■ft 
 
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THE HISTORY OF ROME 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF ROME 
 
 ( BY 
 
 THEODOR MOMMSEN 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION AND ADDITIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
 
 THE PROVINCES, FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN 
 
 PART II 
 
 WITH TWO MAPS BY PROFESSOR KIEPERT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 
 ^ubltisljtrs in ©ritnarg to |§er Majtstp tjjc €htmt 
 1886 
 
THE PROVINCES 
 
 OF THE 
 
 ROMAN EMPIRE 
 
 FROM CAESAR TO DIOCLETIAN 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODOR MOMMSEN 
 
 TRANSLATED 
 
 WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION AND ADDITIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM P. DICKSON, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
 
 VOL. II 
 
 WITH TWO MAPS BY PROFESSOR KIEPERT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 
 ^ublrafjers tit ©ritnarg to %er iWajcstg tfje ©ueen 
 1886 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK EIGHTH 
 
 THE PROVINCES AND PEOPLE, FROM CAESAR 
 TO DIOCLETIAN 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Euphrates Frontier and the Parthians i 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Syria and the Land of the Nabataeans . . 1 1 6 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Judaea and the Jews . . . .160 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Egypt 
 
 232 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The African Provinces . . . -303 
 
 Index 
 
 347 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 The only great state with which the Roman empire The em- 
 bordered was the empire of Iran, 1 based upon that plreofI^an, 
 nationality which was best known in antiquity, as it is 
 in the present day, under the name of the Persians, 
 consolidated politically by the old Persian royal family 
 of the Achaemenids and its first great-king Cyrus, united 
 religiously by the faith of Ahura Mazda and of Mithra. 
 No one of the ancient peoples of culture solved the 
 problem of national union equally early and with equal 
 completeness. The Iranian tribes reached on the south 
 as far as the Indian Ocean, on the north as far as the 
 Caspian Sea ; on the north-east the steppes of inland 
 Asia formed the constant battle-ground between the 
 settled Persians and the nomadic tribes of Turan. On 
 the east mighty mountains formed a boundary separating 
 them from the Indians. In western Asia three great 
 nations early encountered one another, each pushing 
 
 1 The conception that the Roman the Chiliarchs (vi. 15, comp. xviii. 
 
 and the Parthian empires were two 23, xix. 18). The closing catastrophe, 
 
 great states standing side by side, and too, is conceived as a subduing of the 
 
 indeed the only ones in existence, Romans by the Parthians bringing 
 
 dominated the whole Roman East, back the emperor Nero (ix. 14, xvi. 
 
 particularly the frontier - provinces. 12) and Armageddon, whatever may 
 
 It meets us palpably in the Apocalypse be meant by it, as the rendezvous of 
 
 of John, in which there is a juxta- the Orientals for the collective attack 
 
 position as well of the rider on the on the West. Certainly the author, 
 
 Uhite horse with the bow and of the writing in the Roman empire, hints 
 
 /rider on the red horse with the sword these far from patriotic hopes more 
 
 3' (vi. 2, 3) as of the Megistanes and than he expresses them. 
 
 VOL. II. I 
 
2 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 forward on its own account : the Hellenes, who from 
 Europe grasped at the coast of Asia Minor, the Arama- 
 ean peoples, who from Arabia and Syria advanced in a 
 northern and north-eastern direction and substantially- 
 filled the valley of the Euphrates, and lastly, the stocks 
 of Iran not merely inhabiting the country as far as the 
 Tigris, but even penetrating to Armenia and Cappadocia, 
 while primitive inhabitants of another type in these far- 
 extending regions succumbed under these leading powers 
 and disappeared. In the epoch of the Achaemenids, the 
 culminating point of the glory of Iran, the Iranian rule 
 went far beyond this wide domain proper to the stock 
 on all sides, but especially towards the west. Apart 
 from the times, when Turan gained the upper hand over 
 Iran and the Seljuks and Mongols ruled over the 
 Persians, foreign rule, strictly so called, has only been 
 established over the flower of the Iranian stocks twice, by 
 Alexander the Great and his immediate successors and 
 by the Arabian Abbasids, and on both occasions only 
 for a comparatively short time ; the eastern regions — in 
 the former case the Parthians, in the latter the inhabitants 
 of the ancient Bactria — not merely threw off again the 
 yoke of the foreigner, but dislodged him also from the 
 cognate west. 
 
 The rule of When the Romans in the last age of the republic 
 tWansT" came into immediate contact with Iran as a consequence 
 of the occupation of Syria, they found in existence the 
 Persian empire regenerated by the Parthians. We have 
 formerly had to make mention of this state on several 
 occasions ; this is the place to gather together the little 
 that can be ascertained regarding the peculiar character 
 of the empire, which so often exercised a decisive influence 
 on the destinies of the neighbouring state. Certainly to 
 most questions, which the historical inquirer has here to 
 put, tradition has no answer. The Occidentals give but 
 occasional notices, which may in their isolation easily 
 mislead us, concerning the internal condition of their 
 Parthian neighbours and foes ; and, if the Orientals 
 in general have hardly understood how to fix and to 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 3 
 
 preserve historical tradition, this holds doubly true of the 
 period of the Arsacids, seeing that it was by the later 
 Iranians regarded, together with the preceding foreign 
 rule of the Seleucids, as an unwarranted usurpation 
 between the periods of the old and the new Persian rule 
 — the Achaemenids and the Sassanids ; this period of five 
 hundred years is, so to speak, eliminated by way of 
 correction 1 from the history of Iran, and is as if non- 
 existent. 
 
 The standpoint, thus occupied by the court-historio- The Par 
 
 graphers of the Sassanid dynasty, is more the legitimist- sc^thkn 
 
 dynastic one of the Persian nobility than that of Iranian 
 
 nationality. No doubt the authors of the first imperial 
 
 epoch describe the language of the Parthians, whose 
 
 home corresponds nearly to the modern Chorasan, as 
 
 intermediate between the Median and the Scythian, that 
 
 is, as an impure Iranian dialect ; accordingly they were 
 
 regarded as immigrants from the land of the Scythians, 
 
 and in this sense their name is interpreted as "fugitive 
 
 people," while the founder of the dynasty, Arsaces, is 
 
 declared by some indeed to have been a Bactrian, but by 
 
 others a Scythian from the Maeotis. The fact that their 
 
 princes did not take up their residence in Seleucia on the 
 
 Tigris, but pitched their winter quarters in the immediate 
 
 neighbourhood at Ctesiphon, is traced to their wish not 
 
 to quarter Scythian troops in the rich mercantile city. 
 
 Much in the manners and arrangements of the Parthians 
 
 is alien from Iranian habits, and reminds us of the 
 
 customs of nomadic life; they transact business and eat 
 
 on horseback, and the free man never goes on foot. It 
 
 cannot well be doubted that the Parthians, whose name 
 
 alone of all the tribes of this region is not named in the 
 
 sacred books of the Persians, stand aloof from Iran 
 
 proper, in which the Achaemenids and the Magians are at 
 
 home. The antagonism of this Iran to the ruling family 
 
 springing from an uncivilised and half foreign district, 
 
 1 This holds true even in some the last Darius and the first Sassanid 
 
 measure for the chronology. The from 558 to 266 years (Noldeke, 
 
 official historiography of the Sas- Tabari, p. 1). 
 sanids reduces the space between 
 
4 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 and to its immediate followers — this antagonism, which 
 the Roman authors not unwillingly took over from their 
 Persian neighbours — certainly subsisted and fermented 
 throughout the whole rule of the Arsacids, till it at length 
 brought about their fall. But the rule of the Arsacids 
 may not on that account be conceived as a foreign rule. 
 No privileges were conceded to the Parthian stock and 
 to the Parthian province. It is true that the Parthian 
 town Hecatompylos is named as residence of the Arsacids ; 
 but they chiefly sojourned in summer at Ecbatana 
 (Hamadan), or else at Rhagae like the Achaemenids, in 
 winter, as already stated, in the camp-town of Ctesiphon, 
 or else in Babylon on the extreme western border of the 
 empire. The hereditary burial-place continued in the 
 Parthian town Nisaea ; but subsequently Arbela in 
 Assyria served for that purpose more frequently. The 
 poor and remote native province of the Parthians was in 
 no way suited for the luxurious court -life, and the 
 important relations to the West, especially of the later 
 Arsacids. The chief country continued even now to be 
 Media, just as under the Achaemenids. However the 
 Arsacids might be of Scythian descent, not so much 
 depended on what they were as on what they desired 
 to be ; and they regarded and professed themselves 
 throughout as the successors of Cyrus and of Darius. 
 As the seven Persian family -princes had set aside the 
 false Achaemenid, and had restored the legitimate rule 
 by the elevation of Darius, so needs must other seven 
 have overthrown the Macedonian foreign yoke and placed 
 king Arsaces on the throne. With this patriotic fiction 
 must further be connected the circumstance that a 
 Bactrian nativity instead of a Scythian was assigned to 
 the first Arsaces. The dress and the etiquette at the 
 court of the Arsacids were those of the Persian court ; 
 after king Mithradates I. had extended his rule to the 
 Indus and Tigris, the dynasty exchanged the simple title 
 of king for that of king of kings which the Achaemenids 
 had borne, and the pointed Scythian cap for the high 
 tiara adorned with pearls ; on the coins the king carries 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 the bow like Darius. The aristocracy, too, that came 
 into the land with the Arsacids and doubtless became in 
 many ways mixed with the old indigenous one, adopted 
 Persian manners and dress, mostly also Persian names ; of 
 the: Parthian army which fought with Crassus it is said that 
 the soldiers still wore their hair rough after the Scythian 
 fashion, but the general appeared after the Median manner 
 with the hair parted in the middle and with painted face. 
 
 The political organisation, as it was established by The regal 
 the first Mithradates, was accordingly in substance that office> 
 of the Achaemenids. The family of the founder of the 
 dynasty is invested with all the lustre and with all 
 the consecration of ancestral and divinely -ordained rule; 
 his name is transferred de jiwe to each of his successors 
 and divine honour is assigned to him ; his successors are 
 therefore called sons of God, 1 and besides brothers of the 
 sun -god and the moon -goddess, like the Shah of Persia 
 still at the present day ; to shed the blood of a member 
 of the royal family even by mere accident is a sacrilege 
 — all of them regulations, which with few abatements 
 recur among the Roman Caesars, and are perhaps borrowed 
 in part from those of the older great-monarchy. 
 
 Although the royal dignity was thus firmly attached Megis- 
 to the family, there yet subsisted a certain choice as to tanes ' 
 the king. As the new ruler had to belong as well to the 
 college of the "kinsmen of the royal house" as to the 
 council of priests, in order to be able to ascend the 
 throne, an act must have taken place, whereby, it may 
 be presumed, these same colleges themselves acknowledged 
 the new ruler. 2 By the " kinsmen " are doubtless to be 
 
 11 The viceroys of Persis are called 
 in their title constantly " Zag Alohin " 
 (at least the Aramaean signs corres- 
 pond to these words, which were 
 presumably in pronunciation expressed 
 in the Persian way), son of God 
 (Mordtmann, Zeitschrift fiir Numis- 
 matik, iv. 155 f.), and to this corres- 
 ponds the title deoir&rwp on the 
 Gr eek coins of the great-kings. The 
 designation " God " is also found, as 
 with the Seleucids and the Sassanids. 
 
 — Why a double diadem is attributed 
 to the Arsacids (Herodian, vi. 2, 1) 
 is not cleared up. 
 
 2 Taw Hapdvalwv avviBpibv <pt]dt.v 
 (HoaeidJivios) elvai, says Strabo, xi. 
 9, 3, p. 515, 8itt6i>, rb fxkv ovyyevwv, 
 rb 5Z ab<poov koX fj.dywv, e£ &v afMpoiv 
 roiis j3acri\ets KaOlaraadai (Ka9i<TT7]<nv 
 in MSS.) ; Justinus, xvii. 3, 1, 
 Mithridates rex Parthorum . . . 
 propter crudelitatem a senain Parthico 
 regno pellitur. 
 
6 
 
 THE E UPHRA TES ER ONTIER book viii. 
 
 understood not merely the Arsacids themselves, but the 
 " seven houses " of the Achaemenid organisation, princely 
 families, to which according to that arrangement equality 
 of rank and free access to the great-king belonged, and 
 which must have had similar privileges under the Arsacids. 1 
 These families were at the same time holders of hereditary 
 crown offices, 2 e.g. the Suren — the name is like the name 
 Arsaces, a designation at once of person and of office — 
 the second family after the royal house, as crown-masters, 
 placed on each occasion the tiara on the head of the new 
 Arsaces. But as the Arsacids themselves belonged to 
 the Parthian province, so the Suren were at home in 
 Sacastane (Seistan) and perhaps Sacae, thus Scythians ; 
 the Caren likewise descended from western Media, while 
 the highest aristocracy under the Achaemenids was 
 purely Persian. 
 
 Satraps. The administration lay in the hands of the under- 
 kings or satraps ; according to the Roman biographers 
 of Vespasian's time the state of the Parthians consisted 
 of eighteen " kingdoms." Some of these satrapies were 
 appanages of a second son of the ruling house ; in 
 particular the two north-western provinces, the Atro- 
 patenian Media (Aderbijan) and Armenia, so far as it 
 was in the power of the Parthians, appear to have been 
 entrusted for administration to the prince standing next 
 to the ruler for the time. 3 We may add that prominent 
 
 1 In Egypt, whose court ceremonial, not invite the megistanes to table 
 
 as doubtless that of all the states of the (Suetonius, Gai. 5) suggests the con- 
 
 Diadochi, is based on that ordained by jecture that they had the privilege 
 
 Alexander, and in so far upon that of of taking meals with him. The title 
 
 the Persian empire, the like title seems rQiv irpibruiv <f>Lkuv is also found 
 
 to have been conferred also personally among the Arsacids just as at the 
 
 (Franz, C. I. Gr. iii. 270). That Egyptian and Pontic courts {Bull, de 
 
 the same occurred with the Arsacids, corr. Hell. vii. p. 349). 
 
 is possible. Among the Greek-speak- 2 A royal cup-bearer, who is at 
 
 ing subjects of the Arsacid state the the same time general, is mentioned 
 
 appellation fieyiaraves seems in the in Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 7 = Bell. 
 
 original stricter use to denote the Jud. i. 13, I. Similar court offices are 
 
 members of the seven houses ; it is of frequent occurrence in the states 
 
 worthy of notice that megistanes and of the Diadochi. 
 
 satrapae are associated (Seneca, Ep. 3 Tacitus, Ann. xv. 2, 31. If, 
 
 21 ; Josephus, Aixh. xi. 3, 2 ; xx. according to the preface of Agath- 
 
 2, 3). The circumstance that in angelos (p. 109, Langlois), at the 
 
 court mourning the Persian king does time of the Arsacids the oldest and 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIAN S. 
 
 7 
 
 among the satraps were the king of the province of 
 Elymais or of Susa, to whom was conceded a specially 
 powerful and exceptional position, and next to him the 
 king of Persis, the ancestral land of the Achaemenids. 
 The form of administration, if not exclusive, yet prepon- 
 derant and conditioning the title, was in the Parthian 
 empire — otherwise than in the case, of the Caesars — that 
 of vassal - kingdom, so that the satraps entered by 
 hereditary right, but were subject to confirmation by the 
 great -king. 1 To all appearance this continued down- 
 wards, so that smaller dynasts and family chiefs stood 
 in the same relation to the under -kings as the latter 
 occupied to the great -king. 2 Thus the office of great- 
 king among the Parthians was limited to the utmost in 
 favour of the high aristocracy by the accompanying 
 subdivision of the hereditary administration of the land. 
 With this it is quite in keeping, that the mass of the 
 population consisted of persons half or wholly non-free, 3 
 and emancipation was not allowable. In the army 
 which fought against Antonius there are said to have 
 been only 400 free among 50,000. The chief among 
 the vassals of Orodes, who as his general defeated 
 
 ablest prince bore rule over the of horsemen " for these viceroys may 
 
 country, and the three standing next relate to the fact that they, like the 
 
 to him were kings of the Armenians, Roman governors, united in them- 
 
 of the Indians, and of the Massagetae, selves the highest civil and the 
 
 there is here perhaps at bottom the supreme military power, and the 
 
 same arrangement. That the Partho- army of the Parthians consisted pre- 
 
 Indian empire, if it was combined ponderantly of cavalry, 
 with the main land, was likewise re- 2 This we learn from the title 
 
 garded as an appanage for the second uarpaTr^ tQv oaTpairuv, attributed to 
 
 son, is very probable. one Gotarzes in the inscription of 
 
 1 These are doubtless meant by Kermanschahan in Kurdistan (C. I. 
 
 Justinus (xli. 2, 2), proximus maiestati Gr. 4674). It cannot be assigned 
 
 regum praeposilorum ordo est ; ex hoc to the Arsacid king of the same 
 
 duces i?i bello, ex hoc in pace rectores name as such ; but perhaps there 
 
 habent. The native name is preserved may be designated by it, as Olshausen 
 
 by the gloss in Hesychius, /3£<rra£ 6 (Monaisberickt der Berliner A kademie, 
 
 /3acri\e!)s 7rapa Ilip<rais. If in Am- 1878, p. 1 79) conjectures, that posi- 
 
 mianus, xxiii. 6, 14, the presidents of tion which belonged to him after 
 
 the Persian regiones are called vitaxae his renouncing of the great -kingdom 
 
 (x&zdLvistaxae),idestmagistrieqicitum (Tacitus, Ann. xi. 9). 
 et reges et satrapae, he has awkwardly 3 Still later a troop of horse in the 
 
 referred what is Persian to all Inner Parthian army is called that "of the 
 
 Asia (comp. Hermes, xvi. 613); we free:" Josephus, Arch. xiv. 13, 5 = 
 
 may add that the designation "leaders Bell. Jud. i. 13, 3. 
 
8 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Crassus, marched to the field with a harem of 200 
 wives and a baggage train of 1 000 sumpter-camels ; he 
 himself furnished to the army 10,000 horsemen from his 
 clients and slaves. The Parthians never had a standing 
 army, but at all times the waging of war here was left 
 to depend on the general levy of the vassal-princes and 
 of the vassals subordinate to these, as well as of the 
 great mass of the non-free over whom these bore sway. 
 The Greek Certainly the urban element was not quite wanting 
 the Par- m trie political organisation of the Parthian empire. It 
 thian em- i s true that the larger townships, which arose out of the 
 distinctive development of the East, were not urban 
 commonwealths, as indeed even the Parthian royal 
 residence, Ctesiphon, is named in contrast to the neigh- 
 bouring Greek foundation of Seleucia a village ; they 
 had no presidents of their own and no common council, 
 and the administration lay here, as in the country districts, 
 exclusively with the royal officials. But a portion — 
 comparatively small, it is true — of the foundations of the 
 Greek rulers had come under Parthian rule. In the 
 provinces of Mesopotamia and Babylonia by nationality 
 Aramaean the Greek town -system had gained a firm 
 footing under Alexander and his successors. Meso- 
 potamia was covered with Greek commonwealths ; and 
 in Babylonia, the successor of the ancient Babylon, the 
 precursor of Bagdad, and for a time the residence of the 
 Greek kings of Asia — Seleucia on the Tigris — had by its 
 favourable commercial position and its manufactures 
 risen to be the first mercantile city beyond the 
 Roman bounds, with more, it is alleged, than half a 
 million of inhabitants. Its free Hellenic organisation, on 
 which beyond doubt its prosperity above all depended, 
 was not touched even by the Parthian rulers in their 
 own interest, and the city preserved not merely its town 
 council of 300 elected members, but also the Greek 
 language and Greek habits amidst the non- Greek East. 
 It is true that the Hellenes in these towns formed only 
 the dominant element ; alongside of them lived numerous 
 Syrians, and, as a third constituent, there were associated 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 9 
 
 with these the not much less numerous Jews, so that the 
 population of these Greek towns of the Parthian empire, 
 just like that of Alexandria, was composed of three 
 separate nationalities standing side by side. Between 
 these, just as in Alexandria, conflicts not seldom occurred, 
 15 e.g. at the time of the reign of Gaius under the eyes 
 bf the Parthian government the three nations came to 
 blows, and ultimately the Jews were driven out of the 
 larger towns. 
 
 In so far the Parthian empire was the genuine coun- 
 terpart to the Roman. As in the one the Oriental vice- 
 royship is an exceptional occurrence, so in the other is 
 the Greek city; the general Oriental aristocratic character 
 of the Parthian government is as little injuriously affected 
 by the Greek mercantile towns on the west coast as is the 
 civic organisation of the Roman state by the vassal king- 
 doms of Cappadocia and Armenia. While in the state of 
 the Caesars the Romano -Greek urban commonwealth 
 spreads more and more, and gradually becomes the 
 general form of administration, the foundation of towns — 
 the true mark of Helleno- Roman civilisation, which 
 embraces the Greek mercantile cities and the military 
 colonies of Rome as well as the grand settlements of 
 Alexander and the Alexandrids — suddenly breaks off 
 with the emergence of the Parthian government in the 
 East, and even the existing Greek cities of the Parthian 
 empire wane in the further course of development. 
 There, as here, the rule more and more prevails over the 
 exceptions. 
 
 The religion of Iran with its worship — approximating Religion, 
 to monotheism — of the " highest of the gods, who has 
 made heaven and earth and men and for these everything 
 good," with its absence of images and its spirituality, with 
 its stern morality and truthfulness, with its influence upon 
 practical activity and energetic conduct of life, laid hold 
 of the minds of its confessors in quite another and deeper 
 way than the religions of the West ever could ; and, while 
 neither Zeus nor Jupiter maintained their ground in pre- 
 sence of a developed civilisation, the faith among the 
 
io THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 Parsees remained ever young till it succumbed to another 
 gospel — that of the confessors of Mohammed — or at any 
 rate retreated before it to India. It is not our task to 
 set forth how the old Mazda-faith, which the Achaemenids 
 professed, and the origin of which falls in prehistoric time, 
 was related to that which the sacred books of the Persians 
 having their origin probably under the later Achaemenids 
 — the Avesta — announce as the doctrine of the wise Zara- 
 thustra ; for the epoch, when the West is placed in con- 
 tact with the East, only the later form of religion comes 
 under consideration. That the Avesta took shape, not in 
 the east of Iran, in Bactria, but probably in Media, may 
 be regarded as an assured result of recent investigation. 
 But the national religion and the national state were 
 bound up with one another in Iran more closely than 
 even among the Celts. It has already been noticed that 
 the legitimate kingship in Iran was at the same time a 
 religious institution, that the supreme ruler of the land 
 was conceived as specially called to the government by 
 the supreme deity of the land, and even in some measure 
 divine. On the coins of a national type there appears 
 regularly the great fire -altar, and hovering over it the 
 winged god Ahura Mazda, alongside of him in lesser 
 size, and in an attitude of prayer, the king, and over- 
 against the king the imperial banner. In keeping 
 with this, the ascendency of the nobility in the Par- 
 thian empire goes hand in hand with the privileged 
 position of the clergy. The priests of this religion, the 
 Magians, appear already in the documents of the Achae- 
 menids and in the narratives of Herodotus, and have, 
 probably with right, always been regarded by the Occi- 
 dentals as a national Persian institution. The priesthood 
 was hereditary, and at least in Media, presumably also in 
 other provinces, the collective body of the priests was 
 accounted, somewhat like the Levites in the later Israel, 
 as a separate portion of the people. Even under the rule 
 of the Greeks the old religion of the state and the national 
 priesthood maintained their place. When the first Seleucus 
 wished to found the new capital of his empire, the already 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 mentioned Seleucia, he caused the Magians to fix day 
 and hour for it, and it was only after those Persians, not 
 very willingly, had cast the desired horoscope, that the 
 king and his army, in accordance with their indication, 
 accomplished the solemn laying of the foundation-stone 
 of the new Greek city. Thus by his side stood the priests 
 of Ahura Mazda as counsellors, and they, not those of the 
 Hellenic Olympus, were interrogated in public affairs, so 
 far as these concerned divine things. As a matter of 
 course this was all the more the case with the Arsacids. 
 We have already observed that in the election of king, 
 along with the council of the nobility, that of the priests 
 took part. King Tiridates of Armenia, of the house of the 
 Arsacids, came to Rome attended by a train of Magians, 
 and travelled and took food according to their directions, 
 even in company with the emperor Nero, who gladly 
 allowed the foreign wise men to preach their doctrine 
 and to conjure spirits for him. From this certainly it 
 does not follow that the priestly order as such exercised 
 an essentially determining influence on the management 
 of the state ; but the Mazda -faith was by no means 
 re-established only by the Sassanids ; on the contrary, 
 amidst all change of dynasties, and amidst all its own 
 development, the religion of the land of Iran remained in 
 its outline the same. 
 
 The language of the land in the Parthian empire was Language, 
 the native language of Iran. There is no trace pointing 
 to any foreign language having ever been in public use 
 under the Arsacids. On the contrary, it is the Iranian 
 land-dialect of Babylonia and the writing peculiar to this — 
 as both were developed before, and in, the Arsacid period 
 under the influence of the language and writing of the 
 Aramaean neighbours — which are covered by the appella- 
 tion Pahlavi, i.e. Parthava, and thereby designated as 
 those of the empire of the Parthians. Even Greek did 
 not become an imperial language there. None of the 
 rulers bear even as a second name a Greek one ; and, 
 had the Arsacids made this language their own, we should 
 not have failed to find Greek inscriptions in their empire. 
 
THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Extent of 
 the Par- 
 thian em- 
 pire. 
 
 Certainly their coins show down to the time of Claudius 
 exclusively, 1 and predominantly even later, Greek legends, 
 as they show also no trace of the religion of the land, and 
 in standard attach themselves to the local coinage of 
 the Roman east provinces, while they retain the division 
 of the year as well as the reckoning by years just as these 
 had been regulated under the Seleucids. But this must 
 rather be taken as meaning that the great-kings them- 
 selves did not coin at all, 2 and these coins, which in fact 
 served essentially for intercourse with the western neigh- 
 bours, were struck by the Greek towns of the empire in 
 the name of the sovereign. The designation of the king 
 on these coins as "friend of Greeks" (<pi\eX\7)v), which 
 already meets us early, 3 and is constant from the time of 
 Mithradates I., i.e. from the extension of the state as 
 far as the Tigris, has a meaning only, if it is the Parthian 
 Greek city that is speaking on these coins. It may be con- 
 jectured that a secondary position was conceded in public 
 use to the Greek language in the Parthian empire along- 
 side of the Persian, similar to that which it possessed in 
 the Roman state by the side of Latin. The gradual dis- 
 appearance of Hellenism under the Parthian rule may be 
 clearly followed on these urban coins, as well in the 
 emergence of the native language alongside and instead 
 of the Greek, as in the debasement of language which 
 becomes more and more prominent. 4 
 
 As to extent the kingdom of the Arsacids was far 
 inferior, not merely to the great state of the Achaemenids, 
 
 1 The oldest known coin with Pah- 
 lavi writing was struck in Claudius's 
 time under Vologasus I. ; it is bilin- 
 gual, and gives to the king in Greek 
 his filll title, but only the name 
 Arsaces, in Iranian merely the native 
 individual name shortened [Vol.). 
 
 2 Usually this is restricted to the 
 large silver money, and the small 
 silver and most of the copper are 
 regarded as of royal coinage. But 
 by this view a singular secondary 
 part in coinage is assigned to the 
 great - king. ■ More correctly perhaps 
 the former coinage is conceived of as 
 
 predominantly destined for dealings 
 abroad, the latter as predominantly 
 for internal intercourse ; the diversi- 
 ties subsisting between the two kinds 
 are also explained in this way. 
 • 3 The first ruler that bears it is 
 Phraapates about 188 B.C. (Percy 
 Gardner, Parthian Coinage, p. 27). 
 
 4 Thus there stands on the coins 
 of Gotarzes (under Claudius) TwTtpfys 
 fiaaiXevs fiaaikiuv vbs KeKaXovfxdpos 
 'Apraj3dvov. On the later ones the 
 Greek legend is often quite unin- 
 telligible. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 13 
 
 but also to that of their immediate predecessors, the state 
 of the Seleucids. Of its original territory they possessed 
 only the larger eastern half ; after the battle with the 
 Parthians, in which king Antiochus Sidetes, a contem- 
 porary of the Gracchi, fell, the Syrian kings did not 
 again seriously attempt to assert their rule beyond the 
 Euphrates ; but the country on this side of the Euphrates 
 remained with the Occidentals. 
 
 Both coasts of the Persian Gulf, even the Arabian, Arabia, 
 were in possession of the Parthians, and the navigation 
 was thus completely in their power ; the rest of the 
 Arabian peninsula did not obey either the Parthians or 
 the Romans ruling over Egypt. 
 
 To describe the struggle of the nations for the posses- The region 
 sion of the Indus valley, and of the regions bordering on ^J he In " 
 it, to the west and east, so far as the wholly fragmentary 
 tradition allows of a description at all, is not the task of 
 our survey ; but the main lines of this struggle, which 
 constantly goes by the side of that waged for the 
 Euphrates valley, may the less be omitted in this con- 
 nection, as our tradition does not allow us to follow out 
 in detail the circumstances of Iran to the east in their 
 influence on western relations, and it hence appears neces- 
 sary at least to realise for ourselves its outlines. Soon 
 after the death of Alexander the Great, the boundary 
 between Iran and India was drawn by the agreement of 
 his marshal and coheir Seleucus with Chandragupta, or in 
 Greek Sandracottos, the founder of the empire of the 
 Indians. According to this the latter ruled not merely 
 over the Ganges -valley in all its extent and the whole 
 north-west of India, but in the region of the Indus, at least 
 over a part of the upland valley of what is now Cabul, 
 further over Arachosia or Afghanistan, presumably also 
 over the waste and arid Gedrosia, the modern Beloo- 
 chistan, as well as over the delta and mouths of the 
 Indus ; the documents hewn in stone, by which Chan- 
 dragupta's grandson, the orthodox Buddha - worshipper 
 Asoka, inculcated the general moral law on his subjects, 
 have been found, as in all this widely extended domain, 
 
14 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Bactro-In- 
 dian em- 
 pire. 
 
 Indo-Scy- 
 thians. 
 
 so particularly in the region of Peshawur. 1 The Hindoo 
 Koosh, the Parapanisus of the ancients, and its continua- 
 tion to the east and west, thus separated with their mighty 
 chain — pierced only by few passes — Iran and Indu. But 
 this agreement did not long subsist. 
 
 In the earlier period of the Diadochi the Greet rulers 
 of the kingdom of Bactra, which took a mighty impulse 
 on its breaking off from the Seleucid state, crossed the 
 frontier -mountains, brought a considerable part of the 
 Indus valley into their power, and perhaps established 
 themselves still farther inland in Hindostan, so that the 
 centre of gravity of this empire was shifted from vestern 
 Iran to eastern India, and Hellenism gave way to an 
 Indian type. The kings of this empire were called Indian, 
 and bore subsequently non-Greek names ; on the coins 
 the native Indian language and writing appear by the side, 
 and instead, of the Greek, just as in the Partho-Persian 
 coinage the Pahlavi comes up alongside of the Greek. 
 
 Then one nation more entered into the arena ; the 
 Scythians, or, as they were called in Iran and India, the 
 Sacae, broke off from their ancestral settlements Dn the 
 Jaxartes and crossed the mountains southward. The 
 Bactrian province came at least in great part into their 
 power, and at some time in the last century of the Roman 
 republic they must have established themselves in the 
 
 1 While the kingdom of Darius, 
 according to his inscriptions, includes 
 in it the Gadara (the Gandhara of 
 the Indians, Yav dapiris of the Greeks 
 on the Cabul river) and the Hidu 
 (the dwellers by the Indus), the 
 former are in one of the inscriptions 
 of Asoka adduced among his subjects, 
 and a copy of his great edict has been 
 found in Kapurdi Giri, or rather in 
 Shahbaz Garhi (Yusufzai- district), 
 nearly 27 miles north-west of the 
 point where the Cabul river falls into 
 the Indus at Attock. The seat of 
 the government of these north-west 
 provinces of Asoka's kingdom was 
 (according to the inscription C. I. 
 Indicar. i. p. 91) Takkhasila, TdftAa 
 of the Greeks, some 40 miles E.S.E. 
 
 of Attock, the seat of government for 
 the south-western provinces was Ujjeni 
 ('Otfvn). The eastern pait of the 
 Cabul valley thus belonged al any rate 
 to Asoka's empire. It is not quite im- 
 possible that the Khyber pas; formed 
 the boundary ; but probably the whole 
 Cabul valley belonged to India, and 
 the boundary to the south of Cabul 
 was formed by the sharp line of the 
 Suleiman range, and farther to the 
 south-west by the Bolan pass. Of 
 the later Indo-Scythian king Huvishka 
 (Ooerke of the coins), who seems to 
 have resided on the Yamuna in 
 Mathura, an inscription lias been 
 found at Wardak not far northward 
 from Cabul (according to information 
 from Oldenberg). 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 modern Afghanistan and Beloochistan. On that account 
 in the early imperial period the coast on both sides of the 
 mouth of the Indus about Minnagara is called Scythian, 
 and in the interior the district of the Drangae lying to the 
 west of Candahar bears subsequently the name " land of 
 the Sacae," Sacastane, the modern Seistan. This immi- 
 gration of the Scythians into the provinces of the Bactro- 
 Indian empire doubtless restricted and injured it, some- 
 what as the Roman empire was affected by the first 
 migrations of the Germans, but did not destroy it ; under 
 Vespasian there still subsisted a probably independent 
 Bactrian state. 1 
 
 Under the Julian and Claudian emperors the Parthians Partho- 
 seem to have been the leading power at the mouth of the Indian enN 
 Indus. A trustworthy reporter from the Augustan age ^ 
 specifies that same Sacastane among the Parthian pro- 
 vinces, and calls the king of the Saco- Scythians an 
 under-king of the Arsacids ; as the last Parthian province 
 towards the east he designates Arachosia with the capital 
 Alexandropolis, probably Candahar. Soon afterwards, 
 indeed, in Vespasian's time, Parthian princes rule in Min- 
 nagara. This, however, was for the empire on the river 
 Indus more a change of dynasty than an annexation 
 proper to the state of Ctesiphon. The Parthian prince 
 Gondopharus, whom the Christian legend connects with St. 
 Thomas, the apostle of the Parthians and Indians, 2 certainly 
 ruled from Minnagara as far up as Peshawur and Cabul ; 
 but these rulers use, like their superiors in the Indian 
 empire, the Indian language alongside of the Greek, and 
 name themselves great-kings like those of Ctesiphon ; they 
 appear to have been not the less rivals to the Arsacids, 
 on account of their belonging to the same princely house.* 
 
 _ 1 The Egyptian merchant named 2 p ro bably he is the Kaspar— in 
 
 in note 3 makes mention, c. 47, of older tradition Gathaspar— who ap- 
 
 " the warlike people of the Bactrians, pears among the holy three kings 
 
 who have their own king." At that from the East (Gutschmid, Rhein. 
 
 time, therefore, Bactna was separated Mus. xix. 162). 
 
 from the Indus-empire that was under 3 The most definite testimony to 
 
 Parthian princes. Strabo, too (xi. the Parthian rule in these regions is 
 
 1 1, 1, p. 516) treats the Bactro-Indian found in the description of the coasts 
 
 empire as belonging to the past. of the Red Sea drawn up by an 
 
i6 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Empire of 
 the Sacae 
 on the 
 Indus. 
 
 This Parthian dynasty was then followed in the 
 Indian empire after a short interval by what is designated 
 in Indian tradition as that of the Sacae or that of king 
 Kanerku or Kanishka, which begins with 78 A.D. and 
 subsisted at least down to the third century. 1 They 
 
 Egyptian merchant under Vespasian, 
 c. 38: "Behind the mouth of the 
 Indus in the interior lies the capital 
 of Scythia Minnagara ; but this is 
 ruled by the Parthians, who con- 
 stantly chase away one another " (ford 
 Tldpduv ffwexws dWiffKovs £v5iwk6v- 
 ruv). The same is repeated in a 
 somewhat confused way, c. 41 ; it 
 might here appear as if Minnagara 
 lay in India itself above Barygaza, 
 and Ptolemy has already been led 
 astray by this ; but certainly the 
 writer, who speaks as to the interior 
 only from hearsay, has only wished to 
 say that a large town Minnagara lay in- 
 land not far from Barygaza, and much 
 cotton was brought thence to Barygaza. 
 The numerous traces also of Alexan- 
 der, which occur according to the same 
 authority in Minnagara, can be found 
 only on the Indus, not in Gujerat. 
 The position of Minnagara on the 
 lower Indus not far from Hyderabad, 
 and the existence of a Parthian rule 
 there under Vespasian, appear hereby 
 assured. — With this we may be 
 allowed to combine the coins of king 
 Gondopharus or Hyndopherres, who 
 in a very old Christian legend is con- 
 verted to Christianity by St. Thomas, 
 the apostle of the Parthians and In- 
 dians, and in fact appears to belong 
 to the first period of the Roman em- 
 pire (Sallet, Num. Zeitschr. vi. 355 ; 
 Gutschmid, Rhein. Mus. xix. 162); 
 of his brother's son Abdagases (Sallet, 
 ib. p. 365), who may be identical 
 with the Parthian prince of this name 
 in Tacitus, Ann. vi. 36, at any rate 
 bears a Parthian name ; and lastly 
 of king Sanabarus, who must have 
 reigned shortly after Hyndopherres, 
 perhaps was his successor. Here 
 belongs also a number of other coins 
 marked with Parthian names, Arsaces, 
 Pacorus, Vonones. This coinage 
 attaches itself decidedly to that of 
 
 the Arsacids (Sallet, ib. p. 277) ; the 
 silver pieces of Gondopharus and of 
 Sanabarus — of the others the coins 
 are almost solely copper — correspond 
 exactly to the Arsacid drachmae. 
 To all appearance these belong to the 
 Parthian princes of Minnagara ; the 
 appearance here of Indian legend 
 alongside of the Greek, as of Pahlavi 
 writing among the late Arsacids, suits 
 this view. These, however, are not 
 coins of satraps, but, as the Egypt- 
 ian indicates, of great -kings rival- 
 ling those of Ctesiphon ; Hyndo- 
 pherres names himself in very corrupt 
 Greek paaikeiis ^aaCKewv fiiyas avro- 
 Kparwp, and in good Indian " Maha- 
 rajah Rajadi Rajah." If, as is not 
 improbable, under the Mambaros or 
 Akabaros, whom the Periplus, c. 41, 
 52, designates as ruler of the coast of 
 Barygaza, there lurks the Sanabarus 
 of the coins, the latter belongs to the 
 time of Nero or Vespasian, and ruled 
 not merely at the mouths of the Indus, 
 but also over Gujerat. Moreover, if 
 an inscription found not far from 
 Peshawur is rightly referred to king 
 Gondopharus, his rule must have 
 extended up thither, probably as far 
 as Cabul. — The fact that Corbulo in 
 the year 60 sent the embassy of the 
 Hyrcanians who had revolted from the 
 Parthians — in order that they might 
 not be intercepted by the latter — to 
 the coast of the Red Sea, whence they 
 might reach their home without set- 
 ting foot on Parthian territory (Taci- 
 tus, Ann. xv. 25), tells in favour of 
 the view that the Indus valley at that 
 time was not subject to the ruler of 
 Ctesiphon. 
 
 1 That the great kingdom of the 
 Arsacids of Minnagara did not subsist 
 much beyond the time of Nero, is 
 probable from the coins. It is ques- 
 tionable what rulers followed them. 
 The Bactro - Indian rulers of Greek 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 17 
 
 belong to the Scythians, whose immigration was formerly 
 mentioned, and on their coins the Scythian language 
 takes the place of the Indian. 1 Thus in the region of 
 the Indus, after the Indians and the Hellenes, Parthians 
 and Scythians bore sway in the first three centuries of our 
 era. But even under the foreign dynasties a national 
 Indian type of state was established and held its ground, 
 and opposed a not less permanent barrier to the develop- 
 ment of the Partho-Persian power in the East than did 
 the Roman state in the West. 
 
 Towards the north and north-east Iran bordered with Asiatic 
 Turan. As the western and southern shores of the Cas- Sc y thi ans. 
 pian Sea and the upper valleys of the Oxus and Jaxartes 
 offered an appropriate seat for civilisation, so the steppe 
 round the Sea of Aral and the extensive plain stretching 
 behind it belonged by right to the roving peoples. There 
 were among those nomads probably individual tribes 
 names belong predominantly, perhaps latest of their coins show the in- 
 fluence of the oldest Sassanid coinage, 
 and might belong to the second half 
 of the third century (Sallet, Zeitschr. 
 fiir Num. vi. 224). 
 
 1 The Indo-Greek and the Indo- 
 Parthian rulers, just as the Kadphises, 
 make use on their coins to a large 
 extent of the indigenous Indian lan- 
 guage and writing alongside of the 
 Sacian kings on the 
 
 all of them, to the pre -Augustan 
 epoch ; and various indigenous names, 
 e.g. Maues and Azes, fall in point of 
 language and writing {e.g. the form of 
 the w fl) before this time. On the 
 other hand the coins of the kings 
 Kozulokadphises and Oemokadphises, 
 and those of the Sacian kings, Kan- 
 erku and his successors, while all are 
 clearly characterised as belonging to 
 one coinage by the gold stater of the 
 weight of the Roman aureus, which 
 does not previously occur in the In- 
 dian coinage, are to all appearance 
 later than Gondopharus and Sana- 
 barus. They show how the state of 
 the Indus valley assumed a national 
 Indian type in ever increasing mea- 
 sure in contrast to the Hellenes as 
 well as to the Iranians. The reign 
 of these Kadphises will thus fall be- 
 tween the Indo- Parthian rulers and 
 the dynasty of the Sacae, which latter 
 begins with a.d. 78 (Oldenberg, in 
 Sallet's Zeitschr. fiir Num. viii. 292). 
 Coins of these Sacian kings, found in 
 the treasure of Peshawur, name in 
 a remarkable way Greek gods in a 
 mutilated form, Hpa/a\o,2ap<x7ro,along- 
 side of the national Bovdo. The 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Greek : the 
 
 other hand never used the Indian 
 language and Indian alphabet, but 
 employ exclusively the Greek letters, 
 and the non-Greek legends of their 
 coins are beyond doubt Scythian. 
 Thus on Kanerku's gold pieces there 
 sometimes stands pacnXevs (SaiTikiwv 
 Kav-rjpKov, sometimes pao vavopao 
 KavjfpKL Kopavo, where the first two 
 words must be a Scythian form of the 
 Indian Rajadi Rajah, and the two 
 following contain the personal and 
 the family name (Gushana) of the 
 king (Oldenberg, I.e. p. 294). Thus 
 these Sacae were foreign rulers in 
 India in another sense than the 
 Bactrian Hellenes and the Parthians. 
 Yet the inscriptions set up under 
 them in India are not Scythian but 
 Indian. 
 
1 8 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 kindred to the Iranians ; but these have no part in the 
 Iranian civilisation, and it is this element which determines 
 the historical position of Iran, that it forms the bulwark 
 of the peoples of culture against those hordes, who, as 
 Scythians, Sacae, Huns, Mongols, Turks, appear to have 
 no other destiny in the world's history than that of anni- 
 hilating culture. Bactria, the great bulwark of Iran 
 against Turan, sufficed for this defence during a con- 
 siderable time under its Greek rulers in the epoch after 
 Alexander ; but we have already mentioned that subse- 
 quently, although it did not perish, it no longer availed to 
 prevent the Scythians from pressing onward towards the 
 south. With the decay of the Bactrian power the same 
 task was transferred to the Arsacids. How far they 
 responded to it it is difficult to say. In the first period of 
 the empire the great -kings of Ctesiphon seem to have 
 driven back the Scythians or to have brought them into 
 subjection in the northern provinces as well as to the 
 south of the Hindoo Koosh ; they wrested from them 
 again a portion of the Bactrian territory. But it is doubt- 
 ful what limits were here fixed, and whether they were at 
 all lasting. There is frequent mention of wars between 
 the Parthians and Scythians. The latter, here in the first 
 instance dwellers around the Sea of Aral, the forefathers 
 of the modern Turkomans, are regularly the aggressors, 
 inasmuch as they partly by crossing over the Caspian 
 Sea invade the valleys of the Cyrus and the Araxes, 
 partly issuing from their steppes pillage the rich plains of 
 Hyrcania and the fertile oasis of Margiana (Merv). The 
 border -regions agreed to buy off the levy of arbitrary 
 contributions by tributes, which were regularly called up 
 at fixed terms, just as at present the Bedouins of Syria 
 levy the kubba from the farmers there. The Parthian 
 government thus, at least in the earlier imperial period, 
 was as little able as the Turkish government of the present 
 day to secure here to the peaceful subject the fruits of his 
 toil, and to establish a durable state of peace on the fron- 
 tier. Even for the imperial power itself these border- 
 troubles remained an open sore ; often they exercised an 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 19 
 
 influence on the wars of succession of the Arsacids as well 
 as on their disputes with Rome. 
 
 We have set forth in its due place how the attitude 
 of the Parthians to the Romans came to be shaped and 
 the boundaries of the two great powers to be established. 
 While the Armenians had been rivals of the Parthians, 
 and the kingdom on the Araxes set itself to play the 
 part of great-king in anterior Asia, the Parthians had in 
 general maintained friendly relations with the Romans 
 as the foes of their foes. But, after the overthrow of 
 Mithradates and Tigranes, the Romans had, particularly 
 through the arrangements made by Pompeius, taken up 
 a position which was hardly compatible with serious and 
 lasting peace between the two states. In the south 
 Syria was not under direct Roman rule, and the Roman 
 legions kept guard on the margin of the great desert 
 which separates the lands of the coast from the valley of 
 the Euphrates. In the north Cappadocia and Armenia 
 were vassal-principalities of Rome. The tribes bordering 
 on Armenia to the northward, the Colchians, Iberians, 
 Albanians, were thereby necessarily withdrawn from 
 Parthian influence, and were, at least according to the 
 Roman way of apprehending the matter, likewise Roman 
 dependencies. The lesser Media or Atropatene (Ader- 
 bijan), adjoining Armenia to the south-east, and separated 
 from it by the Araxes, had already confronted the 
 Seleucids with its ancient native dynasty reaching back 
 to the time of the Achaemenids, and had even asserted 
 its independence ; under the Arsacids the king of this 
 region appears, according to circumstances, as a vassal 
 of the Parthians or as independent of these by leaning 
 on the Romans. The determining influence of Rome 
 consequently reached as far as the Caucasus and the 
 western shore of the Caspian Sea. This involved an 
 overlapping of the limits indicated by the national 
 relations. The Hellenic nationality had doubtless so 
 far gained a footing on the south coast of the Black 
 Sea and in the interior of Cappadocia and Commagene, 
 that here the Roman ascendency found in it a base of 
 
20 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 support; but Armenia, even under the long years of 
 Roman rule, remained always a non- Greek land, knit 
 to the Parthian state with indestructible ties, by community 
 of language and of faith, the numerous intermarriages of 
 people of rank, and similarity of dress and of armour. 1 The 
 Roman levy and the Roman taxation were never extended 
 to Armenia ; at most the land defrayed the raising and 
 the maintenance of its own troops, and the provisioning 
 of the Roman troops stationed there. The Armenian 
 merchants formed the channel for the exchange of goods 
 over the Caucasus with Scythia, over the Caspian Sea 
 with east Asia and China, down the Tigris with Babylonia 
 and India, towards the west with Cappadocia ; nothing 
 would have been more natural than to include the 
 politically dependent land in the domain of Roman 
 tribute and customs ; yet this step was never taken. 
 
 The incongruity between the national and the political 
 connections of Armenia forms an essential element in the 
 conflict — prolonged through the whole imperial period — 
 with its eastern neighbour. It was discerned doubtless 
 on the Roman side that annexation beyond the Euphrates 
 was an encroachment on the family-domain of Oriental 
 nationality, and was not any increase proper of power 
 for Rome. But the ground or, if the phrase be preferred, 
 the excuse for the continuance of such encroachment 
 lay in the fact that the subsistence side by side of great 
 states with equal rights was incompatible with the system 
 of Roman policy, we may even say with the policy of 
 antiquity in general. The Roman empire knew as limit, 
 in the strict sense, only the sea or a land -district un- 
 armed. To the weaker but yet warlike commonwealth 
 of the Parthians the Romans always grudged a position 
 of power, and took away from it what these in their turn 
 
 1 Arrian, who, as governor of or iiriroTo&Tai ; 34, 7 as respects the 
 
 Cappadocia, had himself wielded wide hose) ; and, where he speaks of 
 
 command over the Armenians (contra Hadrian's introduction of barbaric 
 
 Al. 29), always in the Tactica names cavalry into the Roman army, he 
 
 the Armenians and Parthians together traces the mounted archers back to 
 
 (4, 3, 44, I, as respects the heavy the model of " the Parthians or 
 
 cavalry, the mailed KovTO<p6poi and Armenians" (44, 1). 
 the light cavalry, the dKpo/3oA«JTa£ 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 2 I 
 
 could not forego ; and therefore the relation between 
 Rome and Iran through the whole imperial period was 
 one of perpetual feud, interrupted only by armistices, 
 concerning the left bank of the Euphrates. 
 
