[263] The account of Strabo (xvi. 4, 22 f., p. 780) as to the Arabian expedition of his “friend” Gallus (φίλος ἡμῖν καὶ ἑταῖρος, Strabo, ii. 5, 12, p. 118), in whose train he travelled in Egypt, is indeed trustworthy and honest, like all his accounts, but evidently accepted from this friend without any criticism. The battle in which 10,000 of the enemy and two Romans fell, and the total number of the fallen in this campaign, which is seven, are self-condemned; but not better is the attempt to devolve the want of success on the Nabataean vizier Syllaeos by means of a “treachery,” such as is familiar with defeated generals. Certainly the latter was so far fitted for a scapegoat, as he some years afterwards was on the instigation of Herod brought to trial before Augustus, condemned and executed (Josephus, Arch. xvi. 10); but although we possess the report of the agent who managed this matter for Herod in Rome, there is not a word to be found in it of this betrayal. That Syllaeos should have had the design of first destroying the Arabians by means of the Romans, and then of destroying the latter themselves, as Strabo “thinks,” is, looking to the position of the client-states of Rome, quite irrational. It might rather be thought that Syllaeos was averse to the expedition, because the commercial traffic through the Nabataean land might be injured by it. But to accuse the Arabian minister of treachery because the Roman transports were not fitted for navigating the Arabian coast, or because the Roman army was compelled to carry water with it on camels, to eat durra and dates instead of bread and flesh, and butter instead of oil; to bring forward the deceitfulness of the guidance as an excuse for the fact that 180 days were employed for the forward march over a distance overtaken on the return march in 60 days; and lastly, to criticise the quite correct remark of Syllaeos that a march by land from Arsinoe to Leuce Come was impracticable, by saying that a caravan route went thence to Petra, only shows what a Roman of rank was able to make a Greek man of letters believe.
[264] The sharpest criticism of the campaign is furnished by the detailed account of the Egyptian merchant as to the state of the Arabian coast from Leuce Come (el-Haura to the north of Janbô, the port of Medina) to the Catacecaumene island (Jebel Taik near Lôhaia). "Different peoples inhabit it, who speak languages partly somewhat different, partly wholly so. The inhabitants of the coast live in pens like the ‘fish-eaters’ on the opposite coast" (these pens he describes, c. 2, as isolated and built into the clefts of the rocks), “those of the interior in villages and pastoral companies; they are ill-disposed men speaking two languages, who plunder the seafarers that drift out of their course and drag the shipwrecked into slavery. For that reason they are constantly hunted by the viceroys and chief kings of Arabia; they are called Kanraites (or Kassanites). In general navigation on all this coast is dangerous, the shore is without harbours and inaccessible, with a troublesome surf, rocky and in general very bad. Therefore, when we sail into these waters, we keep to the middle and hasten to get to the Arabian territory at the island Catacecaumene; from thence onward the inhabitants are hospitable, and we meet with numerous flocks of sheep and camels.” The same region between the Roman and the Homeritic frontiers, and the same state of things are in the view of the Axomite king, when he writes: πέραν δὲ τῆς ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης οἰκοῦντας Ἀρραβίτας καὶ Κιναιδοκολπίτας (comp. Ptolemaeus vi. 7, 20), στράτευμα ναυτικὸν καὶ πεζικὸν διαπεμψάμενος καὶ ὑποτάξας αὐτῶν τοὺς βασιλέας, φόρους τῆς γῆς τελεῖν ἐκέλευσα καὶ ὁδεύεσθαι μετ' εἰρήνης καὶ πλέεσθαι, ἀπό τε Λευκῆς κώμης ἔως τῶν Σαβαίων χώρας ἐπολέμησα.
[265] These walls, built of rubble, form a circle of a mile in diameter. They are described by Arnaud (l.c., comp. p. 287, note 1).
[266] That the Oriental expedition of Gaius had Arabia as its goal, is stated expressly by Pliny (particularly H. N. xii. 14, 55, 56; comp, ii. 67, 168; vi. 27, 141, c. 28, 160; xxxii. 1, 10). That it was to set out from the mouth of the Euphrates, follows from the fact that the expedition to Armenia and the negotiations with the Parthians preceded it. For that reason the Collectanea of Juba as to the impending expedition were based upon the reports of the generals of Alexander as to their exploring of Arabia.
