The Greeks in Bactria and India c24.27

c24.27

Isidore of Charax knew a king Goaisos who died at a great age in his own lifetime and therefore lived in the first century B.C. and who ruled ‘the spice-land of the Omani’. ⁴ There was no such place, for the Omani, opposite Omana, were far from the nearest frankincense country; τῆς ἀρωματοφόρου means, in the usual way, the depot for spices, which to a native of Charax would be Omana, just as Egyptian Greeks regularly called Somaliland ἡ κινναμωνοφόρος because it was for them the depot for cinnamon from the Far East. Goaisos therefore probably ruled on both sides of the strait. He can hardly have belonged to the Greek dynasty; he was probably an Arab who (or whose predecessors) ousted (or succeeded) the Greeks, like the Arab line of the Abgars in the same century in the formerly Seleucid Osrhoene. If Goaisos were an Arab king ruling also in Omana, Pliny’s belief that Omana was in Arabia would be explained, and there is evidence to show that somewhere in the Hellenistic period some kingdom must have embraced both sides of the straits;¹ even to-day the coastal population of the Gulf of Ormuz is said to be mainly Arab. It would also explain the Arab name Omana; the Arab dynasty, doubtless sprung from the Omani, had given a name taken from their own land and race to the Hellenistic harbour-town and capital which we have met under the names of Harinozia, Zetis, and Portus Macedonum. Whatever the Greek official name of this town may have been, it has perished as have the official names of Hekatompylos and many other towns (p. 13).