 In the treaties concluded with the Parthians by The p ar - 
 Lucullus (iv. 71) and Pompeius (iv. 127) the Euphrates ? hians dur : 
 was recognised as the boundary, and so Mesopotamia was S. 6Cml 
 ceded to them. But this did not prevent the Romans iv - 671 122 - 
 from receiving the rulers of Edessa among their clients, 
 and from laying claim to a great part of northern 
 Mesopotamia at least for their indirect rule, apparently 
 by extending the limits of Armenia towards the south 
 (iv. 146). On that account, after some delay, the iv . I40 . 
 Parthian government began the war against the Romans, 
 in the form of declaring it against the Armenians. The 
 answer to this was the campaign of Crassus, and, after 
 the defeat at Carrhae (iv. 3 5 1 £), the bringing back of iv . 335 f. 
 Armenia under Parthian power; we may add, the 
 resumption of their claims on the western half of the 
 Seleucid state, the carrying out of which, it is true, 
 proved at that time unsuccessful (iv. 356). During the iv. 339 . 
 whole twenty years of civil war, in which the Roman 
 republic perished and ultimately the principate was 
 established, the state of war between the Romans and 
 Parthians continued, and not seldom the two struggles 
 became intermixed. Pompeius had, before the decisive 
 battle, attempted to gain king Orodes as ally ; but, when 
 the latter demanded the cession of Syria, Pompeius could 
 not prevail on himself to deliver up the province which 
 he had personally made Roman. After the catastrophe 
 he had nevertheless resolved to do so; but accidents 
 directed his flight not to Syria, but to Egypt, where he 
 met his end (iv. 446). The Parthians appeared on the iv. 424. 
 point of once more breaking into Syria ; and the later 
 leaders of the republicans did not disdain the aid of the 
 public foe. Even in Caesar's lifetime Caecilius Bassus, 
 when he raised the banner of revolt in Syria, had at once 
 called in the Parthians. They had followed this call ; 
 Pacorus, the son of Orodes, had defeated Caesar's lieuten- 
 
22 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 41. 
 
 The Par- 
 tisans in 
 Syria and 
 Asia Minor 
 
 ant and liberated the troops of Bassus besieged by him in 
 44. Apamea (709). For this reason, as well as in order to 
 take revenge for Carrhae, Caesar had resolved to go in 
 the next spring personally to Syria and to cross the 
 Euphrates ; but his death prevented the execution of 
 this plan. When Cassius thereupon took arms in Syria, 
 he entered into relations with the Parthian king ; and in 
 42. the decisive battle at Philippi (712) Parthian mounted 
 archers joined in fighting for the freedom of Rome. 
 When the republicans succumbed, the great -king, in the 
 first instance, maintained a quiet attitude ; and Antonius, 
 while designing probably to execute the plans of the 
 dictator, had at first enough to do with the settlement 
 of the East. The collision could not fail to take place ; 
 the assailant this time was the Parthian king. 
 
 In 713 when Caesar the son fought in Italy with the 
 generals and the wife of Antonius, and the latter tarried 
 inactive in Egypt beside queen Cleopatra, Orodes re- 
 sponded to the pressure of a Roman living with him 
 in exile, Quintus Labienus, and sent the latter, a son of 
 the dictator's embittered opponent Titus Labienus, and 
 41. formerly an officer in the army of Brutus, as well as (7 1 3) 
 his son Pacorus with a strong army over the frontier. 
 The governor of Syria, Decidius Saxa, succumbed to 
 the unexpected attack ; the Roman garrisons, formed in 
 great part of old soldiers of the republican army, placed 
 themselves under the command of their former officer ; 
 Apamea and Antioch, and generally all the towns of 
 Syria, except the island -town of Tyre which could not 
 be subdued without a fleet, submitted ; on the flight to 
 Cilicia Saxa, in order not to be taken prisoner, put 
 himself to death. After the occupation of Syria Pacorus 
 turned against Palestine, Labienus towards the province 
 of Asia ; here too the cities far and wide submitted or 
 were forcibly vanquished, with the exception of the 
 Carian Stratonicea. Antonius, whose attention was 
 claimed by the Italian complications, sent no succour 
 to his governors, and for almost two years (from the end 
 41, 39. of 713 to the spring of 715) Syria and a great part of 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 23 
 
 Asia Minor were commanded by the Parthian generals 
 and by the republican imperator Labienus — Parthicus, 
 as he called himself with shameless irony, not the Roman 
 who vanquished the Parthians, but the Roman who with 
 Parthian aid vanquished his countrymen. 
 
 Only after the threatened rupture between the two Driven out 
 holders of power was averted, Antonius sent a new army ^iu S en " 
 under the conduct of Publius Ventidius Bassus, to whom Bassus. 
 he entrusted the command in the provinces of Asia and 
 Syria. The able general encountered in Asia Labienus 
 alone with his Roman troops, and rapidly drove him out 
 of the province. At the boundary between Asia and 
 Cilicia, in the passes of the Taurus, a division of Parthians 
 wished to rally their fugitive allies ; but they too were 
 beaten before they could unite with Labienus, and 
 thereupon the latter was caught on his flight in Cilicia 
 and put to death. With like good fortune Ventidius 
 gained by fighting the passes of the Amanus on the 
 border of Cilicia and Syria ; here Pharnapates, the best 
 of the Parthian generals, fell (715). Thus was Syria 39- 
 delivered from the enemy. Certainly in the following 
 year Pacorus once more crossed the Euphrates ; but only 
 to meet destruction with the greatest part of his army in 
 a decisive engagement at Gindarus, north-east of Antioch 
 (9th June 716). It was a victory which counterbalanced 38. 
 in some measure the day of Carrhae, and one of permanent 
 effect ; for long the Parthians did not again show their 
 troops on the Roman bank of the Euphrates. 
 
 If it was in the interest of Rome to extend her Position of 
 conquests towards the East, and to enter on the inherit- Antonms - 
 ance of Alexander the Great there in all its extent, the 
 circumstances were never more favourable for doing so 
 than in the year 716. The relations of the two rulers 38. 
 to each other had become re-established seasonably for 
 that purpose, and even Caesar at that time had probably 
 a sincere wish for an earnest and successful conduct of 
 the war by his co-ruler and new son-in-law. The disaster 
 of Gindarus had called forth a severe dynastic crisis 
 among the Parthians. King Orodes, deeply agitated by 
 
24 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 the death of his eldest and ablest son, resigned the 
 government in favour of his second son Phraates. The 
 latter, in order the better to secure for himself the throne, 
 exercised a reign of terror, to which his numerous brothers 
 and his old father himself, as well as a number of the 
 high nobles of the kingdom, fell victims ; others of them 
 left the country and sought protection with the Romans, 
 among them the powerful and respected Monaeses. 
 Never had Rome in the East an army of equal numbers 
 and excellence as at this time : Antonius was able to 
 lead over the Euphrates no fewer than 16 legions, about 
 70,000 Roman infantry, about 40,000 auxiliaries, 10,000 
 Spanish and Gallic, and 6000 Armenian horsemen ; at 
 least half of them were veteran troops brought up from 
 the West, all ready to follow anywhere their beloved and 
 honoured leader, the victor of Philippi, and to crown the 
 brilliant victories, which had been already achieved not 
 by but for him over the Parthians, with still greater 
 successes under his own leadership. 
 His aims. In reality Antonius had in view the erection of an 
 
 Asiatic great -kingdom after the model of that of Alex- 
 ander. As Crassus before his invasion had announced 
 that he would extend the Roman rule as far as Bactria 
 and India, so Antonius named the first son, whom the 
 Egyptian queen bore to him, by the name of Alexander. 
 He appears to have directly intended, on the one hand, 
 to bring — excluding the completely Hellenised provinces 
 of Bithynia and Asia — the whole imperial territory in 
 the East, so far as it was not already under dependent 
 petty princes, into this form ; and on the other hand, to 
 make all the regions of the East once occupied by Occi- 
 dentals subject to himself in the form of satrapies. Of 
 eastern Asia Minor the largest portion and the mili- 
 tary primacy were assigned to the most warlike of the 
 princes there, the Galatian Amyntas (I. 335). Alongside 
 of the Galatian prince stood the princes of Paphla- 
 gonia, the descendants of Deiotarus, dispossessed from 
 Galatia ; Polemon, the new prince in Pontus, and the 
 husband of Pythodoris the granddaughter of Antonius ; 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 25 
 
 and moreover, as hitherto, the kings of Cappadocia and 
 Commagene. Antonius united a great part of Cilicia 
 and Syria, as well as of Cyprus and Cyrene, with the 
 Egyptian state, to which he thus almost restored its limits 
 as they had been under the Ptolemies ; and as he had 
 made queen Cleopatra, Caesar's mistress, his own or 
 rather his wife, so her illegitimate child by Caesar, Caesarion, 
 already earlier recognised as joint ruler of Egypt, 1 obtained 
 the reversion of the old kingdom of the Ptolemies, and 
 her illegitimate son by Antonius, Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, 
 obtained that of Syria. To another son, whom she had 
 borne to Antonius, the already mentioned Alexander, 
 Armenia was for the present assigned as a payment to 
 account for the rule of the East conceived as in reserve 
 for him. With this great -kingdom organised after the 
 Oriental fashion 2 he thought to combine the principate 
 over the West. He himself did not assume the name of 
 king, on the contrary bore in presence of his countrymen 
 and the soldiers only those titles which also belonged to 
 Caesar. But on imperial coins with a Latin legend 
 Cleopatra is called queen of kings, her sons by Antonius 
 at least kings ; the coins show the head of his eldest son 
 along with that of his father, as if the hereditary character 
 were a matter of course ; the marriage and the succession 
 of the legitimate and the illegitimate children are treated 
 by him, as was the usage with the great -kings of the 
 
 * Caesar's illegitimate son UroXe- battle of Philippi. It was thus not 
 
 fJ.aios 6 Kal Kalaap debs (piXovdncp the work of Antonius, but sanctioned 
 
 <pi\ofii/jTwp, as his royal designation by the two rulers in concert at a time 
 
 runs (C. /, Gr. 4717), entered on the when it could not but be their object 
 
 joint rule of Egypt in the Egyptian to meet the wishes of the queen of 
 
 year 29 Aug. 71 1/2, as the era shows Egypt, who certainly had from the 
 
 (Wescher, Bullett. delP Inst. 1866, outset ranged herself on their side, 
 p. 199 ; Krall, Wiener Studien, 2 This is what Augustus means 
 
 v. 313). As he came in place of when he says that he had brought 
 
 Ptolemaeus the younger, the husband again to the empire the provinces of 
 
 and brother of his mother, the setting the East in great part distributed 
 
 aside of the latter by Cleopatra, of among kings (Mon. Ancyr. 5, 41 : 
 
 which the particulars are not known, provincias omnis, quae trans Hadri- 
 
 must have taken place just then, and amim mare vergunt ad orientem, 
 
 have furnished the occasion to pro- Cyrenasque, iam ex parte magna 
 
 claim him as king of Egypt. Dio regibus eas possidentibus . . . red- 
 
 also, xlvii. 31, places his nomination peravi). 
 in the summer of 712 before the 
 
26 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 East, or, as he himself said, with the divine freedom of 
 his ancestor Herakles r 1 the said Alexander and his twin 
 sister were named by him, the former Helios, the latter 
 Selene, after the model of those same great -kings, and, 
 as once upon a time the Persian king bestowed on the 
 refugee Themistocles a number of Asiatic cities, so he 
 bestowed on the Parthian Monaeses, who went over to 
 him, three cities of Syria. In Alexander too the king of 
 the Macedonians and the king of kings of the East went 
 in some measure side by side, and to him too the bridal 
 bed in Susa was the reward for the camp-tent of Gau- 
 gamela ; but the Roman copy shows in its exactness a 
 strong element of caricature. 
 Prepara- Whether Antonius apprehended his position in this 
 
 SrtWan be wa ^' immediately on his taking up the government in the 
 war. East, cannot be decided ; it may be conjectured that the 
 creation of a new Oriental great-kingdom in connection 
 with the Occidental principate ripened in his mind 
 gradually, and that the idea was only thought out com- 
 37- pletely, after, in the year 717, on his return from Italy to 
 Asia, he had once more entered into relations with the last 
 
 1 The decorum, which was as cha- — to take ^kjopos as great-grandson, 
 racteristic of Augustus as its opposite and to refer it to the maternal great- 
 was of his colleague, did not fail him grandfather, comes to the same re- 
 here. Not merely in the case of suit ; for then the grandfather is passed 
 Caesarion was the paternity, which over, because the mother was in the 
 the dictator himself had virtually legal sense fatherless. —Whether the 
 acknowledged, afterwards officially fiction, which is in my view more 
 denied ; the children also of Antonius probable, went so far as to indicate 
 by Cleopatra, where indeed nothing a definite Ptolemaeus, possibly to 
 was to be denied, were regarded prolong the life of the last Lagid 
 doubtless as members of the imperial who died in 712, or whether they 42. 
 house, but were never formally ack- were content with inventing a father 
 nowledged as children of Antonius. without entering into particulars, can- 
 On the contrary the son of the not be decided. But the fiction was 
 daughter of Antonius by Cleopatra, adhered to in this respect, that the 
 the subsequent king of Mauretania son of Antonius's daughter obtained 
 Ptolemaeus, is called in the Athenian the name of the fictitious grandfather, 
 inscription, C. I. A. hi. 555, grand- The circumstance that in this case 
 son of Ptolemaeus ; for TLroKefuilov preference was given to the descent 
 (■Kyovos cannot well in this connection from the Lagids over that from Massi- 
 be taken otherwise. This maternal nissa may probably have been occa- 
 grandfather was invented in Rome, sioned more by regard to the imperial 
 that they might be able officially to house, which treated the illegitimate 
 conceal the real one. Any one who child as belonging to it, than by 
 prefers — as O. Hirschfeld proposes the Hellenic inclination of the father. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 27 
 
 queen of the Lagid house not to be again broken off. 
 But his temperament was not equal to such an enterprise. 
 One of those men of military capacity, who knew how, in 
 presence of the enemy, and especially in a position of 
 difficulty, to strike prudently and boldly, he lacked the 
 will of the statesman, the sure grasp and resolute pursuit 
 of a political aim. Had the dictator Caesar assigned to 
 him the problem of subduing the East, he would probably 
 have solved it : the marshal was not fitted to be the ruler. 
 After the expulsion of the Parthians from Syria, almost 
 two years (summer of 7 1 6 to summer of 718) elapsed with- 38 
 out any step being taken towards the object aimed at. 
 Antonius himself, inferior also in this respect that he 
 grudged to his generals important successes, had removed 
 the conqueror of Labienus and of Pacorus, the able Ven- 
 tidius, immediately after this last success, and taken the 
 chief command in person in order to pursue and to miss 
 the pitiful honour of occupying Samosata, the capital of 
 the small Syrian dependent state, Commagene ; annoyed 
 at this, he left the East, in order to negotiate in Italy 
 with his father-in-law as to the future arrangements, or to 
 enjoy life with his young spouse Octavia. His governors 
 in the East were not inactive. Publius Canidius Crassus 
 advanced from Armenia towards the Caucasus, and there 
 subdued Pharnabazus king of the Iberians, and Zober 
 king of the Albanians. Gaius Sossius took in Syria the 
 last town still adhering to the Parthians, Aradus ; he 
 further re-established in Judaea the rule of Herodes, and 
 caused the pretender to the throne installed by the Par- 
 thians, the Hasmonean Antigonus, to be put to death. 
 The consequences of the victory on Roman territory 
 were thus duly drawn, and the recognition of Roman rule 
 was enforced as far as the Caspian Sea and the Syrian 
 desert. But Antonius had reserved for himself the begin- 
 ning of the warfare against the Parthians, and he came 
 not. 
 
 When at length, in 718, he escaped from the arms, 36. 
 not of Octavia, but of Cleopatra, and set the columns of 
 the army in motion, a good part of the appropriate season Ant 
 
28 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 of the year had already elapsed. Still more surprising 
 than this delay was the direction which Antonius chose. 
 All aggressive wars of the Romans against the Parthians, 
 earlier and later, took the route for Ctesiphon, the capital 
 of the kingdom and at the same time situated on its 
 western frontier, and so the natural and immediate aim 
 of operations for armies marching downward on the 
 Euphrates or on the Tigris. Antonius too might, after 
 he had reached the Tigris through northern Mesopotamia, 
 nearly along the route which Alexander had traversed, 
 have advanced down the river upon Ctesiphon and 
 Seleucia. But instead of this he preferred to go in a 
 northerly direction at first towards Armenia, and from that 
 point, where he united his whole military resources and 
 reinforced himself in particular by the Armenian cavalry, 
 to the table-land of Media Atropatene (Aderbijan). The 
 allied king of Armenia maypossibly have recommended this 
 plan of campaign, seeing that the Armenian rulers at all 
 times aspired to the possession of this neighbouring land, 
 and King Artavazdes of Armenia might hope now to 
 subdue the satrap of Atropatene of the same name, and 
 to add the latter's territory to his own. But Antonius 
 himself cannot possibly have been influenced by such con- 
 siderations. He may have rather thought that he should 
 be able to push forward from Atropatene into the heart 
 of the enemy's country, and might regard the old Persian 
 court-residences of Ecbatana and Rhagae as the goal of his 
 march. But, if this was his plan, he acted without 
 knowledge of the difficult ground, and altogether 
 underrated his opponents' power of resistance, besides 
 which the short time available for operations in this 
 mountainous country and the late beginning of the cam- 
 paign weighed heavily in the scale. As a skilled and 
 experienced officer, such as Antonius was, could hardly 
 deceive himself on such points, it is probable that special 
 political considerations influenced the matter. The rule 
 of Phraates was tottering, as we have said ; Monaeses, 
 of whose fidelity Antonius held himself assured, and whom 
 he hoped perhaps to put into Phraates's place, had returned 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 29 
 
 in accordance with the wish of the Parthian king to his 
 native country j 1 Antonius appears to have reckoned on 
 a rising on his part against Phraates, and in expectation 
 of this civil war to have led his army into the interior 
 of the Parthian provinces. It would doubtless have been 
 possible to await the result of this proposal in the friendly 
 Armenia, and, if operations thereafter were requisite, to 
 have at least the full summer-time at his disposal in the 
 following year ; but this waiting was not agreeable to the 
 hasty general. In Atropatene he encountered the obsti- 
 nate resistance of the powerful and half independent 
 under-king, who resolutely sustained a siege in his capital 
 Praaspa or Phraarta (southward from the lake of Urumia, 
 presumably on the lower course of the Jaghatu) ; and 
 not only so, but the hostile attack brought, as it would 
 seem, to the Parthians internal peace. Phraates led on 
 a large army to the relief of the assailed city. Antonius 
 had brought with him a great siege-train, but impatiently 
 hastening forward, he had left this behind in the custody 
 of two legions under the legate Oppius Statianus. Thus 
 he on his part made no progress with the siege ; but king 
 Phraates sent his masses of cavalry under that same 
 Monaeses to the rear of the enemy, against the corps of 
 Statianus laboriously pursuing its march. The Parthians 
 cut down the covering force, including the general himself, 
 took the rest prisoners, and destroyed the whole train of 
 300 waggons. Thereby the campaign was lost. 
 
 The Armenian, despairing of the success of the cam- 
 paign, collected his men and went home. Antonius did 
 not immediately abandon the siege, and even defeated 
 the royal army in the open field, but the alert horsemen 
 escaped without substantial loss, and it was a victory 
 without effect. An attempt to obtain from the king at 
 
 1 It is in itself credible that An- (Plutarch, 37 ; Dio, xlix. 24; Floras 
 
 tonius concealed the impending in- ii. 20 [iv. 10]). But he knew pre- 
 
 vasion from Phraates as long as sumably that this offer would not be 
 
 possible, and therefore, when send- accepted, and in no case can he have 
 
 ing back Monaeses, declared himself been in earnest with those proposals • 
 
 ready to conclude peace on the basis beyond doubt he wished for the war 
 
 of the restitution of the lost standards and the overthrow of Phraates 
 
3 o THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 least the restitution of the old and the newly lost eagles, 
 and thus to conclude peace, if not with advantage, at least 
 with honour, failed ; the Parthian did not give away his 
 sure success so cheaply. He only assured the envoys of 
 Antonius that, if the Romans would give up the siege, 
 he would not molest them on their return home. This 
 neither honourable nor trustworthy promise of the enemy 
 would hardly have induced Antonius to break up. It 
 was natural to take up quarters for the winter in the 
 enemy's country, seeing that the Parthian troops were 
 not acquainted with continuous military service, and pre- 
 sumably most of their forces would have gone home at 
 the commencement of winter. But a strong basis was 
 lacking, and supplies in the exhausted land were not 
 secured ; above all Antonius himself was not capable of 
 such a tenacious conduct of the war. Consequently he 
 abandoned the machines, which the besieged immediately 
 burnt; and entered on the difficult retreat, either too early 
 or too late. Fifteen days' march (300 Roman miles) 
 through a hostile country separated the army from the 
 Araxes, the border river of Armenia, whither in spite 
 of the ambiguous attitude of the ruler the retreat could 
 alone be directed. A hostile army of 40,000 horsemen, 
 in spite of the given promise, accompanied the returning 
 force, and, with the marching off of the Armenians, the 
 Romans had lost the best part of their cavalry. Provi- 
 sions and draught animals were scarce, and the season of 
 the year far advanced. But in the perilous position 
 Antonius recovered his energy and his martial skill, and 
 in some measure also his good fortune in war ; he had 
 made his choice, and the general as well as the troops 
 solved the task in a commendable way. Had they not 
 had with them a former soldier of Crassus, who, having 
 become a Parthian, knew most accurately every step of the 
 way, and, instead of conducting them back through the 
 plain by which they had come, guided them by mountain 
 paths, which were less exposed to cavalry attacks — ap- 
 parently over the mountains about Tabreez — the army 
 would hardly have reached its goal ; and had not Mon- 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 31 
 
 aeses, paying off in his way his debt of thanks to 
 Antonius, informed him in right time of the false assur- 
 ances and the cunning proposals of his countrymen, the 
 Romans would doubtless have fallen into one of the 
 ambushes which on several occasions were laid for them. 
 
 The soldierly nature of Antonius was often brilliantly Difficult* 
 conspicuous during these troublesome days, in his dexterous of the 
 use of any favourable moment, in his sternness towards the retreat " 
 cowardly, in his power over the minds of the soldiers, in his 
 faithful care for the wounded and the sick. Yet the 
 rescue was almost a miracle ; already had Antonius in- 
 structed a faithful attendant in case of extremity not to 
 let him fall alive into the hands of the enemy. Amidst 
 constant attacks of the artful enemy, in weather of wintry 
 cold, soon without adequate food and often without water, 
 they in twenty-seven days reached the protecting frontier, 
 where the enemy desisted from following them. The loss 
 was enormous ; there were reckoned up in those twenty- 
 seven days eighteen larger engagements, and in a single 
 one of them the Romans counted 3000 dead and 5000 
 wounded. It was the very best and bravest that those 
 constant assaults on the vanguard and on the flanks swept 
 away. The whole baggage, a third of the camp-followers, 
 a fourth of the army, 20,000 foot soldiers, and 4000 
 horsemen had perished in this Median campaign, in great 
 part not through the sword, but through famine and 
 disease. Even on the Araxes the sufferings of the un- 
 happy troops were not yet at an end. Artavazdes re- 
 ceived them as a friend, and had no other choice; it 
 would doubtless have been possible to pass the winter 
 there. But the impatience of Antonius did not tolerate 
 this ; the march went on, and from the ever increasing 
 inclemency of the season and the state of health of the 
 soldiers, this last section of the expedition from the Araxes 
 to Antioch cost, although no enemy hampered it, other 
 8000 men. No doubt this campaign was a last flash of 
 what was brave and capable in the character of Antonius ; 
 but it was politically his overthrow all the more, as at the 
 same time Caesar by the successful termination of the 
 
32 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Sicilian war gained the dominion in the West and the con- 
 fidence of Italy for the present and all the future. 
 Last years The responsibility for the miscarriage, which Antonius 
 ofAntonius j n va } n attempted to deny, was thrown by him on the 
 m the ast. dependent kings of Cappadocia and Armenia, and on the 
 latter so far with justice, as his premature marching off 
 from Praaspa had materially increased the dangers and 
 the losses of the retreat. For the plan of the campaign, 
 however, it was not he who was responsible, but Antonius ; x 
 and the failure of the hopes placed on Monaeses, the 
 disaster of Statianus, the breaking down of the siege 
 of Praaspa, were not brought about by the Armenian. 
 Antonius did not abandon the subjugation of the East, 
 35 . but set out next year (7 1 9) once more from Egypt. The 
 circumstances were still even now comparatively favour- 
 able. A friendly alliance was formed with the Median 
 king Artavazdes ; he had not merely fallen into variance 
 with his Parthian suzerain, but was indignant above all at 
 his Armenian neighbour, and, considering the well-known 
 exasperation of Antonius against the latter, he might 
 reckon on finding a support in the enemy of his enemy. 
 Everything depended on the firm accord of the two 
 possessors of power — the victory-crowned master of the 
 West and the defeated ruler in the East ; and, on the 
 news that Antonius proposed to continue the war, his 
 legitimate wife, the sister of Caesar, resorted from Italy 
 to the East to bring up to him new forces, and to 
 strengthen anew his relations to her and to her brother. 
 If Octavia was magnanimous enough to offer the hand 
 of reconciliation to her husband in spite of his relations 
 to the Egyptian queen, Caesar must — as was further con- 
 firmed by the commencement, which just then took place, 
 of the war on the north-east frontier of Italy — have been 
 still ready at that time to maintain the subsisting relation. 
 
 1 The account of the matter given to justify the beaten general. If 
 
 by Strabo, xi. 13, 4, p. 524, evidently Antonius did not take the nearest 
 
 after the description of this war com- route to Ctesiphon, king Artavazdes 
 
 piled by Antonius's comrade in arms cannot be brought in for the blame of 
 
 Dellius, and, it may be conjectured, it as a false guide ; it was a military, 
 
 at his bidding (comp. ib. xi. 1 3, 3 ; and doubtless still more a political, 
 
 Dio, xlix. 39), is a very sorry attempt miscalculation of the general in chief. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 33 
 
 The brother and sister subordinated their personal interests 
 magnanimously to those of the commonwealth. But 
 loudly as interest and honour called for the acceptance 
 of the offered hand, Antonius could not prevail on himself 
 to break off the relation with the Egyptian queen ; he 
 sent back his wife, and this was at the same time a rup- 
 ture with her brother, and, as we may add, an abandon- 
 ment of the idea of continuing the war against the 
 Parthians. Now, ere that could be thought of, the 
 question of mastery between Antonius and Caesar had to 
 be settled. Antonius accordingly returned at once from 
 Syria to Egypt, and in the following year undertook 
 nothing further towards the execution of his plans of 
 Oriental conquest ; only he punished those to whom he 
 assigned the blame of the miscarriage. He caused 
 Ariarathes the king of Cappadocia to be executed, 1 and 
 gave the kingdom to an illegitimate kinsman of his, 
 Archelaus. The like fate was intended for the Armenian. 
 If Antonius in 720 appeared in Armenia, as he said, 
 for the continuance of the war, this had simply the object 
 of getting into his power the person of the king, who had 
 refused to go to Egypt. This act of revenge was ignobly 
 executed by way of surprise, and was not less ignobly 
 celebrated by a caricature of the Capitoline triumph ex- 
 hibited in Alexandria. At that time the son of Antonius, 
 destined for lord of the East, as was already stated, was 
 installed as king of Armenia, and married to the daughter 
 of the new ally, the king of Media ; while the eldest son 
 of the captive king of Armenia executed some time after- 
 wards by order of queen Cleopatra, Artaxes, whom the 
 Armenians had proclaimed king instead of his father, 
 took refuge with the Parthians. Armenia and Media 
 Atropatene were thus in the power of Antonius or allied 
 with him ; the continuance of the Parthian war was 
 announced doubtless, but remained postponed till after 
 the overcoming of the western rival. Phraates on his 
 
 1 The fact of the deposition and Maximus, ix. 15, ext. 2; the cause or 
 
 execution, and the time, are attested the pretext must have been connected 
 
 by Dio, xlix. 32, and Valerius with the Armenian war. 
 
 VOL. II. 1 
 
THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 part advanced against Media, at first without success, as 
 the Roman troops stationed in Armenia afforded help to 
 the Medians ; but when Antonius, in the course of his 
 armaments against Caesar, recalled his forces from that 
 quarter, the Parthians gained the upper hand, vanquished 
 the Medians, and installed in Media, as well as also in 
 Armenia, the king Artaxes, who, in requital for the execu- 
 tion of his father, caused all the Romans scattered in the 
 land to be seized and put to death. That Phraates did 
 not turn to fuller account the great feud between Antonius 
 and Caesar, while it was in preparation and was being 
 fought out, was probably due to his being once more 
 hampered by the troubles breaking out in his own land. 
 These ended in his expulsion, and in his going to the 
 Scythians of the East. Tiridates was proclaimed as 
 great-king in his stead. When the decisive naval battle 
 was fought on the coast of Epirus, and thereupon the 
 overthrow of Antonius was completed in Egypt, this new 
 great-king sat on his tottering throne in Ctesiphon, and 
 at the opposite frontier of the empire the hordes of Turan 
 were making arrangements to reinstate the earlier ruler, 
 in which they soon afterwards succeeded. 
 First The sagacious and clear-seeing man, to whom it fell to 
 
 aiT nts g of liquidate the undertakings of Antonius and to settle the 
 Augustus relations of the two portions of the empire, needed modera- 
 in the East. tion quite ag much as energyt j t wou ld have been the 
 
 gravest of errors to enter into the ideas of Antonius as to 
 conquering the East, or even merely making further con- 
 quests there. Augustus perceived this ; his military 
 arrangements show clearly that, while he viewed the pos- 
 session of the Syrian coast as well as that of Egypt as an 
 indispensable complement to the empire of the Mediter- 
 ranean, he attached no value to inland possessions there. 
 Armenia, however, had now been for a generation Roman, 
 and could, in the nature of the circumstances, only be 
 Roman or Parthian ; the country was by its position, in a 
 military point of view, a sally-port for each of the great 
 powers into the territory of the other. Augustus had no 
 thought of abandoning Armenia and leaving it to the 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 35 
 
 Parthians ; and, as things stood, he could hardly think of 
 doing so. But, if Armenia was retained, the matter could 
 not end there ; the local relations compelled the Romans 
 further to bring under their controlling influence the basin 
 of the river Cyrus, the territories of the Iberians on its 
 upper, and of the Albanians on its lower course — that 
 is, the inhabitants of the modern Georgia and Shirvan, 
 skilled in combat on horseback and on foot — and not to 
 allow the domain of the Parthian power to extend to the 
 north of the Araxes beyond Atropatene. The expedition 
 of Pompeius had already shown that the settlement in 
 Armenia necessarily led the Romans on the one hand as 
 far as the Caucasus, on the other as far as the western 
 shore of the Caspian Sea. The initial steps were every- 
 where taken. The legates of Antonius had fought with 
 the Iberians and Albanians ; Polemon, confirmed in his 
 position by Augustus, ruled not merely over the coast 
 from Pharnacea to Trapezus, but also over the territory 
 of the Colchians at the mouth of the Phasis. To this 
 general state of matters fell to be added the special cir- 
 cumstances of the moment, which most urgently suggested 
 to the new monarch of Rome not merely to show his sword 
 in presence of the Orientals, but also to draw it. That 
 king Artaxes, like Mithradates formerly, had given orders 
 to put to death all the Romans within his bounds, could 
 not be allowed to remain unrequited. The exiled king of 
 Media also had now sought help from Augustus, as he 
 would otherwise have sought it from Antonius. Not 
 merely did the civil war and the conflict of pretenders in 
 the Parthian empire facilitate the attack, but the expelled 
 ruler Tiridates likewise sought protection with Augustus, 
 and declared himself ready as a Roman vassal to accept 
 his kingdom in fief from the latter. The restitution of 
 the Romans who had fallen into the power of the Par- 
 thians at the defeats of Crassus and of the Antonians, and 
 of the lost eagles, might not in themselves seem to the 
 ruler worth the waging of war ; the restorer of the Roman 
 state could not allow this question of military and political 
 honour to drop. 
 
36 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Policy open The Roman statesman had to reckon with these facts ; 
 to him. considering the position, which Antonius took in the East, 
 the policy of action was imperative generally, and doubly 
 so from the preceding miscarriages. Beyond doubt it was 
 desirable soon to undertake the organisation of matters in 
 Rome, but for the undisputed monarch there subsisted no 
 stringent compulsion to do this at once. He found him- 
 self after the decisive blows of Actium and Alexandria on 
 the spot and at the head of a strong and victorious army ; 
 what had to be done some day was best done at once. A 
 ruler of the stamp of Caesar would hardly have returned 
 to Rome without having restored the protectorate in 
 Armenia, having obtained recognition for the Roman 
 supremacy as far as the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, 
 and having settled accounts with the Parthians. A ruler 
 of caution and energy would have now at once organised 
 the defence of the frontier in the East, as the circum- 
 stances required ; it was from the outset clear that the 
 four Syrian legions, together about 40,000 men, were not 
 sufficient to guard the interests of Rome simultaneously 
 on the Euphrates, on the Araxes, and on the Cyrus, and 
 that the militia of the dependent kingdoms only con- 
 cealed, and did not cover, the want of imperial troops. 
 Armenia by political and national sympathy held more 
 to the Parthians than to the Romans ; the kings of Com- 
 magene, Cappadocia, Galatia, Pontus, were inclined doubt- 
 less on the other hand more to the Roman side, but they 
 were untrustworthy and weak. Even a policy keeping 
 within bounds needed for its foundation an energetic 
 stroke of the sword, and for its maintenance the near arm 
 of a superior Roman military power, 
 inadequate Augustus neither struck nor protected ; certainly not 
 measures, because he deceived himself as to the state of the case, 
 but because it was his nature to execute tardily and feebly 
 what he perceived to be necessary, and to let considera- 
 tions of internal policy exercise a more than due influence 
 on the relations abroad. The inadequacy of the protec- 
 tion of the frontier by the client states of Asia Minor he 
 well perceived ; and in connection therewith, already in the 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 37 
 
 year 729, after the death of king Amyntas who ruled all 25. 
 the interior of Asia Minor, he gave to him no successor, 
 but placed the land under an imperial legate. Presumably 
 the neighbouring more important client-states, and par- 
 ticularly Cappadocia, were intended to be in like manner 
 converted after the decease of the holders for the time 
 into imperial governorships. This was a step in advance, 
 in so far as thereby the militia of these countries was in- 
 corporated with the imperial army and placed under 
 Roman officers ; these troops could not exercise a serious 
 pressure on the insecure border-lands or even on the neigh- 
 bouring great -state, although they now counted among 
 those of the empire. But all these considerations were 
 outweighed by regard to the reduction of the numbers of 
 the standing army and of the expenditure for the military 
 system to the lowest possible measure. 
 
 Equally insufficient, in presence of the relations of the 
 moment, were the measures adopted by Augustus on his 
 return home from Alexandria. He gave to the dispos- 
 sessed king of the Medes the rule of the Lesser Armenia, 
 and to the Parthian pretender Tiridates an asylum in 
 Syria, in order through the former to keep in check the 
 king Artaxes who persevered in open hostility against 
 Rome, by the latter to press upon king Phraates. The 
 negotiations instituted with the latter regarding the resti- 
 tution of the Parthian trophies of victory were prolonged 
 without result, although Phraates in the year 731 had 23. 
 promised their return in order to obtain the release of a 
 son who had accidentally fallen into the power of the 
 Romans. 
 
 It was only when Augustus went in person to Syria Augustus 
 in the year 734, and showed himself in earnest, that the g°* r ] a in 
 Orientals submitted. In Armenia, where a powerful 
 party had risen against king Artaxes, the insurgents 
 threw themselves into the arms of the Romans and 
 sought imperial investiture for Artaxes's younger brother 
 Tigranes, brought up at the imperial court and living in 
 Rome. When the emperor's stepson Tiberius Claudius 
 Nero, then a youth of twenty-two years, advanced with 
 
 1 
 
33 
 
 THE E UPHRA TES FR 0NT1ER book viii. 
 
 a military force into Armenia, king Artaxes was put to 
 death by his own relatives, and Tigranes received the 
 imperial tiara from the hand of the emperor's representa- 
 tive, as fifty years earlier his grandfather of the same 
 name had received it from Pompeius (iv. 127). Atropa- 
 tene was again separated from Armenia and passed under 
 the sway of a ruler likewise brought up in Rome, Ario- 
 barzanes, son of the already- mentioned Artavazdes ; yet 
 the latter appears to have obtained the land not as a 
 Roman but as a Parthian dependency. Concerning the 
 organisation of matters in the principalities on the 
 Caucasus we learn nothing ; but as they are subsequently 
 reckoned among the Roman client-states, probably at 
 that time the Roman influence prevailed here also. Even 
 king Phraates, now put to the choice of redeeming his 
 word or fighting, resolved with a heavy heart on the sur- 
 render — keenly as it did violence to the national feelings 
 of his people — of the few Roman prisoners of war still 
 living and the standards won. 
 Mission of Boundless joy saluted this bloodless victory achieved 
 Caesar to ^y this prince of peace. After it there subsisted for a 
 the East. considerable time a friendly relation with the king of the 
 Parthians, as indeed the immediate interests of the two 
 great states came little into contact. In Armenia, on the 
 other hand, the Roman vassal-rule, which rested only on 
 its own basis, had a difficulty in confronting the national 
 opposition. After the early death of king Tigranes his 
 children, or the leaders of the state governing under 
 their name, joined this opposition. Against them 
 another ruler Artavazdes was set up by the friends of the 
 Romans ; but he was unable to prevail against the 
 stronger opposing party. These Armenian troubles dis- 
 turbed also the relation to the Parthians ; it was natural 
 that the Armenians antagonistic to Rome should seek to 
 lean on these, and the Arsacids could not forget that 
 Armenia had been formerly a Parthian appanage for the 
 second son. Bloodless victories are often feeble and 
 dangerous. Matters went so far that the Roman govern- 
 6. ment, in the year 748, commissioned the same Tiberius, 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 39 
 
 who, fourteen years before had installed Tigranes as vassal- 
 king of Armenia, to enter it once more with a military 
 force and to regulate the state of matters in case of need 
 by arms. But the quarrels in the imperial family, which 
 had interrupted the subjugation of the Germans (I. 35), 
 interfered also here and had the same bad effect. Tiberius 
 declined his stepfather's commission, and in the absence 
 of a suitable princely general the Roman government for 
 some years looked on, inactive for good or evil, at the 
 doings of the anti-Roman party in Armenia under Par- 
 thian protection. At length, in the year 753, not merely 1 
 was the same commission given to the elder adopted son 
 of the emperor, Gaius Caesar, at the age of twenty, but the 
 subjugation of Armenia was to be, as the father hoped, 
 the beginning of greater things ; the Oriental campaign of 
 the crown-prince of twenty was, we might almost say, to 
 continue the expedition of Alexander. Literati com- 
 missioned by the emperor or in close relations to the 
 court, the geographer Isidorus, himself at home at the 
 mouth of the Euphrates, and king Juba of Mauretania, 
 the representative of Greek learning among the princely 
 personages of the Augustan circle, dedicated — the former 
 his information personally acquired in the East, the latter 
 his literary collections on Arabia — to the young prince, who 
 appeared to burn with the desire of achieving the con- 
 quest of that land — over which Alexander had met his 
 death — as a brilliant compensation for a miscarriage of 
 the Augustan government which a considerable time ago 
 had there occurred. In the first instance for Armenia 
 this mission was just as successful as that of Tiberius. 
 The Roman crown-prince and the Parthian great-king 
 Phraataces met personally on an island of the Euph- 
 rates ; the Parthians once more gave up Armenia, the 
 imminent danger of a Parthian war was averted, and the 
 understanding, which had been disturbed, was at least out- 
 wardly re-established. Gaius appointed Ariobarzanes, a 
 prince of the Median princely house, as king over the 
 Armenians, and the suzerainty of Rome was once more 
 confirmed. The Armenians, however, opposed to Rome 
 
4o THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 did not submit without resistance ; matters came not 
 merely to the marching in of the legions, but even to 
 fighting. Before the walls of the Armenian stronghold 
 Artageira the young crown-prince received from a Par- 
 thian officer through treachery the wound (2 A.D.) of 
 which he died after months of sickness. The intermixture 
 of imperial and dynastic policy punished itself anew. The 
 death of a young man changed the course of great policy ; 
 the Arabian expedition so confidently announced to the 
 public fell into abeyance, after its success could no longer 
 smooth the way of the emperor's son to the succession. 
 Further undertakings on the Euphrates were no longer 
 thought of ; the immediate object — the occupation of 
 Armenia and the re-establishment of the relations with the 
 Parthians — was attained, however sad the shadows that 
 fell on this success through the death of the crown-prince. 
 Ge i rmaii° f The success had no more endurance than that of the 
 custo [20. more brilliant expedition of 734. The rulers of Armenia 
 the East. installed by Rome were soon hard pressed by those of 
 the counter- party with the secret or open participation 
 of the Parthians, and supplanted. When the Parthian 
 prince Vonones, reared in Rome, was called to the vacant 
 Parthian throne, the Romans hoped to find in him a 
 support ; but on that very account he had soon to vacate 
 it, and in his stead came king Artabanus of Media, an 
 energetic man, sprung on the mother's side from the 
 Arsacids, but belonging to the Scythian people of the 
 Daci, and brought up in native habits (about 10 A.D.) 
 Vonones was then received by the Armenians as ruler, 
 and thereby these were kept under Roman influence. 
 But the less could Artabanus tolerate his dispossessed 
 rival as a neighbour prince ; the Roman government 
 must, in order to sustain a man in every respect unfitted 
 for his position, have applied armed force against the 
 Parthians as against his own subjects. Tiberius, who 
 meanwhile had come to reign, did not order an immediate 
 invasion, and for the moment the anti- Roman party in 
 Armenia was victorious ; but it was not his' intention to 
 abandon the important border -land. On the contrary, 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 4i 
 
 the annexation, probably long resolved on, of the king- 
 dom of Cappadocia was carried out in the year 1 7 ; the 
 old Archelaus, who had occupied the throne there from 
 the year 7 1 8, was summoned to Rome and was there in- 36- 
 formed that he had ceased to reign. Likewise the petty, 
 but on account of the fords of the Euphrates important, 
 kingdom of Commagene came at that time under imme- 
 diate imperial administration. Thereby the direct frontier 
 of the empire was pushed forward as far as the middle 
 Euphrates. At the same time the crown -prince Ger- 
 manicus, who had just commanded with great distinction 
 on the Rhine, went with extended full powers to the 
 East, in order to organise the new province of Cappadocia 
 and to restore the sunken repute of the imperial authority. 
 
 This mission also attained its end soon and easily. And its 
 Germanicus, although not supported by the governor of results. 
 Syria, Gnaeus Piso, with such a force of troops as he was 
 entitled to ask and had asked, went nevertheless to 
 Armenia, and by the mere weight of his person and of 
 his position brought back the land to allegiance. He 
 allowed the incapable Vonones to fall, and, in accordance 
 with the wishes of the chief men favourable to Rome, 
 appointed as ruler of the Armenians a son of that 
 Polemon whom Antonius had made king in Pontus, 
 Zeno, or, as he was called as king of Armenia, Artaxias ; 
 the latter was, on the one hand, connected with the 
 imperial house through his mother queen Pythodoris, a 
 granddaughter of the triumvir Antonius, on the other 
 hand, reared after the manner of the country, a vigorous 
 huntsman and a brave carouser at the festal board. The 
 great -king Artabanus also met the Roman prince in a 
 friendly way, and asked only for the removal of his 
 predecessor Vonones from Syria, in order to check the 
 intrigues concocted between him and the discontented 
 Parthians. As Germanicus responded to this request 
 and sent the inconvenient refugee to Cilicia, where he 
 soon afterwards perished in an attempt to escape, the 
 best relations were established between the two great 
 states. Artabanus wished even to meet personally with 
 
42 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Germanicus at the Euphrates, as Phraataces and Gaius 
 had done ; but this Germanicus. declined, doubtless with 
 reference to the easily excited suspicion of Tiberius. In 
 truth the same shadow of gloom fell on this Oriental 
 expedition as on the last preceding one ; from this too 
 the crown -prince of the Roman empire came not home 
 alive. 
 
 Artabanus For a time the arrangements made did their work. 
 
 Tiberius. So ^ on S as Tiberius bore sway with a firm hand, and so 
 long as king Artaxias of Armenia lived, tranquillity 
 continued in the East ; but in the last years of the old 
 emperor, when he from his solitary island allowed things 
 to take their course and shrank back from all interference, 
 and especially after the death of Artaxias (about 34), the 
 old game once more began. King Artabanus, exalted 
 by his long and prosperous government and by many 
 successes achieved against the border peoples of Iran, 
 and convinced that the old emperor would have no 
 inclination to begin a heavy war in the East, induced the 
 Armenians to proclaim his own eldest son, Arsaces, as 
 ruler ; that is, to exchange the Roman suzerainty for the 
 Parthian. Indeed he seemed directly to aim at war with 
 Rome ; he demanded the estate left by his predecessor 
 and rival Vonones, who had died in Cilicia, from the 
 Roman government, and his letters to it as undisguisedly 
 expressed the view that the East belonged to the Orientals, 
 as they called by the right name the abominations at the 
 imperial court, of which people in Rome ventured only 
 to whisper in their most intimate circles. He is said 
 even to have made an attempt to possess himself of 
 Cappadocia. But he had miscalculated on the old lion. 
 Tiberius was even at Capreae formidable not merely to 
 his courtiers, and was not the man to let himself, and in 
 
 Mission of himself Rome, be mocked with impunity. He sent 
 
 viteiiius. Lucius Vitellius, the father of the subsequent emperor, a 
 resolute officer and skilful diplomatist, to the East with 
 plenary power similar to that which Gaius Caesar and 
 Germanicus had formerly had, and with the commission 
 in case of need to lead the Syrian legions over the 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 43 
 
 Euphrates. At the same time he applied the often tried 
 means for giving trouble to the rulers of the East by 
 insurrections and pretenders in their own land. To the 
 Parthian prince, whom the Armenian nationalists had 
 proclaimed as ruler, he opposed a prince of the royal 
 house of the Iberians, Mithradates, brother of the Armenian 
 king Pharasmanes, and directed the latter, as well as the 
 prince of the Albanians, to support the Roman pretender 
 to Armenia with military force. Large bands of the 
 Transcaucasian Sarmatae, warlike and easy of access to 
 every wooer, were hired with Roman money for the 
 inroads into Armenia. The Roman pretender succeeded 
 in poisoning his rival through bribed courtiers, and in 
 possessing himself of the country and of the capital 
 Artaxata. Artabanus sent in place of the murdered 
 prince another son Orodes to Armenia, and attempted 
 also on his part to procure Transcaucasian auxiliaries ; 
 but only few made good their way to Armenia, and the 
 bands of Parthian horsemen were not a match for the 
 good infantry of the Caucasian peoples and the dreaded 
 Sarmatian mounted archers. Orodes was vanquished in 
 a hard pitched battle, and himself severely wounded in 
 single combat with his rival. Then Artabanus in person 
 set out for Armenia. But now Vitellius also put in 
 motion the Syrian legions, in order to cross the Euphrates 
 and to invade Mesopotamia, and this brought the long 
 fermenting insurrection in the Parthian kingdom to an 
 outbreak. The energetic and, with successes, more and 
 more rude demeanour of the Scythian ruler, had offended 
 many persons and interests, and had especially estranged 
 from him the Mesopotamian Greeks and the powerful 
 urban community of Seleucia, from which he had taken 
 away its municipal constitution, democratic after a Greek 
 type. Roman gold fostered the movement which was 
 in preparation. Discontented nobles had already put 
 themselves in communication with the Roman govern- 
 ment, and besought from it a genuine Arsacid. Tiberius 
 had sent the only surviving son of Phraates, of the same 
 name with his father, and — after the old man, accustomed 
 
44 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 to Roman habits, had succumbed to his exertions while 
 still in Syria — in his stead a grandson of Phraates, likewise 
 living in Rome, by name Tiridates. The Parthian prince 
 Sinnaces, the leader of these plots, now renounced 
 allegiance to the Scythians and set up the banner of the 
 Arsacids. Vitellius with his legions crossed the Euphrates, 
 and in his train the new great -king by grace of Rome. 
 The Parthian governor of Mesopotamia, Ornospades, who 
 had once as an exile shared under Tiberius in the 
 Pannonian wars, placed himself and his troops at once 
 at the disposal of the new ruler ; Abdagaeses, the father 
 of Sinnaces, delivered over the imperial treasure ; very 
 speedily Artabanus found himself abandoned by the 
 whole country, and compelled to take flight to his 
 Scythian home, where he wandered about in the forests 
 without settled abode, and kept himself alive with his 
 bow, while the tiara was solemnly placed on the head 
 of Tiridates in Ctesiphon by the princes who were, 
 according to the Parthian constitution, called to crown 
 the ruler. 
 
 Tiridates But the rule of the new great-king sent by the imperial 
 
 superseded. foe did not last long> The g 0vernmentj conducted less 
 
 by himself, young, inexperienced, and incapable, than by 
 those who had made him king, and chiefly by Abdagaeses, 
 soon provoked opposition. Some of the chief satraps 
 had remained absent even from the coronation festival, 
 and again brought forth the dispossessed ruler from his 
 banishment ; with their assistance and the forces supplied 
 by his Scythian countrymen Artabanus returned, and 
 already in the following year (36) the whole kingdom, 
 with the exception of Seleucia, was again in his power, 
 Tiridates was a fugitive, and was compelled to demand 
 from his Roman protectors the shelter which could not 
 be refused to him. Vitellius once more led the legions 
 to the Euphrates ; but, as the great -king appeared in 
 person and declared himself ready for all that was asked, 
 provided that the Roman government would stand aloof 
 from Tiridates, peace was soon concluded. Artabanus 
 not merely recognised Mithradates as king of Armenia, 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 45 
 
 but presented also to the effigy of the Roman emperor 
 the homage which was wont to be required of vassals, 
 and furnished his son Darius as a hostage to the Romans. 
 Thereupon the old emperor died ; but he had lived long 
 enough to see this victory, as bloodless as complete, of 
 his policy over the revolt of the East. 
 
