Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Germans, Britons, and Indians: Strabo on travelers, soldiers and merchants as sources of information (early first century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified August 5, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=21320.
Ancient author: Strabo, Geography 2.5.11-13 and 15.1.1-6 (link)
Comments: In these two passages – one from the beginning of his work and the other from the introduction to his account of Indians – Strabo outlines not only his own methods but also the methods he assumes that others among the literary elites have used to produce geographic and ethnographic accounts like his own. Strabo stresses the importance of travelers (including his own travels) but also the prime importance of hearsay or oral reports from soldiers, merchants and other travelers.
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[Strabo’s journeys and reliance on oral reports by other travelers]
(2.5.11-13) . . . Now I will explain what part of the land and sea I have myself visited and what part I have trusted what others communicated orally or what others have written. I have travelled westward from Armenia as far as the regions of Tyrrhenia [western coast of north-central Italy] opposite Sardinia, and southward from the Euxine sea [Black Sea] as far as the frontiers of Ethiopia. And you could not find another person among the authors on geography who has travelled over much more of the distances just mentioned than I have. In fact, those who have travelled more than I have in the western regions have not covered as much ground in the east, and those who have travelled more in the eastern countries are behind me in the western. The same holds true in regard to the regions towards the south and north.
[Hearsay or oral report as source for the majority of information]
However, the majority of our material both they [other elite authors] and I receive by hearsay (ἀκοή) and then form our ideas of shape and size and also other characteristics, qualitative and quantitative, precisely as the mind forms its ideas from sense impressions. For our senses report the shape, colour, and size of an apple, and also its smell, feel, and flavour. From all this the mind forms the concept of apple. So, too, even in the case of large figures, while the senses perceive only the parts, the mind forms a concept of the whole from what the senses have perceived. And men who are eager to learn proceed in just that way: they trust as organs of sense those who have seen or wandered over any region, no matter what, some in this and some in that part of the earth. They form in one diagram their mental image of the whole inhabited world.
[Analogy of military commanders trusting oral reports by soldiers]
Actually, even though military commanders (stragēgoi) do everything themselves, they are not present everywhere. Rather, they successfully carry out most of their actions through others, trusting the reports of messengers and sending their orders around in conformity with the reports they hear. Someone who claims that the only person with knowledge is a person who has actually seen something abolishes the criterion of the sense of hearing, even though this sense is much more important than sight for the purposes of knowledge.
[Ethnographic knowledge advanced by such oral reporting]
In particular, the writers of the present time can give a better account of the Britons, the Germans, the peoples both north and south of the Ister [Danube] river, the Getians, the Tyregetans, the Bastarnians, and, furthermore, the peoples in the regions of the Caucasus mountain range, such as Albanians and Iberians. We have also been given information about Hyrkania and Baktriana by the writers of Parthian Matters – namely those gathered around Apollodoros of Artemita – in which they marked off those countries more definitely than many other writers.
Since the Romans have recently invaded Arabia the Blessed with an army led by Aelius Gallus, my friend and companion, and since the merchants (emporoi) of Alexandria are already sailing with fleets by way of the Nile and of the Arabian gulf as far as India, these regions also have become far better known to us of today than to our predecessors. Anyways, when Gallus was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Ethiopia. I also learned that as many as one hundred and twenty ships were sailing from Myos Hormos [modern Quseir al-Quadim on the west coast of the Red Sea] to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian products.
Now my first and most important concern, both for the purposes of knowledge and for the needs of the government, is the following: to try to give, in the simplest possible way, the shape and size of that part of the earth which falls within our map, indicating at the same time what the nature of that part is and what portion it is of the whole earth, because this is the proper task of the geographer. . . [omitted following sections].
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[For Strabo’s preceding discussion of Pelasgians, Trojans, Lelegians, and Kilikians, go to this link].
[Assessing information about India and Indians]
(15.1.1-6) The remaining parts of Asia still left to cover are those outside the Taurus mountain range except Cilicia, Pamphylia, and Lycia, I mean the parts extending from India as far as the Nile and lying between the Taurus and the outer sea [i.e. the entire surrounding sea including the Atlantic and Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean as a gulf] on the south. After Asia one comes to Libya, which I will describe later, but now I must begin with India, for it is the first and largest country that lies out towards the east.
