Travels in the East with Herodotus and the Persians: Herodotus (4.36.2–45) on the Geography of Asia

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Travels in the East with Herodotus and the Persians: Herodotus (4.36.2–45) on the Geography of Asia

Introduction

[1] The Histories (‘researches’) of Herodotus from Halicarnassus were put to writing, as stated in the proem of the work, so that what men have done does not fade from memory with time, that the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians do not cease to be recalled, and to commemorate the cause of the feud between them.

The so-called Barbarians (that is, speakers of non-Greek languages) of the proem were the Persians and the non-Greek peoples of the Persian empire—an empire which during the reign of its founder, Cyrus the Great (ca.550–530), [2] and his successors, Cambyses II (530–522) and Darius I (521–486), had come to encompass nearly the sum of the territories of western Asia, portions of southeastern Europe, and northern regions of the African continent. The account of the conflict of these “Barbarians” with the Greek world forms the main theme of the second half of the Histories . It culminates with the defeat of the expedition of Xerxes (486–464), the successor of Darius I, against the European Greeks in 480/79.

The memories, widespread throughout the work, of the great and marvelous actions of Greeks and “Barbarians” that Herodotus wished to preserve are also imprinted in the first five books of the Histories in the form of an array of journeys through the history, geography, and ethnography of the ancient world. In the course of the narrative, these journeys follow, as a rule, the pattern of successive Persian campaigns of expansion and focus on the countries, deeds and civilizations of the Persians themselves and key peoples with whom the Persians came into conflict down to the early fifth century: the Medes, Lydians, Ionians, and Babylonians, who were conquered by Cyrus, and the warlike Massagetae of Central Asia, who resisted him; the Egyptians and Ethiopians brought into submission by Cambyses; the inhabitants of the Indus region, Scythia, Libya, and Thrace, who were added to the imperial possessions under Darius I. Throughout the narrative, however, we follow Herodotus not only in his travels, actual or mental, but also in his intellectual quest to know the world.

The adventures of exploration and curiosity for the world expressed in the work of Herodotus, were a direct reflection of a vibrant Greek tradition. They were intertwined with the remembered experiences—already several centuries in the making—of the Greeks as merchants and colonists often in distant regions of the Mediterranean, or of travelers, like Herodotus himself, for theori ē (‘to see/observe the world’). The collection, recording and assessment of the information that emanated from such Greek wanderings also had precedents in a Greek milieu, as in archaic poetry, geographical treatises, and philosophical interpretations of the oikoumen ē . The details of the relevant narratives of Herodotus simultaneously mark, however, developments in Greek thought that were triggered by a dialogue with non-Greek traditions. In the case of Asia in particular, these details often refer to knowledge that became accessible to Herodotus and the Greek world in general, as a result of the Persians' far-flung conquests.

Following the testimony of Herodotus and Persian sources, this presentation addresses aspects of the dialogue between Greek and Persian knowledge and thought, as implied by a Herodotean description of Asia — a description that quite evidently had further implications for the manner in which Herodotus perceived the overall form of the inhabited world.

A Controversy About the Continents

In the fourth book of the Histories , in the context of a narrative concerned with the expansionist undertakings of Darius I in southeastern Europe, southern Asia and northern Africa, Herodotus expresses himself with irony at the way the earth had been represented on previous occasions: Herodotus' omission in this instance of any explicit reference to Libya (i.e.Africa), which was commonly considered a third continent in his time, [5] and a lack of certainty about the work of Herodotus' geographical predecessors, have led over the years to divergent reconstructions of the differences that obtain between the Herodotean and earlier world models. In the opinion of a number of scholars who have commented on the passage, Herodotus' disagreement with earlier mapmakers, who depicted the earth as a perfect circle and made Europe and Asia equal in size, could allude to earlier theories that posited a twofold division of the earth (ascribing the earth's entire northern semicircle to Europe, and the entire southern one to Asia) (Figure 1).[6] For others, the omission of Libya in this context would merely imply that the controversy about the size of the continents affected only Europe and Asia.[7] Or, this omission might offer, alternatively, indications that a twofold division of the world was the only o ne that was "tolerated" by Herodotus, [8] who personally believed the earth to be a “single tract” (Herodotus 4.45.2: μι ῇ ἐ ούσ ῃ γ ῇ ), and who only acquiesced in the notion of separate continents because it was sanctioned by custom (4.45.5: το ῖ σι γ ὰ ρ νομιζομένοισι α ὐ τ ῶ ν χρησόμεθα ).

