Scylax of Caryanda (in Caria), Greek historian, lived in the time of Darius Hystaspis (521‑485 B.C.), who commissioned him to explore the course of the Indus. He was engaged to sail, explore and describe the shore of the Indian Ocean for the needs of the Persian.
Scylax of Caryanda was a pioneer in two ways; he wrote the first Indian logos in Greek, and he was rumored to have visited India.
He started from Caspatyrus and is said by Herodotus to have reached the sea, whence he sailed west through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea. The exploration of the Persian gulf and Indian ocean lasted for two years and it was finished around 515 BC.
An account of Scylax’s voyage may have been written and transmitted to later writer. Direct evidence of a written account of Scylax’s explorations comes from Aristotle. In the Politics,the philosopher quotes Scylaxas the source of the statement that in India “the kings are physically very different from their subjects, etc.”
Scylax allegedly completed some books after this voyage: the Periplous, the Periodos Gês, and the Events in the Time of Heracleides King of Mylasa. Few fragments of his Periplous about India remain. They discuss its landscape, plants, political constitution and peoples.
Scylax of Caryanda
Showing posts with label Herodotus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Herodotus. Show all posts
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Saturday, March 24, 2018
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–425 BC)
Herodotus was born to Lyxes and Rhaeo of Caria in Halicarnassus at some point in the first half of the 5th century BC, but left as a consequence of a period of political infighting in which his family was involved.
Herodotus and his brother Theodore belonged to a well-educated privilege class that could afford leisure and extensive travel. He spent much of his adult life traveling the Mediterranean world.
In his travels, Herodotus venture as far as Sicily, north to the Ukraine south to the Nile River, and east to the Black Sea rim as far as the Dnieper River in southwestern Russia.
He is one of the most important historical writers of antiquity. Herodotus' name is inseparable from that of his one surviving work, the Histories, an account of the Persian Wars (490-479 BC), fought between the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes and the cities of Greece and - very broadly defined - of the background to those wars.
This lengthy history described how the Persian expansion westward after the mid-500 BC was eventually defeated by the Greek’s defense of their homeland in 480 – 479 BC.
His writings are an amalgam of geography and history, framed from firsthand observation as well as secondhand accounts, a mixture of sober historical fact as well as reports of the exotic and miraculous.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–425 BC)
Herodotus and his brother Theodore belonged to a well-educated privilege class that could afford leisure and extensive travel. He spent much of his adult life traveling the Mediterranean world.
In his travels, Herodotus venture as far as Sicily, north to the Ukraine south to the Nile River, and east to the Black Sea rim as far as the Dnieper River in southwestern Russia.
He is one of the most important historical writers of antiquity. Herodotus' name is inseparable from that of his one surviving work, the Histories, an account of the Persian Wars (490-479 BC), fought between the Persian kings Darius and Xerxes and the cities of Greece and - very broadly defined - of the background to those wars.
This lengthy history described how the Persian expansion westward after the mid-500 BC was eventually defeated by the Greek’s defense of their homeland in 480 – 479 BC.
His writings are an amalgam of geography and history, framed from firsthand observation as well as secondhand accounts, a mixture of sober historical fact as well as reports of the exotic and miraculous.
Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–425 BC)
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