The Greeks, knowing of this fortress city impregnable in its mountains, were the first to name it Petra, which means rock. Tradition says that Alexander the Great conquered all the then known world and wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. But tradition is wrong. Here is one city that Alexander the Great failed to conquer. Diodurus Siculus tells us that Alexander considered Petra of such importance that he sent Demetrius with an army to capture it. Demetrius tried to force his way into it by the same narrow defile through which we entered. But the inhabitants shut themselves up in their mountain fastness and successfully defied both siege and assault. Although the city refused itself to the visitor who came with the sword, it welcomed him who came with the olive-branch.
As the capital of the Nabatæans, it rose to its zenith in the second century before Christ. Greek geographers of those days called the land of Edom by the name “Arabia Petræa.” Under Aretas III, surnamed Philhellene or friend of the Greeks, the first royal coins were struck, and Petra assumed many of the aspects of Greek culture. Even in the golden age of Rome when Augustus sat on the throne of the Cæsars the fame of this far-away city had reached Europe. It was a Mecca for tourists from all over the world, and it must have had a population of several hundred thousand souls. It was a seat of arts and learning to which the Praxiteleses, the Michelangelos, and the Leonardo da Vincis of that day repaired. Its hospitality was a byword among the ancients. It opened its doors to the early Christians, who were permitted to have their houses of worship there side by side with the temples of Baal, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Petra was to this part of Asia what Rome was to the Romans and Athens to the Greeks. In a. d. 105 one of Trajan’s generals conquered Petra and created the Roman province of Arabia Petræa, but the city continued to flourish as a trade-center under the strong peace of Rome. In those days Petra was the focusing-point on the caravan routes from the interior of Arabia, Persia, and India to Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. It was a great safe-deposit of fabulous wealth, fortressed by frowning cliffs. Both Strabo and Pliny described it as a great city. But when Roman power waned, the Romanized Nabatæans were unable to withstand the desert hordes. The caravan trade was diverted through other channels; Petra declined in importance and ultimately was forgotten. In the twelfth century the Crusaders, under Baldwin I, sent an expedition through the locality and built many castles; they were expelled by Saladin.
There are many indications that Petra was a pleasant and pleasure-loving city. Its wealthier classes must have lived in luxury such as even the luxurious East has not known in many centuries. With its concert-halls, its circuses, its mystic groves, its priests and priestesses of many sensual religions, its wealth of flowers, its brilliant sunshine, and its delightful climate, it must have been at the same time the Paris and the Riviera of Asia Minor. But, except for its immortal sculpture and the few casual tributes to it by writers from alien lands, it has not left a single record of its manner of living, or handed down the name of a single one of its Homers or its Horaces.
Rose-red there lies, and vivid in the sun,
A magic city, hid in Araby;
Of her no ancient legend has been spun,
And all her past the silent years have won
To the deep coffers of antiquity.
About her brooding stillness there blow
The scarlet windflowers, as a carpet flung