One point that emerges clearly, nonetheless, from Herodotus' exposé of his own view about the form of the earth (4.37–45) is that, in contrast to earlier perceptions of Europe and Asia as being equal in size, he considered that Europe extended in length "as far as both of the other two continents," Asia and Libya (4.42.1 : μήκεϊ μ ὲ ν γ ὰ ρ παρ' ἀ μφοτέρας παρήκει ἡ Ε ὐ ρώπη , and 4.45.1: Ἡ δ ὲ Ε ὐ ρώπη ... μήκεϊ ... γινώσκεται παρ' ἀ μφοτέρας παρήκουσα ). From his commentary it is arguably equally clear that at least this divergence between the Herodotean and earlier world models was meant to be substantiated by a description of Asia.

Herodotus' Description of Asia

Featured at the very outset of his alternative explanation of the form of the oikoumen ē , Herodotus' description of Asia (4.37–40) comprises three main tracts of territory, supplying information about their geographical boundaries and, in all but one instance, the number and/or names of the peoples that inhabited them (Figure 2).The first tract (4.37) is stated to have included the Persians, "whose country reaches the sea of the south, named Erythraean [‘Red’, the Indian Ocean and possibly also the Persian Gulf] , and beyond them, in contiguous order, the Medes, the Saspeires and, finally, the Colchians," whose country reaches the sea of the north (i.e., the Black Sea), wherein empties the river Phasis (identified [9] with present-day Rioni and its tributary the Qvirila): four peoples, as Herodotus sums up, "from sea to sea" (4.37: τέσσερα ἔ θνεα ... ἐ κ θαλάσσης ἐ ς θάλασσαν ).

Herodotus continues with territories, first, to the west and, then, to the east of the lands of the Persians, Medes, Saspeires and Colchians. The former group of territories is said to have consisted of "two peninsulae that extended toward the west, reaching the sea" (4.38.1: ἐ νθε ῦ τεν ... τ ὸ πρ ὸ ς ἑ σπέρης ἀ κτα ὶ διφάσιαι ... κατατείνουσι ἐ ς θάλασσαν ). The northernmost of these peninsulae (4.38.2), said to have comprised 30 peoples, is none other than Asia Minor: it extended, as Herodotus specifies, from the river Phasis to as far as (Cape) Sigeium in the Troad on the north; and, on the south, from the Myriandic Gulf (the Gulf of Issus), at the border of Phoenicia, to the Triopium promontory (at the southwestern tip of Asia Minor). The second peninsula (4.39), stated to begin from Persia ( ἀ π ὸ Περσέων ἀ ρξαμένη ), reached, in one direction, as far as the Erythraean Sea and, in another direction, as far as the Mediterranean. Its territory is rendered with reference to two groups of lands. One of these groups, consisting of Persia, Assyria (which in Herodotus usually designates Mesopotamia as a whole, thus both Assyria and Babylonia) and Arabia, ended—or, as Herodotus explains, "is considered to end, though it does not really come to a termination" (4.39.1: ο ὐ λήγουσα ε ἰ μ ὴ νόμ ῳ )— at the Arabian Gulf (present-day Red Sea), "wherein Darius conducted the canal which he made from the Nile." The second group of lands included, in addition to Persia, the territories of Phoenicia, Syria, Palestine and, finally, Egypt, the location of the actual terminal of the peninsula. In this second peninsula there were, according to Herodotus, "only three nations."

