Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Indians, Ethiopians, and Iberians: Poseidonios and Strabo on Eudoxos of Kyzikos’ expeditions (first centuries BCE and CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified August 9, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=21314.
Ancient authors: Poseidonios of Apameia (early first century BCE), On Ocean, Kidd F49C, as discussed by Strabo (early first century CE), Geography 2.3.4-5 (link).
Comments: Early on in his work on Geography, Strabo deals with broad issues regarding the shape of the earth and its seas and regarding his sources. Poseidonios of Apameia is one of his key sources, but Strabo also has considerable hesitancies about Poseidonios’ work On Ocean in several respects. In particular, here we have him discussing stories about expeditions aimed at circumnavigating Libya, or Africa. Strabo’s main concern is about knowledge of the “outer ocean” that surrounds the inhabited world (what we call the Atlantic and Indian Ocean) and what trustworthy sources of information we have about that outer ocean (the “inner” one, a large inlet of the outer one, was the Mediterranean Sea). Poseidonios can’t be trusted, according to Strabo.
What matters for us here is that Strabo goes on at some length summarizing a story told by Poseidonios about Eudoxos of Kyzikos that has important implications regarding the ancient dissemination of “information” (reliable or not) about peoples. The story goes that Eudoxos of Kyzikos was chosen first to do expeditions to India on behalf of the Ptolemaic regime, with the aid of an Indian guide. Then he went out on his own with the aim of circumnavigating Libya (the African continent) starting in Spain and hoping for arrival in India, but having adventures and encounters with other peoples along the way. Strabo does not believe this story is true. But, for us (the modern social historians), virtually all ethnographic “information” is blurred with fiction anyways. We don’t need to decide between Poseidonios and Strabo in that way.
Throughout, there are signs that ancient literary elites contemplated (or reported on) encounters between peoples that occurred on precisely such expeditions. We have the Indian castaway who is trained in Greek to accompany the crew, suggesting inter-ethnic contact within the crew on the voyage itself. Eudoxos is pictured taking notes about the language spoken in eastern Ethiopia, for instance, and then later comparing that information with the “Ethiopians” (remember this is a very broad outsider category for people with “burnt” coloured skin, not a group that would self-identify in this way) he encounters on the western side of Libya on the coast of what we call the Atlantic. Eudoxos is imagined finding an unusual carving on the prow of a ship that had sunk, subsequently consulting shippers in Alexandria in Egypt about it. The Greek-speaking shippers are presented as though they would recognize the ethnic origin of such art, namely the people of Gades far away in Iberia (now Spain). Eudoxos interacts with a local king in Mauretania. Official and unofficial “expeditions” – whether real or imaginary or in between – were a key source of ethnographic impressions and ruminations. I will be addressing this whole scenario more fully in a forthcoming book on Ethnic Relations in the Ancient Mediterranean.
Works consulted: I.G. Kidd, Posidonius: III: The Translation of the Fragments (Cambridge: CUP, 1999); I.G. Kidd, Posidonius: II. The Commentary: (I) Testimonia and Fragments 1-149 (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), pp. 240-257.
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[For Strabo’s preceding discussion of climates and peoples, go to this link].
[Idea of circumnavigating Libya]
(2.3.4) In giving the names of those who are said to have circumnavigated Libya, Poseidonios says that Herodotos believes that certain men commissioned by Neko accomplished the circumnavigation of Libya. Poseidonios adds that Herakleides of Pontos in one of his Dialogues makes a certain Magian who had come to the court of Gelo assert that he had circumnavigated Libya.
[Eudoxos’ expeditions up the Nile]
After stating that these reports are unsupported by testimony, he tells the story of a certain Eudoxos of Kyzikos, a sacred ambassador and peace herald at the festival of Persephone. Eudoxos, the story goes, came to Egypt in the reign of Euergetes II. Eudoxos became associated with the king and the king’s ministers, particularly in connection with the voyages up the Nile. This was because Eudoxos was a man inclined to admire the peculiarities of regions and was also not uninformed about them.
[Indian castaway as a guide on the first Indian expedition]
Now it so happened, the story continues, that a certain Indian was brought to the king by the coast-guards of the recess of the Arabian gulf. They said that they had found him half-dead and alone on a stranded ship, but that they did not know who he was or where he came from, since they did not understand his language. The king put men in charge of the Indian to teach him Greek. When the Indian had learned Greek, he related that on his previous voyage from India he by a strange accident mistook his course and reached Egypt in safety, but only after having lost all his companions by starvation. When his story was doubted, he promised to act as guide on the trip to India for the men who had been previously selected by the King. Eudoxos was also a member of this group.
