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Attempts have been made to discredit this entire story, but the highest living authority on the subject of Phoenicia and the Phoenicians adopts it as almost certainly true, and observes: "The tradition relative to the sojourn of the Phoenicians on the borders of the Erythraean Sea, before their establishment on the coast of the Mediterranean, has thus a new light thrown upon it.
Possibly doth he suffer, as it is frequent and usual amongst the Egyptians, together with all those who inhabit the Erythraean confines, and dwell along the shores and coasts of the Red Sea, some sour prickings and smart stingings in his arms and legs of those little speckled dragons which the Arabians call meden.
BETWEEN the Egyptian and the Arabian deserts, formed by two gulfs of the Erythraean Sea, is a peninsula of granite mountains. It seems as if an ocean of lava, when its waves were literally running mountains high, had been suddenly commanded to stand still.
Their valour and renown touched the heart of Darius, and he established the captives in a city by that part of the Erythraean Sea which receives the waters of the Barbarian Tigris. Their ancient territories were portioned out between the Persians and the Carians of Pedasa.
Many further proofs might be adduced, were they needed, of the Greek belief in an Asiatic Ethiopia, situated somewhere between Arabia and India, on the shores of the Erythraean Sea. Herodotus twice speaks of the Ethiopians of Asia, whom he very carefully distinguishes from those of Africa, and who can only be sought in this position.
The only work of his which is preserved, is a Treatise on the Erythraean Sea; and this we possess only in the Bibliotheca of Photius, and incorporated in the history of Diodorus Siculus. The authority of Agatharcides was very high among the ancients. Strabo, Pliny, and Diodorus, always mention him with the utmost respect, and place implicit confidence in his details.
Again, it carries the indignation of Isaiah, the wild denunciations of Ezekiel, the monotonous refrain of Jeremiah "Ah, Lord, Lord!" The classic Sibyls intone their mystic hymns; the Delphic on her tripod of inspiration, the Erythraean bending over her scrolls, the withered witch of Cumae, the parched prophetess of Libya all seem to cry, "Repent, repent! for the kingdom of the spirit is at hand!
As Professor Jastrow has pointed out, the passage forcibly recalls the story from Berossus, concerning the mythical creature Oannes, who came up from the Erythraean Sea, where it borders upon Babylonia, to instruct mankind in all things, including "seeds and the gathering of fruits". But the only part of the text that concerns us here is the introductory section, where the life-giving flood, by which the dry fields are irrigated, is pictured as following the union of the water-deities, Enki and Ninella.
But a letter arriving in the night from Pedaritus to say that some liberated Erythraean prisoners had come from Samos to betray Erythrae, Astyochus at once put back to Erythrae, and so just escaped falling in with the Athenians.
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