The description of Asia concludes with those territories located to the east of Persians, Medes, Saspeires and Colchians, "towards the east and the region of the sunrise" (4.40).These were delimited on the south by the Erythraean Sea, and on the north by the Caspian and the river Araxes which "flows toward the rising sun" (but this Araxes ought to correspond to either the Oxus or, most likely, the Jaxartes, [10] both of which flow, however, toward the west, emptying into the Aral sea). In the case of this eastern tract of Asia, Herodotus does not name specific peoples/lands; he merely remarks that "[t]ill you reach India the country is peopled, but further east it is void of inhabitants ( ἔ ρημος ; quite possibly the Thar desert), and no one can say what sort of region it is" (4.40.2).

Herodotus does not engage in any detailed comparison of the size and shape of Europe and Asia. From the foregoing description, however, we can readily understand where he based his opinion about the greater extent of the European continent—which is otherwise flatly stated twice following his discussion of Asia. This opinion was based, as it is unanimously recognized, on a perception of the northern border of Asia along the line that was formed by the river Phasis, the Caspian Sea, and the river Araxes (i.e., the Oxus or the Jaxartes).

According to another view that Herodotus mentions in this context, but obviously does not accept, the border between Europe and Asia was located along the line of the river Tanais, the lake Maeotis and the so-called Cimmerian Bosporus (i.e., the river Don, Sea of Azov and Strait of Kerch) (4.45.2: ο ἱ δ ὲ Τάναϊν ποταμ ὸ ν τ ὸ ν Μαιήτην κα ὶ Πορθμήια τ ὰ Κιμμέρια λέγουσι ) (Figure 3). In contrast to this border, which gave Europe only the regions to the west of the Tanais, the line Phasis-Caspian-Araxes adopted by Herodotus ascribed to the European continent the territories to the east of the Tanais as well. It thus rendered the extent of Europe to the east of the Euxine equal to that of Asia, and the total extent of Europe equal to the extent of Asia and Libya put together.

Herodotus confesses ignorance as to who had drawn the two different boundary lines between Europe and Asia, and why (4.45.2). Modern discussions have mainly focused on the meagre and uncertain evidence for the association of these same boundary lines with different Ionian/Milesian "schools" of geography.[11] The ultimate indebtedness, however, of at least the Phasis-Caspian-Araxes border, which Herodotus espouses, to Greek geographical reckoning seems highly improbable, especially if one considers Herodotus' vague picture of the eastern part of "inhabited" Asia, and the fact that the distant territories to the east of the Caspian were generally inaccessible to Greek travelers down to the time of the eastern campaign of Alexander.[12] For the origins of this line, we must arguably look to the Persian domain.

An All-Persian Asia

In the opening chapters of the Histories , in a context that purports to present the Persian perspective on the origins of the Greek-Persian conflict, Herodotus relates among other things, that the Persians traced their enmity against the Greeks to the latter people's attack against Troy, because:

At least as far as Herodotus is concerned, the identification of Asiatic with Persian imperial territorial and ethnographic realities would not have been merely a rhetorical scheme. Extending from the Indus to the Mediterranean, and also including Egypt, Herodotus' ("inhabited") Asia has long been seen to coincide with the territory of Persia's Asiatic-based empire (Figures 3 and 4).[13] The coincidence is especially remarkable with reference to their respective northern borders.

Herodotus' boundary between the European and Asiatic continents toward the west, the Phasis (i.e., the system of the Rioni-Qvirila rivers), corresponded with the northernmost region under Persian control on the Asiatic side of the E uxine.[14] It watered the territory of:

Herodotus' boundary between the European and Asiatic continents toward the east, the river Araxes, was also known to him as the northernmost boundary of Persian expansion east of the Caspian, at least during the early, pre-Darius years of the empire.[15] This river separated the Persian territory from the land of the Massagetae (Herodotus 1.201, 202, 204–208), whom Cyrus the Great had unsuccessfully tried to conquer, dying in the effort.