So Eudoxos sailed away with presents, and he returned with a cargo of perfumes and precious stones (some of which the rivers bring down with the sands, while others are fortified by digging, being solidified from a liquid state, just as our crystals are). But Eudoxos was completely deceived in his expectations, for Euergetes took from him his entire cargo.
[Second Indian expedition, and landing in Ethiopia]
After the death of Euergetes, his wife, Kleopatra, succeeded him on the throne. So Eudoxos was again sent out, by her also, and this time with a larger outfit. But on his return voyage he was driven out of his course by the winds to the south of Ethiopia, and being driven to certain places he placated the people by sharing with them bread, wine, and dried figs (for they did not have such things). So in return he received a supply of fresh water and the guidance of pilots, and he also made a list of some of their words. He also found an end of a wooden prow that had come from a wrecked ship and had a horse carved on it. When he learned that this piece of wreckage belonged to some voyagers who had been sailing from the west, he took it with him when he turned back upon his homeward voyage.
[Return to Egypt and discovery of the Iberian connection]
When Eudoxos arrived safely in Egypt and even though Kleopatra no longer reigned but her son instead, he was again deprived of everything, because it was discovered that he had stolen much property. But he brought the figure-head to the market-place and showed it to the shippers (nauklēroi), and learned from them that it was a figure-head belonging to Gadeirites [people from Gades in Iberia / Cádiz, Spain]. Eudoxos was told that whereas the merchants (emporoi) of Gades fit out large ships, the poor men fit out small ships which they call “horses” from the devices on the prows of their ships, and that they sail with these small ships on fishing voyages around the coast of Maurousia [Mauretania, i.e. modern Algeria and Morocco] as far as the river Lixos [near modern Larache, Morocco]. However, some of the shippers actually recognized the figure-head as having belonged to one of the ships that had sailed rather too far beyond the Lixos river and had not returned home safely.
[Attempts at circumnavigating Libya / Africa from Spain to get to India]
From the above-mentioned fact, Eudoxos conjectured that the circumnavigation of Libya was possible. He went home [to Kyzikos on the western coast of Turkey], placed all his property on a ship, and put out to sea. First he put in at Dikaiarchia [Pozzuoli, Italy], then at Massilia [Marseille, France], and then at the successive points along the coast until he came to Gades [Cádiz, Spain]. He was noisily proclaiming his scheme everywhere and, engaging in business to make money, he built a great ship and also two tow-boats like those used by sea-bandits (lēstrikoi). He put music-girls, physicians, and other artisans on board, and finally set sail on the high sea on the way to India, favoured by constant western breezes. But since his companions became tired of the voyage, he sailed with a fair wind towards the land even though he did not want to do that, for he feared the ebb and flow of the tides. What he feared actually happened: the ship ran aground, though so gently that it was not broken up all at once. They succeeded in bringing the cargo safely to land and also most of the ship’s timbers. Using these timbers, he constructed a third boat about as large as a ship of fifty oars. He continued his voyage, until he came to people who spoke the same words that he had made a list of on the former occasion [i.e. previously in Ethiopia near Egypt]. Right away he at least learned that the men in that region belonged to the same people (homoethneis) as those other Ethiopians, and also that they were neighbours to the kingdom of Bogos.
[In Mauretania]
Accordingly, he abandoned the voyage to India and turned back. On the voyage along the coast, he spotted and took note of an island that was well-watered and well-wooded but uninhabited. When he reached Maurousia [Mauretania] safely he disposed of his boats, travelled on foot to the court of Bogos, and advised him to take up this expedition at Bogos’ expense. But the friends of Bogos prevailed to the contrary, inspiring in him the fear that Maurousia might in consequence be easily exposed to hostile intrigue if the way there had once been pointed out to outsiders who wished to attack it. When Eudoxos heard that he was being sent out, ostensibly, on the expedition as proposed by him, but in reality was going to be placed out on some desert island, he fled to the territory that was under Roman dominion, and from there crossed over to Iberia [now Spain].
[Second attempt at route around Libya to India]
Once again Eudoxos built a round ship and a long ship of fifty oars, his purpose being to keep to the open sea with his long ship and to explore the coast with the round ship. He put on board agricultural implements, seeds, and carpenters, and again set out with a view to the same circumnavigation. His intention was to spend the winter on the island he had previously observed in case the voyage was delayed; to sow the seed and reap the harvest from it; and, then to finish the voyage which he had decided to do in the first place.
