The Provinces of the Roman Empire, from Caesar to Diocletian. v. 2

by Theodor Mommsen

The kingdom of the Axomites.In this region, never occupied or early evacuated by the Egyptians, there was formed—whether at the end of the Lagid epoch or in the first age of the empire—an independent state of some extent and importance, that of the Axomites,[251] corresponding to the modern Habesh. It derives its name from the town Axômis, the modern Axum, situated in the heart of this Alpine country eight days’ journey from the sea, in the modern country of Tigre; the already-mentioned best emporium on this coast, Adulis in the bay of Massowah, served it as a port. The original population of the kingdom of Axômis, of which tolerably pure remnants still maintain themselves at the present day in individual tracts of the interior, belonged from its language, the Agau, to the same Hamitic cycle with the modern Bego, Sali, Dankali, Somali, Galla; to the Egyptian population this linguistic circle seems related in a similar way as the Greeks to the Celts and Slaves, so that here doubtless for research an affinity may subsist, but for their historical existence rather nothing but contrast. But before our knowledge of this country so much as begins, superior Semitic immigrants belonging to the Himyaritic stocks of southern Arabia must have crossed the narrow gulf of the sea and rendered their language as well as their writing at home there. The old written language of Habesh, extinct in popular use since the seventeenth century, the Ge’ez, or as it is for the most part erroneously termed, the Aethiopic,[252] is purely Semitic,[253] and the still living dialects, the Amhara and the Tigriña, are so also in the main, only disturbed by the influence of the older Agau.

Its extent and development.As to the beginnings of this commonwealth no tradition has been preserved. At the end of Nero’s time, and perhaps already long before, the king of the Axomites ruled on the African coast nearly from Suâkim to the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Some time afterwards—the epoch cannot be more precisely defined—we find him as a frontier-neighbour of the Romans on the southern border of Egypt, and on the other coast of the Arabian Gulf in warlike activity in the territory intervening between the Roman possession and that of the Sabaeans, and so coming into immediate contact towards the north with the Roman territory also in Arabia; commanding, moreover, the African coast outside of the Gulf perhaps as far as Cape Guardafui. How far his territory of Axômis extended inland is not clear; Aethiopia, that is, Sennaar and Dongola, at least in the earlier imperial period, hardly belonged to it; perhaps at this time the kingdom of Nabata may have subsisted alongside of the Axomitic. Where the Axomites meet us, we find them at a comparatively advanced stage of development. Under Augustus the Egyptian commercial traffic increased not less with these African harbours than with India. The king had the command not merely of an army, but, as his very relations to Arabia presuppose, also of a fleet. A Greek merchant, who was present in Adulis, terms king Zoskales, who ruled in Vespasian’s time in Axômis, an upright man and acquainted with Greek writing; one of his successors has set up on the spot a memorial-writing composed in current Greek which told his deeds to the foreigners; he even names himself in it a son of Ares—which title the kings of the Axomites retained down to the fourth century—and dedicates the throne, which bears that memorial inscription, to Zeus, to Ares, and to Poseidon. Already in Zoskales’s time that foreigner names Adulis a well organised emporium; his successors compelled the roving tribes of the Arabian coast to keep peace by land and by sea, and restored a land communication from their capital to the Roman frontier, which, considering the nature of this district primarily left dependent on communication by sea, was not to be esteemed of slight account. Under Vespasian brass pieces, which were divided according to need, served the natives instead of money, and Roman coin circulated only among the strangers settled in Adulis; in the later imperial period the kings themselves coined. The Axomite ruler withal calls himself king of kings, and no trace points to Roman clientship; he practises coining in gold, which the Romans did not allow, not merely in their own territory but even within the range of their power. There was hardly another land in the imperial period beyond the Romano-Hellenic bounds which had appropriated to itself Hellenic habits with equal independence and to an equal extent as the state of Habesh. That in the course of time the popular language, indigenous or rather naturalised from Arabia, gained the upper hand and dispossessed the Greek, is probably traceable partly to Arabian influence, partly to that of Christianity and the revival connected with it of the popular dialects, such as we found also in Syria and Egypt; and it does not exclude the view that the Greek language in Axomis and Adulis in the first and second centuries of our era had a similar position to what it had in Syria and Egypt, so far as it is allowable to compare small and great.