The convergence between Herodotus and the map of the Persian empire strongly implies that Herodotus' picture of the shape and size of Asia, and hence also his view concerning the order of magnitude of the territories of Europe and Asia, is likely to be based on a definition of Persia's Asiatic realm. Further remarks in his text and the testimony of Persian sources supply indications that even the description of Asia that Herodotus submits follows Persian prototypes.

Herodotus' Asia and the Persian Rhetoric of Expansion

Darius the Great left a lasting legacy as "the discoverer of the greater part of Asia" (Herodotus 4.44.1):

The explorations of Darius documented for the first time, at least to Herodotus' satisfaction, the eastern and southern boundaries of ("inhabited") Asia, that is the Indus region and the Indian Ocean, as they occur in Herodotus' geographical description of this continent. As we can tell, owing to an analogous preoccupation of Darius with formulating, this time political, boundaries, the Indus and the Indian Ocean also occupied a prominent place in the official statements of the extent of the empire of this "first" explorer.

In a trilingual foundation inscription, excavated at the Persian capital of Persepolis in southwestern Iran, and dating more than half a century earlier than the composition of Herodotus' Histories , Sind (Old Persian Hinduš, the lower Indus area) is mentioned as one of the four geographical extremes (Figure 5) of the kingdom ruled by Darius, the other three being Sparda (i.e, Sardis and the Lydian demesne), the Scythians "who are beyond Sogdiana" and Ethiopia:

Another inscription of the same monarch, carved in Babylonian on the southern wall of the Persepolis terrace, may be taken to imply that the various seas, as well as the desert to the east of the Indus, which demarcate the territory of the Asiatic continent in Herodotus, were also subject to an emphasis in a native Persian milieu, as markers of, and simultaneously testimony to, the vast territory of the Persian empire. The relevant passage describes the kingdom ruled by Darius with reference, among others, to seas and deserts:

In the opinion of Pierre Lecoq, whose translation is followed here, the passages' references to lands "on this side of the sea and on that side of the sea" ought to refer to locations on either side of a single sea, which he takes to be the Mediterranean.[17] The implication, however, that Darius would have opted—especially in a context that was meant to convey the immensity of his empire [18] — for a general, synoptic description of his holdings as extending on either side of the Mediterranean, would seem to be difficult to harmonize with either this ruler's attested, and obviously deliberate, stress on the vastness of his kingdom by means of references to its extremes (in the analogous, summary statement of the breadth and extent of his kingdom in the DPh text); or his consistent visualization of Persia as the center of his realm (see below). On both counts, the incongruity can be resolved if the references of this document to two different "sides" of the sea were actually alluded to bodies of water located on opposite sides of the imperial space.

In this case, the Indian Ocean, on the extended southern seaboard of Darius' empire, and the Mediterranean, Euxine and Caspian, on this empire's western and northern ends, present themselves as the obvious possible referents. Although certainty is lacking in this instance, it is at least a fact that Persian kings do not name different stretches of sea in their inscriptions, invariably referring to them by the generic term for ‘sea’ (Old Persian draya ).[19] This usage, which could imply a Persian perception of the bodies of water that washed different sides of the Persian empire as a single sea, [20] is known to have applied in the royal inscriptions to the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean/Persian Gulf, and quite likely to the Euxine or the Caspian as well.[21] Conceptually, Darius' expression of the constitution of his realm in terms of lands "on this side of the sea and on that side of the sea," may not have differed much from Herodotus' (4.37) later description of the central tract of (Persian) Asia as being inhabited by four peoples "from sea to sea" (i.e., from the Erythraean Sea to the Euxine).[22]

The text's further reference to lands "on this side of the desert and on that side of the desert" is equally ambiguous. The possibility, however, that in this case as well, opposite edges of the realm might be meant, brings to mind, on the one hand, the country "void of inhabitants" ( ἔ ρημος ), that bounded Herodotus' Asia on its Indus side (Herodotus 40), and on the other hand, the extended Arabian and Libyan stretches of desert on the side of Darius' realm opposite from the Indus.

