The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean

It is the interval between the voyage of Nearchus and the discoveries of the Portuguese which I intend to examine in the ' Perhaps never to the Romans but to the Greeks of Egypt under the power of the %mune. [...] The PeriplAs of the Erythr6an Sea is a title prefixed to a work which contains the best account of the commerce carried on from the Red Sea and the coast of Africa to the East Indies during the time that Egypt was a province of the Roman empire. [...] The Erythr6an Sea is an appellation given in the age of the author to the-whole expanse of ocean reaching from the coast of Africa to the utmost boundary of ancient knowledge on the east ; an appellation in all appearance deduced from their etrance into it by the straits of the Red Sea styled Erythras by the Greeks and not excluding the gulph of Persia to which the fabulous history of a ki [...] '4 If the situation of the Pad& were ascetained we might inquire about the manners attributed to them by the historian ; but he mentions only fome tribes that live upon the marshes formed by the river (that is probably the Indus) and then the Padei to the east of these ; this places them on the north of India : as to all appearance the marshes noticed are those formed by the rains in the Pan [...] There are two inconsistencies in the report of this voyage by HerOdotus; the first that he mentions the course of the Indus to the east 19 which is in reality to the south-west ; the second that he supposes Darius 2° to have made use of the discoveries of Skulax for the invasion of India.