Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Onesicrito »

Though for over two millennia much has been written and said about the Hanging Gardens, they remain elusive. Neither the extensive excavations at the city of Babylon nor the abundant contemporaneous cuneiform records have yielded convincing evidence for these gardens and their associated structures. Herodotus says not a word about them. Instead, we have the descriptions of five later writers, who were themselves quoted and paraphrased by others and whose accounts of the gardens are often opaque, contradictory, and technologically baffling at best.Briefly and in approximate chronological order, the principal sources are as follows: first, the Babyloniaca of Berossus, written about 280 BC, which does not survive save in quotations and condensations from it in other sources, among them two works by the first-century AD Josephus, who twice quotes the short note about the gardens; second, the listing in “On the Seven Wonders”, a text preserved solely in a ninth-century Byzantine codex whose Hellenistic source, often doubted, may be Philo of Byzantium, Alexandrian author of engineering treatises about 250 BC; third, a long description by Diodorus Siculus in the mid-first century BC, which he apparently based on the undoubtedly second-hand accounts in the now lost History of Alexander by Cleitarchus of Alexandria and on the fanciful description of Babylon by Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court around 400 BC; fourth, a passage in Strabo's Geography of the early first century AD, which he may have based on a lost text of Onesicritus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great; and fifth, a passage in the mid-first century AD History of Alexander written by Quintus Curtius Rufus, probably also based on Cleitarchus and Ctesias.

Il lavoro riprende tutta la tradizione antica relativa alla figura di Onesicrito di Astipalea, storico, compagno dell’impresa indiana di Alessandro Magno e sul quale la storiografia moderna aveva maturato giudizi poco positivi sia per l’atteggiamento dichiaratamente encomiastico nei confronti del Macedone sia per l’infondatezza dei dati riferiti nella propria opera. Di questa sopravvivono, in effetti, pochi e scarni frammenti concernenti per la maggior parte aspetti geo – etnografici dell’India e trasmessi nelle expositiones geographicae di Plinio il Vecchio e di Strabone, in toni che sembrano dimostrare l’inattendibilità di Onesicrito-storico. La ricerca ha preso perciò le mosse proprio da una ricostruzione della personalità dell’autore, ricordato dalla tradizione antica come allievo di Diogene Cinico e al contempo entusiasta collaboratore di Alessandro, sicché la contraddizione tra aspetti tanto dissonanti ha costituito elemento di partenza per verificare l’attendibilità delle fonti e per proporre una nuova interpretazione dell’opera intitolata “Come Alessandro venne educato”: Il ruolo della formazione del sovrano costituisce infatti una chiave di lettura importante per interpretare i diversi aspetti dell’impresa di Alessandro, alcuni dei quali testimoniati solo da Onesicrito. A quest’ultimo va infatti riconosciuta la prima descrizione dell’isola di Taprobane (Sri Lanka) e una attenta esposizione di aspetti della flora e della fauna indiane, collegati alla localizzazione “estrema” dei luoghi raggiunti dal Macedone. Il lavoro, che è stato condotto su una analisi dei testi, filologicamente ricostruiti, tradotti e commentati, colma una lacuna negli studi sulla storiografia su Alessandro e sul pensiero geografico, tanto più essenziale in quanto dalla tradizione risalente a Onesicrito risultano dipendere concezioni, più o meno fondate o fortunate, sulla storia dei Greci in India e sulla concezione del subcontinente indiano nella geografia antica fino a Tolemeo.

This chapter discusses the Greeks' interest in Indian philosophy. Philosophy in the Greek sense was a great deal more than is connoted by today's academic discipline, concerned as it is with definitions and meaning. Philosophy, “the love of wisdom,” was a guide to life, and could even be applied to the way of life that was informed by wisdom. That is what Pythagoras meant by what the Greeks in Alexander's entourage seem to have thought they found in the Indian philosophers they met. Onesicritus was the earliest witness. On arrival in Taxila, Alexander was intrigued by a group of naked ascetics he observed in a grove outside the city, practicing various yoga postures, and sent Onesicritus to interview them and find out something about them.

This chapter discusses the challenges of writing a book about India. Three main points emerge from this discussion: (1) Our own presumptions about India make it hard for us to see writers like Nearchus, Onesicritus, and Megasthenes clearly, or to see India with their eyes. (2) Many of the authors who have formed our preconceptions can be used as corroborative detail for what is in the classical authors. Among the most valuable are Xuanzang, al-Biruni, Babur and even Mandeville. (3) Could our central authors—Nearchus, Onesicritus and Megasthenes—see India clearly, or did they look for what Ctesias and Scylax had taught them to expect? Because the earlier authors are lost to us this is very difficult to estimate. With this in mind, one should always test them against other available sources and their likely Indian informants.