The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s1.294

c10.s1.294

With the vanishing of the Oxo-Caspian trade route there vanishes the only reason which ever existed for believing that in the Greek period the Oxus flowed into the Caspian and that consequently the river-system of Bactria and the neighbouring countries was very different from what it is to-day. The whole thing originated in the already mentioned mistake of Patrocles; the Ochus (lower Arius) became confused with the Atrek and the Ochus-Atrek with the Oxus,³ producing a tangle which Strabo could not unravel and I shall not attempt to.⁴ Strabo himself, though he duly quotes Patrocles, knew that the Oxus entered the same sea as the Jaxartes, *i.e.* the Aral;⁵ and some valuable Persian evidence has recently been emphasised⁶ which shows that in the second century B.C. the Oxus flowed by Chorasmia (Khiva) as it does to-day. No competent person now believes that the Oxus ever discharged bodily into the Caspian, though the belief will die hard in semi-popular literature; but there is a widespread and very lively theory that both in the Hellenistic period and long afterwards the river sent a *branch* into that sea. I have considered this theory in Appendix 15; here I need only say that it is a question for science, not for scholars.