Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/25

 the renewed Roman-Parthian war, when the Parthian power had fully recovered from the disorders in the South.

The nearest single year that suggests itself as the date of the Periplus is, therefore, 60 A. D.

As to the authorship, it is best to admit that nothing is known. Fabricius in his first edition of the Periplus attributed it to an Alexandrian merchant named Arrian, but other editions, and Fabricius' own second edition, remove the name altogether.

Glaser in an article published in Ausland, 1891, pp.45–46, presents an argument that seems too tempting to be true. He assumes that the sixth book of Pliny quotes from the Periplus; that the "heretofore unpublished account," which Pliny mentions, was that of our author; that his work could have been quoted in no other book of Pliny, and therefore that by comparison of the indices of authorities which Pliny puts at the end of each book, any name appearing in the sixth book only would be the name of our author. By such means Glaser arrives at the name Basilis, and in all his references to the Periplus after the date of that article, he is careful to cite—"Basilis, author of the Periplus, 56 to 67 A. D." But Pliny himself in that same book (VI, 35) refers to Basilis as the author of an acconut of Meroe and the upper Nile, apparently considerably earlier than the expedition of Petronius against Nubia in 24 to 22 B. C.; and a work on India, also by Basilis, is quoted by Agatharchides (Ap. Phot., p.454 b.34, ed. Bekker), whose work on the Erythraean Sea was written about 113 B. C., a century and a half before the Periplus. It seems to be this same Basilis, rather than a later writer of like name, whose Indica is quoted by Athenaeus (Deipnos. IX, 390, b), who wrote about 230 A. D. Unless, therefore, Glaser assumes that the Basilis of Pliny's text is a different man from the Basilis of his index, his argument falls.

Then, too, a man of Pliny's standing would have been apt to refrain from mentioning by name a writer with no literary reputation in Roman society. His index would omit an obscure sea-captain, just as his text omits him, referring merely to "information on which reliance can be placed." For the aristocracy of letters was very real in imperial Rome, and the writer of the Periplus did not "belong." The possibility that Pliny may have used his account does not imply the use of his name. Altogether, Glaser's argument is more ingenious than probable.

That the author was an Egyptian Greek, and a merchan in active