The Provinces of the Roman Empire 39

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 39

Even in the Greek circle, so far as the Roman government operated upon

it in the sense of the Lagids, this development was linked more with

Rome than with Alexandria. It is true that the Greek libraries of the

capital were not equal to the Alexandrian, and there was no institute

in Rome comparable to the Alexandrian Museum. But a position at the

Roman libraries opened up relations to the court. The professorship of

Greek rhetoric in the capital, instituted by Vespasian, filled up and

paid for by the government, gave to its holder, although he was not an

officer of the household in the same sense as the imperial librarian,

a similar position, and was regarded, doubtless on that account, as

the chief professorial chair of the empire.[244] But, above all, the

office of imperial cabinet secretary in its Greek division was the most

esteemed and the most influential position to which a Greek man of

letters could at all attain. Transference from the Alexandrian academy

to such an office in the capital was demonstrably promotion.[245]

Even apart from all which the Greek literati otherwise found in Rome

alone, the court-positions and the court-offices were enough to draw

the most distinguished of them thither rather than to the Egyptian

“free table.” The learned Alexandria of this time became a sort of

“jointure” of Greek science, worthy of respect and useful, but of no

pervading influence on the great movement of culture or mis-culture of

the imperial period; the places in the Museum were, as was reasonable,

not seldom bestowed on scholars of note from abroad, and for the

institution itself the books of the library were of more account than

the burgesses of the great commercial and manufacturing city.

 

* * * * *

 

[Sidenote: The Egyptian army.]

 

The military circumstances of Egypt laid down, just as in Syria, a

double task for the troops there; the protection of the south frontier

and of the east coast, which indeed may not be remotely compared with

that required for the line of the Euphrates, and the maintenance of

internal order in the country as in the capital. The Roman garrison

consisted, apart from the ships stationed at Alexandria and on the

Nile, which seem chiefly to have served for the control of the customs,

under Augustus of three legions, along with the not numerous auxiliary

troops belonging to them, about 20,000 men. This was about half as many

as he destined for all the Asiatic provinces--which was in keeping

with the importance of this province for the new monarchy. But the

occupying force was probably even under Augustus himself diminished

about a third, and then under Domitian by about a further third. At

first two legions were stationed outside of the capital; but the main

camp, and soon the only one, lay before its gates, where Caesar the

younger had fought out the last battle with Antonius, in the suburb

called accordingly Nicopolis. The suburb had its own amphitheatre

and its own imperial popular festival, and was quite independently

organised; so that for a time the public amusements of Alexandria were

thrown into the shade by those of Nicopolis. The immediate watching of

the frontier fell to the auxiliaries. The same causes therefore which

relaxed discipline in Syria--the police-character of their primary task

and their immediate contact with the great capital--came into play

also for the Egyptian troops; to which fell to be added, that the bad

custom of allowing to the soldiers with the standards a married life

or at any rate a substitute for it, and of filling up the troop from

their camp-children, had for long been naturalised among the Macedonian

soldiers of the Ptolemies, and soon prevailed also among the Romans,

at least up to a certain degree. Accordingly, the Egyptian corps, in

which the Occidentals served still more rarely than in the other armies

of the East, and which was recruited in great part from the citizens

and the camp of Alexandria, appears to have been among all the sections

of the army the least esteemed; as indeed also the officers of this

legion, as was already observed, were inferior in rank to those of the

rest.

 

The properly military task of the Egyptian troops was closely connected

with the measures for the elevation of Egyptian commerce. It will be

convenient to take the two together, and to set forth in connection, in

the first instance, the relations to the continental neighbours in the

south, and then those to Arabia and India.

 

[Sidenote: Aethiopia.]

 

[Sidenote: War with queen Candace.]

 

