The Greeks in Bactria and India c24.5

c24.5

Deducting these passages, and omitting for the moment vi, 152, Pliny’s information later than Onesicritus and Nearchus is as follows. vi, 107, the country about the Amanis river is fertile, with fields and vineyards, and is called Armysia (this variant on Harmozaei should indicate a new source); the towns are Zetis and Alexandria (the latter, near Gulashkird, comes in the Alexander-historians). vi, 110, after mentioning the Harmozaei, and giving a parenthesis to what ‘quidam’ say, he goes on ‘ibi (among the Harmozaei) Portus Macedonum et arae Alexandri in promunturio’; that is, his source knew of a Graeco-Macedonian harbour town on the Gulf of Ormuz⁴ and altars on C. Jask attributed to Alexander, who was never near the place (Nearchus, who was, built no altars). This information is from Hellenistic sources. Next vi, 149: Juba (he says) omits to mention two places, Batrasasave the town of the Omani, and Omana, which earlier writers (‘priores’, *i.e.* some Hellenistic writer) made a much frequented harbour of Carmania. Pliny here is following Juba down the Arabian coast southwards from Gerrha, and he himself thinks that Omana, like the Omani, was in Arabia. This is immaterial, for the Periplus (36) is clear that Omana was in Carmania on the Gulf of Ormuz, as Juba probably knew also from his Hellenistic ‘priores’; Pliny has confused Omana with the Omani on the Arabian side, whose name survives in Oman; doubtless the same people were, or had been, active on both sides of the narrow strait (see p. 485). Omana then was a much frequented harbour of Carmania in Hellenistic times, as it was to the author of the Periplus; this means that for once the Periplus can be used for the earlier period.