562 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



So ample was the description of Ceylon afforded by 

 Ptolemy, that for a very long period his successors, 

 AGATHEMERUS, MARCIANUS of Heraclea, and other geo- 

 graphers, were severally contented to use the facts 

 originally collected by him. 1 And it was not till the 

 reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, that COSMAS 

 INDICO-PLEUSTES, by publishing the narrative of Sopater, 

 added very considerably to the previous knowledge of 

 the island. 



As Cosinas is the last Greek writer who treats of 

 Taprobane 2 , it may be interesting, before passing to his 



though he had been as far south as 

 Nelkynda (the modern Neliseram), 

 and the account which he gives from 

 report of the island is meagre, and 

 in some respects erroneous. ARRI- 

 ANI, Periplus Mans Eryih. ; HUDSON, 

 vol. i. p. 35 ; VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 493. 



1 AGATHEMERUS, Hudson Geog., 1. 

 ii. c. 7, 8. ; MARCIANUS HERACLEOTA, 

 Periplus, Hudson, p. 26. STEPHANAS 

 BYZANTINUS, in verbo "Taprobane." 

 Instead of the expression of PTOLEMY 

 that Taprobane ex-aXaro ?raXai 2//ioiV- 

 <W>, which MARCIANUS had ren- 

 dered UaXaifftiioin'Sov, SlEPHANUS 

 transposes the words as if to guard 

 against error, ira\ai fiiv t/caXaro Si- 

 nvvcov, &c. The prior authority of 

 PTOLEMY, however, serves to prolong 

 the mystery, as he calls the capital 

 Palsesimundum. 



8 There is another curious work 

 which,notwithstanding certain doubts 

 as to its authorship, contains internal 

 evidence entitling it, in point of time, 

 to take precedence of COSMAS. This 

 is the tract " De. Moribus Brach- 

 manorum," ascribed to St. Ambrose, 

 and which under the title " lltpl ro>i< 

 rtiQ 'Ivfiag *' Twit 'Bpa\pdvitiv'' has 

 been also attributed to Palladius, but 

 in all probability it was actually 

 the composition of neither. Early 

 in the fifth century Palladius was 

 Bishop of Helenopolis, in Bithynia, 

 and died about A.D. 410. He spent 

 a part of his life in Coptic monas- 

 teries, and it is possible that during 

 his sojourn in Egypt, meeting tra- 



vellers and merchants returning from 

 India, he may have caused this nar- 

 rative to be taken down from the 

 dictation of one of them. CAVE he- 

 sitates to believe that it was written 

 by PALLADIUS, "baud facile credem," 

 &c. (Script. Eccles. Hist. Lit.) ; and 

 the learned Benedictine editors of 

 AMBROSE have excluded it from the 

 works of the latter. They could 

 scarcely have done otherwise when 

 the first chapter of the Latin version 

 opens with the declaration that it 

 was drawn up by its author at the 

 request of " PALLADIUS." " Deside- 

 rium mentis tufe Palladi opus efficere 

 nos compellit," &c. Neither of the 

 two versions can be accepted as a 

 translation of the other, but the dis- 

 crepancies are not inconsistent, and 

 would countenance the conjecture 

 that the book is the production of 

 one and the same person. Much of 

 the material is borrowed from PTO- 

 LEMY and PLINY, but the facts which 

 are new could only have been col- 

 lected by persons who had visited the 

 scenes they describe. The compiler 

 says he had learned from a certain 

 scholar of Thebes that the inhabitants 

 of Ceylon were called Macrobii, be- 

 cause, owing to the salubrity of the 

 climate, the average duration of life 

 was 150 years. The petty kings of 

 the country acknowledged one para- 

 mount sovereign to whom they were 

 subject as satraps ; this the Theban 

 was told by others, as he himself was 

 not allowed to visit the interior. A 