[Soldiers accompanying Alexander]
But we must be careful when we listen to accounts about this country, because not only is it furthest away from us, but not many of our people have seen it. Even those who have seen it, have seen only parts of it, and the majority of what they say is from hearsay (ἀκοή; or: oral report). Εven what they saw they learned on a quick passage with an army through the country. For that reason, they do not present the same accounts of the same things, even though they have written these accounts as though their statements had been carefully confirmed. Some of them were both on the same expedition together and made their journeys together, like those who helped Alexander to subdue Asia. Yet those who accompanied Alexander frequently contradict one another. But if they differ in this way about what was seen, what must we think about things they report from hearsay?
[Sailors and merchants]
Moreover, most of those who have written anything about this region in much later times, and those who sail there at the present time, do not present any accurate information either. Anyways, Apollodoros [of Artemita], who wrote Parthian Matters, mentions the Greeks who caused Baktriana to revolt from the Syrian kings who succeeded Seleukos Nikator, where he says that when those kings had grown in power they also attacked India. However, he reveals nothing else besides what was already known, and he even contradicts what was known, saying that those kings subdued more of India than the Macedonians, or at least that Eukratidas [died ca. 145 BCE] held a thousand cities as his subjects. Those other authors, however, only say that the peoples between the Hydaspes and the Hypanis rivers were nine in number, and that they had five thousand cities, none of which was smaller than the Meropian Kos, and that Alexander subdued all of this country and gave it over to Poros [an Indian king].
Regarding those who sail as merchants (emporikoi) from Egypt by the Nile and the Arabian gulf as far as India, only a small number have sailed as far as the Ganges river. Even these merchants are merely average individuals (idiōtai) and useless with regard to the history of the places they have seen. But from India, from one place and from one king, I mean Pandion, or another Poros, there came to Caesar Augustus presents and gifts of honour and the Indian sage (sophistēs) who burned himself up at Athens, just like Kalanos had done, when he made a similar spectacular display of himself before Alexander.
[Accounts based on expeditions before Alexander under Assyrians and Persians]
If, however, one should dismiss these accounts and observe the records of the country prior to the expedition of Alexander, one would find things still more obscure. Now it is reasonable to suppose that Alexander believed such records because he was blinded by his numerous good fortunes. Anyways, Nearchos says that Alexander conceived an ambition to lead his army through Gedrosia when he learned that both Semiramis [legendary Assyrian queen] and Cyrus [king of Persia] had made an expedition against the Indians, and that Semiramis had turned back in flight with only twenty people and Cyrus with seven. Nearchos also says that Alexander thought how great it would be, when those two had met with such reverses, if he himself should lead a whole victorious army safely through the same peoples and regions. Alexander, therefore, believed these accounts.
[Megasthenes on earlier accounts]
But as for us, what appropriate credence can we place in the accounts of India derived from such an expedition made by Cyrus or Semiramis? Megasthenes virtually agrees with this reasoning when he asks us to have no faith in the ancient stories about the Indians. For, he says, neither was an army ever sent outside the country by the Indians nor did any outside army ever invade their country and master them, except the armies with Herakles and Dionysos and the army in our times with the Macedonians. Yet Megasthenes does add that Sesostris [Senwosret] the Egyptian and Tearkon the Ethiopian advanced as far as Europe, and that Nebuchadnezzar [II, ca. 605-562 BCE], who enjoyed a better reputation among the Chaldeans [i.e. Babylonians] than Herakles did, led an army even as far as the Pillars [of Herakles, i.e. Strait of Gibraltar]. He says that Tearkon also went that far; that Sesostris also led his army from Iberia to Thrace and the Pontos [Black Sea]; and, that Idanthyrsos the Scythian overran Asia as far as Egypt. However, he says that none of these touched India, and Semiramis also died before the attempt. Although the Persians summoned the Hydrakians as mercenary troops from India, the latter did not make an expedition to Persia, but only came near it when Cyrus was marching against the Massagetians.
[For Strabo’s subsequent discussion of Nysaians and Sibians among Indians, go to this link].
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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.