Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

“ Egyptian shipping on the Red Sea was encouraged, and regular trade was opened with the Sabaeans of South Arabia and the tribes of the Somali coast. The names of all these ports, and a description of this newly-created commerce, in terms of romanic enthusiasm, are given by Agatharchides in his work on the Erythraean Sea. At the time this Periplus, the remaining settlements seem to be Arsinoe, Myos-hormus, Berenice, Ptolemais and Adulis. ”

“ Not Strabo or Pliny or Ptolemy, however great the store of knowledge they gathered together, can equal in human interest this unknown merchant who wrote merely of the things he dealt in and the peoples he met—those peoples of whom our civilization still knows so little and to whom it owes so much; who brought to the restless West the surplus from the ordered and industrious East, and in so doing ruled the waters of the "Erythraean Sea." ”

“ There are ruins still visible, even the arrangement of streets being clear; in the center is a small Egyptian temple with hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs of Greek wormanship. There is a fine natural harbor, but the bar is now impossible in low water; and Strabo (XVI, IV, 6) mentions dangerous rocks and violent winds from the sea.
At the time of the Periplus, Berenice seems to have been the leading port of Egypt for the Eastern trade, and was probably the home of the author. ”

“ In no part of the world have alluvial desposits been formed by the rivers more rapidly and to a great extent than here." (At the present day it is about 40 miles from the gulf.)
Pliny's reference to the possession of the lower Tigris by an Arabian chieftain, the name of whose city he extends to the "Characene" district of Elymais, or Elam, indicates how large a part in the affairs of Parthian Empire may have been played, at the date of the Periplus, by its subjects south of the Persian Gulf. ”

“ Pliny's figures are untrustworthy, as in XII, 41, he estimates a little over $4,000,000 as the balance of specie required for the entire trade with India, Arabia and China; but a sudden increase in commerce in none the less evident.
The absence of any description in the Periplus of trade with the coasts of the Persian Gulf, then subject to Parthia, suggests that it was written at a time when Rome and Parthia were at war. Our author's descriptions, even of the southern coast of Arabia, stop at the Frankincense Country and its dependency, the island of Masira ”

“ Pauthier in his French text rightly connects the story with the Kuria Muria group because of its geographical position; Yule and Cordier repudiate it as nonsense. Vincent in his edition of the Periplus (II, 347) refers to the "fable," without explanation, to these islands. Its actual source, so far as is known, has not been observed.
About half-way between Makran and Socotra, Marco Polo says (III, xxxi) , are the two islands "called Male and Female, lying about 30 miles distant from one another. . . . In the island called Male dwell the men alone, without their wives or any other women. ”

“ Two kings reign in the island, hostile to each other; of whom one has the region of the hyacinthus, and the other the rest of the island, in which is the market-town and port. It is frequented by a great press of merchants from far countries. In that island is established the Church of Christ, of the sect of the Persians, and there is a presbyter sent from Persia, and a deacon, and the whole service of the church. But the natives, and the kings, are of other faiths. Many temples are to be seen in this island ”

“ The “small vessels” of § 19 from Muza to the Nabataean port are to be contrasted with the “large vessels” of § 10 that traded from Mosyllum to Egypt. The caravan trade could not be reached in the same way, and along the Red Sea the camel could always compete with the ship. This remained in Arabian hands for another half-century, when the Emperor Trajan reduced the Nabataeans to subjection to Rome.
19. Centurion.—Vincent assumes that this was a Roman officer, but the text does not indicate it. At this time the kingdom of the Nabataeans was independent, powerful and prosperous ”

“ One is tempted to imagine that Pliny's account of the voyage to India (VI, 26) in which he refers to "information on which reliance may be placed, here published for the first time," refers to the Periplus, then existing merely as a merchant's diary; and Glaser has based much of his argument as to the authorship of the Periplus on that passage; but Pliny goes on to describe a voyage different in many ways from that of the Periplus, and giving quite a different account of the coast of India. ”

