Agatharchides of Cnidos, On the Erythaean Sea.

• Author: Mosshammer, Alden A.

The Erythraean or `Red' Sea was the Greeks' name for the passage between the eastern Mediterranean and India, including the Indian Ocean as well as the Red Sea itself, more precisely referred to in antiquity as the Arabian Gulf. Most accounts of this region during the later Hellenistic and Roman periods derived from the five books On the Erythraean Sea written during the middle of the second century B.C.E. by Agatharchides, a native of Cnidos in southwestern Anatolia, who was resident in Ptolemaic Egypt as secretary to a prominent official of the court.

Agatharchides was not a popular author, and none of his works is extant in its original form. A copy of On the Erythraean Sea survived in ninth-century Constantinople, however, and Photius included an extensive summary of its fifth book and a few fragments from the first in Codex 250 of his Bibliotheca. From this summary it is clear that both Diodorus and Strabo derived their accounts of the region from Agatharchides' fifth book.

Professor Stanley Burstein and the Hakluyt Society have now made available for the first time in English a complete collection of the fragments of this important work. Burstein displays the evidence of Photius and Diodorus side-by-side on the page, with the much shorter epitome of Strabo at the bottom. Explanatory notes appear on the page below the columns and above the extracts from Strabo. The format is quite easy to use, and the translations are excellent both for their accuracy and their readability. Burstein achieves an admirable combination of literal translation with naturally flowing English construction.

More significant, perhaps, than the translation are the introduction and especially the excellent explanatory notes that accompany the text. In the introduction, Burstein discusses not only Agatharchides and his work, but also the history of Ptolemaic exploration and exploitation of the region bordering the Red Sea. He explains that this activity was prompted primarily by the need for elephants for military use. Economic exploitation of the region for mining and for the incense-trade was a secondary and later benefit. Turning to Agatharchides and his work, Burstein persuasively argues that On the Erythraean Sea, like Agatharchides' larger (and unfortunately...