Scylax of Caryanda () was a Greek explorer and writer of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE. His own writings are lost, though occasionally cited or quoted by later Greek and Roman authors. The periplus sometimes called the Periplus of Scylax is not, in fact, by him; that so-called Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax was written in about the early 330s BCE by an unknown author working in the ambit of the post-Platonic Academy and/or the Aristotelian Peripatos (Lyceum) at Athens. Exploration Scylax was from Caryanda, a small city on an island close to Iasos in Asia Minor. He was probably an ethnic Carian, who might have been familiar with Greek and used it for his writings. Not much is known about Scylax, except for the few fragments of information relayed by later Greek writers. Herodotus calls him a sea-captain from Ionia. He is said to have sailed down the Indus River at the behest of the Achaemenid emperor Darius I (522–486 BCE) and then around the Arabian peninsula to reach Suez. In the narrative of Herodotus: Several questions have been raised about this narrative. The city of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyica have not been traced to any real locations. Assuming that it is somewhere in the vicinity of Gandhara, which was under the control of the Achaemenid emperor, it is unclear how Scylax was able to assemble a fleet of vessels in this land-locked country. More importantly, the Indus does not flow east, but rather in a south-westerly direction. Due to these reasons, some commentators doubted if Scylax's journey ever took place. But these doubts are now laid to rest by the excavations at Suez, which seem to corroborate Scylax's account, and Darius's subsequent acquisition of control over Sindh. Scholars have constructed various explanations for these questions. David Bivar has noted that 'Caspatyrus' was written as 'Caspapyrus' by the later Greek writer Hekataios, and both the names seem to have been misspellings of 'Paskapyrus', a known Greek spelling of the name of Peshawar. Scylax is presumed to have started by sailing east along the Kabul River and turned south after its confluence with the Indus River near Attock. The idea that the Indus itself flowed east must have been a misunderstanding by Herodotus or his source. Scholars state that Scylax's expedition was not merely for exploration, but rather for reconnaissance for future conquest by Darius. According to