“ Zwemer, (op. cit., p. 101) , further confirms the Periplus:
"Even Sinbad the Sailor might recognize every rope and the odd spoon-shaped oars. All the boats have good lines and are well built by the natives of Indian timber. For the rest, all is of Bahrein manufacture except their pulley-blocks, which come from Bombay. Sail-cloth is woven at Menamah and ropes are twined of date-fiber in rude ropewalks which have no machinery worth mentioning. Even the long soft iron nails are hammered out on the anvil one by one. ”

“ The author of the Periplus is mistaken in supposing that the Macedonians got beyond the Indus region, and is probably quoting what was told him by some trader at Barygaza, who would hardly have distinguished Alexander from Asoka. Under the caste system the traders were not concerned with the religious or political activities of the country, and those concerned with foreign trade were often, as now, mere outcasts; while even had they been informed, they would have been quite equal to attributing anything, for the moment, to Alexander, out of deference to their Greek customers, who. ”

“ Bekker) , whose work on the Erythraean Sea was written about 113 B. C., a century and a half before the Periplus. It seems to be this same Basilis, rather than a later writer of like name, whose Indica is quoted by Athenaeus (Deipnos. IX, 390, b) , who wrote about 230 A. D. Unless, therefore, Glaser assumes that the Basilis of Pliny's text is a different man from the Basilis of his index, his argument falls.
Then, too, a man of Pliny's standing would have been apt to refrain from mentioning by name a writer with no literary reputation in Roman society. ”

“ He then set out on his return to Persia, leaving instructions with Nearkhos to start on the voyage as soon as the calming of the monsoon should render navigation safe. It was the king’s intention to march near to the coast, and to collect at convenient stations supplies for the victualling of the fleet, but he found that such a route was impracticable, and he was obliged to lead his army through the inland provinces which lay between India and his destination, Sûsa. ”

“ Sea beyond the realms of Babylonia belong principally to Arabia, which extends in one direction as far as the sea that washes the shores of Phœnikia and Syrian Palestine, while towards sunset it borders on the Egyptians in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt is penetrated by a gulf which extends up from the great ocean, and as this ocean is connected with the Erythræan Sea, this fact proves that a voyage could be made all the way from Babylon to Egypt by means of this gulf. ”

“ Strength and Weakness of the Athenian Empire.—Under Pericles Athens had become the most powerful naval state in the world. In one of his last speeches, made at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, in which he recounts the resources of the Athenian empire, Pericles says to his fellow-citizens: "There is not now a king, there is not any nation in the universal world, able to withstand that navy which at this juncture you can launch out to sea." ”

“ HOW PERSEUS CONQUERED THE SEA
A heavy storm raged at sea. The billows, as tall and stronger than ships, rolled from the cave on the coast of Greece where Medusa, the Gorgon, ruled and directed them. She drove them out in an endless line of destruction to crush any frail craft that braved the waters, send the sailors to the bottom and leave only broken oars and spars to be washed up on the rocks outside her stony dwelling place.
As the sea arose and the winds shrieked, a ship far out from the land could be seen, riding on the crest of the waves and coming closer to the shore. ”

“ O blessed gods!"
But what a sea! It roared and tossed and boiled. While Ariston looked, a ship was picked up and crushed and swallowed. The sea poured up the steep shore for hundreds of feet. Then it rushed back and left its strange fish gasping on the dry land. Great rocks fell from the sky, and steam rose up as they splashed into the water. The sun was growing fainter. The black cloud was coming on. Soon it would be dark. And then what? Ariston lay down where the last huge wave had cooled the ground. "It is all over, Caius," he murmured. "I shall never see Athens again." ”

“ After abandoning the naval contest at Rhium, and retiring to Corinth, Knêmus and Brasidas were prevailed upon by the Megarians, before the fleet dispersed, to try the bold experiment of a sudden inroad upon Peiræus. Such was the confessed superiority of the Athenians at sea, that, while they guarded amply the coasts of Attica against privateers, they never imagined the possibility of an attack upon their own main harbor. ”

