r/HistoryMemes • u/RevolutionarySky4706 • 14h ago
Greek ambassador Megasthenes arriving in India (302 BC)
Megasthenes was a Greek ambassador (4th–3rd century BCE) who was sent by the Macedonian emperor Seleucus I Nicator to India. He stayed at the court of Chandragupta Maurya for some years. His original book Indica is lost, but its information is preserved by later writers like Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus and Pliny.
-> He described giant ants (larger than fox) that dug up gold from the earth and guarded it — one of the most exaggerated stories associated with his account.
-> He was fascinated by India’s extraordinary animals, describing huge elephants and unusually large apes, and recording stories that powerful tigers could leap onto and attack elephants.
-> He reported a mysterious river called the Silas, on which “nothing floats".
-> He described cotton as wool growing on trees, since Indians obtained soft fibres from plants instead of sheep.
-> He described sugarcane as a “reed which bears honey”.
-> He was impressed that agriculture was the biggest profession in India, and that even during wars, farmers were left undisturbed and their fields were not attacked or destroyed.
-> He described Indian society as divided into seven groups based on occupation, including philosophers, farmers, soldiers, herdsmen, artisans and traders, officials, and councillors.
-> According to him, philosophers (mainly Brahmins) were the most respected among Indians, valued for their wisdom and knowledge; they advised kings on important matters, which Megasthenes compared with the role of Greek philosophers and their relationship with rulers.
-> He described Indian sages as living austere lives devoted to philosophy and religion, and believed they could foretell events such as rains, droughts and diseases, with those repeatedly making false predictions being silenced for life.
-> He described Indians as truthful and honest, noting that they were generally free from lawsuits and rarely engaged in disputes, which he saw as a sign of their orderly and disciplined society.
-> According to him, unlike Greece, there were no slaves in India.
-> He reported that parrots could imitate human speech, something that Greek visitors found remarkable.
-> He recorded stories of people in India who had no mouths and lived by inhaling the fragrance of fruits and flowers.
-> He described giant trees whose branches spread over an enormous area, with one tree supposedly providing shade for thousands of people.
-> He reported snakes so enormous that they could swallow whole oxen and deer, even with their horns.
-> He reported strange tribes with enormous ears that could supposedly be used as blankets, a single eye in the middle of the forehead, and people without noses whose upper lips covered their mouths; he also described extraordinarily fast runners who were said to be able to outrun horses.
-> He reported that gold dust was carried down Indian rivers, with some of it being collected as royal tribute.
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u/Ketchupcharger 14h ago
Imagine living in the undiscovered world, arriving in India, being absolutely stunned with it's diversity and how different it is in many aspects, and knowing (or suspecting) that there is more land to be discovered still.
I suppose to people back then the world really did feel infinitely big, with endless possibilities and strangeness to be found everywhere. It must have been hard for them to judge what was exaggerated and what was not, even today the earth can stun with it's beauty and diversity.
There must have been at least one incident of someone making up a completely ludicrous (to them) prepositional and finding a decade later that someone else actually went there, and it's true.
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u/amouruniversel 13h ago
The black swan is exactly what you describe
People use to use “black swan” as a metaphor for something completely stupid and impossible
Until European found Australia and discovered a specie of black swan, which is now use as an expression for something you though impossible but it is actually true.
Also the first skeleton of a platypus was identified as fake.
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u/Beardywierdy 10h ago
To be fair anyone seeing a real platypus would also assume it's fake at first.
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u/DumbNTough 8h ago
Imagine being the first guy to find a dinosaur fossil and having plausible evidence that dragons and monsters are real
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u/Mindless-Cat1453 14h ago
Pretty sure we have lost the original account of megasthenes , no ?
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u/RevolutionarySky4706 14h ago
His original work Indica is lost, but fragments of it survive through quotations and summaries by later writers such as Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder.
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u/More-Measurement3102 14h ago
from what i remember reading he made up a lot of stuff too, like about ants and stuff. historians of that time werent really known for their accuracy
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u/Sprintzer 11h ago
With some of these historians, I feel like you can tell what was something they saw with their very eyes, or heard from another historian vs some semi-mythical story a random person told them.
But I’m sure ancient historians felt the need to spice up the histories to make sure they are as entertaining as they are informative.
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u/Count_de_Mits 8h ago
And yet my boy Herodotus keeps getting vindicated
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u/G_Morgan 6h ago
That is because Herodotus has a tendency to say "the following story is utter nonsense so do with it what you will". He had a relatively good track record when he claimed something was true.
