Category: Greeks in North Africa

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Eudoxus of Cyzicus was a Greek explorer of the 2nd Century BCE, from the court of the Ptolemaic Kings of Egypt. He is mostly known as the first to sail from the Red Sea all the way to India by crossing the Ocean instead of staying along the Arabian coast, thanks to his mastery of the monsoon winds. By the end of his life, he went on an expedition to explore the African coasts, on account of King Bocchus of Mauretania. He probably died during this expedition, without reaching his goal: sailing around the African continent.

Context

The Greeks, especially from Ptolemaic Egypt, traded with India for spices and the other riches of the Orient – especially silk, a luxurious tissue produced in China. However, the Greek salesmen rarely traveled all the way to India: they stopped half-way, in Arabia, and exchanged merchandise with intermediaries in port cities like Aden in modern-day Yemen. Because of the monsoon – dangerous winds agitating the Indian Ocean – their ships didn’t dare to cross the ocean, but only sailed along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

Eudoxus in India

Eudoxus was born around 150 BCE, in Cyzicus, a Greek city of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). Around 130, he was sent as his city’s emissary for a religious festival to Alexandria, to the court of King Ptolemy VIII Physcon. Emissaries were usually elected by their fellow citizens, which shows that Eudoxus was highly respected by the inhabitants of Cyzicus. He already had a reputation as a great navigator, and was hoping to use this trip to Egypt as an opportunity to sail up the Nile.

Around the same time, an Indian sailor who had been shipwrecked in the Red Sea arrived in Alexandria. To thank the city’s inhabitants for saving him, he offered to show Greek navigators the way to India. Eudoxus of Cyzicus was chosen to lead this expedition. Some sources claim that Ptolemy VIII sent Eudoxus away to India because he was the Queen’s lover, but this is a much more recent legend.

In the following years, Eudoxus of Cyzicus sailed twice from Egypt to India, down the Red Sea, and then through the Ocean, without staying along the Arabian coast. He became the first navigator in the Western world to sail the seas agitated by the formidable monsoon winds.

For his first trip in 118, Eudoxus received the guidance of the shipwrecked Indian sailor. He returned with a cargo of aromatic herbs and precious stones, which was seized by Ptolemy VIII at his return. His second trip, in 116, shortly after Ptolemy VIII died, was organised by Queen Cleopatra III. This time, he traveled alone.

Another Greek navigator, Hippalus, is mentioned in some sources as the first to introduce knowledge of the Indian monsoon into the Greek world. He might have been the captain of Eudoxus’ ship.

Many in Antiquity doubted Eudoxus’ travels, but nowadays, modern historians consider it very likely that they really happened.

Eudoxus travels around Africa

On his return way from his second trip to India, Eudoxus was pushed South by adverse winds, along the African coast, all the way to the Somali Peninsula. There, he found the remains of a wrecked ship. The local population told him this ship had come from the South. By examining the remains, especially the horse-head figure on its prow, he understood that it was a Phoenician ship from the city of Gades, Spain, that was sailing around Africa when it got shipwrecked.

This discovery gave Eudoxus a desire to sail around Africa. Such an exploit had already been achieved several centuries earlier, by an expedition of Phoenician navigators organised by Pharaoh Necho II, but this expedition was little known at the time. Eudoxus, influenced by the works of the geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene, probably believed the continent to be much smaller than it really is (see map above).

Eudoxus might have had an even greater ambition: reaching India by sailing around the Southern tip of Africa; this way, he could escape the control of the Ptolemy, who systematically confiscated his cargo every time he returned from India. This dream would remain unaccomplished for over 1.000 years, until 15-Century Portuguese explorers sailed around the Cape of Good Hope.

Eudoxus returned to Cyzicus, where he sold all his possessions to finance his expedition. He then went to Gades, from where he started his tour of Africa, following the itinerary of Hanno the Navigator. He stopped in Mauretania, to solicit the patronage of King Bocchus (Jugurtha‘s father-in-law, who betrayed him to the Romans). Bocchus refused to support his expedition, forcing Eudoxus back to Gades.

Shortly later, Eudoxus took sea again for another expedition. The Greek historian Posidonius, who lived in Gades and recounts Eudoxus’ expeditions, has very little to say about this second attempt: he only mentions that he still hadn’t returned to Gades around the year 100. The Roman author Pliny the Elder writes that Eudoxus reached his goal, but it is much more likely that he died during this expedition.

