The Provinces of the Roman Empire 42

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 42

In commerce and navigation the Arabians of the south-west of the

peninsula occupied, if no longer the place of supremacy, at any rate

a prominent position throughout the whole imperial period. After

the destruction of Adane, Muza became the commercial metropolis of

this region. The representation formerly given is still in the main

appropriate for the time of Vespasian. The place is described to us at

this time as exclusively Arabian, inhabited by ship-owners and sailors,

and full of stirring mercantile life; the Muzaites with their own ships

navigate the whole east coast of Africa and the west coast of India,

and not merely carry the goods of their own country, but bring also

the purple stuffs and gold embroideries prepared according to Oriental

taste in the workshops of the West, and the fine wines of Syria and

Italy, to the Orientals, and in turn to the western lands the precious

wares of the East. In frankincense and other aromatics Muza and the

emporium of the neighbouring kingdom of Hadramaut, Cane to the east of

Aden, must always have retained a sort of practical monopoly; these

wares, used in antiquity very much more than at present, were produced

not only on the southern coast of Arabia, but also on the African coast

from Adulis as far as the “promontory of spices,” Cape Guardafui, and

from thence the merchants of Muza fetched them and brought them into

general commerce. On the already mentioned island of Dioscorides there

was a joint trading settlement of the three great seafaring nations of

these seas, the Hellenes, that is, the Egyptians, the Arabians, and

the Indians. But of relations to Hellenism, such as we found on the

opposite coast among the Axomites (p. 283), we meet no trace in the

land of Yemen; if the coinage is determined by Occidental types (p.

287 f.), these were current throughout the East. Otherwise writing

and language and the exercise of art, so far as we are able to judge,

developed themselves here just as independently as commerce and

navigation; and certainly this co-operated in producing the result that

the Axomites, while they subjected to themselves the Homerites in a

political point of view, subsequently reverted from the Hellenic path

into the Arabic (p. 283).

 

[Sidenote: Land routes and harbours in Egypt.]

 

In the same spirit as for the relations to southern Africa and to the

Arabian states, and in a more pleasing way, provision was made in

Egypt itself for the routes of commercial intercourse, in the first

instance by Augustus, and beyond doubt by all its intelligent rulers.

The system of roads and harbours established by the earlier Ptolemies

in the footsteps of the Pharaohs had, like the whole administration,

fallen into sad decay amidst the troubles of the last Lagid period.

It is not expressly mentioned that Augustus put again into order the

land and water routes and the ports of Egypt; but that it was done,

is none the less certain. Coptos remained through the whole imperial

period the rendezvous of this traffic.[271] From a recently found

document we gather that in the first imperial period the two routes

leading thence to the ports of Myos Hormos and of Berenice were

repaired by the Roman soldiers and provided at the fitting places

with the requisite cisterns.[272] The canal which connected the Red

Sea with the Nile, and so with the Mediterranean Sea, was in the

Roman period only of secondary rank, employed chiefly perhaps for

the conveyance of blocks of marble and porphyry from the Egyptian

east coast to the Mediterranean; but it remained navigable throughout

the imperial period. The emperor Trajan renewed and probably also

enlarged it--perhaps it was he who placed it in communication with the

still undivided Nile near Babylon (not far from Cairo), and thereby

increased its water-supply--and assigned to it the name of Trajan’s or

the emperor’s river (_Augustus amnis_), from which in later times this

part of Egypt was named (_Augustamnica_).

 

[Sidenote: Piracy.]

 

Augustus exerted himself also in earnest for the suppression of piracy

on the Red and Indian Seas; the Egyptians long even after his death

thanked him, that through his efforts piratical sails disappeared from

the sea and gave way to trading vessels. No doubt what was done in

that respect was far from enough. The facts that, while the government

doubtless from time to time set naval squadrons to work in these

waters, it did not station there a standing war-fleet; and that the

Roman merchantmen regularly took archers on board in the Indian Sea to

repel the attacks of the pirates, would be surprising, if a comparative

indifference to the insecurity of the sea had not everywhere--here,

as well as on the Belgian coast, and on those of the Black Sea--clung

like a hereditary sin to the Roman imperial government or rather to

the Roman government in general. It is true that the governments of

Axomis and of Sapphar were called by their geographical position still

more than the Romans at Berenice and Leuce Come to check piracy, and it

may be partly due to this consideration that the Romans remained, upon

the whole, on a good understanding with these weaker but indispensable

neighbours.

 

[Sidenote: Growth of the Egyptian active traffic to the East.]

 

We have formerly shown that the maritime intercourse of Egypt, if not

with Adulis (p. 284), at any rate with Arabia and India at the epoch

which immediately preceded the Roman rule, was not carried on in the

main through the medium of Egyptians. It was only through the Romans

that Egypt obtained the great maritime traffic to the East. “Not

twenty Egyptian ships in the year,” says a contemporary of Augustus,

“ventured forth under the Ptolemies from the Arabian gulf; now 120

merchantmen annually sail to India from the port of Myos Hormos alone.”

