[772] Cod. Theod., VII, xvi, 2, 3, and Godfrey ad loc.; Cod., IV, lxiii, 4.
[773] The inhabitants were a mixed race, containing Semitic and Hellenic elements, etc. Greek inscriptions were common there; Cosmas, op. cit., ii; cf. Philostorgius, iii, 6, etc.
[774] For the transport of an army to the opposite coast the king was able to collect 120 Roman, Persian, and native vessels; Act. Sanct. (Boll.), lviii, p. 747 (not 1,300 as Finlay, i, p. 264, which comes from adding a cipher to the figures in Surius).
[775] Called Taprobane by the Greek and Roman writers. It was distinguished by the possession of an immense lustrous jewel (ruby perhaps) which scintillated from the top of a temple; Cosmas, op. cit., xi.
[776] The junks from Annam, as it appears, ploughed round the Malay peninsula to Galle; Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 1885, p. 178. The Cingalese took no active part in the trade!; Tennant, Ceylon, i, p. 568 (ibid.).
[777] Cosmas, op. cit., xi. His own trade seems to have lain chiefly between Adule and Malabar. In this age all the southern regions eastward of the Nile were commonly referred to as India; and that river was often named as the boundary between Africa and Asia. Hence the Nile was said to rise in India; Procopius, De Aedific., vi, 1, etc.
[778] Now Somaliland.
[779] Cosmas, op. cit., xi; cf. Strabo, XVI, iv, 14. When Nonnosus went to Axume, c. 330, he saw 5,000 elephants grazing in a vast plain; Excerpt., p. 480.
[780] Cosmas, op. cit., ii. This kind of wordless barter was also the mode of trading with the Serae or Chinese on the higher reaches of the Brahmaputra (?); Pliny, Hist. Nat., vi, 24; Ammianus, xxiii, 6; cf. Herodotus, iv, 196.
[781] Pliny, op. cit., xii, 30. This district was also called the land of Frankincense; cf. Strabo, XVI, iv, 25; Pseud-Arrian, op. cit., 29. There was also a port called Arabia Felix on or near the site of modern Aden.