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

by Theodor Mommsen

Injury to Arabian commerce.But the Arabian commerce was at all events broken down partly by the measures, to be explained further on, of the Roman government for protecting the Egyptian navigation, partly by a blow struck by the Romans against the chief mart of Indo-Arabian traffic. Whether under Augustus himself, possibly among the preparations for the invasion to be carried out by Gaius, or under one of his immediate successors, a Roman fleet appeared before Adane and destroyed the place; in Vespasian’s time it was a village, and its prosperity was gone. We know only the naked fact,[267] but it speaks for itself. A counterpart to the destruction of Corinth and of Carthage by the republic, it, like these, attained its end, and secured for the Romano-Egyptian trade the supremacy in the Arabian gulf and in the Indian Sea.

Later fortunes of the Homerites.The prosperity, however, of the blessed land of Yemen was too firmly founded to succumb to this blow; politically it was even perhaps in this epoch only that it more energetically rallied its resources. Mariaba, at the time when the arms of Gallus failed before its walls, was perhaps no more than the capital of the Sabaeans; but already at that time the tribe of the Homerites, whose capital Sapphar lay somewhat to the south of Mariaba, also in the interior, was the strongest in Arabia Felix. A century later we find the two united under a king of the Homerites and of the Sabaeans reigning in Sapphar, whose rule extends as far as Mocha and Aden, and, as was already said, over the island of Socotra and the coast of Somal and Zanzibar; and at least from this time we may speak of a kingdom of the Homerites. The desert northwards from Mariaba as far as the Roman frontier did not at that time belong to it, and was under no regular authority at all;[268] the principalities of the Minaei and of the Chatramotitae continued also to be under sovereigns of their own. The eastern half of Arabia formed constantly a part of the Persian empire ([p. 13]), and never was under the sceptre of the rulers of Arabia Felix. Even now therefore the bounds were narrow and probably remained so; little is known as to the further development of affairs.[269] In the middle of the fourth century the kingdom of the Homerites was united with that of the Axomites, and was governed from Axomis[270]—a subjection, however, which was subsequently broken off again. The kingdom of the Homerites, as well as the united Axomitico-Homeritic, stood as independent states in intercourse and treaty with Rome during the later imperial period.

Commercial intercourse of the Homerites.In commerce and navigation the Arabians of the south-west of the peninsula occupied, if no longer the place of supremacy, at any rate a prominent position throughout the whole imperial period. After the destruction of Adane, Muza became the commercial metropolis of this region. The representation formerly given is still in the main appropriate for the time of Vespasian. The place is described to us at this time as exclusively Arabian, inhabited by ship-owners and sailors, and full of stirring mercantile life; the Muzaites with their own ships navigate the whole east coast of Africa and the west coast of India, and not merely carry the goods of their own country, but bring also the purple stuffs and gold embroideries prepared according to Oriental taste in the workshops of the West, and the fine wines of Syria and Italy, to the Orientals, and in turn to the western lands the precious wares of the East. In frankincense and other aromatics Muza and the emporium of the neighbouring kingdom of Hadramaut, Cane to the east of Aden, must always have retained a sort of practical monopoly; these wares, used in antiquity very much more than at present, were produced not only on the southern coast of Arabia, but also on the African coast from Adulis as far as the “promontory of spices,” Cape Guardafui, and from thence the merchants of Muza fetched them and brought them into general commerce. On the already mentioned island of Dioscorides there was a joint trading settlement of the three great seafaring nations of these seas, the Hellenes, that is, the Egyptians, the Arabians, and the Indians. But of relations to Hellenism, such as we found on the opposite coast among the Axomites ([p. 283]), we meet no trace in the land of Yemen; if the coinage is determined by Occidental types (p. 287 f.), these were current throughout the East. Otherwise writing and language and the exercise of art, so far as we are able to judge, developed themselves here just as independently as commerce and navigation; and certainly this co-operated in producing the result that the Axomites, while they subjected to themselves the Homerites in a political point of view, subsequently reverted from the Hellenic path into the Arabic ([p. 283]).

