The Provinces of the Roman Empire 41

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 41

The development of this remarkable people had reached a considerable

stage long before the beginning of the Roman rule over Egypt.[257] Its

native seat, the Arabia Felix of the ancients, the region of Mocha

and Aden, is surrounded by a narrow plain along the shore intensely

hot and desolate, but the healthy and temperate interior of Yemen

and Hadramaut produces on the mountain-slopes and in the valleys a

luxuriant vegetation, and the numerous mountain-waters permit in

many respects with careful management a garden-like cultivation. We

have even at the present day an expressive testimony to the rich and

peculiar civilisation of this region in the remains of city-walls

and towers, of useful buildings, particularly aqueducts, and temples

covered with inscriptions, which completely confirm the description of

ancient authors as to the magnificence and luxury of this region; the

Arabian geographers have written books concerning the strongholds and

castles of the numerous petty princes of Yemen. Famous are the ruins of

the mighty embankment which once in the valley of Mariaba dammed up the

river Dana and rendered it possible to water the fields upwards,[258]

and from the bursting of which, and the migration alleged to have been

thereby occasioned of the inhabitants of Yemen to the north, the Arabs

for long counted their years. But above all this district was one of

the original seats of wholesale traffic by land and by sea, not merely

because its productions, frankincense, precious stones, gum, cassia,

aloes, senna, myrrh, and numerous other drugs called for export, but

also because this Semitic stock was, just like that of the Phoenicians,

formed by its whole character for commerce; Strabo says, just like the

more recent travellers, that the Arabs are all traders and merchants.

The coining of silver is here old and peculiar; the coins were at

first modelled after Athenian dies, and later after Roman coins of

Augustus, but on an independent, probably Babylonian basis.[259]

From the land of these Arabians the original frankincense-routes led

across the desert to the marts on the Arabian gulf, Aelana and the

already-mentioned Leuce Come, and the emporia of Syria, Petra and

Gaza;[260] these routes of the land-traffic, which along with those of

the Euphrates and the Nile, furnish the means of intercourse between

East and West from the earliest times, may be conjectured to be the

proper basis of the prosperity of Yemen. But the sea-traffic likewise

soon became associated with them; the great mart for this was Adane,

the modern Aden. From this the goods went by water, certainly in the

main in Arabian ships, either to those same marts on the Arabian gulf

and so to the Syrian ports, or to Berenice and Myos Hormos, and from

thence to Coptos and Alexandria. We have already stated that the

same Arabs likewise at a very early time possessed themselves of the

opposite coast, and transplanted their language, their writing and

their civilisation to Habesh. If Coptos, the Nile-emporium for the

eastern traffic, had just as many Arab as Egyptian inhabitants, if

even the emerald-mines above Berenice (near Jebel Zebâra) were worked

by the Arabs, this shows that in the Lagid state itself they had the

trade up to a certain degree in their hands; and its passive attitude

in respect to the traffic on the Arabian Sea, whither at most an

expedition against the pirates was once undertaken,[261] is the more

readily intelligible, if a state well organised and powerful at sea

ruled these waters. We meet the Arabs of Yemen even beyond their own

sea. Adane remained down to the Roman imperial times a mart of traffic

on the one hand with India, on the other with Egypt, and, in spite

of its own unfavourable position on the treeless shore, rose to such

prosperity that the name of “Arabia Felix” had primary reference to

this town. The dominion, which in our days the Imam of Muscat in the

south-east of the peninsula has exercised over the islands of Socotra

and Zanzibar and the African east coast from Cape Guardafui southward,

pertained in Vespasian’s time “from of old” to the princes of Arabia;

the island of Dioscorides, that same Socotra, belonged then to the

king of Hadramaut, Azania, that is, the coast of Somal and further

southward, to one of the viceroys of his western neighbour, the king

of the Homerites. The southernmost station on the east African coast

which the Egyptian merchants knew of, Rhapta in the region of Zanzibar,

was leased from this sheikh by the merchants of Muza, that is nearly

the modern Mocha, “and they send thither their trading-ships, mostly

manned by Arabian captains and sailors, who are accustomed to deal and

are often connected by marriage with the natives, and are acquainted

with the localities and the languages of the country.” The cultivation

of the soil and industry went hand in hand with commerce; in the houses

of rank in India, Arabian wine was drunk alongside of the Falernian

from Italy and the Laodicene from Syria; and the lances and shoemakers’

awls, which the natives of the coast of Malabar purchased from the

foreign traders were manufactured at Muza. Thus this region, which

moreover sold much and bought little, became one of the richest in the

world.

 

How far its political development kept pace with the economic, cannot

be determined for the pre-Roman and earlier imperial period; only this

much seems to result both from the accounts of the Occidentals and

from the native inscriptions, that this south-west point of Arabia

was divided among several independent rulers with territories of

moderate size. There subsisted in that quarter, alongside of the more

prominent Sabaeans and Homerites, the already-mentioned Chatramotitae

in the Hadramaut, and northward in the interior the Minaeans, all under

princes of their own.

 

With reference to the Arabians of Yemen the Romans pursued the very

opposite policy to that adopted towards the Axomites. Augustus, for

whom the non-enlargement of the empire was the starting-point of the

imperial government, and who allowed almost all the plans of conquest

of his father and master to drop, made an exception of the south-west

coast of Arabia, and here took aggressive measures of his own free

will. This was done on account of the position which this group of

peoples occupied at that time in Indo-Egyptian commercial intercourse.

In order to bring the province of his dominions, which was politically

and financially the most important, up, in an economic aspect, to the

level which his predecessors in rule had neglected to establish or had

allowed to decline, he needed above all to obtain inter-communication

between Arabia and India on the one hand and Europe on the other.

The Nile-route for long competed successfully with the Arabian and

the Euphrates routes; but Egypt played in this respect, as we saw, a

subordinate part at least under the later Lagids. A trading rivalry

subsisted not with the Axomites, but doubtless with the Arabians; if

the Egyptian traffic was to be converted from a passive into an active,

from indirect into direct, the Arabs had to be overthrown; and this

it was that Augustus desired and the Roman government in some measure

achieved.

 

[Sidenote: Expedition of Gallus.]

 

In the sixth year of his reign in Egypt (end of 729) {25 B.C.}

Augustus despatched a fleet, fitted out expressly for this expedition,

of 80 warships and 130 transports, and the half of the Egyptian army,

a corps of 10,000 men, without reckoning the contingents of the two

nearest client kings, the Nabataean Obodas and the Jew Herod, against

the states of Yemen, in order either to subjugate or at least to ruin

them,[262] while at the same time the treasures there accumulated

were certainly taken into account. But the enterprise completely

miscarried, and that from the incapacity of the leader, the governor

of Egypt at the time, Gaius Aelius Gallus.[263] Since the occupation

and the possession of the desolate coast from Leuce Come downwards to

the frontier of the enemy’s territory was of no consequence at all,

it was necessary that the expedition should be directed immediately

against the latter, and that the army should be conducted from the most

southern Egyptian port at once into Arabia Felix.[264] Instead of this

the fleet was got ready at the most northerly, that of Arsinoe (Suez),

and the army was landed at Leuce Come, just as if it were the object

to prolong as much as possible the voyage of the fleet and the march

of the troops. Besides, the war-vessels were superfluous, since the

Arabians possessed no war-fleet, the Roman sailors were unacquainted

with the navigation on the Arabian coast, and the transports, although

specially built for this expedition, were unsuited for their purpose.

