The Provinces of the Roman Empire 36

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 36

When Probus, the general sent by Claudius, at length gained the upper

hand, the Palmyrene partisans, including the majority of the members

of council, threw themselves into the strong castle of Prucheion in

the immediate neighbourhood of the city; and, although, when Probus

promised to spare the lives of those that should come out, the great

majority submitted, yet a considerable portion of the citizens

persevered to the uttermost in the struggle of despair. The fortress,

at length reduced by hunger (270), was razed and lay thenceforth

desolate; but the city lost its walls. The Blemyes still maintained

themselves for years in the land; the emperor Probus first wrested

from them again Ptolemais and Coptos, and drove them out of the country.

 

[Sidenote: Revolt under Diocletian.]

 

The state of distress, which these troubles prolonged through a series

of years, must have produced, may probably thereupon have brought to

an outbreak, the only revolution that can be shown to have arisen in

Egypt.[225] Under the government of Diocletian, we do not know why or

wherefore, as well the native Egyptians as the burgesses of Alexandria

rose in revolt against the existing government. Lucius Domitius

Domitianus and Achilleus were set up as opposition-emperors, unless

possibly the two names denote the same person; the revolt lasted from

three to four years, the towns Busiris in the Delta and Coptos not

far from Thebes were destroyed by the troops of the government, and

ultimately under the leading of Diocletian in person in the spring

of 297 the capital was reduced after an eight months’ siege. Nothing

testifies so clearly to the decline of the land, rich, but thoroughly

dependent on inward and outward peace, as the edict issued in the

year 302 by the same Diocletian, that a portion of the Egyptian grain

hitherto sent to Rome should for the future go to the benefit of the

Alexandrian burgesses.[226] This was certainly among the measures which

aimed at the decapitalising of Rome; but the supply would not have been

directed towards the Alexandrians, whom this emperor had truly no cause

to favour, unless they had urgently needed it.

 

[Sidenote: Agriculture.]

 

Economically Egypt, as is well-known, is above all the land of

agriculture. It is true that the “black earth”--that is the meaning

of the native name for the country, Chemi--is only a narrow stripe

on either side of the mighty Nile flowing from the last rapids near

Syene, the southern limit of Egypt proper, for 550 miles in a copious

stream, through the yellow desert extending right and left, to the

Mediterranean Sea; only at its lower end the “gift of the river,” the

Nile-delta, spreads itself out on both sides between the manifold arms

of its mouth. The produce of these tracts depends year by year on the

Nile and on the sixteen cubits of its flood-mark--the sixteen children

playing round their father, as the art of the Greeks represented the

river-god; with good reason the Arabs designate the low cubits by the

name of the angels of death, for, if the river does not reach its full

height, famine and destruction come upon the whole land of Egypt. But

in general Egypt--where the expenses of cultivation are singularly

low, wheat bears an hundred fold, and the culture of vegetables, of

the vine, of trees, particularly the date-palm, as well as the rearing

of cattle, yield good produce--is able not merely to feed a dense

population, but also to send corn in large quantity abroad. This led

to the result that, after the installation of the foreign rule, not

much of its riches was left to the land itself. The Nile rose at that

time nearly as in the Persian period and as it does to-day, and the

Egyptian toiled chiefly for other lands; and thereby in the first

instance Egypt played an important part in the history of imperial

Rome. After the grain-cultivation in Italy itself had decayed and Rome

had become the greatest city of the world, it needed constant supplies

of moderately-priced transmarine grain; and the principate strengthened

itself above all by the solution of the far from easy economic problem

how to make the supply of the capital financially possible and to

render it secure. This solution depended on the possession of Egypt,

and, in as much as here the emperor bore exclusive sway, he kept Italy

with its dependencies in check through Egypt. When Vespasian seized the

dominion he sent his troops to Italy, but he went in person to Egypt

and possessed himself of Rome through the corn-fleet. Wherever a Roman

ruler had, or is alleged to have had, the idea of transferring the seat

of government to the East, as is told us of Caesar, Antonius, Nero,

Geta, there the thoughts were directed, as if spontaneously, not to

Antioch, although this was at that time the regular court-residence

of the East, but towards the birthplace and the stronghold of the

principate--to Alexandria.

 

For that reason, accordingly, the Roman government applied itself

more zealously to the elevation of agriculture in Egypt than anywhere

else. As it is dependent on the inundation of the Nile, it was

possible to extend considerably the surface fitted for cultivation

by systematically executed water-works, artificial canals, dykes,

and reservoirs. In the good times of Egypt, the native land of the

measuring-chain and of artificial building, much was done for it,

but these beneficent structures fell, under the last wretched and

financially oppressed governments, into sad decay. Thus the Roman

occupation introduced itself worthily by Augustus subjecting the canals

of the Nile to a thorough purifying and renewal by means of the troops

stationed in Egypt. If at the time of the Romans taking possession a

full harvest required a state of the river of fourteen cubits, and

at eight cubits failure of the harvest occurred, at a later period,

after the canals were put into order, twelve cubits were enough for

a full harvest, and even eight cubits yielded a sufficient produce.

Centuries later the emperor Probus not merely liberated Egypt from the

Ethiopians but also restored the water-works on the Nile. It may be

assumed, generally, that the better successors of Augustus administered

in a similar sense, and that especially with the internal peace and

security hardly interrupted for centuries, Egyptian agriculture stood

in a permanently flourishing state under the Roman principate. What

reflex effect this state of things had on the Egyptians themselves we

are not able to follow out more exactly. To a great extent the revenues

from Egypt rested on the possession of the imperial domains, which

in Roman as in earlier times formed a considerable part of the whole

area;[227] here, especially considering the small cost of cultivation,

only a moderate proportion of the produce must have been left to the

small tenants who provided it, or a high money-rent must have been

imposed. But even the numerous, and as a rule smaller, owners must have

paid a high land-tax in corn or in money. The agricultural population,

contented as it was, remained probably numerous in the imperial period;

but certainly the pressure of taxation, as well in itself as on account

of the expenditure of the produce abroad, lay as a heavier burden on

Egypt under the Roman foreign rule than under the by no means indulgent

government of the Ptolemies.

 

[Sidenote: Trades.]

 

Of the economy of Egypt agriculture formed but a part; as it in

this respect stood far before Syria, so it had the advantage of a

high prosperity of manufactures and commerce as compared with the

essentially agricultural Africa. The linen manufacture in Egypt

was at least equal in age, extent, and renown to the Syrian, and

maintained its ground through the whole imperial period, although the

finer sorts at this epoch were especially manufactured in Syria and

Phoenicia;[228] when Aurelian extended the contributions made from

Egypt to the capital of the empire to other articles than corn, linen

cloth and tow were not wanting among them. In fine glass wares, both

as regards colouring and moulding, the Alexandrians held decidedly the

first place, in fact, as they thought, the monopoly, in as much as

certain best sorts were only to be prepared with Egyptian material.

Indisputably they had such a material in the papyrus. This plant,

which in antiquity was cultivated in masses on the rivers and lakes

of lower Egypt, and flourished nowhere else, furnished the natives

as well with nourishment as with materials for ropes, baskets, and

boats, and furnished writing materials at that time for the whole

writing world. What produce it must have yielded, we may gather from

the measures which the Roman senate took, when once in the Roman

market the papyrus became scarce and threatened to fail; and, as its

laborious preparation could only take place on the spot, numberless

men must have subsisted by it in Egypt. The deliveries of Alexandrian

wares introduced by Aurelian in favour of the capital of the empire

extended, along with linen, to glass and papyrus.[229] The intercourse

with the East must have had a varied influence on Egyptian manufactures

as regards supply and demand. Textiles were manufactured there for

export to the East, and that in the fashion required by the usage of

the country; the ordinary clothes of the inhabitants of Habesh were of

Egyptian manufacture; the gorgeous stuffs especially of the weaving in

colours and in gold skilfully practised at Alexandria went to Arabia

and India. In like manner the glass beads prepared in Egypt played

the same part in the commerce of the African coast as at the present

day. India procured partly glass cups, partly unwrought glass for its

own manufacture; even at the Chinese court the glass vessels, with

which the Roman strangers did homage to the emperor, are said to have

excited great admiration. Egyptian merchants brought to the king of

the Axomites (Habesh) as standing presents gold and silver vessels

prepared after the fashion of that country, to the civilised rulers

of the South-Arabian and Indian coast among other gifts also statues,

probably of bronze, and musical instruments. On the other hand the

materials for the manufacture of luxuries which came from the East,

especially ivory and tortoise-shell, were worked up hardly perhaps

in Egypt, chiefly, in all probability, at Rome. Lastly, at an epoch,

which never had its match in the West for magnificent public buildings,

the costly building materials supplied by the Egyptian quarries came

to be employed in enormous masses outside of Egypt; the beautiful red

granite of Syene, the green breccia from the region of Kosêr, the

basalt, the alabaster, after the time of Claudius the gray granite,

and especially the porphyry of the mountains above Myos Hormos. The

working of them was certainly effected for the most part on imperial

account by penal colonists; but the transport at least must have gone

to benefit the whole country and particularly the city of Alexandria.

The extent to which Egyptian traffic and Egyptian manufactures were

developed is shown by an accidentally-preserved notice as to the cargo

of a transport ship (ἄκατος), distinguished by its size, which under

Augustus brought to Rome the obelisk now standing at the Porta del

Popolo with its base; it carried, besides 200 sailors, 1200 passengers,

400,000 Roman bushels (34,000 hectolitres) of wheat, and a cargo of

linen cloth, glass, paper, and pepper. “Alexandria,” says a Roman

author of the third century,[230] “is a town of plenty, of wealth, and

of luxury, in which nobody goes idle; this one is a glass-worker, that

one a paper-maker, the third a linen-weaver; the only god is money.”

This held true proportionally of the whole land.

 

[Sidenote: Egyptian navigation of the Mediterranean.]

 

Of the commercial intercourse of Egypt with the regions adjoining it on

the south, as well as with Arabia and India, we shall speak more fully

in the sequel. The traffic with the countries of the Mediterranean

comes less into prominence in the traditional account, partly,

doubtless, because it belonged to the ordinary course of things,

and there was not often occasion to make special mention of it. The

Egyptian corn was conveyed to Italy by Alexandrian shipmasters, and

in consequence of this there arose in Portus near Ostia a sanctuary

modelled on the Alexandrian temple of Sarapis with a mariner’s

guild;[231] but these transport-ships would hardly be concerned to any

considerable extent in the sale of the wares going from Egypt to the

West. This sale lay probably just as much, and perhaps more, in the

hands of the Italian ship-owners and captains than of the Egyptian;

at least there was already under the Lagids a considerable Italian

settlement in Alexandria,[232] and the Egyptian merchants had not

the same diffusion in the West as the Syrian.[233] The ordinances of

Augustus, to be mentioned afterwards, which remodelled the commercial

traffic on the Arabian and Indian Seas, found no application to the

navigation of the Mediterranean; the government had no interest in

favouring the Egyptian merchants more than the rest in its case. The traffic there remained, presumably, as it was.