Land routes and harbours in Egypt.In the same spirit as for the relations to southern Africa and to the Arabian states, and in a more pleasing way, provision was made in Egypt itself for the routes of commercial intercourse, in the first instance by Augustus, and beyond doubt by all its intelligent rulers. The system of roads and harbours established by the earlier Ptolemies in the footsteps of the Pharaohs had, like the whole administration, fallen into sad decay amidst the troubles of the last Lagid period. It is not expressly mentioned that Augustus put again into order the land and water routes and the ports of Egypt; but that it was done, is none the less certain. Coptos remained through the whole imperial period the rendezvous of this traffic.[271] From a recently found document we gather that in the first imperial period the two routes leading thence to the ports of Myos Hormos and of Berenice were repaired by the Roman soldiers and provided at the fitting places with the requisite cisterns.[272] The canal which connected the Red Sea with the Nile, and so with the Mediterranean Sea, was in the Roman period only of secondary rank, employed chiefly perhaps for the conveyance of blocks of marble and porphyry from the Egyptian east coast to the Mediterranean; but it remained navigable throughout the imperial period. The emperor Trajan renewed and probably also enlarged it—perhaps it was he who placed it in communication with the still undivided Nile near Babylon (not far from Cairo), and thereby increased its water-supply—and assigned to it the name of Trajan’s or the emperor’s river (Augustus amnis), from which in later times this part of Egypt was named (Augustamnica).

Piracy.Augustus exerted himself also in earnest for the suppression of piracy on the Red and Indian Seas; the Egyptians long even after his death thanked him, that through his efforts piratical sails disappeared from the sea and gave way to trading vessels. No doubt what was done in that respect was far from enough. The facts that, while the government doubtless from time to time set naval squadrons to work in these waters, it did not station there a standing war-fleet; and that the Roman merchantmen regularly took archers on board in the Indian Sea to repel the attacks of the pirates, would be surprising, if a comparative indifference to the insecurity of the sea had not everywhere—here, as well as on the Belgian coast, and on those of the Black Sea—clung like a hereditary sin to the Roman imperial government or rather to the Roman government in general. It is true that the governments of Axomis and of Sapphar were called by their geographical position still more than the Romans at Berenice and Leuce Come to check piracy, and it may be partly due to this consideration that the Romans remained, upon the whole, on a good understanding with these weaker but indispensable neighbours.

Growth of the Egyptian active traffic to the East.We have formerly shown that the maritime intercourse of Egypt, if not with Adulis ([p. 284]), at any rate with Arabia and India at the epoch which immediately preceded the Roman rule, was not carried on in the main through the medium of Egyptians. It was only through the Romans that Egypt obtained the great maritime traffic to the East. “Not twenty Egyptian ships in the year,” says a contemporary of Augustus, "ventured forth under the Ptolemies from the Arabian gulf; now 120 merchantmen annually sail to India from the port of Myos Hormos alone." The commercial gain, which the Roman merchant had been obliged hitherto to share with the Persian or Arabian intermediary, flowed to him in all its extent after the opening up of direct communication with the more remote East. This result was probably brought about in the first instance by the circumstance that the Egyptian ports were, if not directly barred, at any rate practically closed, by differential custom-dues against Arabian and Indian transports;[273] only by the hypothesis of such a navigation-act in favour of their own shipping could this sudden revolution of commercial relations be explained. But the traffic was not merely violently transformed from a passive into an active one; it was also absolutely increased, partly in consequence of the increased inquiry in the West for the wares of the East, partly at the expense of the other routes of traffic through Arabia and Syria. For the Arabian and Indian commerce with the West the route by way of Egypt more and more proved itself the shortest and the cheapest. The frankincense, which in the olden time went in great part by the land-route through the interior of Arabia to Gaza ([p. 288], note 2), came afterwards for the most part by water through Egypt. The Indian traffic received a new impulse about the time of Nero, when a skilled and courageous Egyptian captain, Hippalus, ventured, instead of making his way along the long stretch of coast, to steer from the mouth of the Arabian Gulf directly through the open sea for India; he knew the monsoon, which thenceforth the mariners, who traversed this route after him, named the Hippalus. Thenceforth the voyage was not merely materially shortened, but was less exposed to the land and sea pirates. To what extent the secure state of peace and the increasing luxury raised the consumption of Oriental wares in the West, may be discerned in some measure from the complaints, which were in the time of Vespasian loudly expressed, regarding the enormous sums which went out of the empire for that purpose. The whole amount of the purchase-money annually paid to the Arabians and the Indians is estimated by Pliny at 100,000,000 sesterces (= £1,100,000), for Arabia alone at 55,000,000 sesterces (= £600,000), of which, it is true, a part was covered by the export of goods. The Arabians and the Indians bought doubtless the metals of the West, iron, copper, lead, tin, arsenic, the Egyptian articles mentioned formerly ([p. 254]), wine, purple, gold and silver plate, also precious stones, corals, saffron, balm; but they had always far more to offer to foreign luxury than to receive for their own. Hence the Roman gold and silver money went in considerable quantities to the great Arabian and Indian emporia. In India it had already under Vespasian so naturalised itself that the people there preferred to use it. Of this Oriental traffic the greatest part went to Egypt; and if the increase of the traffic benefited the government-chest by the increased receipts from customs, the need for building ships and making mercantile voyages of their own elevated the prosperity of private individuals.

