Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
In the mean time Nearchus was prosecuting his journey along with Archias and five or six others, when he fortunately fell in with a party from the army, which had been sent out with horses and carriages for his accommodation. The admiral and his attendants, from their appearance, might have passed unnoticed.
Long time he deliberated what to do with him, sometimes inclining to the advice and promises of Nearchus of Crete, and Demetrius his son, who were very earnest to preserve Eumenes, whilst all the rest were unanimously instant and importunate to have him taken off.
In the mean time Nearchus had been collecting the vessels that were destined for his expedition; they were assembled at Babylon: to this city also were brought from Phoenicia forty-seven vessels which had been taken to pieces, and so conveyed over land to Thapsacus. Two of these were of five banks, three of four, twelve of three, and thirty rowed with fifteen oars on a side.
LXVIII. He was now much pleased at being joined by Nearchus and his officers, and took so much interest in their accounts of their voyage, that he wished to sail down the Euphrates himself with a great fleet, and then to coast round Arabia and Libya, and so enter the Mediterranean sea through the pillars of Herakles.
There is no reason to believe that the climate or character of the country has undergone any important alteration between the time of Nearchus or Strabo and the present day. At present it is certain that the tract in question answers but very incompletely to the description which those writers give of it.
At last he was obliged to give up all attempts of relieving Nearchus; and after struggling 60 days with want of water, during which period, if he himself had not, at the head of a few horse, pushed on to the coast, and there obtained a supply, by opening the sands, his whole army must have perished, he with great difficulty reached the capital of this desert country.
Nor did this satisfy his resentment, for he wrote to the Corinthians, to send Thessalus to him in chains, and banished Harpalus, Nearchus, Erigyius, and Ptolemy, his son's friends and favorites, whom Alexander afterwards recalled, and raised to great honor and preferment.
As it is our intention, in giving this short abstract of the voyage of Nearchus, to select only such particulars as illustrate the mode of navigation practised among the ancients the progress of discovery, or the state of commerce, we shall pass over every topic or fact not connected with these.
On the twentieth he bathed and sacrificed as usual, and while reclining in his bath-room he conversed with Nearchus and his friends, listening to their account of their voyage, and of the Great Ocean. On the twenty-first he did the same, but his fever grew much worse, so that he suffered much during the night, and next day was very ill.
From this it would seem that a Greek merchant vessel could manage on the average fifty miles a day. Besides this, one of Alexander's admirals, named Nearchus, learned to carry his ships from the mouth of the Indus to the Arabian Gulf.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking