Deimachus
Topic: The Mauryan Empire · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Deimachus was a Greek ambassador. The Seleucid king Antiochus I sent him to the court of Bindusara, the son of Chandragupta Maurya and father of Ashoka. Like Megasthenes before him, he wrote an account of India. That account is now lost. The later Greek geographer Strabo called it unreliable. Deimachus matters because he shows that the Greeks and the Mauryas kept up diplomatic contact after Chandragupta's time.
Example
At Pāṭaliputra, Deimachus followed Megasthenes as the Greek envoy at the Mauryan court. Only a few mentions of him survive in later Greek writers, so his own work cannot be read today.
Don't confuse with
- Megasthenes: the Greek envoy to Chandragupta Maurya's court and author of the Indika. Deimachus came later and was sent to Bindusara.
Related concepts
- Mauryan empire
- Chandragupta Maurya
- Kautilya
- Seleucus-Chandragupta treaty
- Megasthenes
- Indika
- Dionysius