Iambulus
Ἰάμβουλος
(Ἰάμβουλος), 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.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.