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It will be recollected that Nearchus describes in a particular manner, the Icthyophagi of Gadrosia: Agatharcides also describes Icthyophagi, though it is not clear whether he means to confine his description to those of Gadrosia, or to extend it to others on the coast of Arabia and Africa.
From the circumstance that Strabo appeals very frequently to the authority of Eratosthenes, in conjunction with that of Agatharcides, it has been conjectured, that the work of the latter contains all that the former knew, with the addition of his own information; and this conjecture is highly probable, considering that Agatharcides had access to the sources whence Eratosthenes drew his information; to the works of Eratosthenes themselves, which of course would be deposited in the Alexandrian library; and to all the additional works which had enriched the library from the time of Eratosthenes, as well as the additional information which the extensive commerce of Alexandria would supply.
The account which Agatharcides gives of Sabæa is very curious and important; and, as we shall afterwards have occasion to make use of it, in endeavouring to prove that, in very early ages, the Arabians supplied the western world with the productions of the east, we shall extract here what he says of Sabæa from the translation of Dr. Vincent.
This fly is described by Agatharcides in the same manner as by Bruce. The ensete tree of Bruce, the leaves of which resemble the banana, with fruit like figs, but not eatable, with a trunk esculent till it reaches its perfect growth and is full of leaves, resembles in some of its particulars a tree described by Agatharcides.
It may be proper to add, that in the extracts from Agatharcides, given by Photius, it is expressly mentioned that ships from India were met with by the Egyptian ships in the ports of Sabaea.
But to return from this slight digression; Artemidorus has been already mentioned as a geographer subsequent to Agatharcides, who copied Agatharcides, and from whom Diodorus Siculus and Strabo in their turns copied.
The importance and the bearing of these curious facts, first brought to our notice by Agatharcides, as well as the inferences which may be drawn from them regarding the mode in which the ancients obtained their commodities of India, will call our particular attention afterwards: at present we shall merely notice the characteristic and minute picture which Agatharcides has drawn of the Sabeans, and the just notions he had formed on the nature of a commerce, of which all the other writers of antiquity seemed to have been utterly ignorant.
In Albania he found a race with pink eyes and white hair; in Sarmatia another that ate only on alternate days. Agatharcides took him to Libya, and there introduced him to the Psyllians, in whose bodies was a poison deadly to serpents, and who, to test the fidelity of their wives, placed their children in the presence of snakes; if the snakes fled they knew their wives were pure.
Large ships from the Indus, Patala, Persis, and Karmania came to Arabia, as early as the time of Agatharcides; and it is probable that these ships were navigated by Arabians, as the inhabitants of India were not, at this time, and, indeed, never have been celebrated for their maritime enterprize and skill.
By comparing those parts of Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, which they avowedly copy from him, with the track of Agatharcides: in the Red Sea, we are enabled to discover only a few additions of importance to the geographical knowledge supplied by the former: Agatharcides, it will be remembered, brings his account of the African side of the Red Sea no lower down than Ptolemais: he does not even mention the expedition of Ptolemy Euergetes to Aduli; nor the passage of the straits, though Eratosthenes, as cited by Strabo, proves that it was open in his time.
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