 What the sagacity of the old man had attained was The East 
 undone at once by the indiscretion of his successor. Gaius> 
 Apart from the fact that he cancelled judicious arrange- 
 ments of Tiberius, re-establishing, e.g. the annexed 
 kingdom of Commagene, his foolish envy grudged the 
 dead emperor the success which he had gained ; he 
 summoned the able governor of Syria as well as the 
 new king of Armenia to Rome to answer for themselves, 
 deposed the latter, and, after keeping him for a time a 
 prisoner, sent him into exile. As a matter of course the 
 Parthian government took action for itself, and once more 
 seized possession of Armenia which was without a master. 1 
 Claudius, on coming to reign in the year 4 1 , had to begin 
 afresh the work that had been done. He dealt with it 
 after the example of Tiberius. Mithradates, recalled from 
 exile, was reinstated, and directed with the help of his 
 brother to possess himself of Armenia. The fraternal war 
 then waged among the three sons of king Artabanus III. 
 in the P.arthian kingdom smoothed the way for the 
 Romans. After the murder of the eldest son, Gotarzes 
 and Vardanes contended over the throne for years ; 
 Seleucia, which had already renounced allegiance to the 
 father, defied him and subsequently his sons throughout 
 seven years ; the peoples of Turan also interfered, as they 
 always did, in this quarrel of princes of Iran. Mithradates 
 was able, with the help of the troops of his brother and 
 
 1 The account of the seizure of Josephus names this successor, pro- 
 Armenia is wanting, but the fact is bably in error, Bardanes. The im- 
 clearly apparent from Tacitus, Ann. mediate successor of Artabanus III. 
 xi. 9. To this connection probably was, according to Tacitus, Ann. xi. 
 belongs what Josephus, Arch. xx. 3, 3, 8, his son of the same name, whom 
 tells of the design of the successor of along with his son thereupon Gotarzes 
 Artabanus to wage war against the put out of the way ; and this Arta- 
 Romans, from which Izates the satrap banus IV. must be here meant, 
 of Adiabene vainly dissuades him. 
 
46 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 of the garrisons of the neighbouring Roman provinces, to 
 overpower the Parthian partisans in Armenia and to make 
 himself again master there ; x the land obtained a Roman 
 garrison. After Vardanes had come to terms with his 
 brother and had at length reoccupied Seleucia, he seemed 
 as though he would march into Armenia ; but the 
 threatening attitude of the Roman legate of Syria with- 
 held him, and very soon the brother broke the agreement 
 and the civil war began afresh. Not even the assassination 
 of the brave and, in combat with the peoples of Turan, 
 victorious Vardanes put an end to it ; the opposition 
 party now turned to Rome and besought from the 
 government there the son of Vonones, the prince Meher- 
 dates then living in Rome, who thereupon was placed 
 by the emperor Claudius before the assembled senate at 
 the disposal of his countrymen and sent away to Syria 
 with the exhortation to administer his new kingdom well 
 and justly, and to remain mindful of the friendly 
 protectorate of Rome (49). He did not reach the 
 position in which these exhortations might be applied. 
 The Roman legions, which escorted him as far as the 
 Euphrates, there delivered him over to those who had 
 called him — the head of the powerful princely family 
 of the Caren and the kings Abgarus of Edessa and 
 Izates of Adiabene. The inexperienced and unwarlike 
 youth was as little equal to the task as all the other 
 Parthian rulers set up by the Romans ; a number of his 
 most noted adherents left him so soon as they learned 
 to know him, and went to Gotarzes ; in the decisive 
 battle the fall of the brave Caren turned the scale. 
 Meherdates was taken prisoner and not even executed, 
 
 1 The statement of Petrus Patricius least from the year 35 (Tacitus, Ann. 
 
 {Jr. 3 Mull.) that king Mithradates vi. 32) till the year 60 (Tacitus, Ann. 
 
 of Iberia had planned revolt from xiv. 26), Pharasmanes, and in the 
 
 Rome, but in order to preserve the year 75 his son Mithradates (C. I. L. 
 
 semblance of fidelity, had sent his iii. 6052) bore rule. Beyond doubt 
 
 brother Cotys to Claudius, and then, Petrus has confused Mithradates of 
 
 when the latter had given information Iberia and the king of the Bosporus 
 
 to the emperor of those intrigues, of the same name (I. 316, note 1), 
 
 had been deposed and replaced by and here at the bottom lies the 
 
 his brother, is not compatible with narrative, which Tacitus, Ann. xii. 
 
 the assured fact that in Iberia, at 18, presupposes. 
 
€HAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 47 
 
 but only, after the Oriental fashion, rendered incapable of 
 government by mutilation of the ears. 
 
 Notwithstanding this defeat of Roman policy in the Armenia 
 Parthian kingdom, Armenia remained with the Romans, t^p^f by 
 so long as the weak Gotarzes ruled over the Parthians. thians. 
 But so soon as a more vigorous hand grasped the reins 
 of sovereignty, and the internal conflicts ceased, the 
 struggle for that land was resumed. King Vologasus, 
 who after the death of Gotarzes and the short reign of 
 Vonones II. succeeded this his father in the year 51, 1 
 ascended the throne, exceptionally, in full agreement with 
 his two brothers Pacorus and Tiridates. He was an 
 able and prudent ruler — we find him even as a founder 
 of towns, and exerting himself with success to divert the 
 trade of Palmyra towards his new town Vologasias on 
 the lower Euphrates — averse to quick and extreme 
 resolutions, and endeavouring, if possible, to keep peace 
 with his powerful neighbour. But the recovery of 
 Armenia was the leading political idea of the dynasty, 
 and he too was ready to make use of any opportunity 
 for realising it. 
 
 This opportunity seemed now to present itself. The Rhada. 
 Armenian court had become the scene of one of the mistus - 
 most revolting family tragedies which history records. 
 The old king of the Iberians, Pharasmanes, undertook 
 to eject his brother Mithradates, the king of Armenia, 
 from the throne and to put his own son Rhadamistus in 
 his place. Under the pretext of a quarrel with his 
 father Rhadamistus appeared at the court of his uncle 
 and father-in-law, and entered into negotiations with 
 Armenians of repute in that sense. After he had secured 
 a body of adherents, Pharasmanes, in the year 52, under 
 frivolous pretexts involved his brother in war, and 
 brought the country into his own or rather his son's 
 
 1 If the coins, which, it is true, gasus (we know none of Vonones 
 
 for the most part admit of being II.) begin with Sel. 362 Gorpiaeus 
 
 distinguished only by resemblance of = A.D. 51 Sept. (Percy Gardner, 
 
 effigy, are correctly attributed, those Parthian Coinage, pp. 50, 51), which 
 
 of Gotarzes reach to Sel. 362 Daesius agrees with Tacitus, Ann. xii. 14, 
 
 = a.d. 51 June, and those of Volo- 44. 
 
4 8 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 power. Mithradates placed himself under the protection 
 of the Roman garrison of the fortress of Gorneae. 1 
 Rhadamistus did not venture to attack this ; but the 
 commandant, Caelius Pollio, was well known as worthless 
 and venal. The centurion holding command under him 
 resorted to Pharasmanes to induce him to recall his 
 troops, which the latter promised, but did not keep his 
 word. During the absence of the second in command 
 Pollio compelled the king — who doubtless guessed what 
 was before him — by the threat of leaving him in the 
 lurch, to deliver himself into the hands of Rhadamistus. 
 By the latter he was put to death, and with him his wife, 
 the sister of Rhadamistus, and their children, because they 
 broke out in cries of lamentation at the sight of the 
 dead bodies of their parents. In this way Rhadamistus 
 attained to sovereignty over Armenia. The Roman 
 government ought neither to have looked on at such 
 horrors, of which its officers shared the guilt, nor to have 
 tolerated that one of its vassals should make war on 
 another. Nevertheless the governor of Cappadocia, Julius 
 Paelignus, acknowledged the new king of Armenia. Even 
 in the council of the governor of Syria, Ummidius Quad- 
 ratus, the opinion preponderated that it might be matter 
 of indifference to the Romans whether the uncle or the 
 nephew ruled Armenia ; the legate, sent to Armenia with 
 a legion, received only instructions to maintain the status 
 quo till further orders. Then the Parthian king, on the 
 assumption that the Roman government would not be 
 zealous to take part for king Rhadamistus, deemed the 
 moment a fit one for resuming his old claims upon 
 Armenia. He invested his brother Tiridates with 
 Armenia, and the Parthian troops marching in possessed 
 themselves, almost without striking a blow, of the two 
 capitals, Tigranocerta and Artaxata, and of the whole 
 land. When Rhadamistus made an attempt to retain 
 the price of his deeds of blood, the Armenians themselves 
 drove him out of the land. The Roman garrison appears 
 
 1 Gorneae, called by the Armenians Erivan) are still at present named. 
 Garhni, as the ruins (nearly east of (Kiepert.) 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 49 
 
 to have left Armenia after the giving over of Gorneae ; 
 the governor recalled the legion put upon the march 
 from Syria, in order not to fall into conflict with the 
 Parthians. 
 
 When this news came to Rome (at the end of 54) Corbulo 
 , , . , . , , , • • . sent t0 
 the emperor Claudius had just died, and the ministers C ap P a- 
 
 Burrus and Seneca practically governed for his young docia - 
 
 successor, seventeen years old. The procedure of 
 
 Vologasus could only be answered by a declaration of 
 
 war. In fact the Roman government sent to Cappadocia, 
 
 which otherwise was a governorship of the second rank 
 
 and was not furnished with legions, by way of exception 
 
 the consular legate Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo. He had 
 
 come rapidly into prominence as son-in-law of the 
 
 emperor Gaius, had then under Claudius been legate 
 
 of lower Germany in the year 47 (I. 125), and was 
 
 thenceforth regarded as one of the able commanders, not 
 
 at that time numerous, who energetically maintained the 
 
 stringency of discipline — in person a Herculean figure, 
 
 equal to any fatigue, and of unshrinking courage in 
 
 presence not of the enemy merely but also of his own 
 
 soldiers. It appeared to be a sign of things becoming 
 
 better that the government of Nero gave to him the first 
 
 important command which it had to fill. The incapable 
 
 Syrian legate of Syria, Quadratus, was not recalled, but 
 
 was directed to put two of his four legions at the disposal 
 
 of the governor of the neighbouring province. All the 
 
 legions were brought up to the Euphrates, and orders 
 
 were given for the immediate throwing of bridges over 
 
 the stream. The two regions bordering immediately on 
 
 Armenia to the westward, Lesser Armenia and Sophene, 
 
 were assigned to two trustworthy Syrian princes, Aristo- 
 
 bulus, of a lateral branch of the Herodian house, and 
 
 Sohaemus, of the ruling family of Hemesa, and both were 
 
 placed under Corbulo's command. Agrippa, the king of 
 
 the remnant of the Jewish state still left at that time, and 
 
 Antiochus, king of Commagene, likewise received orders 
 
 to march. 
 
 At first, however, no fighting took place. The reason 
 VOL. II. 4 
 
THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Character lay partly in the state of the Syrian legions ; it was a 
 troops. ^ad confession of poverty for the previous administration, 
 that Corbulo was compelled to describe the troops assigned 
 to him as quite unserviceable. The legions levied and 
 doing garrison duty in the Greek provinces had always 
 been inferior to the Occidentals ; now the enervating 
 power of the East with the long state of peace and the 
 laxity of discipline completely demoralised them. The 
 soldiers abode more in the towns than in the camps ; not 
 a few of them were unaccustomed to carry arms, and 
 knew nothing of pitching camps and of service on the 
 watch ; the regiments were far from having their full 
 complement and contained numerous old and useless 
 men ; Corbulo had, in the first instance, to dismiss a 
 great number of soldiers, and to levy and train recruits 
 in still larger numbers. The exchange of the comfortable 
 winter quarters on the Orontes for those in the rugged 
 mountains of Armenia, and the sudden introduction of 
 inexorably stern discipline in the camp, brought about 
 various ailments and occasioned numerous desertions. 
 In spite of all this the general found himself, when 
 matters became serious, compelled to ask that one of the 
 better legions of the West might be sent to him. Under 
 these circumstances he was in no haste to bring his 
 soldiers to face the enemy ; nevertheless it was political 
 considerations that preponderantly influenced him in this 
 course. 
 
 The aims If it had been the design of the Roman government 
 
 of the war. to fa- we out t h e p ar thian ruler at once from Armenia, 
 and to put in his place not indeed Rhadamistus, with 
 whose blood-guiltiness the Romans had no occasion to 
 stain themselves, but some other prince of their choice, 
 the military resources of Corbulo would probably have at 
 once sufficed, since king Vologasus, once more recalled 
 by internal troubles, had led away his troops from 
 Armenia. But this was not embraced in the plan of 
 the Romans ; they wished, on the contrary, rather to 
 acquiesce in the government of Tiridates there, and only 
 to induce and, in case of need, compel him to an acknow- 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR Till A NS. 
 
 ledgment of the Roman supremacy ; only for this object 
 were the legions, in case of extremity, to march. This in 
 reality came very near to the cession of Armenia to the 
 Parthians. What told in favour of this course, and what 
 prevented it, has formerly been set forth (p. 34 f.). If Ar- 
 menia were now arranged as a Parthian appanage for 
 a second son, the recognition of the Roman suzerainty 
 was little more than a formality, strictly taken, nothing 
 but a screen for military and political honour. Thus the 
 government of the earlier period of Nero, which, as is well 
 known, was equalled by few in insight and energy, in- 
 tended to get rid of Armenia in a decorous way ; and 
 that need not surprise us. In fact they were in this case 
 pouring water into a sieve. The possession of Armenia 
 had doubtless been asserted and brought to recognition 
 within the land itself, as among the Parthians, through 
 Tiberius in the year 20 B.C., then by Gaius in the year 2, 
 by Germanicus in the year 18, and by Vitellius in the 
 year 36. But it was just these extraordinary expeditions 
 regularly repeated and regularly crowned with success, 
 and yet never attaining to permanent effect, that justified 
 the Parthians, when in the negotiations with Nero they 
 maintained that the Roman suzerainty over Armenia was 
 an empty name — that the land was, and could be, none 
 other than Parthian. For the vindication of the Roman 
 supreme authority there was always needed, if not the 
 waging of war, at least the threat of it ; and the constant 
 irritation thereby produced made a lasting state of peace 
 between the two neighbouring great powers impossible. 
 The Romans had, if they were to act consistently, only 
 the choice between either bringing Armenia and the left 
 bank of the Euphrates in general effectively under their 
 power by setting aside the mere mediate government, or 
 leaving the matter to the Parthians, so far as was com- 
 patible with the supreme principle of the Roman govern- 
 ment to acknowledge no frontier-power with equal rights. 
 Augustus and the rulers hitherto acting had decidedly 
 declined the former alternative, and they ought therefore 
 to have taken the second course ; but this too they had 
 
52 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 at least attempted to decline, and had wished to exclude 
 the Parthian royal house from the rule over Armenia, 
 without being able to do so. This the leading statesmen 
 of the earlier Neronian period must have regarded as an 
 error, since they left Armenia to the Arsacids, and re- 
 stricted themselves to the smallest conceivable measure of 
 rights thereto. When the dangers and the disadvantages, 
 which the retention of this region only externally attached 
 to the empire brought to the state, were weighed against 
 those which the Parthian rule over Armenia involved for 
 the Romans, the decision might, especially in view of the 
 small offensive power of the Parthian kingdom, well be 
 found in the latter sense. But under all the circumstances 
 this policy was consistent, and sought to attain in a clearer 
 and more rational way the aim pursued by Augustus. 
 Negotia- From this standpoint we understand why Corbulo 
 
 Voiogasus anc * Q ua -dratus, instead of crossing the Euphrates, entered 
 into negotiations with Voiogasus ; and not less why the 
 latter, informed doubtless of the real designs of the 
 Romans, agreed to submit to the Romans in a similar 
 way with his predecessor, and to deliver to them as a 
 pledge of peace a number of hostages closely connected 
 with the royal house. The return tacitly agreed on for 
 this was that the rule of Tiridates over Armenia should 
 be tolerated, and that a Roman pretender should not be 
 set up. So some years passed in a de facto state of peace. 
 But when Voiogasus and Tiridates did not agree to apply 
 to the Roman government for the investing of the latter 
 with Armenia, 1 Corbulo took the offensive against Tiri- 
 dates in the year 58. The very policy of withdrawal 
 and concession, if it was not to appear to friend and foe 
 as weakness, needed a foil, and so either a formal and 
 solemn recognition of the Roman supremacy or, better 
 still, a victory won by arms. 
 
 1 Even after the attack Tiridates emperor, the prospect of a regnum 
 
 complained cur datis nuper obsidibus stabile (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 37). Else- 
 
 redintegrataque amicitia . . . veiere where too the refusal of the oath of 
 
 Armeniae possessione depelleretur, and fealty is indicated as the proper 
 
 Corbulo presented to him, in case of ground of war (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 
 
 his turning as a suppliant to the 34). 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 53 
 
 In the summer of the year 5 8 Corbulo led an army, Corbulo in 
 
 tolerably fit for fighting, of at least 30,000 men, over the 
 Euphrates. The reoganisation and the hardening of the 
 troops were completed by the campaign itself, and the 
 first winter-quarters were taken up on Armenian soil. In 
 the spring of 59 1 he began the advance in the direction 
 of Artaxata. At the same time Armenia was invaded 
 from the north by the Iberians, whose king Pharasmanes, 
 to cover his own crimes, had caused his son Rhadamistus 
 to be executed, and now further endeavoured by good 
 services to make his guilt be forgotten ; and not less by 
 their neighbours to the north-west, the brave Moschi, and 
 on the south by Antiochus, king of Commagene. King 
 Vologasus was detained by the revolt of the Hyrcanians 
 on the opposite side of the kingdom, and could or would 
 not interfere directly in the struggle. Tiridates offered 
 a courageous resistance, but he could do nothing against 
 the crushing superiority of force. In vain he sought to 
 throw himself on the lines of communication of the 
 Romans, who obtained their necessary supplies by way 
 of the Black Sea and the port of Trapezus. The strong- 
 holds of Armenia fell under the attacks of the Roman 
 assailants, and the garrisons were cut down to the last 
 man. Defeated in a pitched battle under the walls of 
 Artaxata, Tiridates gave up the unequal struggle, and 
 went to the Parthians. Artaxata surrendered, and here, 
 in the heart of Armenia, the Roman army passed the 
 
 1 The report in Tacitus, Ann. xiii. tier so early in the year. The narra- 
 
 34-41, embraces beyond doubt the tive of Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 34-41, does 
 
 campaigns of 58 and 59, since Taci- not in itself show an intercalation of a 
 
 tus under the year 59 is silent as to year, but with his mode of narrating it 
 
 the Armenian campaign, while under admits the possibility that the first 
 
 the year 60, Ann. xiv. 23 joins on year was spent in the crossing of the 
 
 immediately to xiii. 41, and evidently Euphrates and the settling in Ar- 
 
 describes merely a single campaign ; menia, and so the winter mentioned 
 
 generally, where he condenses in this in c. 35 is that of the year 58-9, espe- 
 
 way, he as a rule anticipates. That daily as in view of the character of 
 
 the war cannot have begun only in 59, the army such a beginning to the war 
 
 is further confirmed by the fact that would be quite in place, and in view 
 
 Corbulo observed the solar eclipse of of the short Armenian summer it was 
 
 30th April 59 on Armenian soil (Plin. militarily convenient thus to separate 
 
 H. N. ii. 70, 180); had he not en- the marching into the country and 
 
 tered the country till 59, he could the conduct proper of the war. 
 hardly have crossed the enemy's fron- 
 
 Armenia. 
 
54 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Tigranes, 
 king of 
 Armenia. 
 
 Negotia- 
 tions with 
 the Par- 
 thians. 
 
 winter. In the spring of 60 Corbulo broke up from 
 thence, after having burnt down the town, and marched 
 right across the country to its second capital Tigranocerta, 
 above Nisibis, in the basin of the Tigris. The terrors 'of 
 the destruction of Artaxata preceded him ; serious resist- 
 ance was nowhere offered ; even Tigranocerta voluntarily 
 opened its gates to the victor, who here in a well-calcu- 
 lated way allowed mercy to prevail. Tiridates still made 
 an attempt to return and to resume the struggle, but was 
 repulsed without special exertion. At the close of the 
 summer of 60 all Armenia was subdued, and stood at the 
 disposal of the Roman government. 
 
 It is conceivable that people in Rome now left Tiri- 
 dates out of account. The prince Tigranes, a great- 
 grandson on the father's side of Herod the Great, on the 
 mother's of king Archelaus of Cappadocia, related also to 
 the old Marenian royal house on the female side, and a 
 nephew of one of the ephemeral rulers of Armenia in the 
 last years of Augustus, brought up in Rome, and entirely 
 a tool of the Roman government, was now (60) invested 
 by Nero with the kingdom of Armenia, and at the em- 
 peror's command installed by Corbulo in its rule. In the 
 country there was left a Roman garrison, 1 000 legionaries, 
 and from 3000 to 4000 cavalry and infantry of auxiliaries. 
 A portion of the border land was separated from Armenia 
 and distributed among the neighbouring kings, Polemon 
 of Pontus and Trapezus, Aristobulus of Lesser Armenia, 
 Pharasmanes of Iberia and Antiochus of Commagene. 
 On the other hand the new master of Armenia advanced, 
 of course with consent of the Romans, into the adjacent 
 Parthian province of Adiabene, defeated Monobazus the 
 governor there, and appeared desirous of wresting this 
 region also from the Parthian state. 
 
 This turn of affairs compelled the Parthian govern- 
 ment to emerge from its passiveness ; the question now 
 concerned no longer the recovery of Armenia, but the 
 integrity of the Parthian empire. The long-threatened 
 collision between the two great states seemed inevitable. 
 Volo gasus in an assembly of the grandees of the empire 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 55 
 
 confirmed Tiridates afresh as king of Armenia, and sent 
 with him the general Monaeses against the Roman usurper 
 of the land, who was besieged by the Parthians in Tig- 
 ranocerta, which the Roman troops kept in their posses- 
 sion. Vologasus in person collected the Parthian main 
 force in Mesopotamia, and threatened (at the beginning 
 of 61) Syria. Corbulo, who, after Quadratus's death, held 
 the command for a time in Cappadocia as in Syria, but 
 had besought from the government the nomination of 
 another governor for Cappadocia and Armenia, sent pro- 
 visionally two legions to Armenia to lend help to Tigranes, 
 while he in person moved to the Euphrates in order to 
 receive the Parthian king. Again, however, they came 
 not to blows, but to an agreement. Vologasus, well 
 knowing how dangerous was the game which he was 
 beginning, declared himself now ready to enter into the 
 terms vainly offered by the Romans before the outbreak 
 of the Armenian war, and to allow the investiture of his 
 brother by the Roman emperor. Corbulo entered into the 
 proposal. He let Tigranes drop, withdrew the Roman 
 troops from Armenia, and acquiesced in Tiridates establish- 
 ing himself there, while the Parthian auxiliary troops like- 
 wise withdrew ; on the other hand, Vologasus sent an 
 embassy to the Roman government, and declared the 
 readiness of his brother to take the land in fee from 
 Rome. 
 
 These measures of Corbulo were of a hazardous kind, 1 The Par- 
 and led to a bad complication. The Roman general may JJ^Nero. 
 possibly have been, still more thoroughly than the states- 
 men in Rome, impressed by the uselessness of retaining 
 Armenia ; but, after the Roman government had installed 
 Tigranes as king of Armenia, he might not of his own 
 accord fall back upon the conditions earlier laid down, 
 least of all abandon his own acquisitions and withdraw the 
 Roman troops from Armenia. He was the less entitled 
 to do so, as he administered Cappadocia and Armenia 
 
 1 From the representation of Taci- does not venture to express the sur- 
 tus, Ann. xv. 6, the partiality and render of Armenia to Tiridates, and 
 the perplexity are clearly seen. He only leaves the reader to infer it. 
 
56 
 
 THE E UPHRA TES FR ONTIER book viii. 
 
 merely ad interim, and had himself declared to the govern- 
 ment that he was not in a position to exercise the 
 command at once there and in Syria ; whereupon the 
 consular Lucius Caesennius Paetus was nominated as 
 governor of Cappadocia and was already on the way 
 thither. The suspicion can hardly be avoided that Cor- 
 bulo grudged the latter the honour of the final subjugation 
 of Armenia, and wished before his arrival to establish a 
 definitive solution by the actual conclusion of peace with 
 the Parthians. The Roman government accordingly 
 declined the proposals of Vologasus and insisted on the 
 retention of Armenia, which, as the new governor who 
 arrived in Cappadocia in the course of the summer of 61 
 declared, was even to be taken under direct Roman 
 administration. Whether the Roman government had 
 really resolved to go so far cannot be ascertained ; but 
 this was at all events implied in the consistent following 
 out of their policy. The installing of a king dependent 
 on Rome was only a prolongation of the previous un- 
 tenable state of things ; whoever did not wish the cession 
 of Armenia to the Parthians had to contemplate the con- 
 version of the kingdom into a Roman province. The 
 war therefore took its course ; and on that account one of 
 the Moesian legions was sent to the Cappadocian army. 
 Measures When Paetus arrived, the two legions assigned to him 
 
 of Paetus. by Corbulo were encamped on this side of the Euphrates 
 in Cappadocia ; Armenia was evacuated, and had to be 
 reconquered. Paetus set at once to work, crossed the 
 Euphrates at Melitene (Malatia), advanced into Armenia, 
 and reduced the nearest strongholds on the border. The 
 advanced season of the year, however, compelled him soon 
 to suspend operations and to abandon for this year the in- 
 tended reoccupation of Tigranocerta ; nevertheless, in order 
 to resume his march at once next spring, he, after Corbulo's 
 example, took up his winter - quarters in the enemy's 
 country at Rhandeia, on a tributary of the Euphrates, the 
 Arsanias, not far from the modern Charput, while the 
 baggage and the women and children had quarters not far 
 from it in the strong fortress of Arsamosata. But he had 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR TBI AN S. 
 