The pilots had difficulty in finding their way between the shallows and

the rocks, and even the voyage in Roman waters from Arsinoe to Leuce

Come cost many vessels and men. Here the winter was passed; in the

spring of 730 the campaign in the enemy’s country began. The Arabians

offered no hindrance, but Arabia undoubtedly did so. Wherever the

double axes and the slings and bows came into collision with the pilum

and the sword, the natives dispersed like chaff before the wind; but

the diseases, which are endemic in the country, scurvy, leprosy, palsy,

decimated the soldiers worse than the most bloody battle, and all

the more as the general did not know how to move rapidly forward the

unwieldy mass of his army. Nevertheless the Roman army arrived in front

of the walls of Mariaba, the capital of the Sabaeans first affected by

the attack. But, as the inhabitants closed the gates of their powerful

walls still standing,[265] and offered energetic resistance, the

Roman general despaired of solving the problem proposed to him; and,

after he had lain six days in front of the town, he entered on his

retreat, which the Arabians hardly disturbed in earnest, and which was

accomplished with comparative rapidity under the pressure of need,

although with a severe loss in men.

 

[Sidenote: Further enterprises against the Arabs.]

 

It was a bad miscarriage; but Augustus did not abandon the conquest

of Arabia. It has already been related (p. 39) that the journey to

the East, which the crown-prince Gaius entered upon in the year 753

{1 B.C.}, was to terminate at Arabia; it was this time contemplated

after the subjugation of Armenia to reach, in concert with the Parthian

government or in case of need after the overthrow of their armies, the

mouth of the Euphrates, and from thence to take the sea-route which

the admiral Nearchus had once explored for Alexander, towards Arabia

Felix.[266] These hopes ended in another but not less unfortunate

way, through the Parthian arrow which struck the crown-prince before

the walls of Artageira. With him was buried the plan of Arabian

conquest for all the future. The great peninsula remained through the

whole imperial period--apart from the stripes of coast on the north

and north-west--in possession of that freedom from which Islam, the

executioner of Hellenism, was in its own time to issue.

 

[Sidenote: Injury to Arabian commerce.]

 

But the Arabian commerce was at all events broken down partly by the

measures, to be explained further on, of the Roman government for

protecting the Egyptian navigation, partly by a blow struck by the

Romans against the chief mart of Indo-Arabian traffic. Whether under

Augustus himself, possibly among the preparations for the invasion to

be carried out by Gaius, or under one of his immediate successors,

a Roman fleet appeared before Adane and destroyed the place; in

Vespasian’s time it was a village, and its prosperity was gone. We

know only the naked fact,[267] but it speaks for itself. A counterpart

to the destruction of Corinth and of Carthage by the republic, it, like

these, attained its end, and secured for the Romano-Egyptian trade the

supremacy in the Arabian gulf and in the Indian Sea.

 

[Sidenote: Later fortunes of the Homerites.]

 

The prosperity, however, of the blessed land of Yemen was too firmly

founded to succumb to this blow; politically it was even perhaps in

this epoch only that it more energetically rallied its resources.

Mariaba, at the time when the arms of Gallus failed before its walls,

was perhaps no more than the capital of the Sabaeans; but already

at that time the tribe of the Homerites, whose capital Sapphar lay

somewhat to the south of Mariaba, also in the interior, was the

strongest in Arabia Felix. A century later we find the two united

under a king of the Homerites and of the Sabaeans reigning in Sapphar,

whose rule extends as far as Mocha and Aden, and, as was already said,

over the island of Socotra and the coast of Somal and Zanzibar; and

at least from this time we may speak of a kingdom of the Homerites.

The desert northwards from Mariaba as far as the Roman frontier did

not at that time belong to it, and was under no regular authority at

all;[268] the principalities of the Minaei and of the Chatramotitae

continued also to be under sovereigns of their own. The eastern half

of Arabia formed constantly a part of the Persian empire (p. 13), and

never was under the sceptre of the rulers of Arabia Felix. Even now

therefore the bounds were narrow and probably remained so; little is

known as to the further development of affairs.[269] In the middle of

the fourth century the kingdom of the Homerites was united with that of

the Axomites, and was governed from Axomis[270]--a subjection, however,

which was subsequently broken off again. The kingdom of the Homerites, as well as the united Axomitico-Homeritic, stood as independent states in intercourse and treaty with Rome during the later imperial period.