Book 23
6.74
But we would not give a detailed account of the seacoast at the extremities of Persia, and wander too far from our subject. So it will be enough to say that the sea extending from the Caspian mountains along the northern side to the above-mentioned strait is 9000 stadia;See Strabo, xi. 7 ff., who, however, does not give the distance. but the southern frontier, from the mouths of the river Nile to where Carmania begins, is reckoned at 14,000 stadia.
6.75
Among these many men of differing tongues there are varieties of persons, as well as of places. But, to describe their bodily characteristics and their customs in general, they are almost all slender, somewhat dark, or of a leaden pallor, with eyes grim as goats’, eyebrows joined and curved in the form of a half-circle, not uncomely beards, and long, shaggy hair. All of them without exception, even at banquets and on festal days, appear girt with swords; an old Greek custom which, according to the trustworthy testimony of Thucydides,i. 6, 1-3. the Athenians were the first to abandon.