The commercial gain, which the Roman merchant had been obliged hitherto

to share with the Persian or Arabian intermediary, flowed to him in

all its extent after the opening up of direct communication with

the more remote East. This result was probably brought about in the

first instance by the circumstance that the Egyptian ports were, if

not directly barred, at any rate practically closed, by differential

custom-dues against Arabian and Indian transports;[273] only by the

hypothesis of such a navigation-act in favour of their own shipping

could this sudden revolution of commercial relations be explained. But

the traffic was not merely violently transformed from a passive into an

active one; it was also absolutely increased, partly in consequence of

the increased inquiry in the West for the wares of the East, partly at

the expense of the other routes of traffic through Arabia and Syria.

For the Arabian and Indian commerce with the West the route by way

of Egypt more and more proved itself the shortest and the cheapest.

The frankincense, which in the olden time went in great part by the

land-route through the interior of Arabia to Gaza (p. 288, note 2),

came afterwards for the most part by water through Egypt. The Indian

traffic received a new impulse about the time of Nero, when a skilled

and courageous Egyptian captain, Hippalus, ventured, instead of making

his way along the long stretch of coast, to steer from the mouth of

the Arabian Gulf directly through the open sea for India; he knew the

monsoon, which thenceforth the mariners, who traversed this route

after him, named the Hippalus. Thenceforth the voyage was not merely

materially shortened, but was less exposed to the land and sea pirates.

To what extent the secure state of peace and the increasing luxury

raised the consumption of Oriental wares in the West, may be discerned

in some measure from the complaints, which were in the time of

Vespasian loudly expressed, regarding the enormous sums which went out

of the empire for that purpose. The whole amount of the purchase-money

annually paid to the Arabians and the Indians is estimated by Pliny at

100,000,000 sesterces (= £1,100,000), for Arabia alone at 55,000,000

sesterces (= £600,000), of which, it is true, a part was covered by

the export of goods. The Arabians and the Indians bought doubtless the

metals of the West, iron, copper, lead, tin, arsenic, the Egyptian

articles mentioned formerly (p. 254), wine, purple, gold and silver

plate, also precious stones, corals, saffron, balm; but they had always

far more to offer to foreign luxury than to receive for their own.

Hence the Roman gold and silver money went in considerable quantities

to the great Arabian and Indian emporia. In India it had already under

Vespasian so naturalised itself that the people there preferred to

use it. Of this Oriental traffic the greatest part went to Egypt; and

if the increase of the traffic benefited the government-chest by the

increased receipts from customs, the need for building ships and making

mercantile voyages of their own elevated the prosperity of private

individuals.

 

While thus the Roman government limited its rule in Egypt to the narrow

space which is marked off by the navigableness of the Nile, and,

whether in pusillanimity or in wisdom, at any rate never attempted

with consistent energy to conquer either Nubia or Arabia, it strove

as energetically after the possession of the Arabian and the Indian

wholesale traffic, and attained at least an important limitation of

the competitors. As the unscrupulous pursuit of commercial interests

characterised the policy of the republic, so not less did it mark that

of the principate, especially in Egypt.

 

[Sidenote: Romano-Indian commercial intercourse.]

 

We can only determine approximately how far the direct Roman maritime

traffic went towards the East. In the first instance it took the

direction of Barygaza (Barôtch on the Gulf of Cambay above Bombay),

which great mart must have remained through the whole imperial

period the centre of the Egyptio-Indian traffic; several places in

the peninsula of Gujerat bear among the Greeks Greek designations,

such as Naustathmos and Theophila. In the Flavian period, in which the

monsoon-voyages had already become regular, the whole west coast of

India was opened up to the Roman merchants as far down as the coast

of Malabar, the home of the highly-esteemed and dear-priced pepper,

for the sake of which they visited the ports of Muziris (probably

Mangaluru) and Nelcynda (in Indian doubtless Nilakantha from one

of the surnames of the god Shiva, probably the modern Nîlêswara);

somewhat farther to the south at Kananor numerous Roman gold coins of

the Julio-Claudian epoch have been found, formerly exchanged against

the spices destined for the Roman kitchens. On the island Salice, the

Taprobane of the older Greek navigators, the modern Ceylon, in the time

of Claudius a Roman official, who had been driven thither from the

Arabian coast by storms, had met with a friendly reception from the

ruler of the country, and the latter, astonished, as the report says,

at the uniform weight of the Roman pieces of money in spite of the

diversity of the emperor’s heads, had sent along with the shipwrecked

man envoys to his Roman colleague. Thereby in the first instance it was

only the sphere of geographical knowledge that was enlarged; it was not

till later apparently that navigation was extended as far as that large

and productive island, in which on several occasions Roman coins have

come to light. But coins are found only by way of exception beyond Cape

Comorin and Ceylon,[274] and hardly has even the coast of Coromandel

and the mouth of the Ganges, to say nothing of the Further Indian

peninsula and China, maintained regular commercial intercourse with the Occidentals.