Chapter XVIII: Appendix: Roman Britain (4)

[183] To the three legions there belonged five _alae_ and eighteen cohorts, and the army of Palestine consisting of one _ala_ and five cohorts. These _auxilia_ numbered accordingly 3000 alarians and (since among the twenty-three cohorts ten were 1000 strong, thirteen 720, or probably rather only 420 strong; for instead of the startling ἑξακοσίους we expect rather τριακοσίους ἑξάκοντα) 16,240 (or, if 720 is retained, 19,360) cohortales. To these fell to be added 1000 horsemen from each of the four kings, and 5000 Arabian archers, with 2000 from each of the other three kings. This gives together--reckoning the legion at 6000 men--52,240 men, and so towards 60,000, as Josephus (_Bell. Jud._ iii. 4, 2) says. But as the divisions are thus all calculated at the utmost normal strength, the effective aggregate number can hardly be estimated at 50,000. These numbers of Josephus appear in the main trustworthy, just as the analogous ones for the army of Cestius (_Bell. Jud._ ii. 18, 9); whereas his figures, resting on the census, are throughout measured after the scale of the smallest village in Galilee numbering 15,000 inhabitants (_Bell. Jud._ iii. 3, 2), and are historically as useless as the figures of Falstaff. It is but seldom, _e.g._ at the siege of Jotapata, that we recognise reported numbers.

[184] This arch was erected to Titus after his death by the imperial senate. Another, dedicated to him during his short government by the same senate in the circus (_C. I. L._ vi. 944) specifies even with express words as the ground of erecting the monument, “because he, according to the precept and direction and under the superintendence of his father, subdued the people of the Jews and destroyed the town of Hierusolyma, which up to his time had either been besieged in vain by all generals, kings, and peoples, or not assailed at all.” The historic knowledge of this singular document, which ignores not merely Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus Epiphanes, but their own Pompeius, stands on the same level with its extravagance in the praise of a very ordinary feat of arms.

[185] The account of Josephus, that Titus with his council of war resolved not to destroy the temple, excites suspicion by the manifest intention of it, and, as the use made of Tacitus in the chronicle of Sulpicius Severus is completely proved by Bernays, it may certainly well be a question whether his quite opposite account (_Chron._ ii. 30, 6), that the council of war had resolved to destroy the temple, does not proceed from Tacitus, and whether the preference is not to be given to it, although it bears traces of Christian revision. This view further commends itself through the fact that the dedication addressed to Vespasian of the Argonautica of the poet Valerius Flaccus celebrates the victor of Solyma, who hurls the fiery torches.

[186] That the emperor took this land for himself (ἰδίαν αὐτῷ τὴν χώραν φυλάττων) is stated by Josephus, _Bell. Jud._ vii. 6, 6; not in accord with this is his command πᾶσαν γῆν ἀποδόσθαι τῶν Ἰουδαίων (_l. c._), in which doubtless there lurks an error or a copyist’s mistake. It is in keeping with the expropriation that land was by way of grace assigned elsewhere to individual Jewish landowners (Josephus, _vit._ 16). We may add that the territory was probably employed as an endowment for the legion stationed there (_Eph. epigr._ ii. n. 696; Tacitus, _Ann._ xiii. 54).

[187] Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 2, puts the outbreak on the 18th, and so, according to his reckoning (in the Chronicle), the penultimate year of Trajan; and therewith Dio, lxviii. 32, agrees.

[188] Eusebius himself (in Syncellus) says only: Ἀδριανὸς Ἰουδαίους κατὰ Ἀλεξανδρέων στασιάζοντας ἐκόλασεν. The Armenian and Latin translations appear to have erroneously made out of this a restoration of Alexandria destroyed by the Jews, of which Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 2, and Dio, lxviii. 32, know nothing.

[189] This is shown by the expressions of Dio, lxix. 13: οἱ ἁπανταχοῦ γῆς Ἰουδαῖοι and πάσης ὡς εἰπεῖν κινουμένης ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῆς οἰκουμένης.

[190] If, according to the contemporary Appian (_Syr._ 50), Hadrian once more destroyed (κατέσκαψε) the town, this proves as well that it was preceded by an at least in some measure complete formation of the colony, as that it was captured by the insurgents. Only thereby is explained the great loss which the Romans suffered (Fronto, _de bello Parth._ p. 218 Nab.: _Hadriano imperium obtinente quantum militum a Iudaesis ... caesum_; Dio, lxix. 14); and it accords at least well with this, that the governor of Syria, Publicius Marcellus, left his province to bring help to his colleague Tineius Rufus (Eusebius, _H. E._ iv. 6; Borghesi, _Opp._ iii. 64), in Palestine (_C. I. Gr._ 4033, 4034).

[191] That the coins with this name belong to the Hadrianic insurrection is now proved (v. Sallet, _Zeitschr. für Numism._ v. 110); this is consequently the Rabbi Eleazar from Modein of the Jewish accounts (Ewald, _Gesch. Isr._ vii.^2, 418; Schürer, _Lehrbuch_, p. 357). That the Simon whom these coins name partly with Eleazar, partly alone, is the Bar-Kokheba of Justin Martyr and Eusebius is at least very probable.

[192] Dio (lxix. 12) calls the war protracted (οὔτ’ ὀλιγοχρόνιος); Eusebius in his Chronicle puts its beginning in the sixteenth, its end in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of Hadrian; the coins of the insurgents are dated from the first or from the second year of the deliverance of Israel. We have not trustworthy dates; the Rabbinic tradition (Schürer, _Lehrbuch_, p. 361) is not available in this respect.

[193] Biography of Alexander, c. 22: _Iudaeis privilegia reservavit, Christianos esse passus est_. Clearly the privileged position of the Jews as compared with the Christians comes here to light--a position, which certainly rests in its turn on the fact that the former represent a nation the latter do not.