“ The Greek vessels, lighter and easier to manoeuvre than those of the Phoenicians, surround the latter and disable them in detail. “The surface of the sea is hidden with floating wreckage and corpses; the shore and the rocks are covered with the dead.” At length, towards evening, the energy of the barbarians beginning to flag, they slowly fell back upon the Piræus, closely followed by their adversaries, while Aristides bore down upon Psyttalia with a handful of Athenians. ”

“ Pericles was unmoved by any of these attacks, but quietly endured all this storm of obloquy. He sent a fleet of a hundred ships to attack Peloponnesus, but did not sail with it himself, remaining at home to keep a tight hand over Athens until the Peloponnesians drew off their forces. He regained his popularity with the common people, who suffered much from the war, by giving them allowances of money from the public revenue, and grants of land; for he drove out the entire population of the island of Aegina, and divided the land by lot among the Athenians. ”

“ Pericles now made a second expedition against them, and found them in no mind to submit quietly, but determined to dispute the empire of the seas with the Athenians. Pericles gained a signal victory over them in a sea-fight off the Goats' Island, beating a fleet of seventy ships with only forty-four, twenty of which were transports.
Simultaneously with his victory and the flight of the enemy he obtained command of the harbor of Samos, and besieged the Samians in their city. They, in spite of their defeat, still possessed courage enough to sally out and fight a battle under the walls ”

“ Of the nations of Epirus the Chaonians and Thesprotians inhabit the coast from the Ceraunian mountains to the Ambracian gulf; behind Ambracia is Amphilochian Argos. The Amphilochians also are Epirots, together with the tribes lying more in the interior, and joining the mountains of Illyria—viz., the Molotti, the Athamanes, the Æthices, the Tymphæi, the Orestæ, the Paroræi, and [pg 476] the Atintanes, some dwelling nearer to the Macedonians, and others to the Ionian sea. ”

“ Aethra gave birth to Theseus, and Pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting that Neptune, the god most honoured at Troezene, had condescended to be the father of the child:—the gods were very convenient personages in those days. As the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body and nobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when Aethra communicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stone which concealed the tokens of his origin. He easily removed it, and repaired by land to Athens. ”

“ For on his departure, Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher, being at that time general in Samos, despising either the small number of ships that were left or the inexperience of the commanders, prevailed with the citizens to attack the Athenians. And the Samians having won the battle and taken several of the men prisoners, and disabled several of the ships, were masters of the sea, and brought into port all necessities they wanted for the war, which they had not before. Aristotle says, too, that Pericles himself had been once before this worsted by the Milissus in a sea-fight. ”

“ VII. The construction of these vessels, the very sacrifice of the citizens, the general interest that must have attached to an undertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial not more to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heights the hostile rock of Aegina, "the eyesore of the Piraeus," than to the habits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted to the sea—all combined to assist Themistocles in his master policy—a policy which had for its design gradually to convert the Athenians from an agricultural into a maritime people. ”

“ Epimetheus, son of Iapetus, husband of Pandora, with his brother Prometheus took part in creation of man
Epirus, country to the west of Thessaly, lying along the Adriatic Sea
Epopeus, a sailor
Erato, one of the Muses
Erbin of Cornwall, father of Geraint
Erebus, son of Chaos, region of darkness, entrance to Hades
Eridanus, river
Erinys, one of the Furies
Eriphyle, sister of Polynices, bribed to decide on war, in which her husband was slain
Eris (Discordia) , goddess of discord. ”

“ The Persians stood far out to sea to avoid these imaginary enemies. When the day broke Themistocles and Eurybiades could hardly credit the report that all the ships of Asia had disappeared from their anchorage of the evening before. The Athenian admiral urged immediate pursuit, the Spartan general hesitated and at last gave a reluctant consent. The fleet sailed as far as the island of Andros, but found no trace of the enemy. ”