The brief statements of the extent of the kingdom of Darius in the DPh and DPg texts are not the only evidence that is available from a Persian side for the convergence of the Herodotean description of Asia with Persian definitions of the configuration of the Persian realm. The extent of the empire (on all three continents) also acquires a more detailed expression in a Persian environment, in the form of collective pictorial renderings of representatives of subject nations in royal monumental reliefs (Figure 6) and in rosters of holdings that occur in a number of royal monumental inscriptions.[23] As it is possible to infer from the Old Persian term dahyāva (sing. dahyu , ‘land’/’people’ [24] ) which designates these subjects collectively in the inscriptions, as well as from the grammatical forms of individual subjects' names, the various visual and verbal representations of the Persian kings' subjects were meant to express simultaneously the empire's ethnic and territorial makeup. Their geographical import is also reflected in the order in which these subjects are enumerated in the inscriptions.

The known rosters (six dating from the reign of Darius and one from that of Xerxes) vary from one another with respect to the number (which ranges between 23 and over 30 entries) and names of the dahyāva included, as well with regard to the order in which these dahyāva are mentioned. These divergences notwithstanding, the different catalogues generally adhere to a common geographical logic.

As Paul Goukowski [25] discussed (and depicted) with particular reference to the roster of the funerary inscription of Darius at Naqsh-i Rustam, at the head of each roster there are usually featured the entries of Persia, Media and Elam, the three regions that housed the Persian royal capitals and thus represent the center of the empire (Figure 7). The rest of the dahyāva would appear to form, in their majority, four groups of geographically successive lands/peoples, in a radial arrangement, proceeding, in each instance, from the center of the empire toward one of its four extreme points which, as in the DPh inscription, are located to the north-east, south-east, north-west and south-west.[26]

In the Naqsh-i Rustam roster, priority in the order in which the subject entries are listed is given to lands/peoples located to the east of Persia. The first group (Parthia, Ariane, Bactria, Sogdiana and Chorasmia) is directed toward the north-eastern end of the empire. The second group (Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandara and Sind) follows a direction toward the south-eastern end of the empire. The third group (Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia and Egypt), beginning the enumeration of subject lands/peoples to the west of Persia, ends in the imperial south-west, in Africa. The fourth group (Armenia, Cappadocia, Lydia, the Ionians, the Scythians "beyond the sea," Skudra [usually identified with Thrace], and the so-called "petasos-wearing" Ionians) is oriented toward the north-western end of the empire, in south-eastern Europe.

The subjects who are enumerated in the rosters and depicted in the monumental reliefs do not represent, as a whole, the full range of peoples/lands that were ruled by the Persians.The basis for their selection and order of mention in the rosters must have been provided, on the one hand, by their significance, as possessions, for the Persians [27] and, on the other hand, by a schematization of the imperial space in accordance with main (land) routes. The four groups of dahyāva follow (as a general rule) four main axes/itineraries of the imperial road network, which connected the royal capitals in Iran (Persepolis and Pasargadae in Persia; Ecbatana in Media; Susa in Elam) with the peripheral regions of the empire (Figure 8).[28] As noted by Goukowski, [29] Briant, [30] and others, the first group, which follows a north-eastern direction, may be correlated with the ancient Khorasan highway that led from Median Ecbatana to Chorasmia, via Parthia and Bactria. The second group, which looks to the south-east, corresponds with an itinerary that led from Persepolis to Arachosia and Gandara, giving access to Sind as well as Sattagydia. The third group is associated with the route that connected Babylon (and hence also the royal centers in Iranian territory) with Egypt by land. The fourth group may be correlated with the branch of the royal road network described by Herodotus (5.52–54), which led from the main administrative center of the empire, Susa, to Sardis in Asia Minor, and with this road's extension in European Thrace (Herodotus 7.115.3).

Returning to Herodotus, although his description of Asia does not exactly coincide with the contents of the Persian catalogues, [31] significant similarities between these two sets of evidence can still be detected with respect to both their overall frame and details.