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After the Persian conquest of Cyrenaica, the Persian Emperor Darius I deported the population of the city of Barca (El-Marj) to Central Asia. The Barcan exiles were the first members of the Greek community in Bactria, which would undergo a strong development in the following centuries, even founding a Greek kingdom in the region.

Cyrenaican Greeks in Central Asia

After the murder of King Arcesilaus III of Cyrene, in 515, the Persians, who were already occupying Egypt for around 10 years, intervened in Cyrenaica at the invitation of Arcesilaus III’s mother Pheretima. The Persian army besieged Barca (El-Marj), where Arcesilaus III had been killed, and ordered the city to deliver the murderers. The city’s inhabitants refused.

Barca remained under siege for nine months. After the city fell, the Persians delivered the murderers of Arcesilaus III to Pheretima, who had them crucified in Cyrene. The other inhabitants were deported to the Persian province of Bactria (Central Asia, modern-day Afghanistan), where they founded a city which they called Barca. The exact location of this first Greek city in Central Asia was never identified, but it was certainly located in the Balkh Valley, to the North of modern-day Afghanistan. The Greek writer Herotodus, who writes about these events, mentions that this community still existed in his lifetime, close to a century later.

Later on

The Barcan exiles were the first Greeks to settle in Bactria. A few decades later, the Greek presence in the region grew through the arrival of priests fro the city of Didyma, in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), who were settled here by the Persian Emperor Xerxes I. Greek war prisoners exiled to Bactria and Greek mercenaries serving in the Persian army followed.

Alexander the Great conquered Bactria in 328, three years after his victory over the Persian Emperor Darius III. Alexander the Great married Roxana, daugther of Oxyartes, the Persian satrap (governor) of Bactria. The Bactrian Greeks now lived under Greek sovereignty. Veterans of Alexander the Great’s army also settled in Bactria.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Bactria became part of the Seleucid Empire. In 250, Diodotus, the governor of Bactria, revolted against the Seleucids and proclaimed himself King of Bactria, founding the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. This Greek kingdom in Central Asia survived for over a century, until its defeat by the Parthian Empire. The descendants of the Barcan exiles were part of the kingdom’s population, even though they had long ceased to be a distinct group from the other Greeks.

To learn more about the Bactrian Greeks, we recommend this article (in English) from this excellent historical blog on the Greeks in Asia.

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In the 5th Century BCE, King Arcesilaus IV of Cyrene won the chariot race at the Pythian Games, a sports competition organized every four years in the Greek city of Delphi, with a team of Libyan horses.

Context

Cyrene, a Greek colony in Libya, was governed since its founding by the Battiad dynasty. Since the Persian conquest in 515, the Kings of Cyrene were submitted to the Persian Empire.

Greece, one of the most influential nations of the ancient world, organised the Panhellenic Games, four sports competitions open to athletes from all the Greek cities. The four competitions were the Olympic Games, the best well-known competition, in Olympia; the Pythian Games in Delphi ; the Nemean games, at the sanctuary of Zeus in Nemea; and the Isthmian Games, close to Corinth. Each competition was organised every four hears, so that there was one competition every year. Another competition, the Panathenaic Games, was also organized every four years in Athens.

The Pythian Games were dedicated to the god Apollo, who had a sanctuary in Delphi. According to mythology, the games were founded by Apollo, to celebrate his victory over the serpent Python.

Arcesilaus IV at the Pythian Games

Arcesilaus IV (465-440), the last King of Cyrene, won the chariot race at the Pythian Games in 462. He was running with a team of Libyan horses. The Greek poet Pindar celebrated his victory in two of his Odes.

The same year, another Cyrenaican athlete, Amnesias from Barca (El-Marj), won the wrestling competition. Amnesias, who was a shepherd, is famous for training by wrestling against a bull while keeping his flocks. He took his bull with him to Delphi for the competition, and then toured Greece with it. (Source)

Later on

After his victory, Arcesilaus IV tried to use his popularity to attract new Greek colonists to Euhesperides (Benghazi). He was hoping to build himself a place of refuge, where the population would be indebted to him, as his popularity in Cyrene was declining. This initiative proved itself to be completely inefficient: after the 440 revolution that overthrew the Cyrenean monarchy, Archesilaus IV fled to Euhesperides, but he was assassinated as soon as he arrived into the city.

300 years after Arcesilaus, Mastanabal, the son of King Massinissa of Numidia, won the chariot race at the Panathenaic Games, a sports competition organised in Athens.

