The temples of Thebes were the citadels of the capital, and the temples of Elephantine guarded the frontier. So now, when the military prefect is too weak to make himself obeyed, the emperor tries to govern through means of the Christian priesthood; and when it is necessary for the Egyptians to defend their own frontier, he builds a monastery and garrisons it with monks.
Part of the Egyptian trade to the East was carried on through the islands of Ceylon and Socotra; but it was chiefly in the hands of uneducated Arabs of Ethiopia, who were little able to communicate to the world much knowledge of the countries from which they brought their highly valued goods. At Ceylon they met with traders from beyond the Ganges and from China, of whom they bought the silk which Europeans had formerly thought a product of Arabia. At Ceylon was a Christian church, with a priest and a deacon, frequented by the Christians from Persia, while the natives of the place were pagans. The coins there used were Roman, borne thither by the course of trade, which during so many centuries carried the gold and silver eastward. The trade was lately turned more strongly into this channel because a war had sprung up between the two tribes of Jewish Arabs, the Hexumitæ of Abyssinia on the coast of the Red Sea near Adule, and the Homeritæ who dwelt in Arabia on the opposite coast, at the southern end of the Red Sea. The Homeritæ had quarrelled with the Alexandrian merchants in the Indian trade, and had killed some of them as they were passing their mountains from India to the country of the Hexumitae.
Immediately after these murders the Hexumitæ found the trade injured, and they took up arms to keep the passage open for the merchants. Hadad their king crossed the Red Sea and conquered his enemies; he put to death Damianus, the King of the Homeritse, and made a new treaty with the Emperor of Constantinople. The Hexumitæ promised to become Christians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptise them, and to ordain their preachers; and Justinian sent John, a man of piety and high character, the dean of the church of St. John, who returned with the ambassadors and became bishop of the Hexumitae.
It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad, King of the Hexumitae, which was recorded on the monument of Adule, at the foot of the inscription set up eight centuries earlier by Ptolemy Euergetes. The monument is a throne of white marble. The conqueror, whose name had been broken away before the inscription was copied, there boasts that he crossed over the Red Sea and made the Arabians and Sabaaans pay him tribute. On his own continent he defeated the tribes to the north of him, and opened the passage from his own country to Egypt; he also marched eastward, and conquered the tribes on the African incense coast; and lastly, he crossed the Astaborus to the snowy mountains in which that branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between that stream and the Astapus. This valuable inscription, which tells us of snowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a merchant of Alexandria, who passed through Adule on his way to India.
Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to these nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae, to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the Hexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an embassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in his object, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram’s son. Nonnosus landed at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile between Egypt and Meroë. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. After delivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed the Red Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritæ, a grandson of that Arethas to whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the natural difficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes through which he had to pass, Nonnosus performed his task successfully, and on his return home wrote a history of his embassies.
The advantage gained to the Hexumitæ by their invasion of the Homeritæ was soon lost, probably as soon as their forces were withdrawn. The trade through the country of the Homeritae was again stopped; and such was the difficulty of navigation from the incense coast of Africa to the mouths of the Indus, that the loss was severely felt at Auxum. Elesbæs therefore undertook to repeat the punishment which had been before inflicted on his less civilised neighbours, and again to open the trade to the merchants from the Nile. It was while he was preparing his forces for this invasion that Cosmas, the Alexandrian traveller, passed through Adule; and he copied for the King of Auxum the inscription above spoken of, which recorded the victories of his predecessor over the enemies he was himself preparing to attack.
The invasion by Elesbæs, or Elesthæus as he is also named, was immediately successful. The Homeritæ were conquered, their ruler was overthrown; and, to secure their future obedience, the conqueror set over these Jewish Arabs an Abyssinian Christian for their king. Esimaphæus was chosen for that post; and his first duty was to convert his new subjects to Christianity. Political reasons as well as religious zeal would urge him to this undertaking, to make the conquered bear the badge of the conqueror. For this purpose he engaged the assistance of Gregentius, a bishop, who was to employ his learning and eloquence in the cause. Accordingly, in the palace of Threlletum, in the presence of their new king, a public dispute was held between the Christian bishop and Herban, a learned Jew. Gregentius has left us an account of the controversy, in which he was wholly successful, being helped, perhaps, by the threats and promises of the king. The arguments used were not quite the same as they would be now. The bishop explained the Trinity as the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Mind or Father, and resting on the Word or Son, which was then the orthodox view of this mysterious doctrine. On the other hand, the Jew quoted the Old Testament to show that the Lord their God was one Lord. It is related that suddenly the Jews present were struck blind. Their sight, however, was restored to them on the bishop’s praying for them; and they were then all thereby converted and baptised on the spot. The king stood godfather to Herban, and rewarded him with a high office under his government.