His travels were recorded by Philostorgius, an Arian Greek historian,
who relates that Theophilus, after fulfilling his mission to the
Homerites, sailed to his island home known as Divus, allegedly
a group of islands off the Western coast of India. Some modern sources
refer to it as the Maldives.
It is likely that Theophilus spent most of his career in the Roman
city of Antioch in what is now Turkey.
This was not just an isolated case of Maldive contact with Rome at
that time and before.
Another Roman source, Amianus Marcellinus courtier to the Roman
Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus wrote in AD 362 about Maldive
(Divi) envoys who came to the emperor's court. Julianus was
the last pagan emperor of Rome.
A ceremonial vessel excavated from a buried Buddhist temple on the
island of Toddu in Ari Atoll contained a Roman Republican denarius
of Caius Vibius Pansa that was minted in 90 BC and went out of circulation
about 200 years later.