The description of the interior of the Asiatic continent in Herodotus, with Persia as a starting point as well as a principal point of reference (Herodotus 4.37, 39.1, 39.2, 40.1)—something that strikes us as being incompatible with the standard Aegean- or Mediterranean-centered viewpoint of Greek observers of the world—, refers us to the consistently central place occupied by Persia in the scheme of the royal Persian subject lists.[32] The same scheme is evoked by Herodotus' description of two tracts of lands and/or peoples that were located, respectively, to the west and to the east of Persia. Simultaneously, his three groups of peripheral peoples/lands that lay to the north and to the west of Persia echo the radial arrangement of the groups of subject entries in the Persian catalogues.[33]

With regard to the details of Herodotus' description, the division of the western tract of Asia into two territorial units, or "peninsulae" (4.38), would imply a close correlation with the two western groups of dahyāva of the Persian inscriptions (Figure 7).[34] The northernmost of these two "peninsulae," Asia Minor, corresponds to the Asiatic portion of the northwestern group of the catalogues. The second "peninsula," which comprised, according to Herodotus, "Persia, then, Assyria [i.e., Assyria and Babylonia] , and after Assyria, Arabia"—and ended, as he clarifies, "conventionally" in the Arabian Gulf, but "in reality" in Egypt—coincides with the south-western group of the catalogues.

Last, but not least, we may observe that even the characterization of the two parts of Herodotus' western tract of Asia as ἀ κταί (‘peninsulae’) is in perfect accord with a view of the western regions of Asia from the center of the Persian empire, Persia. This understanding is particularly relevant to the notable omission of any reference to the distinct, peninsular character of Arabia in Herodotus' description.[35] Viewed, however, from the heart of the Persian empire, Arabia would have been more readily perceived as an integral part of a larger peninsula, washed on its different sides by the Persian Gulf/Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Med iterranean, and comprising, in addition to Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the Syro-Palestinian coast as far as the Asia Minor-Phoenicia border [36] —just as Herodotus describes.

Concluding remarks

Taken together, the general coincidence of Herodotus' Asia with Persia's Asiatic realm on the one hand, and the significant similarities that can be traced between Herodotus' representation of the Asiatic continent and the Persians' own representations of their imperial domain on the other hand, would imply that Herodotus' picture of Asia must emanate from official Persian definitions of their realm. One may assume that the same circumstance applies to his view—which, as we have seen, is based on this picture—that Europe surpassed Asia in size, and that it extended as far as Asia and Libya put together; and, hence, to the Phasis border as well.

At the time when Herodotus was writing, this ultimate Persian origin was probably forgotten. Judging also by his statement that he was not aware who had determined the border between Europe and Asia along the Phasis, and on what grounds, the Persian territorial realities and geographical perceptions, which form the basis of his thought in this particular instance, are not consciously registered as Persian in his historiography. His description nevertheless underscores the fertile dialogue that clearly existed between the ancient Greek and the ancient Persian ways of looking at the world in and near the fifth century BC.

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Footnotes

Note 1
The author wishes to express her warmest thanks to the organizers of The Athens Dialogues Programme of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation for the opportunity to participate in the conference "The Adventure of Human Curiosity: Travelling From Antiquity to Modern Recreation," as well as to the rest of the participants in this conference for a full-day feast of journeys into ancient and modern experiences of travel. Thanks are equally due to Kalliope Kritikakou-Nikolaropoulou for kindly lending a critical ear during the development of the thoughts presented here and, not least, to David Stronach for reading the final English version of the essay before it was submitted for publication. The present contribution constitutes a preliminary, summary announcement of results of the author's research on the impact of Persian rhetoric on sources for the emergence of the Persian empire (see also, e.g., Zournatzi 2013).

Note 2
All dates are BC.

Note 3
For this sense of γ ῆ ς περιόδους γράψαντας , see LS & J s.v. γράφω (1).