Rome and the Axomites.Of political relations of the Romans to the state of Axomis hardly anything is mentioned from the first three centuries of our era, to which our narrative is confined. With the rest of Egypt they took possession also of the ports of the east coast down to the remote Trogodytic Berenice, which on account of that remoteness was in the Roman period placed under a commandant of its own.[254] Of extending their territory into the inhospitable and worthless mountains along the coast there was never any thought; nor can the sparse population, standing at the lowest stage of development, in the immediately adjoining region have ever given serious trouble to the Romans. As little did the Caesars attempt, as the early Lagids had done, to possess themselves of the emporia of the Axomitic coast. There is express mention only of the fact that envoys of the Axomite kings negotiated with the emperor Aurelian. But this very silence, as well as the formerly indicated independent position of the ruler,[255] leads to the inference that here the recognised frontier was permanently respected on both sides, and that a relation of good neighbourhood subsisted, which proved advantageous to the interests of peace and especially of Egyptian commerce. That the latter, especially the important traffic in ivory, in which Adulis was the chief entrepot for the interior of Africa, was carried on predominantly from Egypt and in Egyptian vessels, cannot—considering the superior civilisation of Egypt—be subject to any doubt even as regards the Lagid period; and in Roman times this traffic probably only increased in amount, without undergoing further change.

The west coast of Arabia.Far more important for Egypt and the Roman empire generally than the traffic with the African south was that which subsisted with Arabia and the coasts situated farther to the east. The Arabian peninsula remained aloof from the sphere of Hellenic culture. It would possibly have been otherwise had king Alexander lived a year longer; death swept him away amidst the preparations for sailing round and occupying the already-explored south coast of Arabia, setting out from the Persian Gulf. But the voyage which the great king had not been able to enter on was never undertaken by any Greek after him. From the most remote times, on the other hand, a lively intercourse had taken place between the two coasts of the Arabian Gulf over its moderately broad waters. In the Egyptian accounts from the time of the Pharaohs the voyages to the land of Punt, and the spoils thence brought home in frankincense, ebony, emeralds, leopards’ skins, play an important part. It has been already ([p. 148]) mentioned that subsequently the northern portion of the Arabian west coast belonged to the territory of the Nabataeans, and with this came into the power of the Romans. This was a desolate beach;[256] only the emporium Leuce Come, the last town of the Nabataeans and so far also of the Roman empire, was not merely in maritime intercourse with Berenice lying opposite, but was also the starting-point of the caravan-route leading to Petra and thence to the ports of southern Syria, and in so far, one of the centres of the traffic between the East and the West ([p. 151]). The adjoining regions on the south, northward and southward of the modern Mecca, corresponded in their natural character to the opposite Trogodyte country, and were, like this, neither politically nor commercially of importance, nor yet apparently united under one sceptre, but occupied by roving tribes. But at the south end of this gulf was the home of the only Arabic stock, which attained to greater importance in the pre-Islamic period. The Greeks and the Romans name these Arabs in the earlier period after the people most prominent at that time Sabaeans, in later times after another tribe usually Homerites, as, according to the new Arabic form of the latter name, now for the most part Himjarites.

The state of the Homerites.The development of this remarkable people had reached a considerable stage long before the beginning of the Roman rule over Egypt.[257] Its native seat, the Arabia Felix of the ancients, the region of Mocha and Aden, is surrounded by a narrow plain along the shore intensely hot and desolate, but the healthy and temperate interior of Yemen and Hadramaut produces on the mountain-slopes and in the valleys a luxuriant vegetation, and the numerous mountain-waters permit in many respects with careful management a garden-like cultivation. We have even at the present day an expressive testimony to the rich and peculiar civilisation of this region in the remains of city-walls and towers, of useful buildings, particularly aqueducts, and temples covered with inscriptions, which completely confirm the description of ancient authors as to the magnificence and luxury of this region; the Arabian geographers have written books concerning the strongholds and castles of the numerous petty princes of Yemen. Famous are the ruins of the mighty embankment which once in the valley of Mariaba dammed up the river Dana and rendered it possible to water the fields upwards,[258] and from the bursting of which, and the migration alleged to have been thereby occasioned of the inhabitants of Yemen to the north, the Arabs for long counted their years. But above all this district was one of the original seats of wholesale traffic by land and by sea, not merely because its productions, frankincense, precious stones, gum, cassia, aloes, senna, myrrh, and numerous other drugs called for export, but also because this Semitic stock was, just like that of the Phoenicians, formed by its whole character for commerce; Strabo says, just like the more recent travellers, that the Arabs are all traders and merchants. The coining of silver is here old and peculiar; the coins were at first modelled after Athenian dies, and later after Roman coins of Augustus, but on an independent, probably Babylonian basis.[259] From the land of these Arabians the original frankincense-routes led across the desert to the marts on the Arabian gulf, Aelana and the already-mentioned Leuce Come, and the emporia of Syria, Petra and Gaza;[260] these routes of the land-traffic, which along with those of the Euphrates and the Nile, furnish the means of intercourse between East and West from the earliest times, may be conjectured to be the proper basis of the prosperity of Yemen. But the sea-traffic likewise soon became associated with them; the great mart for this was Adane, the modern Aden. From this the goods went by water, certainly in the main in Arabian ships, either to those same marts on the Arabian gulf and so to the Syrian ports, or to Berenice and Myos Hormos, and from thence to Coptos and Alexandria. We have already stated that the same Arabs likewise at a very early time possessed themselves of the opposite coast, and transplanted their language, their writing and their civilisation to Habesh. If Coptos, the Nile-emporium for the eastern traffic, had just as many Arab as Egyptian inhabitants, if even the emerald-mines above Berenice (near Jebel Zebâra) were worked by the Arabs, this shows that in the Lagid state itself they had the trade up to a certain degree in their hands; and its passive attitude in respect to the traffic on the Arabian Sea, whither at most an expedition against the pirates was once undertaken,[261] is the more readily intelligible, if a state well organised and powerful at sea ruled these waters. We meet the Arabs of Yemen even beyond their own sea. Adane remained down to the Roman imperial times a mart of traffic on the one hand with India, on the other with Egypt, and, in spite of its own unfavourable position on the treeless shore, rose to such prosperity that the name of “Arabia Felix” had primary reference to this town. The dominion, which in our days the Imam of Muscat in the south-east of the peninsula has exercised over the islands of Socotra and Zanzibar and the African east coast from Cape Guardafui southward, pertained in Vespasian’s time “from of old” to the princes of Arabia; the island of Dioscorides, that same Socotra, belonged then to the king of Hadramaut, Azania, that is, the coast of Somal and further southward, to one of the viceroys of his western neighbour, the king of the Homerites. The southernmost station on the east African coast which the Egyptian merchants knew of, Rhapta in the region of Zanzibar, was leased from this sheikh by the merchants of Muza, that is nearly the modern Mocha, “and they send thither their trading-ships, mostly manned by Arabian captains and sailors, who are accustomed to deal and are often connected by marriage with the natives, and are acquainted with the localities and the languages of the country.” The cultivation of the soil and industry went hand in hand with commerce; in the houses of rank in India, Arabian wine was drunk alongside of the Falernian from Italy and the Laodicene from Syria; and the lances and shoemakers’ awls, which the natives of the coast of Malabar purchased from the foreign traders were manufactured at Muza. Thus this region, which moreover sold much and bought little, became one of the richest in the world.

How far its political development kept pace with the economic, cannot be determined for the pre-Roman and earlier imperial period; only this much seems to result both from the accounts of the Occidentals and from the native inscriptions, that this south-west point of Arabia was divided among several independent rulers with territories of moderate size. There subsisted in that quarter, alongside of the more prominent Sabaeans and Homerites, the already-mentioned Chatramotitae in the Hadramaut, and northward in the interior the Minaeans, all under princes of their own.

