VII. INDIA AND THE GREEK V/EST wtrile all this was happening in the Easr,l ttle west was gradually tuming in another direction. Whilst tlre Nea¡ East had been, from the Greek viewpoint, in the middle of events during the fint part of the Hellenistic period, the focus was now shifting to ttre West, with the rise of Roman power. In literature, eastemmost Hellenism is rarely men- úoned, even when it still existed, and the India of AJexander and his successors is more and more transferred to the realm of history and legend. At the same time, howevef, new means of contact were developing on the practical level. Although the bulk of our evidence for lndo-westem commerce comes only from the Roman Imperial period, its beginnings are aùready to be seen in the Hellenistic Age. This will be more frrlly discussed in the next volume of our studies. Now I have con- centrated on its origins, although occasional overstepping of our chronological limits has often been unavoidable. A new featu¡e here was ttre growing familiarity with the Ocean, the Er¡lraean Sea of the ancients. For Alexander and his men it wæ still compleæly unknown, but explora- tion was started as soon as the Ocean was reached at the mouths of the Indus and it con- tinued during the time of the successors of Alexander. Real and imaginary naval venh¡res were described in literature, and the distant islands of the Easærn Ocean became a ne\ry scene for utopias and fabulous stories. L Unchanging Literary Image In the Greek (and Latin) literature of the Hellenistic West, India is mostly mentioned solely in the context of Alexander. It was no canon (like that suggested by Ditrle for the Roman period)2 - yet! But India was distant, and in Greek eyes it only gained impofance when Alexander went there. The Indiar¡ ventures of the Seleucids were too episodic to attract much notice. Megasthenes had been on the spot, and his work was read, of course, but on the whole very few literate men actually went to India after Alexander and the early Hellenistic period. The Indo-Greeks did, but from the Western perspective they were themselves distant and peripheral, and few ca¡ed about their achievemenæ. I See the preceding chapter ) Dihle 1964a. 32t VII. India and the GreekWest For most subseguent authors the contemporary historians of Alexander were there- fore thought to be the only reliable authorities on India. "Beyond the Hyphasis nothing certain is known."3 Megasthenes, too, w¿rs read and used, but with suspicion and there- fore, happily for us, mostly provided with references. Eratosthenes was used because he alone gave a critical evaluation of ea¡lier sou¡ces. Soon the Parthians cut off the land-route, and the di¡ect sea-route from Eg¡pt to India was not yet opened (cf. VII.2). Still India soems to have had some role in literan¡re. In addition to the hisorians of Alexander and the ambassadors discussed above (chapærs lI and ITÐ, our meÍrgre remains of early Hellenistic lite¡ature conøin some further refer- ences to lndia. Some have already been mentioned in the chapters on science (IV and V); now it is tirne for us to discuss the rest. A missing source among the Hellenistic literatu¡e on India is tI:a Indica of Basilis.a Aterminus ante quemis given in the reference by Agatharchides, who died c. 130 B.C.s The work is clearly referred to as the Indica, but Basilis is said (in F 2) to have described and perhaps even visited Meroe, too. A relaæd figure is thus Simonides the Younger (FGrH 669), who also went to Meroe, remained there for five years, and is mentioned (together with Basilis) by Pliny among the authorities consulted in the sixth book of his Naturalis Historia.6 But nothing more is known either of Basilis or of Simonides. Per- haps Basilis was somehow connected wi¡h the Ptolemaic venn¡res in the South and with the beginnings of di¡ect nade with India.? Simonides' book was probably anAethiopica. We have no more than two testimonia and n¡,o fragments from Basilis (and from Simonides only two testimonia). While Agatharchides (T 1) says that Basiüs, together with Hecataeus,S described the East, Pliny seems to list him among his sources on Ethio. pia (I2), and mentions him again in his description of tlrat counEy (F 2). The retnaining fragment (F l, by Athenaeus) is ascribed to the second book of a work called the Indica, but the subject, þgmaei and the geranomachia motif,g can just as well be connected with Ettriopia as wittr India. Still less do we know of Eudoxus, whom Ptiny mentions among his authorities on the fabulous peoples of India beside Megasthenes, Ctesias, Tauron and Onesicritus.lo 3 A.ri-ur, Ind.6, I; cf. Strabo 15, 1,27 & 37. a FG'Hitï. 5 B""ilir T I = Agatha¡chides, De Mari Rubro 65 (Photius). 