 57 
 
 underrated the difficulty of the undertaking. One, and 
 that the best of his legions, the Moesian, was still on the 
 march, and spent the winter on this side of the Euphrates 
 in the territory of Pontus ; the two others were not those 
 whom Corbulo had taught to fight and conquer, but the 
 former Syrian legions of Quadratus, not having their full 
 complement, and hardly capable of use without thorough 
 reorganisation. He had withal to confront not, like Cor- 
 bulo, the Armenians alone, but the main body of the 
 Parthians ; Vologasus had, when the war became in earn- 
 est, led the flower of his troops from Mesopotamia to 
 Armenia, and judiciously availed himself of the strategical 
 advantage that he commanded the inner and shorter lines. 
 Corbulo might, especially as he had bridged over the 
 Euphrates and constructed tetes de pont on the other bank, 
 have at least hampered, or at any rate requited this march- 
 ing off by a seasonable incursion into Mesopotamia ; but 
 he did not stir from his positions and he left it to Paetus 
 to defend himself, as best he could, against the whole 
 force of his foes. The latter was neither himself military 
 nor ready to accept and follow military advice, not even 
 a man of resolute character; arrogant and boastful in onset, 
 despairing and pusillanimous in presence of misfortune. 
 
 Thus there came what could not but come. In the 
 spring of 62 it was not Paetus who assumed the aggres- 
 sive, but Vologasus ; the advanced troops who were to 
 bar the way of the Parthians were crushed by the superior 
 force ; the attack was soon converted into a siege of the 
 Roman positions pitched far apart in the winter camp and 
 the fortress. The legions could neither advance nor 
 retreat ; the soldiers deserted in masses ; the only hope 
 rested on Corbulo's legions lying inactive far off in nor- 
 thern Syria, beyond doubt at Zeugma. Both generals 
 shared in the blame of the disaster: Corbulo on account of 
 the lateness of his starting to render help, 1 although, when 
 
 1 This is said by Tacitus himself, this praise involves. How partial is 
 
 Ann. xv. 10: nec a Corbulone pro- the tone of the whole account resting 
 
 fieratwn, quo gliscentibus perictilis on Corbulo's despatches, is shown 
 
 etiam subsidii latis augeretur, in naive among other things by the circum- 
 
 unconcern at the severe censure which stance that Paetus is reproached in 
 
58 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 he did recognise the whole extent of the danger, he 
 hastened his march as much as possible ; Paetus, because 
 he could not take the bold resolution to perish rather than 
 to surrender, and thereby lost the chance of rescue that was 
 near — in three days longer the 5000 men whom Corbulo 
 was leading up would have brought the longed-for help. 
 The conditions of the capitulation were free retreat for the 
 Romans and evacuation of Armenia, with the delivering 
 up of all fortresses occupied by them, and of all the 
 stores that were in their hands, of which the Parthians 
 were urgently in need. On the other hand Vologasus 
 declared himself ready, in spite of this military success, to 
 ask Armenia as a Roman fief for his brother from the 
 imperial government, and on that account to send envoys 
 to Nero. 1 The moderation of the victor may have rested 
 on the fact that he had better information of Cor- 
 bulo's approach than the enclosed army ; but more 
 probably the sagacious man was not concerned to renew 
 the disaster of Crassus and bring Roman eagles again to 
 Ctesiphon. The defeat of a Roman army — he knew — 
 was not the overpowering of Rome ; and the real concession, 
 which was involved in the recognition of Tiridates, was 
 not too dearly purchased by the compliance as to form. 
 Conclusion The Roman government once more declined the offer 
 of peace. Q f t ^ e p ar thian king and ordered the continuance of the 
 war. It could not well do otherwise ; if the recognition 
 of Tiridates was hazardous before the recommencement 
 of war, and hardly capable of being accepted after the 
 Parthian declaration of war, it now, as a consequence 
 of the capitulation of Rhandeia, appeared directly as its 
 
 one breath with the inadequate pro- peration against Nero in the picture 
 
 visioning of the camp (xv. 8) and of Corbulo. 
 
 with the surrender of it in spite of 1 The statement of Corbulo that 
 
 copious supplies (xv. 16), and the Paetus bound himself on oath in 
 
 latter fact is inferred from this, that presence of his soldiers and of the 
 
 the retiring Romans preferred to de- Parthian deputies to send no troops 
 
 stroy the stores which, according to to Armenia till the arrival of Nero's 
 
 the capitulation, were to be delivered answer, is declared by Tacitus, Ann. 
 
 to the Parthians. As the exaspera- xv. 16, unworthy of credit ; it is in 
 
 tion against Tiberius found its ex- keeping with the state of the case, 
 
 pression in the painting of Germani- and nothing was done to the con- 
 
 cus in fine colours, so did the exas- trary. 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 59 
 
 ratification. From Rome the resumption of the struggle 
 against the Parthians was energetically promoted. Paetus 
 was recalled ; Corbulo, in whom public opinion, aroused 
 by the disgraceful capitulation, saw only the conqueror 
 of Armenia, and whom even those who knew exactly and 
 judged sharply the state of the matter could not avoid 
 characterising as the ablest general and one uniquely 
 fitted for this war, took up again the governorship of 
 Cappadocia, and at the same time the command over all 
 the troops available for this campaign, who were further 
 reinforced by a seventh legion brought up from Pannonia ; 
 accordingly all the governors and princes of the East 
 were directed to comply in military matters with his 
 orders, so that his official authority was nearly equivalent 
 to that which had been assigned to the crown -princes 
 Gaius and Germanicus for their missions to the East. 
 If these measures were intended to bring about a serious 
 reparation of the honour of the Roman arms they missed 
 their aim. How Corbulo looked at the state of affairs, 
 is shown by the very agreement which he made with the 
 Parthian king not long after the disaster of Rhandeia ; 
 the latter withdrew the Parthian garrisons from Armenia, 
 the Romans evacuated the fortresses constructed on 
 Mesopotamian territory for the protection of the bridges. 
 For the Roman offensive the Parthian garrisons in 
 Armenia were just as indifferent as the bridges of the 
 Euphrates were important ; whereas, if Tiridates was to 
 be recognised as a Roman vassal -king in Armenia, the 
 latter certainly were superfluous and Parthian garrisons 
 in Armenia impossible. In the next spring (63) Corbulo 
 certainly entered upon the offensive enjoined upon him, 
 and led the four best of his legions at Melitene over the 
 Euphrates against the Partho- Armenian main force 
 stationed in the region of Arsamosata. But not much 
 came of the fighting ; only some castles of Armenian 
 nobles opposed to Rome were destroyed. On the other 
 hand, this encounter led also to agreement. Corbulo 
 took up the Parthian proposals formerly rejected by his 
 government, and that, as the further course of things 
 
6o 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 showed, in the sense that Armenia became once for all 
 a Parthian appanage for the second son, and the Roman 
 government, at least according to the spirit of the 
 agreement, consented to bestow this crown in future 
 only on an Arsacid. It was only added that Tiridates 
 should oblige himself to take from his head the royal 
 diadem publicly before the eyes of the two armies in 
 Rhandeia, just where the capitulation had been concluded, 
 and to deposit it before the effigy of the emperor, promising 
 not to put it on again until he should have received it 
 from his hand, and that in Rome itself. This was done 
 (63). By this humiliation there was no change in the 
 fact that the Roman general, instead of waging the war 
 intrusted to him, concluded peace on the terms rejected 
 by his government. 1 But the statesmen who formerly 
 took the lead had meanwhile died or retired, the personal 
 government of the emperor was installed in their stead, 
 and the solemn act in Rhandeia and the spectacle in 
 prospect of the investiture of the Parthian prince with 
 the crown of Armenia in the capital of the empire failed 
 not to produce their effect on the public, and above all 
 Tiridates in on the emperor in person. The peace was ratified and 
 fulfilled. In the year 66 the Parthian prince appeared 
 according to promise in Rome, escorted by 3000 Parthian 
 horsemen, bringing as hostages the children of his three 
 brothers as well as those of Monobazus of Adiabene. 
 Falling on his knees he saluted his liege lord seated on 
 the imperial throne in the market-place of the capital, 
 and here the latter in presence of all the people bound 
 the royal chaplet round his brow. 
 
 The conduct on both sides, cautious, and we might 
 
 cussion in the trial to which he was 
 subjected some years after, is probable 
 
 Rome. 
 
 The East 
 under the 
 Flavians. 
 
 1 As, according to Tacitus, Ann. 
 xv. 25 (comp. Dio, lxii. 22), Nero 
 
 dismissed graciously the envoys of from the statement that one of the 
 
 Vologasus, and allowed them to see 
 the possibility of an understanding if 
 Tiridates appeared in person, Corbulo 
 may in this case have acted accord- 
 ing to his instructions ; but this was 
 rather perhaps one of the turns added 
 in the interest of Corbulo. That 
 these events were brought under dis- 
 
 ofncers of the Armenian campaign 
 became his accuser. The identity 
 of the cohort - prefect, Arrius Varus, 
 in Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 9, and of the 
 primipilus, Hist. iii. 6, has been 
 without reason disputed ; comp. on 
 C. I. L. v. 867. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 61 
 
 almost say peaceful, of the last nominally ten years' war, 
 and its corresponding conclusion by the actual transfer 
 of Armenia to the Parthians, while the susceptibilities 
 of the mightier western empire were spared, bore good 
 fruit. Armenia, under the national dynasty recognised by 
 the Romans, was more dependent on them than formerly 
 under the rulers forced upon the country. A Roman 
 garrison was left at least in the district of Sophene, 
 which most closely bordered on the Euphrates. 1 For 
 the re -establishment of Artaxata the permission of the 
 emperor was sought and granted, and the building was 
 helped on by the emperor Nero with money and workmen. 
 Between the two mighty states separated from each other 
 by the Euphrates at no time has an equally good relation 
 subsisted as after the conclusion of the treaty of Rhandeia 
 in the last years of Nero and onward under the three 
 rulers of the Flavian house. Other circumstances con- 
 tributed to this. The masses of Transcaucasian peoples, 
 perhaps allured by their participation in the last wars, 
 during which they had found their way to Armenia as 
 mercenaries, partly of the Iberians, partly of the Parthians, 
 began then to threaten especially the western Parthian 
 provinces, but at the same time the eastern provinces 
 of the Roman empire. Probably in order to check them, 
 immediately after the Armenian war in the year 63, the 
 annexation was ordained of the so-called kingdom of 
 Pontus, i.e. the south-east corner of the coast of the 
 Black Sea, with the town of Trapezus and the region of 
 the Phasis. The great Oriental expedition, which this 
 emperor was just on the point of beginning when the 
 catastrophe overtook him (68), and for which he already 
 had put the flower of the troops of the West on the 
 march, partly to Egypt, partly along the Danube, was meant 
 no doubt to push forward the imperial frontier in other 
 directions ; 2 but its proper aim was the passes of the 
 
 1 In Ziata (Charput) there have bulo's orders in the year 64 {Eph, 
 
 been found two inscriptions of a fort, epigr. v. p. 25). 
 
 which one of the legions led by 3 Nero intended inter reliqtia bella, 
 
 Corbulo over the Euphrates, the 3d an Ethiopian one (Plin. vi. 29, 
 
 Gallica, constructed there by Cor- comp. 184). To this the sending 
 
62 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 Caucasus above Tiflis, and the Scythian tribes settled 
 on the northern slope, in the first instance the Alani. 1 
 These were just assailing Armenia on the one side and 
 Media on the other. So little was that expedition of Nero 
 directed against the Parthians that it might rather be 
 conceived of as undertaken to help them ; overagainst the 
 wild hordes of the north a common defensive action was 
 at any rate indicated for the two civilised states of the 
 West and East. Vologasus indeed declined with equal 
 friendliness the amicable summons of his Roman colleague 
 to visit him, just as his brother had done, at Rome, since 
 he had no liking on his part to appear in the Roman 
 forum as a vassal of the Roman ruler ; but he declared 
 himself ready to present himself before the emperor when 
 he should arrive in the East, and the Orientals doubtless, 
 though not the Romans, sincerely mourned for Nero. 
 King Vologasus addressed to the senate officially an 
 entreaty to hold Nero's memory in honour, and, when a 
 pseudo-Nero subsequently emerged, he met with sympathy 
 above all in the Parthian state. 
 Arrange- Nevertheless the Parthian was not so much concerned 
 
 ments of about the friendship of Nero as about that of the Roman 
 
 Vespasian. A 
 
 of troops to Alexandria (Tacitus, account of Josephus is also confused. 
 
 Hist. i. 31, 70) had reference. If here the Albani, with consent of 
 
 1 As the aim of the expedition both the king of the Hyrcanians, invade 
 
 Tacitus, Hist, i. 6, and Suetonius, Media and then Armenia through the 
 
 JVer. 19, indicate the Caspian gates, Caspian gates, the writer has been 
 
 i.e. the pass of the Caucasus between thinking of the other Caspian gate 
 
 Tiflis and Vladi-Kavkas at Darial, eastward from Rhagae ; but this must 
 
 which, according to the legend, Alex- be his mistake, since the latter pass, 
 
 ander closed with iron gates (Plin. situated in the heart of the Parthian 
 
 H. JV. vi. 11, 30; Josephus, Bell. kingdom, cannot possibly have been 
 
 Jud. vii. 7, 4 ; Procopius, Pers. i. the aim of the Neronian expedition, 
 
 10). Both from this locality and and the Alani had their seats not on 
 
 from the whole scheme of the expedi- the eastern shore of the Caspian but 
 
 tion it cannot possibly have been to the north of the Caucasus. On 
 
 directed against the Albani on the account of this expedition the best 
 
 western shore of the Caspian Sea; of the Roman legions, the 14th, was 
 
 here, as well as at another passage recalled from Britain, although it 
 
 (Ann. ii. 68, ad Armenios, indeAlbanos went only as far as Pannonia (Tacitus, 
 
 Heniochosque), only the Alani can be Hist. ii. 11, comp. 27, 66), and a 
 
 meant, who in Josephus, /. c. and new legion, the 1st Italic, was formed 
 
 elsewhere appear just at this spot and by Nero (Suetonius, JVer. 19). One 
 
 are frequently confounded with the sees from this what was the scale on 
 
 Caucasian Albani. No doubt the which the project was conceived. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 65 
 
 state. Not merely did he refrain from any encroachment 
 during the crises of the four-emperor-year, 1 but correctly 
 estimating the probable result of the pending decisive 
 struggle, he offered to Vespasian, when still in Alexandria, 
 40,000 mounted archers for the conflict with Vitellius, 
 which, of course, was gratefully declined. But above all 
 he submitted without more ado to the arrangements which 
 the new government made for the protection of the east 
 frontier. Vespasian had himself as governor of Judaea 
 become acquainted with the inadequacy of the military 
 resources statedly employed there; and, when he ex- 
 changed this governorship for the imperial power, not 
 only was Commagene again converted, after the precedent 
 of Tiberius, from a kingdom into a province, but the 
 number of the standing legions in Roman Asia was 
 raised from four to seven, to which number they had 
 been temporarily brought up for the Parthian and again 
 for the Jewish war. While, further, there had been 
 hitherto in Asia only a single larger military command, 
 that of the governor of Syria, three such posts of high 
 command were now instituted there. Syria, to which 
 Commagene was added, retained as hitherto four legions ; 
 the two provinces hitherto occupied only by troops of the 
 second order, Palestine and Cappadocia, were furnished, 
 the first with one the second with two legions. 2 Armenia 
 remained a Roman dependent principality in possession 
 
 1 In what connection he refused 
 to Vespasian the title of emperor 
 (Dio, lxvi. 11) is not clear; possibly 
 immediately after his insurrection, 
 before he had perceived that the 
 Flavians were the stronger. His in- 
 tercession for the princes of Com- 
 magene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 
 7, 3) was attended by success, and 
 so was purely personal, by no means 
 a protest against the conversion of 
 the kingdom into a province. 
 
 2 The four Syrian legions were 
 the 3d Gallica, the 6th fewata (both 
 hitherto in Syria), the 4th Scythica 
 (hitherto in Moesia, but having al- 
 ready taken part in the Parthian as 
 in the Jewish war), and the 1 6th Flavia 
 
 (new). The one legion of Palestine 
 was the 10th fretensis (hitherto in 
 Syria). The two of Cappadocia 
 were the 12th fuhninata (hitherto 
 in Syria, moved by Titus to Meli- 
 tene, Josephus, Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), 
 and the 15th Afiollinaris (hitherto in 
 Pannonia, but having taken part, like 
 the 4th Scythica, in the Parthian as 
 in the Jewish war). The garrisons 
 were thus changed as little as possible, 
 only two of the legions already called 
 earlier to Syria received fixed stations 
 there, and one newly instituted was 
 moved thither. — After the Jewish 
 war under Hadrian the 6th ferrata 
 was despatched from Syria to Pales- 
 tine. 
 
6 4 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 of the Arsacids, but under Vespasian a Roman garrison 
 was stationed beyond the Armenian frontier in the Iberian 
 fortress Harmozika near Tiflis, 1 and accordingly at this 
 time Armenia also must have been militarily in the 
 Roman power. All these measures, however little they 
 contained even a threat of war, were pointed against the 
 eastern neighbour. Nevertheless Vologasus was after the 
 fall of Jerusalem the first to offer to the Roman crown-prince 
 his congratulations on the strengthening of the Roman 
 rule in Syria, and he accepted without remonstrance the 
 encampment of the legions in Commagene, Cappadocia, 
 and Lesser Armenia. Nay, he even once more incited 
 Vespasian to that Transcaucasian expedition, and be- 
 sought the sending of a Roman army against the Alani 
 under the leadership of one of the imperial princes ; 
 although Vespasian did not enter into this far-seeing 
 plan, that Roman force can hardly have been sent into 
 the region of Tiflis for any other object than for closing 
 the pass of the Caucasus, and in so far it represented 
 there also the interests of the Parthians. In spite of the 
 strengthening of the military position of Rome on the 
 Euphrates, or even perhaps in consequence of it — for to 
 instil respect into a neighbour is a means of preserving 
 the peace — the state of peace remained essentially un- 
 disturbed during the whole rule of the Flavians. If — 
 as cannot be surprising, especially when we consider the 
 constant change of the Parthian dynasts — collisions now 
 and then occurred, and war-clouds even made their 
 appearance, they disappeared again as quickly. 2 The 
 emergence of a pseudo-Nero in the last years of Ves- 
 pasian — he it was who gave the impulse to the Revelation 
 
 1 At this time (comp. C. I. L. v. 
 6988), probably falls also the Cap- 
 padocian governorship of C. Rutilius 
 Gallicus, of which it is said (Statius, 
 i. 4, 78) : hunc . . . timuit . . . 
 Armenia et patiens Latii iam pontis 
 Araxes, with reference presumably 
 to a bridge - structure executed by 
 this Roman garrison. That Gal- 
 licus served under Corbulo, is 
 
 from the silence of Tacitus not prob- 
 able. 
 
 2 That war threatened to break 
 out under Vespasian in the year 75 
 on the Euphrates, while M. Ulpius 
 Trajanus, the father of the emperor, 
 was governor of Syria, is stated by 
 Pliny in his panegyric on the son, 
 c. 14, probably with strong exaggera- 
 tion ; the cause is unknown. 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 65 
 
 of John — might almost have led to such a collision. The 
 pretender, in reality a certain Terentius Maximus from 
 Asia Minor, but strikingly resembling the poet-emperor 
 in face, voice, and address, found not merely a conflux of 
 adherents in the Roman region of the Euphrates, but also 
 support among the Parthians. Among these at that time, 
 as so often, several rulers seem to have been in conflict 
 with each other, and one of them, Artabanus, because 
 the emperor Titus declared against him, seems to have 
 adopted the cause of the Roman pretender. This, how- 
 ever, had no consequences ; on the contrary, soon after- 
 wards the Parthian government delivered up the pretender 
 to the emperor Domitian. 1 The commercial intercourse, 
 advantageous for both parties between Syria and the 
 lower Euphrates, where just then king Vologasus called 
 into existence the new emporium Vologasias or Vologaso- 
 certa, not far from Ctesiphon, must have contributed its 
 part towards promoting the state of peace. 
 
 Things came to a conflict under Trajan. In the 
 earlier years of his government he had made no essential 
 change in eastern affairs, apart from the conversion of 
 the two client-states hitherto subsisting on the border 
 of the Syrian desert — the Nabataean of Petra and the 
 Jewish of Caesarea Paneas — into administrative districts 
 directly Roman (A.D. 106). The relations with the ruler of 
 the Parthian kingdom at that time, king Pacorus, were 
 not the most friendly, 2 but it was only under his brother 
 
 1 There are coins dated, and pro- 
 vided with the individual names of 
 the kings, of (V)ologasus from the 
 years 389 and 390 — 77 - 78 ; of 
 Pacorus from the years 389-394 = 
 77-82 (and again 404-407=92- 
 95) ; of Artabanus from the year 392 
 = 80-1. The corresponding historical 
 dates are lost, with the exception of 
 the notice connecting Titus and Arta- 
 banus in Zonaras, xi. 18 (comp. 
 Suetonius, Ner. 57 ; Tacitus, Hist. 
 i. 2), but the coins point to an epoch 
 of rapid changes on the throne, and, 
 apparently, of simultaneous coinage 
 by rival pretenders. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 2 This is proved by the detached 
 notice from Arrian in Suidas (s. v. 
 eiriKk-mia.) : 6 di TlaKopos 6 ILapdvaUcv 
 fiaaCkebs Kal dWa rivh iiriKk-qixaTa 
 eiv£<pepe Tpcuavip ry [3a<n\ei, and by 
 the attention which is devoted in 
 Pliny's report to the emperor, written 
 about the year 112 [ad Trai. 74), to 
 the relations between Pacorus and the 
 Dacian king Decebalus. The time of 
 the reign of this Parthian king cannot 
 be sufficiently fixed. There are no 
 Parthian coins with the king's name 
 from the whole period of Trajan ; the 
 coining of silver seems to have been 
 in abeyance during that period. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 and successor Chosroes that a rupture took place, and 
 that again concerning Armenia. The Parthians were to 
 blame for it. When Trajan bestowed the vacated throne 
 of the Armenian king on Axidares the son of Pacorus, 
 he kept within the limits of his right ; but king Chosroes 
 described this personage as incapable of governing, and 
 arbitrarily installed in his stead another son of Pacorus, 
 Parthomasiris, as king. 1 The answer to this was the 
 Roman declaration of war. Trajan left the capital to- 
 wards the end of the year 114, 2 to put himself at the 
 head of the Roman troops of the East, which were cer- 
 tainly once more found in the deepest degeneracy, but 
 were reorganised in all haste by the emperor, and rein- 
 forced besides by better legions brought up from Pannonia. 3 
 
 1 That Axidares (or Exedares) was 
 a son of Pacorus and king of Armenia 
 before Parthomasiris, but had been 
 deposed by Chosroes, is shown by 
 the remnants of Dio's account, lxviii. 
 17 ; and to this point also the two 
 fragments of Arrian (16 Midler), 
 the first, probably from an address 
 of a supporter of the interests of 
 Axidares to Trajan : 'A^Sdp^ 5e Srt 
 ttpXew XRV 'Ap/xecias, off /xoi doicei etval 
 ere afuplXoyov, whereupon doubtless 
 the complaints brought against Par- 
 thomasiris followed ; and the answer, 
 evidently of the emperor, that it is 
 not the business of Axidares, but his, 
 to judge as to Parthomasiris, because 
 he — apparently Axidares — had first 
 broken the treaty and suffered for it. 
 What fault the emperor imputes to 
 Axidares is not clear ; but in Dio 
 also Chosroes says that he has not 
 satisfied either the Romans or the 
 Parthians. 
 
 2 The remnants of Dio's account 
 in Xiphilinus and Zonaras show 
 clearly that the Parthian expedition 
 falls into two campaigns, the first 
 (Dio, lvi. 17, 1, 18, 2, 23-25), 
 which is fixed at 115 a.d. by the 
 consulate of Pedo (the date also of 
 Malalas, p. 275, for the earthquake 
 of Antioch, 13 Dec. 164 of the An- 
 tiochene era=ii5 a.d. agrees there- 
 with), and the second (Dio, c. 26- 
 
 32, 3), which is fixed at 116 A.D. by 
 the conferring of the title Parthicus 
 (c. 28, 2), took place between April 
 and August of that year (see my 
 notice in Droysen, Hellenismus^ iii. 2, 
 361). That at c. 23 the titles Opti- 
 mus (conferred in the course of 
 114 a.d.) and Parthicus are men- 
 tioned out of the order of time, is 
 shown as well by their juxtaposition 
 as by the later recurrence of the 
 second honour. Of the fragments 
 most belong to the first campaign ; 
 c. 22, 3 and probably also 22, 1, 2 
 to the second. — The acclamations 
 of imperator do not stand in the 
 way. Trajan was demonstrably in 
 the year 113 imp. VI. (C. I. L. vi. 
 960); in the year 114 imp. VII. 
 (C. I. L. ix. 1558 et a/.); in the 
 year 115 imp. IX. (C. I. L. ix. 
 5894 et al.), and imp. XI. (Fabretti, 
 398, 289 et al.); in the year 116 
 imp. XII. (C. I. Z. viii. 621, x. 
 1634), and XIII. (C. /. L. iii. D. 
 xxvii.). Dio attests an acclamation 
 from the year 115 (lxviii. 19), and 
 one from the year 116 (lxviii. 28); 
 there is ample room for both, arid 
 there is no reason to refer imp. VII. 
 precisely, as has been attempted, to 
 the subjugation of Armenia. 
 