With reference to the Arabians of Yemen the Romans pursued the very opposite policy to that adopted towards the Axomites. Augustus, for whom the non-enlargement of the empire was the starting-point of the imperial government, and who allowed almost all the plans of conquest of his father and master to drop, made an exception of the south-west coast of Arabia, and here took aggressive measures of his own free will. This was done on account of the position which this group of peoples occupied at that time in Indo-Egyptian commercial intercourse. In order to bring the province of his dominions, which was politically and financially the most important, up, in an economic aspect, to the level which his predecessors in rule had neglected to establish or had allowed to decline, he needed above all to obtain inter-communication between Arabia and India on the one hand and Europe on the other. The Nile-route for long competed successfully with the Arabian and the Euphrates routes; but Egypt played in this respect, as we saw, a subordinate part at least under the later Lagids. A trading rivalry subsisted not with the Axomites, but doubtless with the Arabians; if the Egyptian traffic was to be converted from a passive into an active, from indirect into direct, the Arabs had to be overthrown; and this it was that Augustus desired and the Roman government in some measure achieved.

Expedition of Gallus.In the sixth year of his reign in Egypt (end of 729)25 B.C. Augustus despatched a fleet, fitted out expressly for this expedition, of 80 warships and 130 transports, and the half of the Egyptian army, a corps of 10,000 men, without reckoning the contingents of the two nearest client kings, the Nabataean Obodas and the Jew Herod, against the states of Yemen, in order either to subjugate or at least to ruin them,[262] while at the same time the treasures there accumulated were certainly taken into account. But the enterprise completely miscarried, and that from the incapacity of the leader, the governor of Egypt at the time, Gaius Aelius Gallus.[263] Since the occupation and the possession of the desolate coast from Leuce Come downwards to the frontier of the enemy’s territory was of no consequence at all, it was necessary that the expedition should be directed immediately against the latter, and that the army should be conducted from the most southern Egyptian port at once into Arabia Felix.[264] Instead of this the fleet was got ready at the most northerly, that of Arsinoe (Suez), and the army was landed at Leuce Come, just as if it were the object to prolong as much as possible the voyage of the fleet and the march of the troops. Besides, the war-vessels were superfluous, since the Arabians possessed no war-fleet, the Roman sailors were unacquainted with the navigation on the Arabian coast, and the transports, although specially built for this expedition, were unsuited for their purpose. The pilots had difficulty in finding their way between the shallows and the rocks, and even the voyage in Roman waters from Arsinoe to Leuce Come cost many vessels and men. Here the winter was passed; in the spring of 730 the campaign in the enemy’s country began. The Arabians offered no hindrance, but Arabia undoubtedly did so. Wherever the double axes and the slings and bows came into collision with the pilum and the sword, the natives dispersed like chaff before the wind; but the diseases, which are endemic in the country, scurvy, leprosy, palsy, decimated the soldiers worse than the most bloody battle, and all the more as the general did not know how to move rapidly forward the unwieldy mass of his army. Nevertheless the Roman army arrived in front of the walls of Mariaba, the capital of the Sabaeans first affected by the attack. But, as the inhabitants closed the gates of their powerful walls still standing,[265] and offered energetic resistance, the Roman general despaired of solving the problem proposed to him; and, after he had lain six days in front of the town, he entered on his retreat, which the Arabians hardly disturbed in earnest, and which was accomplished with comparative rapidity under the pressure of need, although with a severe loss in men.

Further enterprises against the Arabs.It was a bad miscarriage; but Augustus did not abandon the conquest of Arabia. It has already been related ([p. 39]) that the journey to the East, which the crown-prince Gaius entered upon in the year 753 1 B.C., was to terminate at Arabia; it was this time contemplated after the subjugation of Armenia to reach, in concert with the Parthian government or in case of need after the overthrow of their armies, the mouth of the Euphrates, and from thence to take the sea-route which the admiral Nearchus had once explored for Alexander, towards Arabia Felix.[266] These hopes ended in another but not less unfortunate way, through the Parthian arrow which struck the crown-prince before the walls of Artageira. With him was buried the plan of Arabian conquest for all the future. The great peninsula remained through the whole imperial period—apart from the stripes of coast on the north and north-west—in possession of that freedom from which Islam, the executioner of Hellenism, was in its own time to issue.