Note 5
See Herodotus 4.45 and 2.16 ( Ἕ λληνάς τε κα ὶ α ὐ το ὺ ς Ἴ ωνας … ο ἵ φασι τρία μόρια ε ἶ ναι γ ῆ ν π ᾶ σαν, Ε ὐ ρώπην τε κα ὶ Ἀ σίην κα ὶ Λιβύην , ‘For the Greeks and the Ionians ... say that the earth is divided into three parts’).

Note 6
E.g., Bunbury 1879 I:146; How and Wells 1928:436; Heidel 1937:12; Asheri et al. 2007:608 [A. Corcella].

Note 7
First argued by Myres (1896: esp. 625), the view that Herodotus is here arguing against earlier divisions of the earth into three equal-sized continents, seems to have gained more wide acceptance among specialist of ancient geography over recent decades, see e.g., Prontera 2011:185 and cf. Irby 2012:89–92 with figs. 3.2 and 3.4. According to Jacob (1991:57) the equal-sized continents of Europe and Asia would have occupied, respectively, as perceived by Herodotus' predecessors, the north-western and north-eastern quadrants of the circular earth, and that the entire southern semicircle would have belonged to Libya.

Note 8
Zimmermann 1997:295–298, explaining this supposed "tolerance" as a further instance of the impact of Greek-Persian geopolitical realities on Herodotean thought.

Note 9
See Lordkipanidze 2000: 20–23.

Note 10
Cf., eg., Asheri et al. 2007:610, 40,1n [A. Corcella] .

Note 11
For the notion, emanating from mentions of Tanais in extant fragments of Hecataeus, that the Tanais border was perhaps already mentioned, or even introduced, by this Milesian geographer-historian, who was active around 500 BC, see, e.g., Asheri et al. 2007:614, 45,2n [A. Corcella]. Myres (1896:628–629) was content that the Phasis line had (also) issued forth from "mainly" Milesian researches. According to Heidel (1937:51), the latter border would have perhaps developed in correlation with a line east of the Caucasus that supposedly pre-existed in Ionian cartography. Others surmise that the Phasis boundary would have already formed a part of the map of Hecataeus' predecessor, Anaximander, e.g., Irby 2012:89 with fig. 3.2 on pp. 90.

Note 12
The differential of Herodotus' knowledge about, on the one hand, the Mediterranean regions of Asia, and especially Asia Minor, and on the other hand, the interior of the Asiatic continent, is assessed more recently by Prontera 2011.

Note 13
See, in the first place, Myres 1896:620–629 (further suggesting that Herodotus' description of Asia must have been based on a "Persian map" of the "Persian empire and its surroundings" that became available to the Greek world through the agency of Scylax of Caryanda); cf. Heidel 1937:52–53. Among more recent discussions of the general geographical coincidence of Herodotus' Asia with the territory of the Persian empire, see esp. Calmeyer 1982:176–178, Asheri et al. 2007:29 [D. Asheri] (suggesting, among other things, that Herodotus 4.37–40 "offers us ... a shadowy human geography of four tracts of the Persian empire" and presuming a Persian source for his description), and Prontera 2011:185, 193 and passim . For the prominent allusions of Herodotus' facts about Asia to the Persian power, see, e.g., Bichler 2007. Concerning the impact of Persian rhetoric on Herodotus' perception of the Persians as masters of the "whole of Asia," see further Zournatzi 2013.

Note 14
For an overview of the significant contribution of archaeology to our knowledge concerning Persian presence and influence in this border region of the Persian empire, see Knauss 2005.

Note 15
Cf., e.g., Prontera 2011:182. On the farthest point of Persian expansion in Central Asia, see also Strabo 11.11.4.

Note 17
Lecoq 1997:230, DPg § 1, n. 1. For a more cosmologically inclined interpretation of the body of water referred to in this inscription as "le Fleuve Amer," defining the boundaries of the inhabited earth, see Briant 1996:192.

Note 18
For this sense of the various formulae used of Darius' holdings in the DPg text, cf. Briant 1996:191–192.

