Skylax
Skylax was an ancient Greek geographer from Karyanda , Caria , who lived in the late 6th century BC. Lived.
Life
Little information is available about Skylax. His name is possibly of Carian origin. Skylax undertook a voyage of discovery on behalf of the Persian great king Darius I. The exact time of this trip is not known. A period from 519 to 516 BC is used in research. Chr. Considered; in any case, before 514 BC it found When Darius undertook his Scythian campaign.
The trip was presumably intended to educate people about possible future military operations by the Persians in this area. How many people took part in the expedition and what role Skylax played exactly is unknown; presumably he acted as a navigator. Skylax traveled from the mouth of the Indus , where the ships were apparently also built, to the Arabian Gulf. He then circumnavigated the Arabian Peninsula to the Red Sea and drove on to Egypt to the Isthmus of Suez . The trip lasted 30 months.
Skylax summarized the results of his trip in a periplus . The work is now lost, but it was used by Herodotus and Hecataeus . A Skylax treatise on Herakleides of Mylasa is also lost.
Pseudo-Skylax
The “Periplus of the Mediterranean”, preserved under Skylax's name, does not come from him, but was first discovered between 400 and 360 BC. Written in BC .
expenditure
- Felix Jacoby : The Fragments of the Greek Historians (No. 709). Brill, Leiden 2005, ISBN 978-90-04-14392-0 (1 CD-ROM, reprint of the Berlin edition 1923 ff.).
- Brill's New Jacoby , No. 709 (with English translation and commentary by Philip Kaplan)
literature
- Friedrich Gisinger : Skylax 2. In: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III A, 1, Stuttgart 1927, Col. 619-646.
- Aurelio Peretti: Il periplo di Scilace. Studio sul primo portolano del Mediterraneo . Giardini, Pisa 1979 (Biblioteca di studi antichi; 23).
Web links
- Jonah Lendering: Scylax of Caryanda . In: Livius.org (English)
Remarks
- ↑ See Richard Hennig : Terrae Incognitae . Vol. 1, Leiden 1944, p. 117; Philip Kaplan, in: Brill's New Jacoby , No. 709.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Skylax |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Greek geographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 6th century BC Chr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th century BC Chr. |