[223] The alliance of the Palmyrenes and the Blemyes is pointed to by the notice of the vita Firmi, c. 3, and by the statement, according to Zosimus, i. 71, that Ptolemais fell away to the Blemyes (comp. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 32). Aurelian only negotiated with these (Vita, 34, 41); it was Probus who first drove them again out of Egypt (Zosimus, l.c.; Vita, 17).
[224] We still possess letters of this sort, addressed by the bishop of the city, at that time Dionysius († 265), to the members of the church shut off in the hostile half of the town (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 21, 22, comp. 32). When it is therein said: “one gets more easily from the West to the East than from Alexandria to Alexandria,” and ἡ μεσαιτάτη τῆς πόλεως ὁδός, consequently the street furnished with colonnades, running from the Lochias point right through the town (comp. Lumbroso, l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani, 1882, p. 137) is compared with the desert between Egypt and the promised land, it appears almost as if Severus Antoninus had carried out his threat of drawing a wall across the town and occupying it in a military fashion (Dio, lxxvii. 23). The razing of the walls after the overthrow of the revolt (Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15) would then have to be referred to this very building.
[225] The alleged Egyptian tyrants, Aemilianus, Firmus, Saturninus, are at least not attested as such. The so-called description of the life of the second is nothing else than the sadly disfigured catastrophe of Prucheion.
[226] Chr. Pasch. p. 514; Procopius, Hist. arc. 26; Gothofred. on Cod. Theod. xiv. 26, 2. Stated distributions of corn had already been instituted earlier in Alexandria, but apparently only for persons old and decayed, and—it may be conjectured—on account of the city, not of the state (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 21).
[227] In the town of Alexandria there appears to have been no landed property to the strict sense, but only a sort of hereditary lease (Ammianus, xxii. 11, 6; Staatsrecht, ii. 963, note 1); but otherwise private property in the soil prevailed also in Egypt, in the sense in which the provincial law knows such a thing at all. There is often mention of domanial possession e.g. Strabo, xvii. 1, 51, p. 828, says that the best Egyptian dates grow on an island on which private persons might not possess any land, but it was formerly royal, now imperial, and yielded a large income. Vespasian sold a portion of the Egyptian domains and thereby exasperated the Alexandrians (Dio, lxvi. 8)—beyond doubt the great farmers who then gave the land in sub-lease to the peasants proper. Whether landed property in mortmain, especially of the priestly colleges, was in the Roman period still as extensive as formerly, may be doubted; as also whether otherwise large estates or small properties predominated; petty husbandry was certainly general. We possess figures neither for the domanial quota nor for that of the land-tax; that the fifth sheaf in Orosius, i. 8, 9, is copied including the usque ad nunc from Genesis, is rightly observed by Lumbroso, Recherches, p. 94. The domanial rent cannot have amounted to less than the half; even for the land-tax the tenth (Lumbroso, l. c. p. 289, 293) may have hardly sufficed. Export of grain otherwise from Egypt needed the consent of the governor (Hirschfeld, Annona, p. 23), doubtless because otherwise scarcity might easily set in in the thickly-peopled land. Yet this arrangement was certainly more by way of control than of prohibition; in the Periplus of the Egyptian corn is on several occasions (c. 7, 17, 24, 28, comp. 56) adduced among the articles of export. Even the cultivation of the fields seems to have become similarly controlled; “the Egyptians, it is said, are fonder of cultivating rape than corn, so far as they may, on account of the rape-seed oil” (Plinius, H. N. xix. 5, 79).
[228] In the edict of Diocletian among the five fine sorts of linen the first four are Syrian or Cilician (of Tarsus) and the Egyptian linen appears not merely in the last place, but is also designated as Tarsian-Alexandrian, that is, prepared in Alexandria after the Tarsian model.
[229] It was related of a rich man in Egypt that he had lined his palace with glass instead of with marble, and that he possessed papyrus and lime enough to provide an army with them (Vita Firmi, 3).
[230] That the alleged letter of Hadrian (Vita Saturnini, 8) is a late fabrication, is shown e.g. by the fact, that the emperor in this highly friendly letter addressed to his father-in-law, Servianus, complains of the injuries which the Alexandrians at his first departure had heaped on his son Verus, while on the other hand it is established that this Servianus was executed at the age of ninety in the year 136, because he had disapproved the adoption of Verus, which had taken place shortly before.
[231] The ναύκληροι τοῦ πορευτικοῦ Ἀλεξανδρεινοῦ στόλου, who set up the stone doubtless belonging to Portus, C. I. Gr. 5889, were the captains of these grain-ships. From the Serapeum of Ostia we possess a series of inscriptions (C. I. L. xiv. 47), according to which it was in all parts a copy of that at Alexandria; the president is at the same time ἐπιμελητὴς παντὸς τοῦ Ἀλεξανδρείνου στόλου (C. I. Gr. 5973). Probably these transports were employed mainly with the carriage of grain, and this consequently took place by succession, to which also the precautions adopted by the emperor Gaius in the straits of Reggio (Josephus, Arch. xix. 2, 5) point. With this well comports the fact, that the first appearance of the Alexandrian fleet in the spring was a festival for Puteoli (Seneca, Ep. 77, 1).
[232] This is shown by the remarkable Delian inscriptions, Eph. epigr. i. p. 600, 602.