A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. Группа авторов. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

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along the Arabian coast, including Androsthenes of Thasos, who had also traveled with Nearchus and wrote Periplus of the Indian Coast, a source used by Eratosthenes and Athenaeus (Strabo 16.3.2; Athen. 3.93b; FGrH 711; Wirth, “Androsthenes 4,” Der Kleine Pauly, 350–351; Potts 1990: 5). Other reports from sea expeditions sent by Alexander and the Ptolemies informed the historian and geographer Agatharchides of Cnidus (c. 200–c. 145 BCE) who wrote On the Erythraean Sea, known from excerpts in Diodorus Siculus (3.12–48), Strabo (16.5.5–20), and Photius (Bibliotheca Codex 250) (FGrH 86, Müller, GGM I, liv–lxxiii, 111–194; Burstein 1989: 30–32, 176ff).

       The Roman Period

      We know from Pliny (HN 5.83, 6.40) that Domitius Corbulo’s expedition to Armenia for Nero produced some new measurements for the upper Euphrates and Caspian region. For evidence of later expeditions and geographic surveys during the resurgence of Roman campaigns against the Parthians under Trajan and Hadrian, the main source is Ptolemy’s Geographikē hyphēgēsis (or, Guide to Drawing the World, conventionally titled Geography) (Berggren and Jones 2000: 4). We have the name of one Syrian, Maes Titianus, who ventured along the Silk Road as far as the Stone Tower (Tashkurgan, Xinjiang) and supplied Ptolemy with 876 schoinoi (26,280 stades) as the land distance from the Euphrates to Stone Tower (Ptol. Geog. 1.11.3). Maes sought to trade directly with the Chinese silk merchants whose wares normally passed to the avid Roman market via Parthian traders