The Greeks in Bactria and India c9.s1.67

c9.s1.67

¹ Arr. III, 25, 8, and all analogy. ² Arr. ib. ³ Tomaschek, Wien SB CII, 1883, p. 206. ⁴ I gave this in CAH VI pp. 389–90, but necessarily without explanation. Modern writers locate Prophthasia at Farah, though Droysen long ago proved that this was impossible (Hellenismus² III, 2, p. 216). Pliny VI, 61, after the bematists, gave the distance from Herat to Prophthasia as 199 Roman miles, say about 185 English miles; Eratosthenes, using the Seleucid survey (p. 55 n. 1), gave 1600 stades, say some 200 English miles (Strabo XI, 514), while others (ib.) made it 1500 stades, say 187½ English miles; these figures agree well enough with a site on the Hamun lake, but absolutely exclude Farah, which modern maps make about 140 English miles from Herat. Farah is Isidore’s Phra, capital of the Anauoi satrapy; this is from the Parthian survey, but Isidore has added a note that the Anauoi country was once part of the (undivided) satrapy of Aria; Farah therefore (this is the point) was never in Zarangiane-Seistan at all. Farah-Phra is Propasta of the Peutinger Table, a word which has nothing to do with Prophthasia; it may be a Persian term meaning ‘seen from afar’, Tomaschek, op. cit. p. 213. Stephanus, s.v. Φράδα, says that the old name of Prophthasia was Phrada, which I suppose is Persian (cf. Autophradates), and was presumably the Iranian name of the village where ‘the Zarangians’, i.e. the Persian satrap’s palace and fortress, were located; it is not Phra. The later Zarang is said to be represented by the ruins at Nad Ali (Herzfeld, Sakastan p. 3); but it does not follow that Nad Ali was the actual site of ‘the Zarangians’ and Prophthasia (it seems rather far south), for names sometimes moved a considerable distance, and the Hamun lake has altered its size and shape greatly from time to time.