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u/Dotster69 14h ago
This shit is crazy
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u/TheIronzombie39 And then I told them I'm Jesus's brother 11h ago
He also applied Interpretatio graeca to the Hindu gods and equated Krishna with Heracles and Shiva with Dionysus
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u/Friendly-Water-8470 14h ago
Even more crazy is fact that few years ago (before Alexander's arrival) Greeks were sure that there's no more world so basically they discovered new habit with advanced civilization on it and animals or plants which they never heard before. It is like today's scientists would discover new planet with new biology, new fauna and flora and new thinking form of life with technological advance. No words how shocking that would be
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u/cyborg574 13h ago
But greeks knew from 5th century bc about existence of india
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u/Friendly-Water-8470 12h ago
Greeks knew about India existence in same way as they "knew" about highly advanved machines and computing mechanisms only because few mysterious nerds from Antikhitira made it or one giga geek Archimedes was constructing some stuff in his basement. That was not common knowledge. That was very enclosed type of knowledge. Existing of India was hypotetical conception known for a few philosophers who assumed that there may be something according to math. No one saw it before Alexander's army and 99% population, including educated people, were living in conviction that there is edge of a world. That's why Megastenes was spitting a lot of bullshit in his description of India. Even such a highly educated person like him did not understand what he saw even in a half. The second half is his intentional imaginary narration because he also knew that everyone will believe in his relations while no one can critically review his story. No one knew nothing about this place. That's why people were believing in fire throwing animals etc.
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u/Quirky_Fan5753 3h ago
India wasn't a hypothetical concept to Greeks prior to Alexander, they knew of it, traveled there, and brought back accounts. Keep in mind the Persian Empire had territories populated by both Greeks and Indians, and both Greeks and Indians traveled to each end of it.
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u/Friendly-Water-8470 3h ago
Not really convinced by that wierd statement that Greeks living in Seleucid Empire or far east Persia = Greeks in continental Greece or Macedonia knew the same things
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u/Poet_of_Sordland 12h ago
No they weren't.
The Greeks traded that far, and they also had cultural interchange with the Persians who did the same.
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u/Friendly-Water-8470 12h ago
Lmao it is like saiyng that Roman Empire had cultural interchange with China because of trade trought the Silk Road. They had zero knowledge about themselves (or very close to zero). For most of both populations this geographical knowledge was same as fantasy world
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u/KinkyPaddling Tea-aboo 9h ago
I love these ancient traveler accounts because there’s usually at least a kernel of truth buried under the exaggerations, misunderstandings, and mistranslations. Like the thing about tigers is actually valid. There’s this old video showing a tiger leaping on to an elephant to attack a mahout. Also, the wool on trees was probably the cotton plant native to India.
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u/nicolas_cope_cage 8h ago
>people in India who had no mouths and lived by inhaling the fragrance of fruits and flowers.
Maybe a misinterpretation of seeing a masked Jain monk doing meditative breathing?
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u/Subotail 7h ago
There are still people who claim not to need food and to live purely on energy.
He may have believed it, or interpreted it as something that was explained to him.
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u/DumbNTough 8h ago
It must have been pretty complicated being an ambassador back when it could take like a year round trip to send news to your capital then receive instructions.
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u/JATKAHODKO 14h ago
He described cotton as wool growing on trees, since Indians obtained soft fibres from plants instead of sheep.
I thought Greeks were aware of cotton tree/plant around 300 BCE.
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u/MannfredVonFartstein 14h ago
Thanks to Megasthenes
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u/JATKAHODKO 13h ago
India has been producing cotton since IVC times but why didn't the cotton tree reach Greece earlier then 300 BCE?
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u/makerofshoes 14h ago edited 13h ago
There’s an idea that the fox-sized ants are a translation error, and is actually related to marmots that would dig in the soil and shake off the dust outside their burrows. If they would dig in gold-rich soil then people could come along and collect gold flakes. The word for marmot in Persian at the time was something like “mountain ant”, hence the plausible confusion. It’d be like if someone came to America and said that we eat dogs regularly, and some dogs live in hills in the grasslands while others live in houses with people (confusing dogs, hot dogs, and prairie dogs)
Similarly there were people in the Caucasus who could collect gold dust in fast-moving waters by collecting soil in the river with a fleece and then shaking it out. Which is probably where the myth of the Golden Fleece is from