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this naval power. Given Ptolemy II Philadelphus’s already-mentioned interest in
the canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea, as well as his penchant for elephants,
there is certainly reason to assume that he had an interest in connecting the
Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean (both to reach east Africa
and India) (Sidebotham, 2011: 42–44). Navy aside, on the diplomatic front Pliny
claims that Ptolemy II Philadelphus sent an ambassador to India. Later Hellenistic
rulers of Egypt continued Ptolemy II’s interest. Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (late-
second century bce) expressed a similar desire to navigate the Indian Ocean and
beyond. According to Strabo, who relates the story from Poseidonius, at this later
Ptolemy’s instigation, Eudoxus of Cyzicus, guided by an Indian sailor who had
been washed ashore in Egypt, sailed the monsoons to India and returned with
precious stones and spices (Strabo, Geography, 2.4). When Eudoxus attempted the
trip again, Strabo recounts skeptically, he was blown off course, and through a
series of interactions became convinced that he could circumnavigate Africa
counter- clockwise, which he apparently attempted unsuccessfully. Eudoxus’
Ptolemaic-sponsored adventures in the Indian Ocean may well have been the cat-
alyst for the creation of a Ptolemaic office titled “Strategos and Epistrategos of the
Red Sea and Indian Ocean” (SB 2264 and 8036, cited in Sidebotham, 2011: 37
and 292 n. 30). Having taken control of Egypt from Cleopatra VII, the last of the
Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, the Romans in the late first century bce launched an
unsuccessful military expedition into southern Arabia, complete with 80 warships,
130 transport vessels, and 10 000 troops (Strabo, Geography, 16.22–24 and
Sidebotham, 1986: 120–130). Whatever its purpose, this Roman expedition is
suggestive of imperial interest in the sea routes linking the Mediterranean and the
Indian Ocean (Pollard, 2009: 338). Perhaps not coincidentally, the first Roman
emperor, Augustus (r. 30 bce–14 ce), who dispatched Aelius Gallus on this failed
expedition into Arabia also claimed to have received ambassadors from India (Res
Gestae, 31). From the Ptolemies through the Roman period, imperial powers
flirted with impartial political–military control of Indian Ocean–Mediterranean
connectivity.
Later imperial powers such as the Abbasids (750–1258 ce) and the Ottomans
(fifteenth century onward) managed to accomplish what the Greeks and Romans
could not, namely a degree of control over an extended period of time of the
political–military interactions between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean.
The Ottoman sack of Constantinople in 1453 offers a symbolic and real turning
point in Mediterranean exchange with the east. In the century before and after
this historical moment, the Ottoman Empire had established control over the land
and sea routes that linked the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Beginning
in the early sixteenth century ce, the Portuguese ushered in a new era in
Mediterranean–Indian Ocean exchange, by-passing Ottoman controlled lands
and waters by circumnavigating Africa. Once they plotted their circum-Africa
route to the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese used military force to establish
an “Estado da India” and declared the Indian Ocean to be a mare clausum
(closed sea). The Portuguese would issue a “commercial passport” (cartaz) to
Indian Ocean shippers, in what some have described as “state-sponsored piracy”
since the Portuguese would take goods from ships without a cartaz (Gilbert and
Reynolds, 2006: 40–41). In this way, the Portuguese achieved a western European