[194] In order to make good that even in bondage the Jews were able to‘’“” exercise a certain self-administration, Origen (about the year 226) writes to Africanus, c. 14: “How much even now, where the Romans rule and the Jews pay to them the tribute (τὸ δίδραχμον), has the president of the people (ὁ ἐθνάρχης) among them in his power with permission of the emperor (συγχωροῦντος Καίσαρος)? Even courts are secretly held according to the law, and even on various occasions sentence of death is pronounced. This I, who have long lived in the land of this people, have myself experienced and ascertained.” The patriarch of Judaea already makes his appearance in the letter forged in the name of Hadrian in the biography of the tyrant Saturninus (c. 8), in the ordinances first in the year 392 (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 8). Patriarchs as presidents of individual Jewish communities, for which the word from its signification is better adapted, meet us already in the ordinances of Constantine I. (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 1, 2).

[195] The jurists of the third century lay down this rule, appealing to an edict of Severus (_Dig._ xxvii. 1, 15, 6; l. 2, 3, 3). According to the ordinance of the year 321 (_C. Th._ xvi. 8, 3) this appears even as a right, not as a duty of the Jews, so that it depended on them to undertake or decline the office.

[196] The analogous treatment of castration in the Hadrianic edict, _Dig._ xlviii. 8, 4, 2, and of circumcision in Paulus, _Sent._ v. 22, 3, 4, and Modestinus, _Dig._ xlviii. 8, 11 pr., naturally suggests this point of view. The statement that Severus _Judaeos fieri sub gravi poena vetuit_ (_Vita_, 17), is doubtless nothing but the enforcement of this prohibition.

[197] The remarkable account in Origen’s treatise _against Celsus_, ii. 13 (written about 250), shows that the circumcision of the non-Jew involved _de iure_ the penalty of death, although it is not clear how far this found application to Samaritans or Sicarii.

[198] This exclusion of the joint rule of the senate as of the senators is indicated by Tacitus (_Hist._ i. 11) with the words that Augustus wished to have Egypt administered exclusively by his personal servants (_domi retinere_; comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. p. 963). In principle this abnormal form of government was applicable for all the provinces not administered by senators, the presidents of which were also at the outset called chiefly _praefecti_ (_C. I. L._ v. p. 809, 902). But at the first division of the provinces between emperor and senate there was probably no other of these but just Egypt; and subsequently the distinction here came into sharper prominence, in so far as all the other provinces of this category obtained no legions. For in the emergence of the equestrian commandants of the legion instead of the senatorial, as was the rule in Egypt, the exclusion of the senatorial government finds its most palpable expression.

[199] This ordinance holds only for Egypt, not for the other territories administered by non-senators. How essential it appeared to the government, we see from the constitutional and religious apparatus called into requisition to secure it (_Trig. tyr._ c. 22).

[200] The current assertion that _provincia_ is only by an abuse of language put for the districts not administered by senators is not well founded. Egypt was private property of the emperor just as much or just as little as Gaul and Syria--yet Augustus himself says (_Mon. Ancyr._ 5, 24) _Aegyptum imperio populi Romani adieci_, and assigns to the governor, since he as _eques_ could not be _pro praetore_, by special law the same jurisdiction in processes as the Roman praetors had (Tacitus, _Ann._ xii. 60).

[201] As a matter of course what is here meant is the land of Egypt, not the possessions subject to the Lagids. Cyrene was similarly organised (p. 165). But the properly Egyptian government was never applied to southern Syria and to the other territories which were for a longer or a shorter time under the power of Egypt.

[202] To these falls to be added Naucratis, the oldest Greek town already founded in Egypt before the Ptolemies, and further Paraetonium, which indeed in some measure lies beyond the bounds of Egypt.

[203] There was not wanting of course a certain joint action, similar to that which is exercised by the _regiones_ and the _vici_ of self-administering urban communities; to this category belongs what we meet with of agoranomy and gymnasiarchy in the nomes, as also the erection of honorary memorials and the like, all of which, we may add, make their appearance only to a small extent and for the most part but late. According to the edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957, l. 34) the _strategoi_ do not seem to have been, properly speaking, nominated by the governor, but only to have been confirmed after an examination; we do not know who had the proposing of them.

[204] The position of matters is clearly apparent in the inscription set up at the beginning of the reign of Pius to the well-known orator Aristides by the Egyptian Greeks (_C. I. Gr._ 4679); as dedicants are named ἡ πόλις τῶν Ἀλεξανδρέων καὶ Ἑρμούπολις ἡ μεγάλη καὶ ἡ βουλὴ ἡ Ἀντινοέων νέων Ἑλλήνων καὶ οἱ ἐν τῷ Δέλτᾳ τῆς Αἰγύπτου καὶ οἱ τὸν Θηβαϊκὸν νομὸν οἰκοῦντες Ἕλληνες. Thus only Antinoopolis, the city of the “new Hellenes,” has a Boule; Alexandria appears without this, but as a Greek city in the aggregate. Moreover there take part in this dedication the Greeks living in the Delta and those living in Thebes, but of the Egyptian towns Great-Hermopolis alone, on which probably the immediate vicinity of Antinoopolis has exercised an influence. To Ptolemais Strabo (xvii. 1, 42, p. 813) attributes a σύστημα πολιτικὸν ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ τρόπῳ; but in this we may hardly think of more than what belonged to the capital according to its constitution more exactly known to us--and so specially of the division of the burgesses into _phylae_. That the pre-Ptolemaic Greek city Naucratis retained in the Ptolemaic time the Boule, which it doubtless had, is possible, but cannot be decisive for the Ptolemaic arrangements.--Dio’s statement (ii. 17) that Augustus left the other Egyptian towns with their existing organisation, but took the common council from the Alexandrians on account of their untrustworthiness, rests doubtless on misunderstanding, the more especially as, according to it, Alexandria appears slighted in comparison with the other Egyptian communities, which is not at all in keeping with probability.

[205] The Egyptian coining of gold naturally ceased with the annexation of the land, for there was in the Roman empire only imperial gold. With the silver also Augustus dealt in like manner, and as ruler of Egypt caused simply copper to be struck, and even this only in moderate quantities. At first Tiberius coined, after A.D. 27-28, silver money for Egyptian circulation, apparently as token-money, as the pieces correspond nearly in point of weight to four, in point of silver value to one, of the Roman denarius (Feuardent, _Numismatique, Égypte ancienne_, ii. p. xi.). But as in legal currency the Alexandrian drachma was estimated as obolus (consequently as a sixth, not as a fourth; comp. _Röm. Münzwesen_, p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius (_Hermes_, v. p. 136), and the provincial silver always lost as compared with the imperial silver, the Alexandrian tetradrachmon of the silver value of a denarius has rather been estimated at the current value of two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly down to Commodus, from whose time the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is essentially a copper coin, the same has been quite as much a coin of value as the Syrian tetradrachmon and the Cappadocian drachma; they only left to the former the old name and the old weight.

