The Chronology of India, from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century c5.69

c5.69

An Indian embassy received by Augustus at Samos. Strabo relates that Nicolaus Damascenus met at Antioch Epidaphne the survivors of an Indian embassy to Augustus bearing a letter in Greek from a king named Pandiōn or Pōros. With them was Zarmanochegas (Śramaṇāchārya) of Barygaza or Bharoch, who afterwards burned himself at Athens. Allusions to this embassy are made by Horace in his odes. Florus and Suetonius refer to it, and Dio Cassius speaks of its reception at Samos B.C. 22–20, and mentions Zarmaros (Zarmanochegas) as accompanying it. It is mentioned by Hieronymus in his translation of the *Canon Chronicon* of Eusebius, but placed by him in the third year of the 188th Olympiad = B.C. 26, while Orosius of Tarragona speaks of an Indian and a Skythian embassy reaching Caesar in Spain B.C. 27. These various notices apparently refer to one and the same embassy, probably sent by some petty Indian king at the instigation, and in the interests of, Greek traders.—Reinaud, *Relations politiques et commerciales de l’Empire Romain avec l’Asie Orientale*, or JA. 1863, 6e série, i, 179 ff. Priaulx, *Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana and Indian Embassies to Rome*, 65 ff. Strabo, xv, i, 73.