Greek Texts & Translations

writers to be still longer lived,) that they are temperate in their habits and healthy; although the country produces everything in abundance.

The following are their peculiarities : to have a kind of Lacedaemonian common meal, where they eat in public. Their food consists of what is taken in the chase. They make no use of gold nor silver, although they have mines of these metals. Instead of slaves, they employed youths in the flower of their age, as the Cretans employ the Aphamiotae, and the Lacedaemonians the Helots. They study no science with attention but that of medicine; for they consider the excessive pursuit of some arts, as that of war, and the like, to be committing evil. There is no process at law but against murder and outrage, for it is not in a person's own power to escape either one or the other; but as contracts are in the power of each individual, he must endure the wrong, if good faith is violated by another; for a man should be cautious whom he trusts, and not disturb the city with constant disputes in courts of justice.

Such are the accounts of the persons who accompanied Alexander in his expedition. 35

A letter of Craterus to his mother Aristopatra is circulated, which contains many other singular circumstances, and differs from every other writer, particularly in saying that Alexander advanced as far as the Ganges. Craterus says, that he himself saw the river, and the whales ^note which it produces, and [his account] of its magnitude, breadth, and depth, far exceeds, rather than approximates, probability. For that the Ganges is the largest of known rivers in the three continents, it is generally agreed; next to this is the Indus; and, thirdly, the Danube; and, fourthly, the Nile. But different authors differ in their account of it, some assigning 30, others 3 stadia, as the least breadth. But Megasthenes says that its ordinary width is 100 stadia, ^note and its least depth twenty orguiae. ^note