Iambu'lus
(
*)Ia/mboulos), a Greek author, who is known for having written a work on the strange forms and figures of the inhabitants of India. (Tzetz.
Chil. 7.144.) Diodorus Siculus (2.55, &c.), who seems only to have transcribed Iambulus in his description of the Indians, relates that the latter 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 Iambulus gave of the east, which he had probably never seen, consisted of nothing but fabulous absurdities. (Lucian,
Verae Hist. 3; comp. Osann,
Beiträge zur Griech. u. Röm. Lit. Gesch. vol. i. p. 288, &c.)
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