One day an Indian sailor turned up on the coast of Egypt after being shipwrecked. He was arrested by guards who took him to King Ptolemy VIII. Egypt was an established Greek colony back then. Because the sailor couldn't speak Greek they had no idea where he'd come from so they taught him some elementary Greek. Eudoxos was the King's advisor on geography at the time and he asked the Indian "where have you come from?" The Indian replied "I'm from India mate, over the ocean, 3000 miles away. My ship was lost in the Arabian Sea for a long time, having gone off course after we missed the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The rest of the crew perished through starvation and I steered the ship up the Red Sea to Egypt on my tod." Eudoxos said "It must have been a huge undertaking, since it takes an expert crew of many hands to manage an ocean-going ship." The sailor nodded in agreement. Eudoxos, after a chat with the king, was given permission to sail to India with the sailor. When he reached India he received a load of precious stones and glorious spices from an accommodating Indian prince. When he returned to Egypt, greedy old King Ptolemy took charge of all the treasure. Eudoxos was a bit put out and voiced his disapproval and the king locked him up for his insolence. After the king died, he was succeeded by his wife Queen Cleopatra III, who released Eudoxos. She entrusted him to sail back to India to get more jewels and spices. Eudoxos went and received more jewels and by the time he returned to Egypt, her son was king, and he took most of the treasure, except for the stuff Eudoxos had wisely stashed away in his secret box. Anyway, while crossing the Red Sea he found part of a shipwreck, a wooden prow. He assumed it was foreign, being of a carved horse design. He showed it to an expert on the antiques market and he verified it was Spanish Celtic. Eudoxos put two and two together and came to the conclusion "blimey, that means you must be able to sail around Libya!" Which was what they called the whole of Africa in those days. So with royal backing, he sailed up the Med with a large crew that included a gang of female dancers, but his ship was accidentally grounded and damaged so he built another one on the Spanish coast. He launched it and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean and down the coast of Mauretania. He took note of the Canary Islands and continued all the way round the Cape of Good Hope to the island of Bogos, which is said to be on the Horn of Africa. This means he was only about 200 miles away from completing his desired circumnavigation! Eudoxos, however, decided to turn back at the last minute. I dare say he had his reasons. After a while, as he'd been missing for a few years, some of the king's sailors set out to track him down, as the king had invested a lot of money into the venture, but they couldn't find him.
Poseidonius the ancient historian and geographer, reckons it's possible that Eudoxos turned back and went into hiding because he heard the king was after him, apparently he heard the king was furious because he'd somehow found out about the items of Indian treasure that he'd previously stashed away. Poseidonius reckons he shacked up somewhere in the Canaries, happy as Larry in his garden.
So that was the end of the expedition. To this day no one knows what really happened to Eudoxos or the dancing girls he took with him or indeed, as the Graeco-Roman geographer Strabo says "Poseidonius may have fabricated the whole shabang as various threads of the tale just don't seem to add up." He questions the fact about the Indian sailor getting lost. If they were an expert crew how the devil did they miss the entrance to the Persian Gulf? It's a hundred miles wide! Then again Strabo might be nit-picking. It could've been a perfectly legitimate story that was slightly embellished over time.
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