[206] That the emperor Hadrian, among other Egyptising caprices, gave to the nomes as well as to his Antinoopolis for once the right of coining, which was thereupon done subsequently on a couple of occasions, makes no alteration in the rule.

[207] This figure is given by the so-called Epitome of Victor, c. 1, for the time of Augustus. After this payment was transferred to Constantinople there went thither under Justinian (_Ed._ xiii. c. 8) annually 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to be understood, according to c. 6, as meant), or 26-2/3 millions of Roman bushels (Hultsch, _Metrol._ p. 628), to which falls further to be added the similar payment to the town of Alexandria, introduced by Diocletian. To the shipmasters for the freight to Constantinople 8000 solidi = £5000 were annually paid from the state-chest.

[208] At least Cleopatra on a distribution of grain in Alexandria excluded the Jews (Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 5), and all the more, consequently, the Egyptians.

[209] The edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957), l. 33 ff., exempts the ἐνγενεῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς dwelling ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (not ἐν τῇ πόλει) on account of their business from the λειτουργίαι χωρικαί.

[210] “There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (_in Flacc._ 10), “as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps _bacillarius_). He afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις μάστιξιν).

[211] Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4, μόνοις Αἰγυπτίοις οἱ κύριοι νῦν Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταλαμβάνειν ἡστινοσοῦν πολιτείας ἀπειρήκασιν. 6, _Aegyptiis neque regum quisquam videtur ius civitatis fuisse largitus neque nunc quilibet imperatorum_ (comp. _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13). The same upbraids his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a native Egyptian, had denied his home and given himself out as an Alexandrian.--Individual exceptions are not thereby excluded.

[212] Alexandrian science, too, protested in the sense of the king against this proposition (Plutarch, _de fort. Alex._ i. 6); Eratosthenes designated civilisation as not peculiar to the Hellenes alone, and not to be denied to all barbarians, _e.g._ not to the Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the Carthaginians; men were rather to be divided into “good” and “bad” (Strabo, i. _fin._ p. 66). But of this theory no practical application was made to the Egyptian race even under the Lagids.

[213] Admission to the equestrian positions was at least rendered difficult: _non est ex albo iudex patre Aegyptio_ (_C. I. L._ iv. 1943; comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. 919, note 2; _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13, note 2). Yet we meet early with individual Alexandrians in equestrian offices, like Tiberius Julius Alexander (p. 246, note).

[214] If the words of Pliny (_H. N._ v. 31, 128) are accurate, that the island of Pharos before the harbour of Alexandria was a _colonia Caesaris dictatoris_ (comp. iv. 574), the dictator has here too, like Alexander, gone beyond the thought of Aristotle. But there can be no doubt as to the point, that after the annexation of Egypt there never was a Roman colony there.

[215] The titles of Augustus run with the Egyptian priests to the following effect: “The beautiful boy, lovely through worthiness to be loved, the prince of princes, elect of Ptah and Nun the father of the gods, king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, Autokrator, son of the sun, lord of diadems, Kaisar, ever living, beloved by Ptah and Isis;” in this case the proper names “Autokrator, Kaisar,” are retained from the Greek. The title of Augustus occurs first in the case of Tiberius in an Egyptian translation (_nti χu_), and with the retention of the Greek Σεβαστός under Domitian. The title of the fair, lovely boy, which in better times was wont to be given only to the children proclaimed as joint-rulers, afterwards became stereotyped, and is found employed, as for Caesarion and Augustus, so also for Tiberius, Claudius, Titus, Domitian. It is more important that in deviation from the older title, as it is found, _e.g._ in Greek on the inscription of Rosetta (_C. I. Gr._ 4697), in the case of the Caesars from Augustus onward the title “prince of princes” is appended, by which beyond doubt it was intended to express their position of great-king, which the earlier kings had not.

[216] If people knew, king Seleucus was wont to say (Plutarch, _An seni_, 11), what a burden it was to write and to read so many letters, they would not take up the diadem if it lay at their feet.

[217] That he wore other insignia than the officers generally (Hirschfeld, _Verw. Gesch._ p. 271), it is hardly allowable to infer from _vita Hadr._ 4.

[218] Thus Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian Jew, held this governorship in the last years of Nero (p. 204); certainly he belonged to a very rich family of rank, allied by marriage even with the imperial house, and he had distinguished himself in the Parthian war as chief of the staff of Corbulo--a position which he soon afterwards took up once more in the Jewish war of Titus. He must have been one of the ablest officers of this epoch. To him is dedicated the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise περὶ κοσμοῦ (p. 168), evidently composed by another Alexandrian Jew (Bernays, _Gesammelte Abhandl._ ii. 278).

[219] Unmistakably the _iuridicus Aegypti_ (_C. I. L._ x. 6976; also _missus in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem_, _Bull. dell’ Inst._ 1856, p. 142; _iuridicus Alexandreae_, _C._ vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 8934; _Dig._ i. 20, 2), and the _idiologus ad Aegyptum_ (_C._ x. 4862; _procurator ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu_, _Eph. cp._ v. p. 30, and _C. I. Gr._ 3751; ὁ γνώμων τοῦ ἰδίου λόγου, _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 44, comp. v. 39), are modelled on the assistants associated with the legates of the imperial provinces for the administration of justice (_legati iuridici_) and the finances (_procuratores provinciae_; _Staatsrecht_ 1^2, p. 223, note 5). That they were appointed for the whole land, and were subordinate to the _praefectus Aegypti_, is stated by Strabo expressly (xvii. 1, 12, p. 797), and this assumption is required by the frequent mention of Egypt in their style and title as well as by the turn in the edict _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 39. But their jurisdiction was not exclusive; “many processes,” says Strabo, “are decided by the official administering justice” (that he assigned guardians, we learn from _Dig._ i. 20, 2), and according to the same it devolved on the Idiologus in particular to confiscate for the exchequer the _bona vacantia et caduca_.--This does not exclude the view that the Roman _iuridicus_ came in place of the older court of thirty with the ἀρχιδικαστής at its head (Diodorus, i. 75), who was Egyptian, and may not be confounded with the Alexandrian ἀρχιδικαστής, had moreover perhaps been set aside already before the Roman period, and that the Idiologus originated out of the subsistence in Egypt of a claim of the king on heritages, such as did not occur to the same extent in the rest of the empire, which latter view Lumbroso (_Recherches_, p. 285) has made very probable.