While thus the Roman government limited its rule in Egypt to the narrow space which is marked off by the navigableness of the Nile, and, whether in pusillanimity or in wisdom, at any rate never attempted with consistent energy to conquer either Nubia or Arabia, it strove as energetically after the possession of the Arabian and the Indian wholesale traffic, and attained at least an important limitation of the competitors. As the unscrupulous pursuit of commercial interests characterised the policy of the republic, so not less did it mark that of the principate, especially in Egypt.

Romano-Indian commercial intercourse.We can only determine approximately how far the direct Roman maritime traffic went towards the East. In the first instance it took the direction of Barygaza (Barôtch on the Gulf of Cambay above Bombay), which great mart must have remained through the whole imperial period the centre of the Egyptio-Indian traffic; several places in the peninsula of Gujerat bear among the Greeks Greek designations, such as Naustathmos and Theophila. In the Flavian period, in which the monsoon-voyages had already become regular, the whole west coast of India was opened up to the Roman merchants as far down as the coast of Malabar, the home of the highly-esteemed and dear-priced pepper, for the sake of which they visited the ports of Muziris (probably Mangaluru) and Nelcynda (in Indian doubtless Nilakantha from one of the surnames of the god Shiva, probably the modern Nîlêswara); somewhat farther to the south at Kananor numerous Roman gold coins of the Julio-Claudian epoch have been found, formerly exchanged against the spices destined for the Roman kitchens. On the island Salice, the Taprobane of the older Greek navigators, the modern Ceylon, in the time of Claudius a Roman official, who had been driven thither from the Arabian coast by storms, had met with a friendly reception from the ruler of the country, and the latter, astonished, as the report says, at the uniform weight of the Roman pieces of money in spite of the diversity of the emperor’s heads, had sent along with the shipwrecked man envoys to his Roman colleague. Thereby in the first instance it was only the sphere of geographical knowledge that was enlarged; it was not till later apparently that navigation was extended as far as that large and productive island, in which on several occasions Roman coins have come to light. But coins are found only by way of exception beyond Cape Comorin and Ceylon,[274] and hardly has even the coast of Coromandel and the mouth of the Ganges, to say nothing of the Further Indian peninsula and China, maintained regular commercial intercourse with the Occidentals.

Chinese silk was certainly already at an early period sold regularly to the West, but, as it would appear, exclusively by the land-route, and through the medium partly of the Indians of Barygaza, partly and chiefly of the Parthians; the Silk-people or the Seres (from the Chinese name of silk Sr) of the Occidentals were the inhabitants of the Tarim-basin to the north-west of Thibet, whither the Chinese brought their silk, and the Parthian intermediaries jealously guarded the traffic thither. By sea, certainly, individual mariners reached accidentally or by way of exploration at least to the east coast of Further India and perhaps still farther; the port of Cattigara known to the Romans at the beginning of the second century A.D. was one of the Chinese coast-towns, perhaps Hang-chow-foo at the mouth of the Yang-tse-kiang. The report of the Chinese annals that in 166 A.D. an embassy of the emperor Antun of Ta-(that is Great) Tsin (Rome) landed in Ji-nan (Tonkin), and thence by the land-route arrived at the capital Lo-yang (or Ho-nan-foo on the middle Hoang-ho) to the emperor Hwan-ti, may warrantably be referred to Rome and to Marcus Antoninus. This event, however, and what the Chinese authorities mention as to a similar appearance of the Romans in their country in the course of the third century, can hardly be understood of public missions, since as to these Roman statements would hardly have been wanting; but possibly individual captains may have passed with the Chinese court as messengers of their government. These connections had perceptible consequences only in so far as the earlier tales regarding the procuring of silk gradually gave way to better knowledge.