[Conclusion to Poseidonios’ story and Strabo’s assessment of the story as fictional]
“Now I,” says Poseidonios, “have traced the story of Eudoxos to this point, but what happened afterwards probably the people of Gades and Iberia know.” So from all these indications he says it is shown that the ocean flows in a circle around the inhabited world: “For him no fetters of continent encompass; but he pours forth his waters boundlessly, and nothing ever contaminates their purity” [source of verse unknown].
Now Poseidonios is absurb with all this: 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 though real evidence this Bergaian [fictitious] story. Poseidonios either invented it himself or accepted it from others who were its inventors. For, in the first place, what plausibility is there in the “strange accident” which the Indian tells about? Actually, the Arabian gulf is like a river in its narrowness, and it is about fifteen thousand stadium-lengths long up to its mouth, which, in its turn, is narrow throughout its entire length. So it is not likely that the Indians who were voyaging outside this gulf were pushed out of their course into it by mistake (for its narrowness at its mouth would have shown their mistake), nor, if they sailed into the gulf on purpose, did they any longer have the excuse that they mistook their course or encountered inconstant winds. And how can it be that they permitted all their crew-members to die of starvation with the exception of one man? And if he survived, how could he single-handedly have guided the ship, which was not a small one, since in any event it could sail over open seas of so great extent? And how strange is his speedy mastery of the Greek language, which enabled him to convince the king that he was competent to act as pilot of the expedition? And how strange Euergetes’ scarcity of competent pilots, since the sea in that region was already known to many men? And as for that peace herald and sacred ambassador of the people of Kyzikos [i.e. Eudoxos], how did he come to abandon his native city and go sailing to India? And how did he come to be entrusted with so great an office? And although on his return everything was taken away from him, contrary to his expectation, and he was in disgrace, how did he come to be entrusted with a still greater equipment of presents? And when he returned from this second voyage and was driven off his course to Ethiopia, why did he write down those lists of words? And why did he enquire from what source the beak of that fishing-smack had been cast ashore? For the discovery that this bit of wreckage had belonged to men who sailed from the west could have signified nothing, since he himself was to sail from the west on his homeward voyage.
And so, again, upon his return to Alexandria, when it was discovered that he had stolen much property, how is it that he was not punished, and that he even went about interviewing shipmasters, at the same time showing them the figure-head of the ship? And wasn’t the man that recognized the figure-head an amazing guy? Wasn’t the man that believed him a still more amazing guy, namely, the man who on the strength of a hope of that sort returned to his home land and then changed his home to the regions beyond the Pillars [of Herakles; i.e. Strait of Gibraltar]? But it would not even have been permitted for him to put to sea from Alexandria without permission, least of all after he had stolen property belonging to the king. Neither could he have sailed out of the harbour secretly, since not only the harbour, but also all the other ways of issue from the city had always been kept closed under just as strong guard as I know is still kept up to this day (for I have lived a long time in Alexandria). Yet at the present time, under Roman control, the watch is considerably relaxed: but under the kings, the guards were much more strict.
And, again, when Eudoxos had sailed away to Gades, and in royal style had built himself ships and continued on his voyage, after his vessel had been wrecked, how could he have built a third boat in the desert? And how is it, when once more he put out to sea and found that those western Ethiopians spoke the same language as the eastern Ethiopians, that he was not eager to accomplish the rest of his voyage (insofar as he was so foolish in his eagerness for travels abroad, and since he had a good hope that the unexplored remainder of his voyage was but small) — but instead gave up all this and conceived a longing for the expedition that was to be carried out through the aid of Bogos? And how did he come to learn about the plot that was secretly framed against him? And what advantage could this have been to Bogos? By this I mean his causing the disappearance of the man when he might have dismissed him in other ways? But even if the man learned about the plot, how could he have made his escape to places of safety? For, although there is nothing impossible in any escapes of that sort, yet every one of them is difficult and rarely made even with a streak of good luck. However, Eudoxos is always attended by good luck, although he is placed in jeopardies one after another. And, again, after he had escaped from Bogos, why was he not afraid to sail once more along the coast of Libya when he had an outfit large enough to colonize an island?
Now, really, all this does not fall short of the fabrications of Pytheas, Euhemeros [link] and Antiphanes. Those men, however, we can pardon for their fabrications — since they follow precisely this as their business — just as we pardon jugglers. However, who could pardon Poseidonios, master of demonstration and pursuer of wisdom (philosophos), whom we may almost call the claimant for first honours. That much, at least, is not well done by Poseidonios.
[For Strabo’s subsequent discussion of travelers, soldiers and merchants as sources of orally transmitted information, 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.