[220] The ἐξηγητής, according to Strabo, xvii. 1, 12, p. 797, the first civic official in Alexandria under the Ptolemies as under the Romans, and entitled to wear the purple, is certainly identical with the year-priest in the testament of Alexander appearing in the Alexander-romance very well instructed in such matters (iii. 33, p. 149, Müller). As the Exegetes has, along with his title, doubtless to be taken in a religious sense, the ἐπιμέλεια τῶν τῇ πόλει χρησίμων, that priest of the romance is ἐπιμελιστὴς τῆς πόλεως. The romance-writer will not have invented the payment with a talent and the hereditary character any more than the purple and the golden chaplet; the hereditary element, in reference to which Lumbroso (_l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, p. 152) recalls the ἐξηγητὴς ἔναρχος of the Alexandrian inscriptions (_C. I. Gr._ 4688, 4976 c.), is presumably to be conceived to the effect that a certain circle of persons was called by hereditary right, and out of these the governor appointed the year-priest. This priest of Alexander (as well as of the following Egyptian kings, according to the stone of Canopus and that of Rosetta, _C. I. Gr._ 4697), was under the earlier Lagids the eponym for Alexandrian documents, while later as under the Romans the kings’ names come in for that purpose. Not different from him probably was the “chief priest of Alexandria and all Egypt,” of an inscription of the city of Rome from Hadrian’s time (_C. I. Gr._ 5900: ἀρχιερεῖ Ἀλεξανδρείας καὶ Αἰγύπτου πάσης Λευκίῳ Ἰουλίῳ Οὐηστίνῳ καὶ ἐπιστάτῃ τοῦ Μουσείου καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ βιβλιοθηκῶν Ῥωμαικῶν τε καὶ Ἑλληνικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς παιδείας Ἀδριανοῦ, ἐπιστολεῖ τοῦ αὐτοῦ αὐτοκράτορος); the proper title, ἐξηγητής was avoided out of Egypt, because it usually denoted the sexton. If the chief priesthood, as the tenor of the inscription suggests, is to be assumed as having been at that time permanent, the transition from the annual tenure to the at least titular, and not seldom also real, tenure for life repeats itself, as is well known, in the _sacerdotia_ of the provinces, to which this Alexandrian one did not indeed belong, but the place of which it represented in Egypt (p. 238). That the priesthood and the presidency of the Museum are two distinct offices is shown by the inscription itself. We learn the same from the inscription of a royal chief physician of a good Lagid period, who is withal as well exegete as president of the Museum (Χρύσερμον Ἡρακλείτου Ἀλεξανδρέα τὸν συγγενῆ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ ἐξηγητὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρῶν καὶ ἐπιστάτην τοῦ Μουσείου). But the two monuments at the same time suggest that the post of first official of Alexandria and the presidency of the Museum were frequently committed to the same man, although in the Roman time the former was conferred by the prefect, the latter by the emperor.

[221] Not to be confounded with the similar office which Philo (in _Flacc._ 16) mentions and Lucian (_Apolog._ 12) held; this was not an urban office, but a subaltern’s post in the praefecture of Egypt, in Latin _a commentariis_ or _ab actis_.

[222] This is the _procurator Neaspoleos et mausolei Alexandriae_ (_C. I. L._ viii. 8934; Henzen, 6929). Officials of a like kind and of like rank, but whose functions are not quite clear, are the _procurator ad Mercurium Alexandreae_ (_C. I. L._ x. 3847), and the _procurator Alexandreae Pelusii_ (_C._ vi. 1024). The Pharos also is placed under an imperial freedman (_C._ vi. 8582).

[223] The alliance of the Palmyrenes and the Blemyes is pointed to by the notice of the _vita Firmi_, c. 3, and by the statement, according to Zosimus, i. 71, that Ptolemais fell away to the Blemyes (comp. Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 32). Aurelian only negotiated with these (_Vita_, 34, 41); it was Probus who first drove them again out of Egypt (Zosimus, _l.c._; _Vita_, 17).

[224] We still possess letters of this sort, addressed by the bishop of the city, at that time Dionysius († 265), to the members of the church shut off in the hostile half of the town (Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 21, 22, comp. 32). When it is therein said: “one gets more easily from the West to the East than from Alexandria to Alexandria,” and ἡ μεσαιτάτη τῆς πόλεως ὁδός, consequently the street furnished with colonnades, running from the Lochias point right through the town (comp. Lumbroso, _l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, 1882, p. 137) is compared with the desert between Egypt and the promised land, it appears almost as if Severus Antoninus had carried out his threat of drawing a wall across the town and occupying it in a military fashion (Dio, lxxvii. 23). The razing of the walls after the overthrow of the revolt (Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15) would then have to be referred to this very building.

[225] The alleged Egyptian tyrants, Aemilianus, Firmus, Saturninus, are at least not attested as such. The so-called description of the life of the second is nothing else than the sadly disfigured catastrophe of Prucheion.

[226] _Chr. Pasch._ p. 514; Procopius, _Hist. arc._ 26; Gothofred. on _Cod. Theod._ xiv. 26, 2. Stated distributions of corn had already been instituted earlier in Alexandria, but apparently only for persons old and decayed, and--it may be conjectured--on account of the city, not of the state (Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 21).

