distant from the sea. The Governor of the province, he added, was on the spot, and he would present him to Nearkhos, and he presented him accordingly. Nearkhos consulted this person regarding the route he should take in order to reach the king, and then they all went off, and made their way to the ships. Early next morning the ships by orders of Nearkhos were drawn on shore, partly for repair of the damages which some of them had suffered on the voyage, and partly because he had resolved to leave here the greater part of his army. Having this in view, he fortified the roadstead with a double palisade, and also with an earthen rampart and a deep ditch extending from the banks of the river to the dockyard where the ships were lying.