Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Persian wisdom: Herakleides of Pontos on the Magian who circumnavigated Libya (mid-fourth century BCE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified March 30, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=19003.
Ancient authors: Herakleides of Herakleia on the Pontos, Zoroaster, as cited by Poseidonios and discussed by Strabo, Geography 2.3.4-5 (link) = Eckart Schütrumpf, ed., Heraclides of Pontus: Texts, Translation (Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2018), fragments 139-140, 179.
Comments: While Greek discussions of Persian Magians most often focused on their astrological and healing knowledge, Herakleides (a student of Plato’s who was later active within peripatetic circles) apparently wrote a dialogue on Zoroaster in which he discussed a Magian of the fifth century BCE (perhaps expressly fictional) whose wisdom was supposedly applied to successfully circumnavigating Libya (Africa).
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(fragment 139 = Strabo, Geography 2.3.4) In giving the names of those who are said to have circumnavigated Libya, Poseidonios says that Herodotos [Histories 4.42] believes that certain men commissioned by Neko [pharaoh of Egypt, late seventh century BCE] accomplished the circumnavigation of Libya. He also adds that Herakleides of Pontos in one of his dialogues [i.e. perhaps Zoroaster, as mentioned in fragment 79 = Plutarch, In Reply to Kolotes 14.1115a] makes a certain Magian (magos) who had come to the court of Gelon [tyrant of Syracuse, ca. 485-478 BCE] assert that he had circumnavigated Libya. And, after stating that these reports are unsupported by testimony, Poseidonios tells the story of a certain Eudoxos of Kyzikos [ca. 130s BCE] . . . . [omitted extensive discussion of Eudoxos’ supposed circumnavigation of Libya]. (fragment 140 = 2.3.5) Now Poseidonios is amazing in his view about all this, because although he considers as unsupported by testimony the story of the voyage of the Magian, which Herakleides told, and of the voyage even of the emissaries of Neko, of which Herodotos gives an account, he puts down as real evidence this Bergaian [i.e. absurd] story about Eudoxos, though he either invented it himself or accepted it from others who were its inventors.
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Source of translation: H.L. Jones, Strabo, 8 volumes, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1917-28), public domain (passed away in 1932), adapted by Harland.