[227] In the town of Alexandria there appears to have been no landed property to the strict sense, but only a sort of hereditary lease (Ammianus, xxii. 11, 6; _Staatsrecht_, ii. 963, note 1); but otherwise private property in the soil prevailed also in Egypt, in the sense in which the provincial law knows such a thing at all. There is often mention of domanial possession, _e.g._ Strabo, xvii. 1, 51, p. 828, says that the best Egyptian dates grow on an island on which private persons might not possess any land, but it was formerly royal, now imperial, and yielded a large income. Vespasian sold a portion of the Egyptian domains and thereby exasperated the Alexandrians (Dio, lxvi. 8)--beyond doubt the great farmers who then gave the land in sub-lease to the peasants proper. Whether landed property in mortmain, especially of the priestly colleges, was in the Roman period still as extensive as formerly, may be doubted; as also whether otherwise large estates or small properties predominated; petty husbandry was certainly general. We possess figures neither for the domanial quota nor for that of the land-tax; that the fifth sheaf in Orosius, i. 8, 9, is copied including the _usque ad nunc_ from Genesis, is rightly observed by Lumbroso, _Recherches_, p. 94. The domanial rent cannot have amounted to less than the half; even for the land-tax the tenth (Lumbroso, _l. c._ p. 289, 293) may have hardly sufficed. Export of grain otherwise from Egypt needed the consent of the governor (Hirschfeld, _Annona_, p. 23), doubtless because otherwise scarcity might easily set in in the thickly-peopled land. Yet this arrangement was certainly more by way of control than of prohibition; in the Periplus of the Egyptian corn is on several occasions (c. 7, 17, 24, 28, comp. 56) adduced among the articles of export. Even the cultivation of the fields seems to have become similarly controlled; “the Egyptians, it is said, are fonder of cultivating rape than corn, so far as they may, on account of the rape-seed oil” (Plinius, _H. N._ xix. 5, 79).

[228] In the edict of Diocletian among the five fine sorts of linen the first four are Syrian or Cilician (of Tarsus) and the Egyptian linen appears not merely in the last place, but is also designated as Tarsian-Alexandrian, that is, prepared in Alexandria after the Tarsian model.

[229] It was related of a rich man in Egypt that he had lined his palace with glass instead of with marble, and that he possessed papyrus and lime enough to provide an army with them (_Vita Firmi_, 3).

[230] That the alleged letter of Hadrian (_Vita Saturnini_, 8) is a late fabrication, is shown _e.g._ by the fact, that the emperor in this highly friendly letter addressed to his father-in-law, Servianus, complains of the injuries which the Alexandrians at his first departure had heaped on his son Verus, while on the other hand it is established that this Servianus was executed at the age of ninety in the year 136, because he had disapproved the adoption of Verus, which had taken place shortly before.

[231] The ναύκληροι τοῦ πορευτικοῦ Ἀλεξανδρεινοῦ στόλου, who set up the stone doubtless belonging to Portus, _C. I. Gr._ 5889, were the captains of these grain-ships. From the Serapeum of Ostia we possess a series of inscriptions (_C. I. L._ xiv. 47), according to which it was in all parts a copy of that at Alexandria; the president is at the same time ἐπιμελητὴς παντὸς τοῦ Ἀλεξανδρείνου στόλου (_C. I. Gr._ 5973). Probably these transports were employed mainly with the carriage of grain, and this consequently took place by succession, to which also the precautions adopted by the emperor Gaius in the straits of Reggio (Josephus, _Arch._ xix. 2, 5) point. With this well comports the fact, that the first appearance of the Alexandrian fleet in the spring was a festival for Puteoli (Seneca, _Ep._ 77, 1).

[232] This is shown by the remarkable Delian inscriptions, _Eph. epigr._ i. p. 600, 602.

[233] Already in the Delian inscriptions of the last century of the republic the Syrians predominate. The Egyptian deities had doubtless a much revered shrine there, but among the numerous priests and dedicators we meet only a single Alexandrian (Hauvette-Besnault, _Bull. de corr. Hell._ vi. 316 f.). Guilds of Alexandrian merchants are known to us at Tomi (I. 310, note) and at Perinthus (_C. I. Gr._ 2024).

[234] After Juvenal has described the wild drinking bouts of the native Egyptians in honour of the local gods of the several nomes, he adds that therein the natives were in no respect inferior to the Canopus, _i.e._ the Alexandrian festival of Sarapis, notorious for its unbridled licentiousness (Strabo, xvii. 1, 17, p. 801): _horrida sane Aegyptus, sed luxuria quantum ipse notavi, barbara famoso non cedit turba Canopo_ (_Sat._ xv. 44).

[235] Ammianus, xxii. 16, 23: _Erubescit apud (Aegyptios), si qui non infitiando tributa plurimas in corpore vibices ostendat_.

[236] This was according to Juvenal Tentyra, which must be a mistake, if the well known Tentyra is meant; but the list of the Ravennate chronicler, iii. 2, names the two places together.

[237] Seneca, _ad Helv._ 19, 6: _loquax et in contumelias praefectorum ingeniosa provincia ... etiam periculosi sales placent_.

[238] Dio Chrysostom says in his address to the Alexandrians (_Or._ xxxii. p. 663 Reiske): “Because now (the intelligent) keep in the background and are silent, there spring up among you endless disputes and quarrels and disorderly clamour, and bad and unbridled speeches, accusers, aspersions, trials, a rabble of orators.” In the Alexandrian Jew-hunt, which Philo so drastically describes, we see these mob-orators at work.

[239] Dio Cassius, xxxix. 58: “The Alexandrians do the utmost in all respects as to daring, and speak out everything that occurs to them. In war and its terrors their conduct is cowardly; but in tumults, which with them are very frequent and very serious, they without scruple come to mortal blows, and for the sake of the success of the moment account their life nothing, nay, they go to their destruction as if the highest things were at stake.”

[240] The “pious Egyptians” offered resistance, as Macrobius, _Sat._ i. 7, 14, reports, but _tyrannide Ptolemaeorum pressi hos quoque deos_ (Sarapis and Saturnus) _in cultum recipere Alexandrinorum more, apud quos potissimum colebantur, coacti sunt_. As they thus had to present bloody sacrifices, which was against their ritual, they did not admit these gods, at least into the towns; _nullum Aegypti oppidum intra muros suos aut Saturni aut Sarapis fanum recepit_.

[241] The often-quoted anonymous author of a description of the empire from the time of Constantius, a good heathen, praises Egypt particularly on account of its exemplary piety: “Nowhere are the mysteries of the gods so well celebrated as there from of old and still at present.” Indeed, he adds, some were of opinion that the Chaldaeans--he means the Syrian cultus--worshipped the gods better; but he held to what he had seen with his own eyes--“Here there are shrines of all sorts and magnificently adorned temples, and there are found numbers of sacristans and priests and prophets and believers and excellent theologians, and all goes on in its order; you find the altars everywhere blazing with flame and the priests with their fillets and the incense-vessels with deliciously fragrant spices.” Nearly from the same time (not from Hadrian), and evidently also from a well-informed hand, proceeds another more malicious description (_vita Saturnini_, 8): “He who in Egypt worships Sarapis is also a Christian, and those who call themselves Christian bishops likewise adore Sarapis; every grand Rabbi of the Jews, every Samaritan, every Christian clergyman is there at the same time a sorcerer, a prophet, a quack (_aliptes_). Even when the patriarch comes to Egypt some demand that he pray to Sarapis, others that he pray to Christ.” This diatribe is certainly connected with the circumstance that the Christians declared the Egyptian god to be the Joseph of the Bible, the son of Sara, and rightfully carrying the bushel. The position of the Egyptian orthodox party is apprehended in a more earnest spirit by the author, belonging presumably to the third century, of the Dialogue of the Gods, preserved in a Latin translation among the writings attributed to Appuleius, in which the thrice-greatest Hermes announces things future to Asklepios: “Thou knowest withal, Asklepios, that Egypt is a counterpart of heaven, or, to speak more correctly, a transmigration and descent of the whole heavenly administration and activity; indeed, to speak still more correctly, our fatherland is the temple of the whole universe. And yet a time will set in, when it would appear as if Egypt had vainly with pious mind in diligent service cherished the divine, when all sacred worship of the gods will be without result and a failure. For the deity will betake itself back into heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, and the land, which was the seat of religious worships, will be deprived of the presence of divine power and left to its own resources. Then will this consecrated land, the abode of shrines and temples, be densely filled with graves and corpses. O Egypt, Egypt, of thy worships only rumours will be preserved, and even these will seem incredible to thy coming generations, only words will be preserved on the stones to tell of thy pious deeds, and Egypt will be inhabited by the Scythian or Indian or other such from the neighbouring barbarian land. New rights will be introduced, a new law, nothing holy, nothing religious, nothing worthy of heaven and of the celestials will be heard or in spirit believed. A painful separation of the gods from men sets in; only the bad angels remain there, to mingle among mankind” (according to Bernays’s translation, _Ges. Abh._ i. 330).

[242] When the Romans ask from the famous rhetor Proaeresios (end of the third and beginning of the fourth century) one of his disciples for a professorial chair, he sends to them Eusebius from Alexandria; “as respects rhetoric,” it is said of the latter (Eunapius, _Proaer._ p. 92 Boiss.), “it is enough to say that he was an Egyptian; for this people, no doubt, pursues versemaking passionately, but earnest oratory (ὁ σπουδαῖος Ἕρμης) is not at home among them.” The remarkable resumption of Greek poetry in Egypt, to which, _e.g._ the epic of Nonnus belongs, lies beyond the bounds of our narrative.

[243] A “Homeric poet” ἐκ Μουσείου is ready to sing the praise of Memnon in four Homeric verses, without adding a word of his own (_C. I. Gr._ 4748). Hadrian makes an Alexandrian poet a member in reward for a loyal epigram (Athenaeus, xv. p. 677 _e_). Examples of rhetors from Hadrian’s time may be seen in Philostratus, _Vit. Soph._ i. 22, 3, c. 25, 3. A φιλόσοφος ἀπὸ Μουσείου in Halicarnassus (_Bull. de corr. Hell._ iv. 405). At a later period, when the circus was everything, we find a noted pugilist figuring (so to say) as an honorary member of the philosophical class (inscription from Rome, _C. I. Gr._ 5914: νεωκόρος τοῦ μεγά[λου Σαράπιδ]ος καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ Μουσείῳ [σειτου]μένων ἀτελῶν φιλοσόφων; comp. _ib._ 4724, and Firmicus Maternus, _de errore prof. rel._ 13, 3). Οἱ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἀπὸ τοῦ Μουσείου ἰατροί (Wood, _Ephesus, inscriptions from tombs_, n. 7), a society of Ephesian physicians, have relation doubtless to the Museum at Alexandria, but were hardly members of it; they were rather trained in it.

[244] Ὁ ἄνω θρόνος in Philostratus, _Vit. Soph._ ii. 10, 5.

[245] Examples are Chaeremon, the teacher of Nero, previously installed in Alexandria (Suidas, Διονύσιος Ἀλεξανδρεύς; comp. Zeller, _Hermes_, xi. 430, and above, p. 259); Dionysius, son of Glaucus, at first in Alexandria, successor of Chaeremon, then from Nero down to Trajan librarian in Rome and imperial cabinet secretary (Suidas, _l. c._); L. Julius Vestinus under Hadrian, who, even after the presidency of the Museum, filled the same positions as Dionysius in Rome (p. 248 note), known also as a philological author.

[246] The eunuch of Candace, who reads in Isaiah (Acts of the Apostles, viii. 27) is well known; and a Candace reigned also in Nero’s time (Plinius, _H. N._ vi. 29, 182).

[247] That the imperial frontier reached to Hiera Sycaminos, is evident for the second century from Ptolemaeus, v. 5, 74, for the time of Diocletian from the Itineraries, which carry the imperial roads thus far. In the _Notitia dignitatum_, a century later, the posts again do not reach beyond Syene, Philae, Elephantine. In the tract from Philae to Hiera Sycaminos, the Dodecaschoinos of Herodotus (ii. 29), temple-tribute appears to have been raised already in early times for the Isis of Philae always common to the Egyptians and Aethiopians; but Greek inscriptions from the Lagid period have not been found here, whereas numerous dated ones occur from the Roman period, the oldest from the time of Augustus (Pselchis, A.D. 2; _C. I. Gr._ n. 5086), and of Tiberius (_ib._ A.D. 26, n. 5104, A.D. 33, n. 5101), the most recent from that of Philippus (Kardassi, A.D. 248, n. 5010). These do not prove absolutely that the place where the inscription was found belonged to the empire; but that of a land-measuring soldier of the year 33 (n. 5101), and that of a _praesidium_ of the year 84 (Talmis, n. 5042 f.), as well as numerous others certainly presuppose it. Beyond the frontier indicated no similar stone has ever been found; for the remarkable inscription of the _regina_ (_C. I. L._ iii. 83), found at Messaurât, to the south of Shendy (16° 25′ lat., 5 leagues to the south of the ruins of Naga), the most southern of all known Latin inscriptions, now in the Berlin Museum, has been set up, not by a Roman subject, but presumably by an envoy of an African queen, who was returning from Rome, and who spoke Latin perhaps only in order to show that he had been in Rome.

[248] The _tropaea Niliaca, sub quibus Aethiops et Indus intremuit_, in an oration probably held in the year 296 (Paneg. v. 5), apply to such a _rencontre_, not to the Egyptian insurrection; and the oration of the year 289 speaks of attacks of the Blemyes (Paneg. iii. 17).--Procopius, _Bell. Pers._ i. 19, reports the cession of the “Twelve-mile-territory” to the Nubians. It is mentioned as standing under the dominion, not of the Nubians, but of the Blemyes by Olympiodorus, _fr._ 37, Müll. and the inscription of Silko, _C. I. Gr._ 5072. The fragment recently brought to light of a Greek heroic poem as to the victory of a late Roman emperor over the Blemyes is referred by Bücheler (_Rhein. Mus._ xxxix. 279 f.) to that of Marcianus, in the year 451 (comp. Priscus, _fr._ 27).

[249] Juvenal (xi. 124) mentions the elephant’s teeth, _quos mittit porta Syenes_.

[250] According to the mode in which Ptolemy (iv. 5, 14, 15) treats of this coast, it seems, just like the “Twelve-mile-land,” to have lain outside of the division into nomes.

[251] Our best information as to the kingdom of Axomis is obtained from a stone erected by one of its kings, beyond doubt in the better period of the empire, at Adulis (_C. I. Gr._ 5127 _b_), a sort of writing commemorative of the deeds of this apparent empire-founder in the style of that of Darius at Persepolis, or that of Augustus at Ancyra, and fixed on the king’s throne, before which down to the sixth century criminals were executed. The skilful disquisition of Dillmann (_Abh. der Berliner Akademie_, 1877, p. 195 f.), explains as much of it as is explicable. From the Roman standpoint it is to be noted that the king does not name the Romans, but clearly has in view their imperial frontiers when he subdues the Tangaites μέχρι τῶν τῆς Αἰγύπτου ὁρίων, and constructs a road ἀπὸ τῶν τῆς ἐμῆς βασιλείας τόπων μέχρι Αἰγύπτου, and further, names as the northern limit of his Arabian expedition Leuce Come, the last Roman station on the Arabian west coast. Hence it follows further, that this inscription is more recent than the Periplus of the Red Sea written under Vespasian; for according to this (c. 5) the king of Axomis rules ἀπὸ τῶν Μοσχοφάγων μέχρι τῆς ἄλλης Βαρβαρίας, and this is to be understood exclusively, since he names in c. 2 the τύραννοι of the Moscophages, and likewise remarks in c. 14, that beyond the Straits of Bab el Mandeb there is no “king,” but only “tyrants.” Thus at that time the Axomitic kingdom did not reach to the Roman frontier, but only to somewhere about Ptolemais “of the chase,” just as in the other direction not to Cape Guardafui, but only as far as the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Nor does the Periplus speak of possessions of the king of Axomis on the Arabian coast, although he on several occasions mentions the dynasts there.

[252] The name of the Aethiopians was associated in the better period with the country on the Upper Nile, especially with the kingdoms of Meroe and Nabata (p. 275), and so with the region which we now call Nubia. In later antiquity, for example by Procopius, the designation is referred to the state of Axomis, and hence in more recent times is frequently employed for Abyssinia.

[253] Hence the legend that the Axomites were Syrians settled by Alexander in Africa, and still spoke Syrian (Philostorgius, _Hist. Eccl._ iii. 6).

[254] This is the _praefectus praesidiorum et montis Beronices_ (_C. I. L._ ix. 3083), _praefectus montis Berenicidis_ (Orelli, 3881), _praefectus Bernicidis_ (_C. I. L._ x. 1129), an officer of equestrian rank, analogous to those adduced above (p. 249), as stationed in Alexandria.

[255] The letter, which the emperor Constantius in the year 356 directs to Aeizanas, the king of the Axomites at that time, is that of one ruler to another on an equal footing; he requests his friendly and neighbourly assistance against the spread of the Athanasian heresy, and for the deposition and delivering up of an Axomitic clergyman suspected of it. The fellowship of culture comes here into the more definite prominence, as the Christian invokes against the Christian the arm of the heathen.

[256] Inland lay the primeval Teimâ, the son of Ishmael of Genesis, enumerated by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pilesar in the eighth century before Christ among his conquests, named by the prophet Jeremiah together with Sidon, around which gather in a remarkable way Assyrian, Egyptian, Arabian relations, the further unfolding of which, after bold travellers have opened up the place, we may await from Oriental research. In Teimâ itself Euting recently found Aramaic inscriptions of the oldest epoch (Nöldeke, _Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie_, 1884, p. 813 f.). From the not far distant place Medâin-Sâlih (Hijr) proceed certain coins modelled after the Attic, which in part replace the owl of Pallas by that image of a god which the Egyptians designate as Besa the lord of Punt, _i.e._ of Arabia (Erman, _Zeitschrift für Numismatik_, ix. 296 f.). We have already mentioned the Nabataean inscriptions just found there (p. 148, note 3). Not far from thence, near ’Ola (el-Ally) inscriptions have been found, which correspond in the writing and in the names of gods and kings to those of the South-Arabian Minaeans, and show that these had a considerable station here, sixty days’ journey from their home, but on the frankincense-route mentioned by Eratosthenes, from Minaea to Aelana; and alongside of these others of a cognate but not identical South-Arabian stock (D. H. Müller in the _Berichte der Wiener Akademie_ of 17th December 1884). The Minaean inscriptions belong beyond doubt to the pre-Roman period. As on the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom by Trajan these districts were abandoned (p. 152), from that time another south-Arabian tribe may have ruled there.

[257] The accounts connected with the trade in frankincense in Theophrastus († 287 B.C.; _Hist. plant._ ix. 4) and more fully in Eratosthenes († 194 B.C.); in Strabo (xvi. 4, 2, p. 768) of the four great tribes of the Minaeans (Mamali Theophr.?) with the capital Carna; the Sabaeans (Saba Theophr.) with the capital Mariaba; the Cattabanes (Kitibaena Theophr.) with the capital Tamna; the Chatramotitae (Hadramyta Theophr.) with the capital Sabata, describe the very circle out of which the Homerite kingdom developed itself, and indicate its beginnings. The much sought for Minaei are now pointed out with certainty in Ma’in in the interior above Marib and Hadramaut, where hundreds of inscriptions have been found, and have yielded already no fewer than twenty-six kings’ names. Mariaba is even now named Marib. The region Chatramotitis or Chatramitis is Hadramaut.

[258] The remarkable remains of this structure, executed with the greatest precision and skill, are described by Arnaud (_Journal Asiatique_, 7 série, tome 3, for the year 1874, p. 3 f. with plans; comp. Ritter, _Erdkunde_, xii. 861). On the two sides of the embankment, which has now almost wholly disappeared, stand respectively two stone structures built of square blocks, of conical almost cylindrical form, between which a narrow opening is found for the water flowing out of the basin; at least on the one side a canal lined with pebbles leads it to this outlet. It was once closed with planks placed one above another, which could be individually removed, to carry the water away as might be needed. The one of those stone cylinders bears the following inscription (according to the translation, not indeed quite certain in all its details, of D. H. Müller, _Wiener Sitzungsberichte_, vol. xcvii, 1880, p. 965): “Jata’amar the glorious, son of Samah’alî the sublime, prince of Saba, caused the Balap (mountain) to be pierced (and erected) the sluice-structure named Rahab for easier irrigation.” We have no secure basis for fixing the chronological place of this and numerous other royal names of the Sabaean inscriptions. The Assyrian king Sargon says in the Khorsabad inscription, after he has narrated the vanquishing of the king of Gaza, Hanno, in the year 716 B.C.: “I received the tribute of Pharaoh the king of Egypt, of Shamsiya the queen of Arabia, and of Ithamara the Sabaean; gold, herbs of the eastern land, slaves, horses, and camels” (Müller, _l. c._ p. 988; Duncker, _Gesch. des Alterthums_, ii.^5 p. 327).

[259] Sallet in the _Berliner Zeitschrift für Numismatik_, viii. 243; J. H. Mordtmann in the _Wiener Numism. Zeitschrift_, xii. 289.

[260] Pliny, _H. N._ xii. 14, 65, reckons the cost of a camel’s load of frankincense by the land-route from the Arabian coast to Gaza at 688 denarii (= £30). “Along the whole tract fodder and water and shelter and various custom-dues have to be paid for; then the priests demand certain shares and the scribes of the kings; moreover the guards and the halberdiers and the body-guards and servants have their exactions; to which our imperial dues fall to be added.” In the case of the water-transport these intervening expenses were not incurred.

[261] The chastising of the pirates is reported by Agatharchides in Diodorus, iii. 43, and Strabo, xvi. 4, 18, p. 777. But Ezion-Geber in Palestine, on the Elanitic gulf, ἣ νῦν Βερενίκη καλεῖται (Josephus, _Arch._ viii. 6, 4), was so called certainly not from an Egyptian princess (Droysen, _Hellenismus_, iii. 2, 349), but from the Jewess of Titus.

[262] This (προσοικειοῦσθαι τούτους--τοὺς Ἄραβας--ἢ καταστρέφεσθαι: Strabo, xvi. 4, 22, p. 780; εἰ μὴ ὁ Συλλαῖος αὐτὸν--τὸν Γάλλον--προὐδίδου, κἂν κατεστρέψατο τὴν Εὐδαίμονα πᾶσαν: _ib._ xvii. 1, 53, p. 819) was the proper aim of the expedition, although also the hope of spoil, just at that time very welcome for the treasury, is expressly mentioned.

[263] The account of Strabo (xvi. 4, 22 f., p. 780) as to the Arabian expedition of his “friend” Gallus (φίλος ἡμῖν καὶ ἑταῖρος, Strabo, ii. 5, 12, p. 118), in whose train he travelled in Egypt, is indeed trustworthy and honest, like all his accounts, but evidently accepted from this friend without any criticism. The battle in which 10,000 of the enemy and two Romans fell, and the total number of the fallen in this campaign, which is seven, are self-condemned; but not better is the attempt to devolve the want of success on the Nabataean vizier Syllaeos by means of a “treachery,” such as is familiar with defeated generals. Certainly the latter was so far fitted for a scapegoat, as he some years afterwards was on the instigation of Herod brought to trial before Augustus, condemned and executed (Josephus, _Arch._ xvi. 10); but although we possess the report of the agent who managed this matter for Herod in Rome, there is not a word to be found in it of this betrayal. That Syllaeos should have had the design of first destroying the Arabians by means of the Romans, and then of destroying the latter themselves, as Strabo “thinks,” is, looking to the position of the client-states of Rome, quite irrational. It might rather be thought that Syllaeos was averse to the expedition, because the commercial traffic through the Nabataean land might be injured by it. But to accuse the Arabian minister of treachery because the Roman transports were not fitted for navigating the Arabian coast, or because the Roman army was compelled to carry water with it on camels, to eat durra and dates instead of bread and flesh, and butter instead of oil; to bring forward the deceitfulness of the guidance as an excuse for the fact that 180 days were employed for the forward march over a distance overtaken on the return march in 60 days; and lastly, to criticise the quite correct remark of Syllaeos that a march by land from Arsinoe to Leuce Come was impracticable, by saying that a caravan route went thence to Petra, only shows what a Roman of rank was able to make a Greek man of letters believe.