I. HYDASPES.
THIS is a river of India, which falls with an extraordinary swift stream into the Saronitic Syrtis. Chrysippe, by the impulse of Venus, whom she had offended, fell in love with her father Hydaspes, and not being able to curb her preternatural desires, by the help of her nurse, in the dead of the night got to his bed and received his caresses; after which, the king proving unfortunate in his affairs, he buried alive the old bawd that had betrayed him, and crucified his daughter. Nevertheless such was the excess of his grief for the loss of Chrysippe, that he threw himself into the river Indus, which was afterwards called by his name Hydaspes.
Moreover in this river there grows a stone, which is called lychnis, which resembles the color of oil, and is very bright in appearance. And when they are searching after it, which they do when the moon increases, the pipers play all the while. Nor is it to be worn by any but the richer sort. Also near that part of the river which is called Pylae, there grows an herb which is very like a heliotrope, with the juice of which the people anoint their skins to prevent sunburning, and to secure them against the scorching of the excessive heat.
The natives whenever they take their virgins tardy, nail them to a wooden cross, and fling them into this river, singing at the same time in their own language a hymn to Venus. Every year also they bury a condemned old woman near the top of the hill called Therogonos; at which time an infinite multitude of creeping creatures come down from the top of the hill, and devour the insects that hover about the buried carcass. This Chrysermus relates in his History of India, though Archelaus gives a more exact account of these things in his Treatise of Rivers.
Near to this river lies the mountain Elephas, so called upon this occasion. When Alexander the Macedonian advanced with his army into India, and the natives were resolved to withstand him with all their force, the elephant upon which Porus, king of that region, was wont to ride, being of a sudden stung with a gad-bee, ran up to the top of the mountain of the sun, and there uttered these words distinctly in human speech:
O king, my lord, descended from the race of Gegasius, forbear to attempt any thing against Alexander, for he is descended from Jupiter. And having so said, he presently died. Which when Porus understood, afraid of Alexander, he fell at his feet and sued for peace. Which when he had obtained, he called the mountain Elephas;—as Dercyllus testifies in his Third Book of Mountains.
De Fluviis. Pseudo-Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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