[267] Our only information as to this remarkable expedition has been preserved to us by the Egyptian captain, who about the year 75 has described his voyage on the coasts of the Red Sea. He knows (c. 26) the Adane of later writers, the modern Aden, as a village on the coast (κώμη παραθαλάσσιος), which belongs to the realm of Charibael, king of the Homerites, but was earlier a flourishing town, and was so termed (εὐδαίμων δ' ἐπεκλήθη πρότερον οὖσα πόλις) because before the institution of the direct Indo-Egyptian traffic this place served as a mart: νῦν δὲ οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ τῶν ἡμετέρων χρόνων Καῖσαρ αὐτὴν κατεστρέψατο. The last word can here only mean “destroy,” not, as more frequently, “subdue,” because the conversion of the town into a village is to be accounted for. For Καῖσαρ Schwanbeck (Rhein. Mus. neue Folge, vii. 353) has proposed Χαριβαήλ, C. Müller Ἰλασάρ (on account of Strabo, xvi. 4, 21, p. 782): neither is possible—not the latter, because this Arabian dynast ruled in a far remote district and could not possibly be presumed as well known; not the former, because Charibael was a contemporary of the writer, and there is here reported an incident which occurred before his time. We shall not take offence at the tradition, if we reflect what interest the Romans must have had in setting aside the Arabian mart between India and Egypt, and in bringing about direct intercourse. That the Roman accounts are silent as to this occurrence is in keeping with their habit; the expedition, which beyond doubt was executed by an Egyptian fleet and simply consisted in the destruction of a presumably defenceless place on the coast, would not be from a military point of view of any importance; about great commercial dealings the annalists gave themselves no concern, and generally the incidents in Egypt came still less than those in the other imperial provinces to the knowledge of the senate and therewith of the annalists. The naked designation Καῖσαρ, in which from the nature of the case the ruler then reigning is excluded, is probably to be explained from the circumstance that the reporting captain, while knowing doubtless the fact of the destruction by the Romans, knew not its date or author.—It is possible that to this the notice in Pliny (H. N. ii. 67, 168) is to be referred: maiorem (oceani) partem et orientis victoriae magni Alexandri lustravere usque in Arabicum sinum, in quo res gerente C. Caesare Aug. f. signa navium ex Hispaniensibus naufragiis feruntur agnita. Gaius did not reach Arabia (Plin. H. N. vi. 28, 160); but during the Armenian expedition a Roman squadron may very well have been conducted by one of his sub-commanders to this coast, in order to pave the way for the main expedition. That silence reigns elsewhere respecting it cannot surprise us. The Arabian expedition of Gaius had been so solemnly announced and then abandoned in so wretched a way, that loyal reporters had every reason to obliterate a fact which could not well be mentioned without also reporting the failure of the greater plan.
[268] The Egyptian merchant distinguishes the ἔνθεσμος βασιλεύς of the Homerites (c. 23) sharply from the τύραννοι, the tribal chiefs sometimes subordinate to him, sometimes independent (c. 14), and as sharply distinguishes these organised conditions from the lawlessness of the inhabitants of the desert (c. 2). If Strabo and Tacitus had had eyes as open for these things as that practical man had, we should have known somewhat more of antiquity.
[269] The war of Macrinus against the Arabes eudaemones (vita, 12) and their envoys sent to Aurelian (vita, 33), who are named along with those of the Axomites, would prove their continued independence at that time, if these statements could be depended on.
[270] The king names himself, about the year 356 ([p. 284], note 2), in a document (C. I. Gr. 5128) βασιλεὺς Ἀξωμιτῶν καὶ Ὀμηριτῶν καὶ τοῦ Ῥαειδὰν (castle in Sapphar, the capital of the Homerites; Dillmann, Abh. der Berl. Akad. 1878, p. 207) ... καὶ Σαβαειτῶν καὶ τοῦ Σιλεῆ (castle in Mariaba, the capital of the Sabaeans; Dillmann, l.c.). With this agrees the contemporary mission of envoys ad gentem Axumitarum et Homerita[rum] (C. Th. xii. 12, 2). As to the later state of things comp. especially Nonnosus (fr. hist. Gr. iv. p. 179, Müll.) and Procopius, Hist. Pers. i. 20.
[271] Aristides (Or. xlviii. p. 485, Dind.) names Coptos the Indian and Arabian entrepôt. In the romance of Xenophon the Ephesian (iv. 1), the Syrian robbers resort to Coptos, “for there a number of merchants pass through, who are travelling to Aethiopia and India.”
[272] Hadrian later constructed “the new Hadrian’s road” which led from his town Antinoopolis near Hermopolis, probably through the desert to Myos Hormos, and from Myos Hormos along the sea to Berenice, and provided it with cisterns, stations (σταθμοί), and forts (inscription in Revue Archéol. N. S. xxi. year 1870, p. 314). However there is no mention of this road subsequently, and it is a question whether it continued to subsist.