Egypt reaches on the south, as was already remarked, as far as the

barrier which the last cataract, not far from Syene (Assouan),

opposes to navigation. Beyond Syene begins the stock of the Kesch,

as the Egyptians call them, or, as the Greeks translated it, the

dark-coloured, the Aethiopians, probably akin to the Axomites to be

afterwards mentioned, and, although perhaps sprung from the same

root as the Egyptians, at any rate confronting them in historical

development as a foreign people. Further to the south follow the Nahsiu

of the Egyptians, that is, the Blacks, the Nubians of the Greek,

the modern Negroes. The kings of Egypt had in better times extended

their rule far into the interior, or at least emigrant Egyptians had

established for themselves here dominions of their own; the written

monuments of the Pharaonic government go as far as above the third

cataract to Dongola, where Nabata (near Nûri) seems to have been the

centre of their settlements; and considerably further up the stream,

some six days’ journey to the north of Khartoum, near Shendy, in

Sennaar, in the neighbourhood of the long forgotten Aethiopian town

Meroe, are found groups of temples and pyramids, although destitute

of writing. When Egypt became Roman, all this development of power

was long a matter of the past; and beyond Syene there ruled an

Aethiopian stock under queens, who regularly bore the name or the title

Candace,[246] and resided in that once Egyptian Nabata in Dongola; a

people at a low stage of civilisation, predominantly shepherds, in a

position to bring into the field an army of 30,000, but equipped with

shields of ox-hides, armed mostly not with swords, but with axes or

lances and iron-mounted clubs, predatory neighbours, not a match for

the Romans in combat. In the year 730 or 731 {24, 23. B.C.} these

invaded the Roman territory--as they asserted, because the presidents

of the nearest nomes had injured them--as the Romans thought, because

the Egyptian troops were then to a large extent occupied in Arabia,

and they hoped to be able to plunder with immunity. In reality they

overcame the three cohorts who covered the frontier, and dragged

away the inhabitants from the nearest Egyptian districts--Philae,

Elephantine, Syene--as slaves, and the statues of the emperor, which

they found there, as tokens of victory. But the governor, who just

then took up the administration of the province, Gaius Petronius,

speedily requited the attack; with 10,000 infantry and 800 cavalry

he not merely drove them out, but followed them along the Nile into

their own land, defeated them emphatically at Pselchis (Dekkeh),

and stormed their stronghold Premis (Ibrim), as well as the capital

itself, which he destroyed. It is true that the queen, a brave woman,

renewed the attack next year and attempted to storm Premis, where a

Roman garrison had been left; but Petronius brought seasonable relief,

and so the Aethiopian queen determined to send envoys and to sue for

peace. The emperor not merely granted it, but gave orders to evacuate

the subject territory, and rejected the proposal of his governor to

make the vanquished tributary. This event, otherwise not important, is

remarkable in so far as just then the definite resolution of the Roman

government became apparent, to maintain absolutely the Nile valley as

far as the river was navigable, but not at all to contemplate taking

possession of the wide districts on the upper Nile. Only the tract

from Syene, where under Augustus the frontier-troops were stationed,

as far as Hiera Sycaminos (Maharraka), the so-called Twelve-mile-land

(Δωδεκάσχοινος), while never organised as a nome and never viewed as

a part of Egypt, was yet regarded as belonging to the empire; and at

least under Domitian the posts were even advanced as far as Hiera

Sycaminos.[247] On that footing substantially the matter remained.

The Oriental expedition planned by Nero (p. 61) was certainly intended

to embrace Aethiopia; but it did not go beyond the preliminary

reconnoitring of the country by Roman officers as far as Meroe. The

relations with the neighbours on the Egyptian southern frontier down

to the middle of the third century must have been on the whole of a

peaceful kind, although there were not wanting minor quarrels with that

Candace and with her successors, who appear to have maintained their

position for a considerable time, and subsequently perhaps with other

tribes, that attained to ascendency beyond the imperial bounds.

 

[Sidenote: The Blemyes.]

 

It was not till the empire was unhinged in the period of Valerian

and Gallienus, that the neighbours broke over this boundary. We have

already mentioned (p. 250) that the Blemyes settled in the mountains

on the south-east frontier, formerly obeying the Aethiopians, a

barbarous people of revolting savageness, who even centuries later had

not abandoned human sacrifices, advanced at this epoch independently

against Egypt, and by an understanding with the Palmyrenes occupied

a good part of upper Egypt, and held it for a series of years. The

vigorous emperor Probus drove them out; but the inroads once begun did

not cease,[248] and the emperor Diocletian resolved to draw back the

frontier. The narrow “Twelve-mile-land” demanded a strong garrison, and

brought in little to the state. The Nubians, who roamed in the Libyan

desert, and were constantly visiting in particular the great Oasis,

agreed to give up their old abodes and to settle in this region, which

was formally ceded to them; at the same time fixed annual payments

were made to them as well as to their eastern neighbours the Blemyes,

nominally in order to compensate them for guarding the frontier, in

reality beyond doubt to buy off their plundering expeditions, which

nevertheless of course did not cease. It was a retrograde step--the

first, since Egypt became Roman.

 

[Sidenote: Aethiopian commercial traffic.]

 

Of the mercantile intercourse on this frontier little is reported from

antiquity. As the cataracts of the upper Nile closed the direct route

by water, the traffic between the interior of Africa and the Egyptians,

particularly the trade in ivory, was carried on in the Roman period

more by way of the Abyssinian ports than along the Nile; but it was

not wanting also in this direction.[249] The Aethiopians who dwelt in

numbers beside the Egyptians on the island of Philae were evidently

mostly merchants, and the border-peace that here prevailed must have

contributed its part to the prosperity of the frontier-towns of upper Egypt and of Egyptian trade generally.