 3 The pungent description of the 
 Syrian army of Trajan in Fronto 
 (p. 206 f. Naber) agrees almost 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 67 
 
 Envoys of the Parthian king met him at Athens ; but 
 they had nothing to offer except the information that 
 Parthomasiris was ready to accept Armenia as a Roman 
 fief, and were dismissed. The war began. In the first 
 conflicts on the Euphrates the Romans fared worst j 1 but 
 when the old emperor, ready to fight and accustomed to 
 victory, placed himself at the head of the troops in the 
 spring of 115, the Orientals submitted to him almost 
 without resistance. Moreover, among the Parthians civil 
 war once more prevailed, and a pretender, Manisarus, had 
 appeared against Chosroes. From Antioch the emperor 
 marched to the Euphrates and farther northward as far as 
 the most northerly legion-camp Satala in Lesser Armenia, 
 whence he advanced into Armenia and took the direction of 
 Artaxata. On the way Parthomasiris appeared in Elegeia 
 and took the diadem from his head, in the hope of pro- 
 curing investiture through this humiliation, as Tiridates 
 had once done. But Trajan was resolved to make this 
 vassal-state a province, and to shift the eastern frontier of 
 the empire generally. This he declared to the Parthian 
 prince before the assembled army, and directed him with 
 his suite to quit at once the camp and the kingdom ; 
 thereupon a tumult took place, in which the pretender lost 
 
 literally with that of the army of 
 Corbulo in Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 35. 
 "The Roman troops generally had 
 sadly degenerated (ad ignaviam re- 
 dactus) through being long disused 
 to military service ; but the most 
 wretched of the soldiers were the 
 Syrian, insubordinate, refractory, un- 
 punctual at the call to arms, not 
 to be found at their post, drunk from 
 midday onward ; unaccustomed even 
 to carry arms and incapable of 
 fatigue, ridding themselves of one 
 piece of armour after another, half 
 naked like the light troops and the 
 archers. Besides they were so de- 
 moralised by the defeats they had 
 suffered that they turned their backs 
 at the first sight of the Parthians, 
 and the crescents were regarded by 
 them, as it were, as giving the signal 
 to run away." In the contrasting 
 
 description of Trajan it is said among 
 other things : " He did not pass 
 through the tents without closely 
 concerning himself as to the soldiers, 
 but showed his contempt for the 
 Syrian luxury, and looked closely 
 into the rough doings of the Pan- 
 nonians (sed contemnere — so we must 
 read — Syroricm mundztias, introspi- 
 cere Pannoniorum inscitias) ; so he 
 judged of the serviceableness (in- 
 geniuni) of the man according to his 
 bearing (cultus)." In the Oriental 
 army of Severus also the "European" 
 and the Syrian soldiers are dis- 
 tinguished (Dio, Ixxv. 12). 
 
 1 This is shown by the mala proelia 
 in the passage of Fronto quoted, and 
 by Dio's statement, lxviii. 19, that 
 Trajan took Samosata without a 
 struggle ; thus the 1 6th legion sta- 
 tioned there had lost it. 
 
68 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 his life. Armenia yielded to its fate, and became a 
 Roman governorship. The princes also of the Caucasian 
 tribes, the Albani, the Iberi, farther on toward the Black 
 Sea the Apsilae, the Colchi, the Heniochi, the Lazi, and 
 various others, even those of the trans-Caucasian Sarmatae 
 were confirmed in the relation of vassalage, or now sub- 
 jected to it. Trajan thereupon advanced into the terri- 
 tory of the Parthians and occupied Mesopotamia. Here, 
 too, all submitted without a blow ; Batnae, Nisibis, Sin- 
 gara came into the power of the Romans ; in Edessa the 
 emperor received not merely the subjection of Abgarus, 
 the ruler of the land, but also that of the other dynasts, 
 and, like Armenia, Mesopotamia became a Roman pro- 
 vince. Trajan took up once more his winter quarters in 
 Antioch, where a violent earthquake demanded more 
 victims than the campaign of the summer. In the next 
 spring (116) Trajan, the "victor of the Parthians," as the 
 senate now saluted him, advanced from Nisibis over the 
 Tigris, and occupied, not without encountering resistance 
 at the crossing and subsequently, the district of Adiabene ; 
 this became the third new Roman province, named 
 Assyria. The march went onward down the Tigris to 
 Babylonia ; Seleucia and Ctesiphon fell into the hands 
 of the Romans, and with them the golden throne of the 
 king and his daughter ; Trajan reached even the Persian 
 satrapy of Mesene, and the great mercantile town at the 
 mouth of the Tigris, Charax Spasinu. This region also 
 seems to have been incorporated with the empire in such 
 a way that the new province Mesopotamia embraced the 
 whole region enclosed by the two rivers. 
 Revolt of Full of longing, Trajan is said now to have wished 
 
 and^T' f° r mmse lf the youth of Alexander, in order to carry from 
 siege. the margin of the Persian Sea his arms into the Indian 
 land of marvels. But he soon learned that he needed 
 them for nearer opponents. The great Parthian empire 
 had hitherto scarcely confronted in earnest his attack, and 
 ofttimes sued in vain for peace. But now on the way 
 back at Babylon news reached the emperor of the revolt 
 of Babylonia and Mesopotamia ; while he tarried at the 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 69 
 
 mouth of the Tigris the whole population of these new- 
 provinces had risen against him j 1 the citizens of Seleucia 
 on the Tigris, of Nisibis, indeed of Edessa itself, put the 
 Roman garrisons to death or chased them away and 
 closed their gates. The emperor saw himself compelled 
 to divide his troops, and to send separate corps against 
 the different seats of the insurrection ; one of these legions 
 under Maximus was, with its general, surrounded and cut 
 to pieces in Mesopotamia. Yet the emperor mastered 
 the insurgents, particularly through his general Lusius 
 Quietus, already experienced in the Dacian war, a native 
 sheikh of the Moors. Seleucia and Edessa were besieged 
 and burnt down. Trajan went so far as to declare 
 Parthia a Roman vassal-state, and invested with it at 
 Ctesiphon a partisan of Rome, the Parthian Parthamas- 
 pates, although the Roman soldiers had not set foot on 
 more than the western border of the great-kingdom. 
 
 Then he began his return to Syria by the route along Death of 
 which he had come, detained on the way by a vain attack Tra jan. 
 on the Arabs in Hatra, the residence of the king of the 
 brave tribes of the Mesopotamian desert, whose mighty 
 works of fortification and magnificent buildings are still at 
 the present day imposing in their ruins. He intended to 
 continue the war next year, and so to make the subjection 
 of the Parthians a reality. But the combat in the desert 
 of Hatra, in which the sixty-year-old emperor had bravely 
 fought with the Arab horsemen, was to be his last. He 
 sickened and died on the journey home (8th Aug. 1 1 7), 
 without being able to complete his victory and to hold 
 
 1 It may be that at the same time fused coil of legends of Malalas some 
 
 Armenia also revolted. But when historical facts, e.g. the installation of 
 
 Gutschmid (quoted by Dierauer in Parthamaspates (who is here son of 
 
 Biidinger's Untersuchungen, i. 179), king Chosroes of Armenia) as king 
 
 makes Meherdotes and Sanatrukios, of Parthia by Trajan; and so, too, 
 
 whom Malalas adduces as kings of the dates of Trajan's departure from 
 
 Persia in the Trajanic war, into kings Rome in October (114), of his landing 
 
 of Armenia again in revolt, this result in Seleucia in December, and of his 
 
 is attained by a series of daring con- entrance into Antioch on the 7th 
 
 jectures, which shift the names of Jan. (115) may be correct. But, as 
 
 persons and peoples as much as they this report stands, the historian can 
 
 transform the causal nexus of events, only decline to accept it ; he cannot 
 
 There are certainly found in the con- rectify it. 
 
THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 the celebration of it in Rome ; it was in keeping with his 
 spirit that even after death the honour of a triumph was 
 accorded to him, and hence he is the only one of the 
 deified Roman emperors who even as god still bears the 
 title of victory. 
 
 Trajan's Trajan had not sought war with the Parthians, but it 
 
 policy^ 1 had been forced u P on him ' not he ' but Cnosroes nad 
 broken the agreement as to Armenia, which during the 
 last forty years had been the basis of the state of peace 
 in the region of the Euphrates. If it is conceivable that 
 the Parthians did not acquiesce in it, since the continuing 
 suzerainty of the Romans over Armenia carried in itself 
 the stimulus to revolt, we must on the other hand acknow- 
 ledge that in the way hitherto followed further steps could 
 not be taken than were taken by Corbulo ; the uncondi- 
 tional renunciation of Armenia, and — which was the 
 necessary consequence of it — the recognition of the 
 Parthian state on a footing of full equality, lay indeed 
 beyond the horizon of Roman policy as much as the 
 abolition of slavery and similar ideas that could not be 
 thought of at that time. But if permanent peace could 
 not be attained by this alternative, there was left in the 
 great dilemma of Roman Oriental policy only the other 
 course — the extension of direct Roman rule to the left 
 bank of the Euphrates. Therefore Armenia now became 
 a Roman province, and no less Mesopotamia. This was 
 only in keeping with the . nature of the case. The con- 
 version of Armenia from a Roman vassal -state with a 
 Roman garrison into a Roman governorship made not much 
 change externally ; the Parthians could only be effectively 
 ejected from Armenia when they lost possession of the 
 neighbouring region ; and above all, the Roman rule as 
 well as the Roman provincial constitution found a far 
 more favourable soil in the half-Greek Mesopotamia than 
 in the thoroughly Oriental Armenia. Other considera- 
 tions fell to be added. The Roman customs-frontier in 
 Syria was badly constituted, and to get the international 
 traffic from the great commercial marts of Syria towards 
 the Euphrates and the Tigris entirely into its power was 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 71 
 
 an essential gain to the Roman state, as indeed Trajan 
 immediately set to work to institute the new customs-dues 
 at the Euphrates and Tigris. 1 Even in a military point 
 of view the boundary of the Tigris was easier of defence 
 than the previous frontier-line which ran along the Syrian 
 desert and thence along the Euphrates. The conversion 
 of the region of Adiabene beyond the Tigris into a Roman 
 province, whereby Armenia became an inland one, and 
 the transformation of the Parthian empire itself into a 
 Roman vassal-state were corollaries of the same idea. It 
 is not meant to be denied that in a policy of conquest 
 consistency is a dangerous praise, and that Trajan after 
 his fashion yielded in these enterprises more than was 
 reasonable to the effort after external success, and went 
 beyond the rational goal ; 2 but wrong is done to him 
 when his demeanour in the East is referred to blind lust 
 of conquest. He did what Caesar would have done had 
 he lived. His policy is but the other side of that of Nero's 
 statesmen, and the two are as opposite, as they are equally 
 consistent and equally warranted. Posterity has justified 
 more the policy of conquest than that of concession. 
 
 For the moment no doubt it was otherwise. The Reaction 
 Oriental conquests of Trajan lit up the gloomy evening of Hadri an 
 the Roman empire like flashes of lightning in the dark- and Pius, 
 ness of the night ; but, like these, they brought no new 
 morning. His successor found himself compelled to 
 choose between completing the unfinished work of sub- 
 duing the Parthians or allowing it to drop. The exten- 
 sion of the frontier could not be carried out at all without 
 a considerable increase of the army and of the budget ; 
 and the shifting of the centre of gravity to the East, there- 
 by rendered inevitable, was a dubious strengthening of the 
 empire. Hadrian and Pius therefore returned entirely 
 
 1 Fronto, Princ. hist. p. 209 2 Nearly with equal warrant, Julian 
 
 Naber : cum praesens Traianus Eti- (Caes. p. 328) makes the emperor say 
 
 phratis et Tigridis portoria equorum that he had not taken up arms against 
 
 et camelorum trib\utaque ordinaret, the Parthians before they had violated 
 
 Ma\cer (?) caesus est. This applies to right, and Dio (Ixviii. 17) reproaches 
 
 the moment when Babylonia and him with having waged the war from 
 
 Mesopotamia revolted, while Trajan ambition, 
 was tarrying at the mouth of the Tigris. 
 
/2 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 into the paths of the earlier imperial period. Hadrian 
 allowed the Roman vassal-king of Parthia, Parthamas- 
 pates, to drop, and portioned him off in another way. 
 He evacuated Assyria and Mesopotamia, and voluntarily 
 gave back these provinces to their earlier ruler. He sent 
 to him as well his captive daughter ; the permanent token 
 of the victory won, the golden throne of Ctesiphon, even 
 the pacific Pius refused to deliver up again to the Par- 
 thians. Hadrian as well as Pius earnestly endeavoured to 
 live in peace and friendship with their neighbour, and at 
 no time do the commercial relations between the Roman 
 entrepots on the Syrian east frontier and the mercantile 
 towns on the Euphrates seem to have been more lively 
 than at this epoch. 
 Armenia a Armenia ceased likewise to be a Roman province, and 
 state 1 " returned to its former position as a Roman vassal-state 
 and a Parthian appanage of the second son. 1 The 
 princes of the Albani, and the Iberians on the Caucasus, 
 and the numerous small dynasts in the south-eastern 
 corner of the Black Sea likewise remained dependent. 2 
 
 1 Hadrian cannot possibly have re- which Hadrian compensated the Par- 
 leased Armenia from the position of a thian prince nominated as Parthian 
 Roman dependency. The notice of king by Trajan {vita, c. 5), were in 
 his biographer, c. 21 : Armeniis regent fact Armenians, which is not impro- 
 habere permisit, cum sub Traiano bable, there lies in it a confirmation 
 legatum habuissent points rather to as well of the lasting dependence of 
 the contrary, and we find at the end Armenia on Rome as of the continu- 
 of Hadrian's reign a contingent of ous rule of the Arsacids there. Even 
 Armenians in the army of the gover- the 'AvpyjXios TLaKopos /3acrt\ei)s /xeydXTjs 
 nor of Cappadocia (Arrian. c. Alan. 'Ap/xevlas, who erected a monument in 
 29). Pius did not merely induce the Rome to his brother Aurelius Meri- 
 Parthians by his representations to thates who died there {C. I. Gr. 
 desist from the intended invasion of 6559), belongs from his name to the 
 Armenia {vita, 9), but also in fact house of the Arsacids. But he was 
 invested them with Armenia (coins hardly the king of Armenia installed 
 from the years 140- 144, Eckhel, vii. by Vologasus IV. and deposed by the 
 p. 15). The fact also that Iberia Romans (p. 74); if the latter had 
 certainly stood in the relation of de- come to Rome as a captive, we should 
 pendence under Pius, because other- know it, and even he would hardly have 
 wise the Parthians could not have been allowed to call himself king of 
 brought complaints as to its king in Great Armenia in a Roman inscription. 
 Rome (Dio, Ixix. 15), presupposes a 2 As vassals holding from Trajan 
 like dependent relation for Armenia, or Hadrian, Arrian {Peripl. c. 15) 
 The names of the Armenian kings of adduces the Heniochi and Machelones 
 this period are not known. If the (comp. Dio, lxviii. 18; lxxi. 14); the 
 proximae gentes, with the rule of Lazi (comp. Suidas, s. v. Ao/xeTiavds), 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 73 
 
 Roman garrisons were stationed not merely on the coast 
 in Apsarus 1 and on the Phasis, but, as can be shown, 
 under Commodus in Armenia itself, not far from Artaxata ; 
 in a military point of view all these states belonged to the 
 district of the commandant of Cappadocia. 2 This supre- 
 macy, however, very indefinite in its nature, seems to have 
 been dealt with generally, and in particular by Hadrian, 3 
 in such a way that it appeared more as a right of protec- 
 tion than as subjection proper, and at least the more 
 powerful of these princes did, and left undone, in the main 
 what pleased them. The common interest — which we have 
 formerly brought out — in warding off the wild trans- 
 Caucasian tribes became still more definitely prominent in 
 this epoch, and evidently served as a bond in particular 
 between Romans and Parthians. Towards the end of the 
 reign of Hadrian the Alani, in agreement apparently with 
 the king of Iberia, at that time Pharasmanes II., on whom 
 it primarily devolved to bar the pass of the Caucasus 
 against them, invaded the southern regions, and pillaged 
 not only the territory of the Albanians and Armenians, 
 but also the Parthian province of Media and the Roman 
 province of Cappadocia, though matters did not come to 
 a waging of war in common, but the gold of the ruler 
 then reigning in Parthia, Vologasus III., and the mobilis- 
 ing of the Cappadocian army on the part of the Romans, 4 
 
 over whom also Pius put a king (vita, 
 9) ; the Apsilae ; the Abasgi ; the 
 Sanigae, these all within the imperial 
 frontier reaching as far as Dioscu- 
 rias = Sebastopolis ; beyond it, in the 
 region of the Bosporan vassal-state, 
 the Zichi or Zinchi (id. c. 27). 
 
 1 This is confirmed not only by 
 Arrian, Peripl. c. 7, but by the officer 
 of Hadrian's time praepositus nume- 
 rorum tendentium in Ponto Absaro 
 (C. I. L. x. 1202). 
 
 2 Comp. p. 75 note 2. The de- 
 tachment probably of 1000 men (be- 
 cause under a tribune) doing garrison 
 duty in the year 185 in Valarshapat 
 (Etshmiazin) not far from Artaxata, 
 belonged to one of the Cappadocian 
 legions (C. 1. L. iii. 6052). 
 
 3 Hadrian's efforts after the friend- 
 ship of the Oriental vassal-princes are 
 often brought into prominence, not 
 without a hint that he was more than 
 fairly indulgent to them (vita, c. 13, 
 17, 21). Pharasmanes of Iberia did 
 not come to Rome on his invitation, 
 but complied with that of Pius (vita 
 Hadr. 13, 21 ; vita Pii, 9 ; Dio, lxix. 
 15, 2, which excerpt belongs to Pius). 
 
 4 We still possess the remarkable 
 report of the governor of Cappadocia 
 under Hadrian, Flavius Arrianus, 
 upon the mobilising of the Cappa- 
 docian army against the "Scythians" 
 among his minor writings ; he was 
 himself at the Caucasus and visited 
 the passes there (Lydus, de Mag. iii. 
 S3). 
 
74 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 induced the barbarians to return, yet their interests coin- 
 cided, and the complaint which the Parthians lodged in 
 Rome as to Pharasmanes of Iberia, shows the concert of 
 the two great powers. 1 
 Parthian The disturbances of the status quo came again from 
 
 M^rcusand ^ e P artman side. The suzerainty of the Romans over 
 Vems. Armenia played a part in history similar to that of the 
 German empire over Italy ; unsubstantial as it was, it was 
 yet constantly felt as an encroachment, and carried within 
 it the danger of war. Already under Hadrian the con- 
 flict was imminent ; the emperor succeeded in keeping the 
 peace in a personal interview with the Parthian prince. 
 Under Pius the Parthian invasion of Armenia seemed 
 once more impending ; his earnest dissuasive was in the 
 first instance successful. But even this most pacific of all 
 emperors, who had it more at heart to save the life of a 
 burgess than to kill a thousand foes, was obliged in the 
 last period of his reign to prepare himself for the attack 
 and to reinforce the armies of the East. Hardly had he 
 closed his eyes (161), when the long-threatening thunder- 
 cloud discharged itself. By command of Vologasus IV. 
 the Persian general Chosroes 2 advanced into Armenia, and 
 placed the Arsacid prince Pacorus on the throne. The 
 governor of Cappadocia Severianus did what was his duty, 
 and led on his part the Roman troops over the Euphrates. 
 At Elegeia, just where a generation before the king Par- 
 thorn asiris, likewise placed by the Parthians on the 
 Armenian throne, had humbled himself in vain before 
 Trajan, the armies encountered each other ; the Roman 
 was not merely beaten but annihilated in a three days' 
 conflict ; the unfortunate general put himself to death, as 
 Varus had formerly done. The victorious Orientals were 
 not content with the occupation of Armenia, but crossed 
 
 1 This we learn from the frag- 2 So he is named in Lucian, Hist. 
 
 ments of Dio's account in Xiphilinus, conscr. 21 ; if the same calls him 
 
 Zonaras, and in the Excerpts ; Zon- (A/ex. 27) Othryades, he is drawing 
 
 aras has preserved the correct reading here from a historian of the stamp 
 
 'AXavol instead of 'A\j3avoi ; that the of those whom he ridicules in that 
 
 Alani pillaged also the territory of the treatise, and of whom another Hel- 
 
 Albani, is shown by the setting of lenised the same man as Oxyroes 
 
 the exc. Ursin. lxxii. (Hist, conscr. c. 18). 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 75 
 
 the Euphrates and invaded Syria ; the army stationed 
 there was also defeated, and there were fears as to the 
 fidelity of the Syrians. The Roman government had no 
 choice. As the troops of the East showed on this occasion 
 their small capacity for fighting, and were besides weak- 
 ened and demoralised by the defeat which they had 
 suffered, further legions were despatched to the East from 
 the West, even from the Rhine, and levies were ordered in 
 Italy itself. Lucius Verus, one of the two emperors who 
 shortly before had come to govern, went in person to the 
 East (162) to take up the chief command, and if he, 
 neither warlike nor yet even faithful to his duty, showed 
 himself unequal to the task, and of his deeds in the East 
 hardly anything else is to be told than that he married 
 his niece there and was ridiculed for his theatrical enthu- 
 siasm even by the Antiochenes, the governors of Cappa- 
 docia and Syria — in the former case first Statius Priscus, 
 then Martius Verus, in the latter Avidius Cassius, 1 the 
 best generals of this epoch — managed the cause of Rome 
 better than the wearer of the crown. Once more, before 
 the armies met, the Romans offered peace ; willingly 
 would Marcus have avoided the severe war. But Volo- 
 gasus abruptly rejected the reasonable proposals ; and this 
 time the pacific neighbour was also the stronger. Ar- 
 menia was immediately recovered ; already, in the year 
 163, Priscus took the capital Artaxata, and destroyed it. 
 Not far from it the new capital of the country, Kainepolis, 
 in Armenia Nor-Khalakh or Valarshapat (Etshmiazin) 
 was built by the Romans and provided with a strong 
 garrison. 2 In the succeeding year instead of Pacorus 
 
 1 Syria was administered when the 
 war broke out by L. Attidius Cor- 
 nelianus (C. I. Gr. 4661 of the year 
 160 ; vita Marci, 8 ; C. I. L. iii. 
 129 of the year 162), after him by 
 Julius Verus (C. /. L. iii. 199, pro- 
 bably of the year 163) and then by 
 Avidius Cassius presumably from the 
 year 164. The statement that the 
 other provinces of the East were 
 assigned to Cassius's command (Philo- 
 stratus, vit. Soph. i. 13 ; Dio, lxxi. 
 
 3), similarly to what was done to Cor- 
 bulo as legate of Cappadocia, can 
 only relate to the time after the de- 
 parture of the emperor Verus ; so 
 long as the latter held the nominal 
 chief command there was no room 
 for it. 
 
 2 A fragment probably of Dio (in 
 Suidas s. v. Mdprtos), tells that Priscus 
 in Armenia laid out the Kaiv^ 7r6Xts 
 and furnished it with a Roman gar- 
 rison, his successor Martius Verus 
 
76 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 Conflicts in 
 Syria and 
 Mesopo- 
 tamia. 
 
 Sohaemus, by descent also an Arsacid, but a Roman 
 subject and Roman senator, was nominated as king of 
 Great Armenia. 1 In a legal point of view nothing was 
 changed in Armenia ; yet the bonds which joined it to 
 Rome were drawn tighter. 
 
 The conflicts in Syria and Mesopotamia were more 
 serious. The line of the Euphrates was obstinately 
 defended by the Parthians ; after a keen combat on the 
 right bank at Sura the fortress of Nicephorium (Ragga) on 
 the left was stormed by the Romans. Still more vehe- 
 mently was the passage at Zeugma contested ; but here too 
 victory remained with the Romans in the decisive battle 
 at Europus (Djerabis to the south of Biredjik). They 
 now advanced on their part into Mesopotamia. Edessa 
 was besieged, Dausara not far from it stormed ; the 
 Romans appeared before Nisibis ; the Parthian general 
 saved himself by swimming over the Tigris. The Romans 
 might from Mesopotamia undertake the march to Babylon. 
 The satraps forsook in part the banners of the defeated 
 
 silenced the national movement that 
 had arisen there, and declared this 
 city the first of Armenia. This was 
 Valarshapat (0va\apira.7rdT or OvaXep- 
 okt'httt) in Agathangelos) thenceforth 
 the capital of Armenia. Kaivr) tt6\ls 
 was, as Kiepert informs me, already 
 recognised by Stilting as translation 
 of the Armenian Nor-Khalakh, which 
 second name Valarshapat constantly 
 bears in Armenian authors of the fifth 
 century alongside of the usual one. 
 Moses of Chorene, following Barde- 
 sanes, makes the town originate from 
 a Jewish colony brought thither under 
 king Tigranes VI., who according to 
 him reigned 150-188; he refers the 
 enclosing of it with walls and the 
 naming of it to his son Valarsch II. 
 188-208. That the town had a 
 strong Roman garrison in 185 is 
 shown by the inscription C. I. L. iii. 
 6052. 
 