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Ancient Cyrenaica cultivated and sold a plant that only grew in this region: silphium. This plant, which has now disappeared, was highly appreciated in the whole ancient world: it was used as medication, perfume and condiment.

Silphium was a plant with a thick, hollow stem, thick roots covered in black bark, thin leaves, and yellow flowers. A silphium stem could be up to 3 meters high.

The cities of Cyrenaica exported silphium everywhere in the ancient world. This plant was highly valuable: a silphium stem was sold for its weight in gold. Because of its value, silphium played a crucial role in the region’s economy, and many coins from Cyrene and the neighboring cities show a silphium stem.

The value of silphium came from its resin, called laserpicium in Latin. Through an incision in the stem, the resin flowed out with a pleasant fragrance. Incisions in the roots produced a translucent resin, that was more pure and more highly concentrated, making it even more valuable.

Silphium had both medical and culinary uses. It was considered an universal remedy, to cure cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, warts, gut, and all kinds of ailments. It was also used as an aphrodisiac and a contraceptive, to reduce female fertility.
In cooking, silphium was used as seasoning for many dishes. Silphium leaves were fed to sheep: they have their meet a particularly delicious taste.
Finally, silphium was used as a burnt perfume.

Silphium grew only in Eastern Libya, from around Derna to the Gulf of Sirte. The Greek poet Pindar described Cyrenaica as a “garden of flowers”. Silphium was a wild plant, impossible to cultivate. All attempts to grow it outside its natural environment failed.

What kind of plant was it? Did it look like any other plant that still exists today? Silphium probably was a variety of ferule, a type of plant of which several species can still be found today in the Mediterranean world. Ferula drudeana, a ferule native to central Turkey, produces a similar kind of resin; but there is no known link between this species and Libya. Some specialists also suggested that silphium might have been a hybrid between various species of ferules. This might explain why it was so hard to grow: hybrid plants often have amazing qualities in the first generation, but they are sterile, and cannot be reproduced through grain, but only asexually, through roots.

Silphium disappeared at the beginning of the Roman era. The Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that the last silphium stem found in Cyrenaica was offered to Emperor Nero, as a curiosity. It was long believed that silphium disappeared because of over-exploitation, but the desertification of its native region is actually a more likely cause of its disappearance. At the beginning of the 5th Century, Synesius of Cyrene mentions silphium in a letter, as a plant that no longer existed in his lifetime. He says that its disappearance is one of the reasons of the decline of his native Cyrenaica.

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In Cyrene, not long before the Roman era, a woman called Aretaphila became famous for her brave fight against two tyrants who were oppressing the city: her own husband Nicocrates and his successor Leander. In the ancient world, Aretaphila was considered as a model of a virtuous woman, because of her fight for her people’s freedom.

In 96 BCE, when the last king of Cyrenaica, Ptolemy Apion, died without a heir, his kingdom was bequeathed to the Roman Republic. However, this new territory was at first mostly ignored by the Romans. The first Roman governor was sent to Cyrenaica only in 74.

In these years, a tyrant called Nicocrates took power in Cyrene and brutalized the population. Nicocrates forced Aretaphila, a woman of the city, to marry him, after killing her first husband Phaedimus. Aretaphila was determined to free her people from the violence of this tyrant, and plotted to have him poisoned. Calbia, Nicocrates’ mother, suspected her plans, and convinced her son to have Aretaphila tortured.

Later, Aretaphila convinced her daugther to seduce Leander, the brother of Nicocrates, so that he would overthrow him. Leander managed to kill Nicocrates, and succeeded him.

Sadly, Leander showed himself to be just as tyrannical as his brother. Aretaphila then called on the Libyan Prince Anabus to come to free Cyrene.

In 87, the Roman general Lucullus, an ally of Sulla, visited Cyrene, as part of a naval expedition to gather a fleet from the Roman allies, in order to fight Mithridates. Civil war had been raging in the city for seven years, between Leander’s supporters and opponents. Lucullus ended the conflict, repressed the tyrant, and established a new Constitution. 13 years later, Lucullus would convince the Roman authorities to make Cyrenaica a Roman province.

After the fall of the tyranny, the citizens of Cyrene offered Aretaphila responsibilities in the new city government, but she refused. She reportedly spent the rest of her life in the women’s quarters of her house, working on her loom.

The Greek historian Plutarch mentions Aretaphila in his book On the virtue of women, for her aspiration to free her people from tyranny. There apparently was a cult in her honor among women of this time.