[243] A “Homeric poet” ἐκ Μουσείου is ready to sing the praise of Memnon in four Homeric verses, without adding a word of his own (C. I. Gr. 4748). Hadrian makes an Alexandrian poet a member in reward for a loyal epigram (Athenaeus, xv. p. 677 e). Examples of rhetors from Hadrian’s time may be seen in Philostratus, Vit. Soph. i. 22, 3, c. 25, 3. A φιλόσοφος ἀπὸ Μουσείου in Halicarnassus (Bull. de corr. Hell. iv. 405). At a later period, when the circus was everything, we find a noted pugilist figuring (so to say) as an honorary member of the philosophical class (inscription from Rome, C. I. Gr. 5914: νεωκόρος τοῦ μεγά[λου Σαράπιδ]ος καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ Μουσείῳ [σειτου]μένων ἀτελῶν φιλοσόφων; comp. ib. 4724, and Firmicus Maternus, de errore prof. rel. 13, 3). Οἱ ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἀπὸ τοῦ Μουσείου ἰατροί (Wood, Ephesus, inscriptions from tombs, n. 7), a society of Ephesian physicians, have relation doubtless to the Museum at Alexandria, but were hardly members of it; they were rather trained in it.
[244] Ὁ ἄνω θρόνος in Philostratus, Vit. Soph. ii. 10, 5.
[245] Examples are Chaeremon, the teacher of Nero, previously installed in Alexandria (Suidas, Διονύσιος Ἀλεξανδρεύς; comp. Zeller, Hermes, xi. 430, and above, p. 259); Dionysius, son of Glaucus, at first in Alexandria, successor of Chaeremon, then from Nero down to Trajan librarian in Rome and imperial cabinet secretary (Suidas, l.c.); L. Julius Vestinus under Hadrian, who, even after the presidency of the Museum, filled the same positions as Dionysius in Rome ([p. 248] note), known also as a philological author.
[246] The eunuch of Candace, who reads in Isaiah (Acts of the Apostles, viii. 27) is well known; and a Candace reigned also in Nero’s time (Plinius, H. N. vi. 29, 182).
[247] That the imperial frontier reached to Hiera Sycaminos, is evident for the second century from Ptolemaeus, v. 5, 74, for the time of Diocletian from the Itineraries, which carry the imperial roads thus far. In the Notitia dignitatum, a century later, the posts again do not reach beyond Syene, Philae, Elephantine. In the tract from Philae to Hiera Sycaminos, the Dodecaschoinos of Herodotus (ii. 29) temple-tribute appears to have been raised already in early times for the Isis of Philae always common to the Egyptians and Aethiopians; but Greek inscriptions from the Lagid period have not been found here, whereas numerous dated ones occur from the Roman period, the oldest from the time of Augustus (Pselchis, 2 A.D.; C. I. Gr. n. 5086), and of Tiberius (ib. 26 A.D., n. 5104, 33 A.D., n. 5101), the most recent from that of Philippus (Kardassi, 248 A.D., n. 5010). These do not prove absolutely that the place where the inscription was found belonged to the empire; but that of a land-measuring soldier of the year 33 (n. 5101), and that of a praesidium of the year 84 (Talmis, n. 5042 f.), as well as numerous others certainly presuppose it. Beyond the frontier indicated no similar stone has ever been found; for the remarkable inscription of the regina (C. I. L. iii. 83), found at Messaurât, to the south of Shendy (16° 25′ lat., 5 leagues to the south of the ruins of Naga), the most southern of all known Latin inscriptions, now in the Berlin Museum, has been set up, not by a Roman subject, but presumably by an envoy of an African queen, who was returning from Rome, and who spoke Latin perhaps only in order to show that he had been in Rome.
[248] The tropaea Niliaca, sub quibus Aethiops et Indus intremuit, in an oration probably held in the year 296 (Paneg. v. 5), apply to such a rencontre, not to the Egyptian insurrection; and the oration of the year 289 speaks of attacks of the Blemyes (Paneg. iii. 17).—Procopius, Bell. Pers. i. 19, reports the cession of the “Twelve-mile-territory” to the Nubians. It is mentioned as standing under the dominion, not of the Nubians, but of the Blemyes by Olympiodorus, fr. 37, Müll. and the inscription of Silko, C. I. Gr. 5072. The fragment recently brought to light of a Greek heroic poem as to the victory of a late Roman emperor over the Blemyes is referred by Bücheler (Rhein. Mus. xxxix. 279 f.) to that of Marcianus, in the year 451 (comp. Priscus, fr. 27).
[249] Juvenal (xi. 124) mentions the elephant’s teeth, quos mittit porta Syenes.
[250] According to the mode in which Ptolemy (iv. 5, 14, 15) treats of this coast, it seems, just like the “Twelve-mile-land,” to have lain outside of the division into nomes.
[251] Our best information as to the kingdom of Axomis is obtained from a stone erected by one of its kings, beyond doubt in the better period of the empire, at Adulis (C. I. Gr. 5127 b), a sort of writing commemorative of the deeds of this apparent empire-founder in the style of that of Darius at Persepolis, or that of Augustus at Ancyra, and fixed on the king’s throne, before which down to the sixth century criminals were executed. The skilful disquisition of Dillmann (Abh. der Berliner Akademie, 1877, p. 195 f.), explains as much of it as is explicable. From the Roman standpoint it is to be noted that the king does not name the Romans, but clearly has in view their imperial frontiers when he subdues the Tangaites μέχρι τῶν τῆς Αἰγύπτου ὁρίων, and constructs a road ἀπὸ τῶν τῆς ἐμῆς βασιλείας τόπων μέχρι Αἰγύπτου, and further, names as the northern limit of his Arabian expedition Leuce Come, the last Roman station on the Arabian west coast. Hence it follows further, that this inscription is more recent than the Periplus of the Red Sea written under Vespasian; for according to this (c. 5) the king of Axomis rules ἀπὸ τῶν Μοσχοφάγων μέχρι τῆς ἄλλης Βαρβαρίας, and this is to be understood exclusively, since he names in c. 2 the τύραννοι of the Moscophages, and likewise remarks in c. 14, that beyond the Straits of Bab el Mandeb there is no “king,” but only “tyrants.” Thus at that time the Axomitic kingdom did not reach to the Roman frontier, but only to somewhere about Ptolemais “of the chase,” just as in the other direction not to Cape Guardafui, but only as far as the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Nor does the Periplus speak of possessions of the king of Axomis on the Arabian coast, although he on several occasions mentions the dynasts there.
[252] The name of the Aethiopians was associated in the better period with the country on the Upper Nile, especially with the kingdoms of Meroe and Nabata ([p. 275]), and so with the region which we now call Nubia. In later antiquity, for example by Procopius, the designation is referred to the state of Axomis, and hence in more recent times is frequently employed for Abyssinia.