Ariston (explorer)

Ariston (Ancient Greek: Ἀρίστων) was an explorer sent out by Ptolemy II Philadelphus of ancient Egypt to explore the western coast of Pre-Islamic Arabia, to prepare for a military action. Prior to this the main body of knowledge about the Arabian peninsula had come from the expeditions of Alexander the Great a century earlier.[1] Ariston's expedition was some time between 280 and 276 BCE.[2][3]

The periplus from the expedition survived long after the century in which the expedition happened, and is mentioned by several later writers like Eratosthenes and Agatharchides, and preserved by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, who offer extracts and digests of Agatharchides.[2][4] "Arabia" was given by some writers the name "Poseideion" from an altar which Ariston had erected there to the Greek god Poseidon.[5]

References
  1. Fisher, Greg (2019). Rome, Persia, and Arabia: Shaping the Middle East from Pompey to Muhammad. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000740905. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  2. Retso, Jan (2013). The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781136872891. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  3. Gmirkin, Russell (2006). Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 161. ISBN 9780567134394. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  4. Gallo, Luigi (2018). "The Greeks and the Arabian Coast of the Red Sea". In Manzo, Andrea; Zazzaro, Chiara; De Falco, Diana Joyce (eds.). Stories of Globalisation: The Red Sea and the Persian Gulf from Late Prehistory to Early Modernity: Selected Papers of Red Sea Project VII. Brill Publishers. p. 297. ISBN 9789004362321. Retrieved 2023-04-01.
  5. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica 3.41

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Ariston". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 309.

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