Iambulus

Iambulus (Ancient Greek: Ἰάμβουλος, Iamboulos) was an ancient Greek merchant and the likely author of a Utopian novel about the strange forms and figures of the inhabitants of the "Islands of the Sun".

His work did not survive in the original, but only as a fragment in Diodorus Siculus' Bibliotheca historica. Diodorus, who seems only to have transcribed lambulus in his description of the Indians, relates that lambulus was made a slave by the Ethiopians, and sent by them to a happy island in the eastern seas, where he acquired his knowledge. The whole account, however, has the appearance of a mere fiction; and the description which lambulus gave of the east, which he had probably never seen, consisted of nothing but fabulous absurdities.^[1]

Iambulus is mentioned in the humorous novel, "True Story" by Lucian as writing "a lot of surprising things about the Atlantic Ocean".^[2] He is listed in the preface as an inspiration.

See also

• The City of the Sun

References

1.  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Leonhard Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Iambulus". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 2. p. 550.
2. True History, page 3

Further reading

• Fernandez Robbio, Matías S. (2010). online "La travesía de Yambulo por las Islas del Sol (D.S., II.55-60). Introducción a su estudio, traducción y notas" Check |url= value (help). MORUS – Utopia e Renascimento 7: 27–41.
• Rose, H. J. (1939). "The date of Jambulus". The Classical Quarterly 33: 9–10.
• Winston, David (1976). "Iambulus' Island of the Sun and Hellenistic Literary Utopias". Science-Fiction Studies 3: 219–227.
• "True History & Lucius or The Ass" by Lucian, translated by Paul Turner, Indiana University Press, 1974.