Rawlinson, H. G. Intercourse between India and the western world from the earliest times to the fall of Rome

(Cambridge :  University Press,  1916.)

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92                       The Ptolemies

part in the battle of Ipsus^. They had been
employed by Porus against Alexander and were
later used by Pyrrhus and Hannibal against the
Romans. The tactical value of these unwieldy
beasts against well-disciplined troops is not great,
and they quickly fell into disrepute in European
warfare. They continued, however, to form one
of the four traditional " arms " of the Indian army
and were freely used as late as the days of the
Moghal Empire. Ptolemais of the Hunts was
probably not far from Port Sudan, and may then,
as now, have been linked with the Nile by a road
running to Berbera. The port of Adulis was
chiefly famous for the inscription, preserved for
us by Kosmas Indikopleustes^, which recites the
conquests of Ptolemy Euergetes (247-233 B.C.). It
was the natural port for Abyssinia and the Sudan.
The knowledge possessed about India by'the
Alexandrian Greeks was chiefly due to Erato¬
sthenes, the learned President of the Library from
240-196 B.C., though some facts must have been
made known before this by Dionysius, who had
been sent to India, says Pliny, in the reign of
Philadelphus on an embassy, and published details
about the forces of the Indian nations on his
return. His account of India, contained in the
third book of his Geography, was considered by

1  Antiochus III was given one hundred and fifty by
Subhagasena. Polybius, xi. 34. Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci
Inscriptiones Selectae, 54.

2  Bunbury, Anc. Geog. 11, 609.
  Page 92