Agatharchides

• Agatharchides of Cnidus was a Greek Geographer who wrote in the second century BCE, during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt.
• Most of his books are now Lost Works, but they have been preserved in part by being quoted in works by later Greco-Roman geographers.

Works

• ‘On the Erythraean Sea’ (Arabian Sea) (5 books)
  • Four books are lost, but the fifth book has survived intact, and describes the lands around the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.
• ‘Affairs in Asia’ (10 books) lost.
  • History of the Asian Empires down to the end of the wars of the successors to Alexander the Great’s empire in the 3rd century BCE. Book II contained a detailed description of peoples along the Nile, including Meroe the capital of Kush. It also lists possible causes of the annual Flooding of the Nile.
• ‘Affairs in Europe’ (49 books) lost.
  • A history of Europe from the third to the mid second century BCE.

• Authors who directly quoted his Works:
  • Strabo
  • Diodorus Siculus
  • Pliny the Elder.
    • In ‘Natural History Book VI’  Pliny's Description of the Route to India uses some of Agatharchides work.