Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 3, 2025
By the 6th of January, B.C. 345, he reached the island of Kataia, which forms the boundary between Karmania and Persis. The length of the former coast is rather more than three hundred miles: the time occupied by Nearchus in this part of his voyage was about twelve days. He arrived at Badis, the first station in Karmania, on the 7th of December; at Anamis on the 10th; here he remained three days.
The particulars of this trade between India and Egypt, by means of the Arabians, will be afterwards detailed, and its great antiquity traced and proved; at present we have alluded to it merely to bear us out in our position, that Indian ships, laden with Indian commodities, frequenting the ports of Sabaea, and those ports being described by Agatharcides as the limits of his knowledge of this coast of the Red Sea, we are fully justified in concluding, that, in the reign of Philometor, there was not only no direct trade to India, but no inducement to such trade; and that 146 years after the death of Alexander, the Greek sovereigns of Egypt had done little to complete what that monarch had projected, and in part accomplished by the navigation of Nearchus the communication by sea between Alexandria and India.
On the 23d of October, 327 years before Christ, the fleet sailed from Nicoea, on the Hydaspes, a city built by Alexander on the scite of the battle in which he defeated Porus. The importance which he attached to this expedition, as well as his anxiety respecting its skilful conduct and final issue, are strongly painted by Arrian, to whom we are indebted for the journal of Nearchus.
The extent of this difficult passage was thirty-seven miles, at the end of which Nearchus came to an anchor at a distance from the coast. Their course next day was in deep water, which continued till they arrived, after sailing a day and a half, at a village at the mouth of the Euphrates: at this village there was a mart for the importation of the incenses of Arabia.
He sailed down the Indus, in the year 326, with eight hundred vessels; having arrived at the ocean, he sent Nearchus with a fleet to run along the coasts of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf as far as the mouth of the Euphrates. In 325 he took sixty days in crossing from Gedrosia, entered Keramania, returned to Pasargada, Persepolis, and Susa, and married Statira, the daughter of Darius.
From Ormuz, Marco Polo, going up again towards the north-east, visited Kirman; then he ventured by dangerous roads across a sandy desert, where there was only brackish water to be found, the desert across which, 1500 years before, Alexander had led his army to meet Nearchus. Seven days afterwards he entered the town of Khabis.
"We are in search of Nearchus and his people," replied the officer: "And I am Nearchus," said the admiral; "and this is Archias. Take us under your conduct, and we will ourselves report our history to the king." They were accordingly placed in the carriages, and conducted towards the army without delay.
He became intimate there with one Nearchus, a philosopher of the Pythagorean school, and listened with much interest to his discourses.
The fact is that all our information on the islands prior to the Portuguese occupation comes from the Periplus of Nearchus. Eratosthenes, a naval officer of Alexander's, states that the Gulf was 10,000 stadia long from Cape Armozum, i.e.
After many disasters and a skirmish with some of the natives, Nearchus reached the extreme point of the land of the Orites, which is marked in modern geography by Cape Morant.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking