As soon as the news of Caligula’s death (A.D. 41) reached Egypt, the joy of the Jews knew no bounds. They at once flew to arms to revenge themselves on the Alexandrians, whose streets were again the seat of civil war. The governor did what he could to quiet both parties, but was not wholly successful till the decree of the new emperor reached Alexandria. In this Claudius granted to the Jews the full rights of citizenship, which they had enjoyed under the Ptolemies, and which had been allowed by Augustus; he left them to choose their own high priest, to enjoy their own religion without hindrance, and he repealed the laws of Caligula under which they had been groaning. At this time the Jewish alabarch in Egypt was Demetrius, a man of wealth and high birth, who had married Mariamne, the daughter of the elder Agrippa.
The government under Claudius was mild and just, at least as far as a government could be in which every tax-gatherer, every military governor, and every sub-prefect was supposed to enrich himself by his appointment. Every Roman officer, from the general down to the lowest tribune, claimed the right of travelling through the country free of expense, and seizing the carts and cattle of the villagers to carry him forward to the next town, under the pretence of being a courier on the public service. But we have a decree of the ninth year of this reign, carved on the temple in the Great Oasis, in which Cneius Capito, the prefect of Egypt, endeavours to put a stop to this injustice. He orders that no traveller shall have the privilege of a courier unless he has a proper warrant, and that then he shall only claim a free lodging; that clerks in the villages shall keep a register of all that is taken on account of the public service; and that if anybody make an unjust claim he shall pay four times the amount to the informer and six times the amount to the emperor. But royal decrees could do little or nothing where there were no judges to enforce them; and the people of Upper Egypt must have felt this law as a cruel insult when they were told that they might take up their complaints to Basilides, at Alexandria. The employment of the informer is a full acknowledgment of the weakness of this absolute government, and that the prefect had not the power to enforce his own decrees; and, when we compare this law with that of Alexander on his conquest of the country, we have no difficulty in seeing why Egypt rose under the Ptolemies and sunk under the selfish policy of Augustus.
Claudius was somewhat of a scholar and an author; he wrote several volumes both in Greek and in Latin. The former he might perhaps think would be chiefly valued in Alexandria; and when he founded a new college in that city, called after himself the Claudian Museum, he ordered that on given days every year his history of Carthage should be publicly read in one museum, and his history of Italy in the other; thus securing during his reign an attention to his writings which their merits alone would not have gained.
Under the government of Claudius the Egyptians were again allowed to coin money; and in his first year begins that historically important series in which every coin is dated with the year of the emperor’s reign. The coins of the Ptolemies were strictly Greek in their workmanship, and the few Egyptian characters that we see upon them are so much altered by the classic taste of the die-engraver that we hardly know them again. But it is far otherwise with the coins of the emperors, which are covered with the ornaments, characters, and religious ceremonies of the native Egyptians; and, though the style of art is often bad, they are scarcely equalled by any series of coins whatever in the service they render to the historian.
It was in this reign that the route through Egypt to India first became really known to the Greeks and Romans. The historian Pliny, who died in 79 A.D., has left us a contemporary account of these early voyages. “It will not be amiss,” he says in his Natural History, “to set forth the whole of the route from Egypt, which has been stated to us of late, upon information on which reliance may be placed and is here published for the first time. The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain our empire of less than five hundred and fifty millions of sesterces [or two million dollars], giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold among us at fully one hundred times their cost price.
“Two miles distant from Alexandria is the town of Heliopolis. The distance thence to Koptos, up the Nile, is three hundred and eight miles; the voyage is performed, when the Etesian winds are blowing, in twelve days. From Koptos the journey is made with the aid of camels, stations being arranged at intervals for the supply of fresh water. The first of these stations is called Hydreuma, and is distant twenty-two miles; the second is situate on a mountain at a distance of one day’s journey from the last; the third is at a second Hydreuma, distant from Koptos ninety-five miles; the fourth is on a mountain; the next to that is another Hydreuma, that of Apollo, and is distant from Koptos one hundred and eighty-four miles; after which there is another on a mountain; there is then another station at a place called the New Hydreuma, distant from Koptos two hundred and thirty miles; and next to it there is another called the Old Hydreuma, where a detachment is always on guard, with a caravansary that affords lodging for two thousand persons. The last is distant from the New Hydreuma seven miles. After leaving it, we come to the city of Berenicê, situate upon a harbour of the Red Sea, and distant from Koptos two hundred and fifty-seven miles. The greater part of this distance is generally travelled by night, on account of the extreme heat, the day being spent at the stations; in consequence of which it takes twelve days to perform the whole journey from Koptos to Berenicê.
“Passengers generally set sail at midsummer before the rising of the Dog-star, or else immediately after, and in about thirty days arrive at Ocelis in Arabia, or else at Cane, in the region which bears frankincense. To those who are bound for India, Ocelis is the best place for embarkation. If the wind called Hippolus happens to be blowing, it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest mart of India, Muziris by name [the modern Mangalore]. This, however, is not a very desirable place for disembarkation, on account of the pirates which frequent its vicinity, where they occupy a place, Mtrias; nor, in fact, is it very rich in articles of merchandise. Besides, the roadstead for shipping is a considerable distance from the shore, and the cargoes have to be conveyed in boats, either for loading or discharging. At the moment that I am writing these pages,” continues Pliny, “the name of the king of the place is Cælobotras. Another part, and a much more convenient one, is that which lies in the territory of the people called Neacyndi, Barace by name. Here King Pandian used to reign, dwelling at a considerable distance from the mart in the interior, at a city known as Modiera. The district from which pepper is carried down to Barace in boats hollowed out of a single tree, is known as Cottonara. None of these names of nations, ports, and cities are to be found in any of the former writers, from which circumstance it would appear that the localities have since changed their names. Travellers set sail from India on their return to Europe, at the beginning of the Egyptian month Tybus, which is our December, or, at all events, before the sixth day of the Egyptian month Mechir, the same as our ides of January: if they do this, they can go and return in the same year. They set sail from India with a south-east wind, and, upon entering the Red Sea, catch the south-west or south.”
The places on the Indian coast which the Egyptian merchant vessels then reached are verified from the coins found there; and as we know the course of the trade-wind by which they arrived, we also know the part of Africa where they left the shore and braved the dangers of the ocean. A hoard of Roman gold coins of these reigns has been dug up in our own days near Calicut, under the roots of a banyan-tree. It had been there buried by an Alexandrian merchant on his arrival from this voyage, and left safe under the cover of the sacred tree to await his return from a second journey. But he died before his return, and his secret died with him. The products of the Indian trade were chiefly silk, diamonds, and other precious stones, ginger, spices, and some scents. The state of Ethiopia was then such that no trade came down the Nile to Syênê; and the produce of southern Africa was brought by coasting vessels to Berenicê. These products were ivory, rhinoceros teeth, hippopotamus skins, tortoise shell, apes, monkeys, and slaves, a list which throws a sidelight both on the pursuits of the natives and the tastes of the ultimate purchasers.