Note 19
See, e.g., the designation of seemingly both the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean as "the sea which comes from Persia" in the Suez inscriptions of Darius (Kent 1953:DZc line 10); the designation of eastern Mediterranean subjects as "those on/by the sea" and "those beyond the sea" in the royal rosters of subject peoples (Kent 1953:DB I, l. 15, DPe, ll. 13–15, DSe, ll. 28–29, XPh, ll. 23–25; Lecoq 1997:DSaa); and the "sea" (the Caspian or the Euxine?) that Darius crossed in a campaign against "pointed-cap" Scythians on the northern edge of his realm (Kent 1953:DB V, ll. 23–24; for a possible alternative interpretation, however, of draya in this instance as a reference to a river [the Oxus] , see Lecoq 1997:214, DB § 74 n. 2).

Note 20
The construction of Darius' canal (Kent 1953:DZc) would have enhanced this perception. For an analogous perception of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Red Sea (i.e., Indian Ocean) as a "single" sea by Herodotus (cf. Asheri et al. 2007:25 [Asheri ] ), see in particular the description of Aristagoras' map of the circuit of the earth (5.49), as showing "all the sea and all the rivers" ( θάλασσά τε π ᾶ σα κα ὶ ποταμο ὶ πάντες ).

Note 21
See above, n. 18.

Note 22
"Land" (KUR) renders in the idiom of the Babylonian inscriptions the corresponding Persian notion of land/people (for which see below, n. 23). Thus the DPg's "lands" would have corresponded to Herodotus' "peoples." For the possible Iranian ancestry of Herodotus' axis "from sea to sea," see Calmeyer 1982:178 with n. 219.

Note 23
For a comprehensive presentation of the rosters and a list of the relevant inscriptions, see Vogelsang 1992:96–106, with Table 1. For the different ethnic types depicted, see esp. Roaf 1974. Concerning the ideological implications of these verbal and pictorial representations of the empire's subjects, see Root 1979 and, more succinctly, Briant 1996:184–198.

Note 24
For the combination in the term dahyu of the notion of ethnos , as well as that of the region where this ethnos inhabited, see Cameron 1973 and Lecoq 1990.

Note 25
See Goukowski 1978:esp. 222–224.

Note 26
Among subsequent analyses in the same sense, see, in particular, Vogelsang 1992:106–119 (with a further focus on the eastern groups of dahyāva ) and more recent comments in Wiesehöfer 2007.

Note 27
Burn 1962:111; Cameron 1973:47.

Note 28
For a wide-ranging overview of the fragmentary, written and material, testimony that enables us to reconstruct the branches, and workings, of this extended communications network, see Briant 1996:369–376.

Note 29
Goukowski 1978:163 και 222–224.

Note 30
Briant 1996:369–371.

Note 31
Hence also a certain tendency to minimize the possible impact of Persian models in this instance (e.g., Prontera 2011:192–193).

Note 32
Cf. Asheri et al. 2007:29 [D. Asheri] and 609, 37–41n. [A. Corcella] .

Note 33
The initial inference of this correspondence may be traced to Heidel 1937:52.

Note 34
Cf. Heidel 1937:52 (based on the list of the Behistun inscription of Darius I published by Weissbach in 1911). Myres (1896:621), who was not familiar with the Achaemenid rosters of subjects and the spatial concepts they convey, had nonetheless perceived the ground principle: namely, that these two ''peninsulae" of Herodotus "are constructed about two great roads, which are taken as their axes: in Asia Minor, the Royal Road from the Euphrates to Sardis; in Arabia, the caravan route from Carchemish through Palestine to Egypt."

Note 35
Dihle 1990:43 ff.

Note 36
Subject to this reasoning, one also need not suppose that Herodotus' "misrepresentation" of the Arabian peninsula was due, at least in part, to "the error of the South Sea explorer [i.e., Scylax] ... in crossing the mouth of the Persian Gulf, under the impression that he was close to the known estuary of the Choaspes and Euphrates," and obliterating, as a result, Arabia's eastern sea-coast (Myres 1896: 621).