6 In addition to the central Asian and Indian account (6, 18, 4ó - 26, 106), book 6. as part of the geographical section of Pliny's work, also includcs Asia Minor, Arabia, a¡rd Ethiopia. 7 wecker's suggestion (1916, 1294) that he, like Dionysius, was a Ptolemaic ambassador to the Maurya couf is no more than a mere guess. It is possible, of course, but nothing really points to it. 8 P.ob"bly Hecataeus of Miletus was meant, as Hecataeus of Abdera wrote about Egypt. On the other hand, ir seems somewhat curious that such an author as Hecataeus of Miletus, of the early ftfth century B.C., would have been quoted by Agatharchides, wridng well before the archaic mode of the Roman Impcrial period, while Megauhenes and the historians of Alexander were ignored. Or did Photius in his excerpt (afrer all, we do not have ¡hc original of Agatharchides) ignorc some ñ¡nher names, but include the a¡chaic Heca¡aeus? 9 Or this, sec Karttunen 1989a. 128ff. l0 Pliny l, ?. Eudoxus isalsomentionedbyTzetzes (Chit.7,l44, f/i6) in a list of authors descriÞ ing fabulous peoples and other marvels. 322 VII.Inàia and the GreekWest Our only fragment mentions the fabulous Sruthopodes or'the sparow-footed people' in South India (Pliny 7, 2,24). Perhaps he was Eudoxus of Rhodes, mentioned by Mar- cianus (Epir. 2) among authors such as Androsthenes, Sosander (cf. tr.4 on both), Han- no, PSrtheas, and Scylax. No bener is our knowledge of Tauron: only a reference among Pliny's sources, and an Indian tribe (Choromandae) mentioned in the same passage of Pliny (7,2,24). There a¡e many Hellenistic authors who only occasionally refer to India. Duris of Samos in his history (FGrH 76) described Alexander's campaigns and thus also the Indian part of them. Among his rather numerous fragments, howeve¡ there are only three that concem us here. One (F 47) refen to Prometheus and the Caucasus, here probably meaning the Hindukush,ll another (F 27) to Dionysus and his legendary campaign in India. The third (F 48 from Ptiny) might have been an attempt at providing a rational explanation of the fabulous races of India. A mongrel race is said to have been born from a union of Indians with wild animals. Such an explanation could well have been offered for instance for the dog-heads. On the other hand, Duris is said to have been much more inærested in dramatic effect and in sensational matters ttran in rational explanæions. Phylarchus the historianl2 also belongs to the third century B.C. His work was an example of so-called "hagic history", even in this respect continuing the work of Duris, and perhaps his lengthy history is not one of to our greatest losses in Hellenistic literatr¡re. It probably contained linle about India; the emphasis seems to have been on Greek his- tory. Among his fragments we find an account of the supposed devotion of elephants to thei¡ human masters (F 36 from Athenaeus), related only indirectly to India. More impor- tant is the F 35, in two versions (from Apolloníts' Mirabília, and Athenaeus), which gives the aforementioned account (chapter VI.l) of a snong aphrodisiac root presented by Sandrocotn¡s to Seleucus. fui otherwise unknown piece of Hellenistic speculation is given in F 78 (Plutarch, De Iside).It is an attempt to derive Egyptian religion from India, claiming that Dionysus brought two bulls from India to Eg1pt, one called Apis and the other Osiris. In other sources Dionysus, the conqueror of India, is himself identified with Osiris.l3 An understandably polemical reference, cited from tlre- Commcn¡aries of Ftole' maeus YII (Euergetes II; after I82-IL6 B.C.), presened for us by Athenaeus (10, 438), states ttrat Antiochus Epiphanes adopted "Indian revels and ca¡ouses" and therefo¡e "spent large sums".l4 Since the days of Alexander Indians had had a place in Hellenistic festivities. Cha¡es tells us that Indian conjurors participated in the programme of the great marriage celebrations at Susa" and that Calanus' death was celebrated by a drinking con- ll So Jacoby in his note ¿d /. t2 FGrH 8l with 5 testimonies and 85 fragments. l3 E.g. Diodorus l, 19,7f. a¡d 4, l. l4 Athenaeus, Deipn. 10, 52, 438 lloÀonórqç ôè ñv xclì 'Avtío¡¿oç ó paoú.ôç ô rlr¡0eìç 'Errgav{ç, ô öp¡peúocç napà 'Propaíorç, ôç iotopeî fltoX.r¡rcîoç ô Eriep1åt¡ç Èv tQ tpítrp tõv 'Yro¡rvr¡- ¡rdtorv rriv tQ rÉ¡rrtg çóox<ov cùtòv eiç toirç 'lvõtroùç ró¡rouç roi péOoç tpcnévto roÀIù rivaÀíorerv.