 1 That Sohaemus was Achaemenid 
 and Arsacid (or professed to be) and 
 king's son and king, as well as Roman 
 senator and consul, before he became 
 
 king of Great Armenia, is stated by 
 his contemporary Jamblichus (c. 10 
 of the extract in Photius). Probably 
 he belonged to the dynastic family of 
 Hemesa (Josephus, Arch. xx. 8, 4, 
 et al. ) If Jamblichus the Babylonian 
 wrote "under him," this can doubt- 
 less only be understood to the effect 
 that he composed his romance in 
 Artaxata. That Sohaemus ruled over 
 Armenia before Pacorus is nowhere 
 stated, and is not probable, since 
 neither Fronto's words (p. 127 Naber), 
 quod Sohaemo potius quam Vologaeso 
 regnum Armeniae dedisset aut quod 
 Pacoram regno privasset, or those of 
 the fragment from Dio (?) lxxi. 1 : 
 M&prios Ourjpos rbv QovKvdLdrjv ii<- 
 TrtfMrei. Karayayelv "EdaipLOv is 'Ap/meviav 
 point to reinstatement, and the coins 
 with rex Armeniis datus (Eckhel, vii. 
 91, comp. vita Veri, 7, 8) in fact 
 exclude it. We do not know the 
 predecessor of Pacorus, and are not 
 even aware whether the throne which 
 he took possession of was vacant or 
 occupied. 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 77 
 
 great -king; Seleucia, the great capital of the Hellenes 
 on the Euphrates, voluntarily opened its gates to the 
 Romans, but was afterwards burnt down by them, because 
 the burgesses were rightly or wrongly accused of an 
 understanding with the enemy. The Parthian capital, 
 Ctesiphon, was also taken and destroyed ; with good 
 reason at the beginning of the year 165 the senate could 
 salute the two rulers as the Parthian grand-victors. In 
 the campaign of this year Cassius even penetrated into 
 Media ; but the outbreak of a pestilence, more especially 
 in these regions, decimated the troops and compelled 
 them to return, accelerating perhaps even the conclusion 
 of peace. The result of the war was the cession of the 
 western district of Mesopotamia ; the princes of Edessa 
 and of Osrhoene became vassals of Rome, and the town 
 of Carrhae, which had for long Greek leanings, became 
 a free town under Roman protection. 1 As regards extent, 
 especially in presence of the complete success of the war, 
 the increase of territory was moderate, but yet of import- 
 ance, inasmuch as thereby the Romans gained a footing 
 on the left bank of the Euphrates. We may add that 
 the territories occupied were given back to the Parthians 
 and the status quo was restored. On the whole, therefore, 
 the policy of reserve adopted by Hadrian was now 
 abandoned once more, and there was a return to the 
 course of Trajan. This is the more remarkable, as the 
 government of Marcus certainly cannot be reproached 
 with ambition and longing after aggrandisement ; what 
 it did it did under compulsion and in modest limits. 
 
 The emperor Severus pursued the same course further Parthian 
 and more decidedly. The year of the three emperors, T ars under 
 193, had led to the war between the legions of the West eVemS * 
 and those of the East, and with Pescennius Niger the 
 latter had succumbed. The Roman vassal-princes of the 
 East, and as well the ruler of the Parthians, Vologasus V., 
 son of Sanatrucius, had, as was natural, recognised Niger, 
 and even put their troops at his disposal ; the latter 
 
 * This is shown by the Mesopo- are no accounts in our tradition as to 
 tamian royal and urban coins. There the conditions of peace. 
 
7S 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Province of 
 Meso- 
 potamia. 
 
 had at first gratefully declined, and then, when his cause 
 took a turn to the worse, invoked their aid. The other 
 Roman vassals, above all the prince of Armenia, cautiously- 
 kept back ; only Abgarus, the prince of Edessa, sent the 
 desired contingent. The Parthians promised aid, and it 
 came at least from the nearest districts, from the prince 
 Barsemias of Hatra in the Mesopotamian desert, and 
 from the satrap of the Adiabeni beyond the Tigris. 
 Even after Niger's death (194) these strangers not 
 merely remained in the Roman Mesopotamia, but even 
 demanded the withdrawal of the Roman garrisons 
 stationed there and the giving back of this territory. 1 
 
 Thereupon Severus advanced into Mesopotamia and 
 took possession of the whole extensive and important 
 region. From Nisibis an expedition was conducted against 
 the Arab prince of Hatra, which, however, did not succeed 
 in taking the fortified town ; even beyond the Tigris 
 against the satrap of Adiabene the generals of Severus 
 accomplished nothing of importance. 2 But Mesopotamia, 
 
 1 The beginning of the Ursinian 
 excerpt of Dio, lxxv. I, 2, is con- 
 fused. 01 'Opporjvol, it is said, Kal ol 
 'A8iaj3rivol airoffTavres Kal Nitrate 
 TrdXiopKovvres Kal 7]TT7)d&res virb 
 Heovripov eivpea^eiaavro irpbs atirbv 
 
 fXETCL TOV TOV Nfy/DOU 6&VaT0V. 
 
 Osrhoene was then Roman, Adiabene 
 Parthian; from whom did the two 
 districts revolt ? and whose side did 
 the Nisibenes take? That their 
 opponents were defeated by Severus 
 before the sending of the embassy is 
 inconsistent with the course of the 
 narrative ; for the latter makes war 
 upon them because their envoys 
 make unsatisfactory offers to him. 
 Probably the supporting of Niger by 
 subjects of the Parthians and their 
 concert with Niger's Roman partisan 
 are now strictly apprehended as a 
 revolt from Severus ; the circum- 
 stance that the people afterwards 
 maintain that they had intended rather 
 to support Severus, is clearly indicated 
 as a makeshift. The Nisibenes may 
 have refused to co-operate, and there- 
 fore have been attacked by the 
 
 adherents of Niger. Thus is ex- 
 plained what is clear from the extract 
 given by Xiphilinus from Dio, lxxv. 
 2, that the left bank of the Euphrates 
 was for Severus an enemy's land, but 
 not Nisibis ; therefore the town need 
 not have been Roman at that time ; 
 on the contrary, according to all 
 indications, it was only made Roman 
 by Severus. 
 
 2 As the wars against the Arabians 
 and the Adiabenians were in fact 
 directed against the Parthians, it 
 was natural that the titles Parthicus, 
 Arabicus, and Parthicus Adiabenicus, 
 should on that account be conferred 
 on the emperor ; they are also so 
 found, but usually Parthicus is 
 omitted, evidently because, as the 
 biographer of Severus says (c. 9), 
 excusavit Parthicum nomen, ne Par- 
 thos lacesseret. With this agrees the 
 notice certainly belonging to the year 
 195 in Dio, lxxv. 9, 6, as to the 
 peaceful agreement with the Parthians 
 and the cession of a portion of 
 Armenia to them. 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 79 
 
 i.e. the whole region between the Euphrates and Tigris 
 as far as the Chaboras, became a Roman province, and 
 was occupied with two legions newly created on account 
 of this extension of territory. The principality of Edessa 
 continued to subsist as a Roman fief, but was now no 
 longer border- territory but surrounded by land directly 
 imperial. The considerable and strong city of Nisibis, 
 thenceforth called after the name of the emperor and 
 organised as a Roman colony, became the capital of the new 
 province and seat of the governor. After an important 
 portion of territory had thus been torn from the Parthian 
 kingdom, and armed force had been used against two 
 satraps dependent on it, the great -king made ready with 
 his troops to oppose the Romans. Severus offered peace, 
 and ceded for Mesopotamia a portion of Armenia. But 
 the decision of arms was thereby only postponed. As 
 soon as Severus had started for the West, whither the 
 complication with his co-ruler in Gaul recalled him, the 
 Parthians broke the peace 1 and advanced into Meso- 
 potamia ; the prince of Osrhoene was driven out, the 
 land was occupied, and the governor, Laetus, one of the 
 most excellent warriors of the time, was besieged in 
 Nisibis. He was in great danger, when Severus once 
 more arrived in the East in the year 198, after Albinus 
 had succumbed. Thereupon the fortune of war turned. 
 The Parthians retreated, and now Severus took the 
 offensive. He advanced into Babylonia, and won 
 Seleucia and Ctesiphon ; the Parthian king saved himself 
 with a few horsemen by flight, the crown-treasure became 
 the spoil of the victors, the Parthian capital was abandoned 
 to the pillage of the Roman soldiers, and more than 
 100,000 captives were brought to the Roman slave 
 market. The Arabians indeed in Hatra defended them- 
 selves better than the Parthian state itself ; in vain 
 Severus endeavoured in two severe sieges to reduce the 
 desert -stronghold. But in the main the success of the 
 two campaigns of 198 and 199 was complete. By the 
 
 1 That Armenia also fell into their 9, 2 ; no doubt his representation is 
 power is indicated by Herodian, v. warped and defective. 
 
So 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 erection of the province of Mesopotamia and of the 
 great command there, Armenia lost the intermediate 
 position which it hitherto had ; it might remain in its 
 previous relations and apart from formal incorporation. 
 The land retained thus its own troops, and the imperial 
 government even paid for these subsequently a contribution 
 from the imperial chest. 1 
 The change The further development of these relations as neigh- 
 of govern- k ours was essentially influenced by the changes which 
 
 ment m the . « T r , 
 
 West and internal order underwent in the two empires. If under 
 in the East. ^ dynasty of Nerva, and not less under Severus, the 
 Parthian state, often torn asunder by civil war and 
 contention for the crown, had been confronted by the 
 relatively stable Roman monarchy as superior, this order 
 of things broke down after Severus's death, and almost 
 for a century there followed in the western empire mostly 
 wretched and thoroughly ephemeral regents, who in 
 presence of other countries were constantly hesitating 
 between arrogance and weakness. While the scale of the 
 West thus sank that of the East rose. A few years 
 after the death of Severus (211) a revolution took place 
 in Iran, which not merely, like so many earlier crises, 
 overthrew the ruling regent, nor even merely called to 
 the government another dynasty instead of the decayed 
 Arsacids, but, unchaining the national and religious 
 elements for a mightier upward flight, substituted for 
 the bastard civilisation — pervaded by Hellenism — of the 
 Parthian state the state -organisation, faith, manners, and 
 princes of that province which had created the old 
 Persian empire, and, since its transition to the Parthian 
 
 1 When at the peace in 218 the old with the words of Dio ; the connec- 
 
 relation between Rome and Armenia tion must be what we have indicated, 
 
 was renewed, the king of Armenia In the fourth and fifth centuries the 
 
 gave himself the prospect of a renewal fortress of Biriparach in the Caucasus, 
 
 of the Roman annual moneys (Dio, which barred the Dariel pass, was 
 
 lxxviii. 27 : rod Hipid&rov rb apyipiov maintained by the Persians, who 
 
 8 kolt iros irapa twv 'Pw/xaiuif played the part of masters here after 
 
 evpiffKero eXirlaavTos \rj\J/ea9ai). Pay- the peace of 364, with a Roman 
 
 ment of tribute proper by the Romans contribution, and this was likewise 
 
 to the Armenians is excluded for the conceived as payment or tribute 
 
 period of Severus and the time before (Lydus, de Mag. iii. 52, 53 ; Priscus, 
 
 Severus, and by no means agrees Jr. 31, Mull.). 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 81 
 
 dynasty, preserved within it as well the tombs of Darius 
 and Xerxes as the germs of the regeneration of the 
 people. The re-establishment of the great -kingdom of 
 the Persians overthrown by Alexander ensued through 
 the emergence of the dynasty of the Sassanids. Let us 
 cast a glance at this new shape of things before we 
 pursue further the course of Romano -Parthian relations 
 in the East. 
 
 It has already been stated that the Parthian dynasty, The 
 although it had wrested Iran from Hellenism, was yet Sassamds - 
 regarded by the nation as, so to speak, illegitimate. 
 Artahshatr, or in new Persian Ardashir — so the official 
 biography of the Sassanids reports — came forward to 
 revenge the blood of Dara murdered by Alexander, and 
 to bring back the rule to the legitimate family and 
 re-establish it, such as it had been at the time of his 
 forefathers before the divisional kings. Under this 
 legend lies a good deal of reality. The dynasty which 
 bears the name of Sasan, the grandfather of Ardashir, 
 was no other than the royal dynasty of the Persian 
 province ; Ardashir's father, Papak or Pabek, 1 and a 
 long list of his ancestors had, under the supremacy of 
 the Arsacids, swayed the sceptre in this ancestral land 
 of the Iranian nation, 2 had resided in Istachr, not far 
 from the old Persepolis, and marked their coins with 
 Iranian language and Iranian writing, and with the 
 sacred emblems of the Persian national faith, while the 
 great -kings had their abode in the half- Greek border- 
 land, and had their coins stamped in the Greek language 
 and after the Greek style. The fundamental organisation 
 of the Iranian state-system — the great-kingdom holding 
 
 1 Artaxares names his father Papa- not know. Naturally the Roman 
 cus in the inscription, quoted at p. authors take the side of the weak 
 83, note 1, king ; how it is to be legitimate Arsacid against the danger- 
 reconciled with this, that not merely ous usurper. 
 
 does the native legend (in Agathias 2 Strabo (under Tiberius) xv. 3, 
 
 ii. 27) make Pabek a shoemaker, but 24 : vvv d'ijdy] KaO' avrovs (rwecrnSres 
 
 also the contemporary Dio (if in ol Ttipaai ^aaiXias ix ovcrLV vittjkSovs 
 
 reality Zonaras, xii. 15, has borrowed eripois paaiXevcri, irpbrepov ptv Ma/ce- 
 
 these words from him) names Artax- ddcri, vvv St ILapdvalois. 
 ares e£ a<pavQv ml &56i;uv, we do 
 
 VOL. II. 6 
 
82 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Extent of 
 the Sas- 
 sanid king 
 dom. 
 
 superiority over the divisional kings — was under the 
 two dynasties as little different as that of the empire 
 of the German nation under the Saxon and the Suabian 
 emperors. Only for this reason in that official version 
 the time of the Arsacids is designated as that of the 
 divisional-kings, and Ardashir as the first common head 
 of all Iran after the last Darius, because in the old Persian 
 empire the Persian province stood related alike to the 
 other provinces and to the Parthians, as in the Roman 
 state Italy stood related to the provinces, and the Persian 
 disputed with the Parthian the legitimate title to the 
 great-kingdom connected de jure with his province. 1 
 
 What was the relation of the Sassanid kingdom to 
 that of the Arsacids in point of extent, is a question to 
 which tradition gives no sufficient answer. The provinces 
 of the west collectively remained subject to the new 
 dynasty after it sat firm in the saddle, and the claims 
 which it set up against the Romans went, as we shall see, 
 far beyond the pretensions of the Arsacids. But how 
 far the rule of the Sassanids reached towards the West, 
 and when it advanced to the Oxus which was subsequently 
 regarded as the legitimate boundary between Iran and 
 Turan, are matters withdrawn from our field of vision. 2 
 
 1 When Noldeke says (Tabari, p. 
 449), "The subjection of the chief 
 lands of the monarchy directly to the 
 crown formed the chief distinction 
 of the Sassanid kingdom from the 
 Arsacid, which had real kings in its 
 various provinces," the power of the 
 great - kingdom beyond doubt is 
 thoroughly dependent on the per- 
 sonality of the possessor, and under 
 the first Sassanids must have been 
 much stronger than under the last 
 decayed Arsacids. But a contrast in 
 principle is not discoverable. From 
 Mithradates I., the proper founder 
 of the dynasty, onward the Arsacid 
 ruler names himself " king of kings," 
 just as did subsequently the Sassanid, 
 while Alexander the Great and the 
 Seleucids never bore this title. Even 
 under them individual vassal - kings 
 ruled, e.g. in Persis (p. 8i, note 2) ; 
 
 but the vassal-kingdom was not then 
 the regular form of imperial adminis- 
 tration, and the Greek rulers did not 
 name themselves according to it, any 
 more than the Caesars assumed the 
 title of great - king on account of 
 Cappadocia or Numidia. The satraps 
 of the Arsacid state were essentially 
 the Marzbans of the Sassanids. Per- 
 haps rather the great imperial offices, 
 which in the Sassanid polity cor- 
 respond to the supreme administrative 
 posts of the Diocletiano-Constantinian 
 constitution, and probably were the 
 model for the latter, were wanting to 
 the Arsacid state ; then certainly the 
 two would be related to each other 
 much as the imperial organisation of 
 Augustus to that of Constantine. But 
 we know too little of the Arsacid or- 
 ganisation to affirm this with certainty. 
 2 According to the Persian records 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 83 
 
 The state -system of Iran did not undergo quite a The state 
 fundamental transformation in consequence of the coming slssanids 
 in of the new dynasty. The official title of the first 
 Sassanid ruler, as it is given uniformly in three languages 
 under the rock -relief of Nakshi-Rustam, "The Mazda- 
 servant God Artaxares, king of kings of the Arians, of 
 divine descent," 1 is substantially that of the Arsacids, 
 except that the Iranian nation, as already in the old 
 native regal title, and the indigenous god are now expressly 
 named. That a dynasty having its home in Persis came 
 in lieu of one originally alien in race and only nationalised, 
 was a work and a victory of national reaction ; but the 
 force of circumstances placed various insurmountable 
 barriers in the way of the consequences thence resulting. 
 Persepolis, or, as it is now called, Istachr, becomes again 
 nominally the capital of the empire, and there on the 
 same rock -wall, alongside of the similar monuments of 
 Darius, the remarkable statues and still more remarkable 
 inscriptions just mentioned proclaim the fame of Ardashir 
 and Shapur; but the administration could not well be con- 
 ducted from this remote locality, and Ctesiphon continued 
 still to be its centre. The new Persian government did 
 
 of the last Sassanid period preserved know (comp. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 
 
 in the Arabic chronicle of Tabari 17, 116). 
 
 Ardashir, after he has cut off with his 1 The title runs in Greek ( C. I. Gr. 
 own hand the head of Ardawan and 4675), MdaSaavos (Mazda - servant, 
 has assumed the title Shahan-shah, treated as a proper name) Bebs 
 king of kings, conquers first Hamad- 'Aprafd/Mjs /3acnAei>s fiacrCkiuv 'Apiav&v 
 han (Ecbatana) in Great Media, then £k yivovs OeQv ; with which closely 
 Aderbijan (Atropatene), Armenia, agrees the title of his son Sapor I. 
 Mosul (Adiabene) ; and further Suris- (id. 4676), only that after 'Apiavusv 
 tan or Sawad (Babylonia). Thence there is inserted ko.1 'kvapuxvGiv, and 
 he returns to Istachr unto his Persian so the extension of the rule to foreign 
 home, and then starting afresh con- lands is brought into prominence, 
 quers Sagistan, Gurgan (Hyrcania), In the title of the Arsacids, so far as 
 Abrashahr (Nisapur in the Parthian it is clear from the Greek and Persian 
 land), Merv (Margiane), Balkh legends of coins, 6e6s, fiacriXei/s (3a<ri- 
 (Bactra), and Charizm (Khiva) up deoirdrup (= iic ytvovs 6eQv) 
 to the extreme limits of Chorasan. recur, whereas there is no prominence 
 "After he had killed many people given to the Arians and, significantly, 
 and had sent their heads to the fire- to the ' 4 Mazda -servant " ; by then- 
 temple of Anahedh (in Istachr), he side appear numerous other titles 
 returned from Merv to Pars and borrowed from the Syrian kings, 
 settled in Gor" (Feruzabad). How such as ttncpdvqs, diiccuos, viK&Twp, 
 much of this is legend, we do not also the Roman airoicpdTup. 
 
34 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 not resume the de jure prerogative of the Persians, as it had 
 subsisted under the Achaemenids ; while Darius named 
 himself " a Persian son of a Persian, an Arian from Arian 
 stock," Ardashir named himself, as we saw, simply king of 
 the Arians. We do not know whether Persian elements 
 were introduced afresh into the great houses apart from 
 the royal ; in any case several of them remained, like the 
 Suren and the Caren ; only under the Achaemenids, not 
 under the Sassanids these were exclusively Persian. 
 Church and Even in a religious point of view no change, strictly 
 priesthood called, set in: but the faith and the priests gained 
 
 under the ' ' _ i 
 
 Sassanids. under the Persian great-kings an influence and a power 
 such as they had never, possessed under the Parthian. It 
 may well be that the twofold diffusion of foreign worships 
 in the direction of Iran — of Buddhism from the East and 
 of the Jewish-Christian faith from the West — brought by 
 their very hostility a regeneration to the old religion of 
 Mazda. The founder of the new dynasty, Ardashir, was, 
 as is credibly reported, a zealous fire-worshipper, and him- 
 self took priestly orders ; therefore, it is further said, from 
 that time the order of the Magi became influential and 
 arrogant, while it had hitherto by no means had such 
 honour and such freedom, but on the contrary had not 
 been held in much account by the rulers. " Thenceforth 
 all the Persians honour and revere the priests ; public 
 affairs are arranged according to their counsels and 
 oracles ; each treaty and each law-dispute undergoes 
 their inspection and their judgment, and nothing appears 
 to the Persian right and legal which has not been con- 
 firmed by a priest." Accordingly we encounter an ar- 
 rangement of spiritual administration which reminds us 
 of the position of the Pope and the bishops alongside of 
 the Emperor and the princes. Each circle is placed under 
 a chief-Magian (Magupat, lord of Magians, in new Persian 
 Mobedh), and these all in turn under the chiefest of the 
 chief Magians (Mobedhan-Mobedh), the counterpart of 
 "the king of kings," and now it is he who crowns the 
 king. The consequences of this priestly dominion did 
 not fail to appear : the rigid ritual, the restrictive precepts 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 85 
 
 as to guilt and expiation, science resolving itself into a 
 wild system of oracles and of magic, while belonging 
 from the first to Parsism, in all probability only attained 
 to their full development at this epoch. 
 
 Traces of the national reaction appear also in the use Theian- 
 of the native language and the native customs. The largest ^country 
 Greek city of the Parthian empire, the ancient Seleucia, un der the 
 continued to subsist, but it was thenceforth called not Sassamds - 
 after the name of the Greek marshal, but after that of 
 its new master Beh, or better, Ardashir. The Greek 
 language hitherto at any rate always in use, although 
 debased and no longer ruling alone, disappears on the 
 emergence of the new dynasty at once from the coins, 
 and only on the inscriptions of the first Sassanids is 
 it still to be met with by the side of, and behind, the 
 language proper of the land. The " Parthian writing," the 
 Pahlavi, maintains its ground, but alongside of it comes 
 a second little different and indeed, as the coins show, 
 as properly official, probably that used hitherto in the 
 Persian province, so that the oldest monuments of the 
 Sassanids, like those of the Achaemenids, are trilingual, 
 somewhat as in the German middle ages Latin, Saxon, 
 and Franconian were employed side by side. After king 
 Sapor I. (f 272) the bilingual usage disappears, and the 
 second mode of writing alone retains its place, inheriting 
 the name Pahlavi. The year of the Seleucids, and the 
 names of the months belonging to it, disappear with the 
 change of dynasty ; in their stead come, according to old 
 Persian custom, the years of the rulers and the native 
 Persian names of months. 1 Even the old Persian legend 
 is transferred to the new Persia. The still extant " history 
 of Ardashir, son of Papak," which makes this son of 
 a Persian shepherd arrive at the Median court, perform 
 menial offices there, and then become the deliverer of his 
 people, is nothing but the old tale of Cyrus changed to 
 
 1 Frawardin, Ardhbehesht, etc. of the Roman province Cappadocia 
 
 (Ideler, Chronologie, ii. 515). It is (Ideler, i. 443); they must proceed 
 
 remarkable that essentially the same from the time when it was a Persian 
 
 names of the months have maintained satrapy, 
 themselves in the provincial calendar 
 
86 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Govern- 
 ment of the 
 Sassanids. 
 
 The new 
 Persians 
 and the 
 Romans. 
 
 the new names. Another fable -book of the Indian 
 Parsees is able to tell how king Iskander Rumi, i.e. " Alex- 
 ander the Roman," had caused the holy books of Zara- 
 thustra to be burnt, and how they were then restored by 
 the pious Ardaviraf when king Ardashir had mounted 
 the throne. Here the Romano- Hellene confronts the 
 Persian ; the legend has, as might be expected, forgotten 
 the illegitimate Arsacid. 
 
 In other respects the state of things remained essen- 
 tially the same. In a military point of view in particular, 
 the armies of the Sassanids were certainly not regular 
 and trained troops, but the levy of men capable of arms, 
 into which with the national movement a new spirit may 
 doubtless have passed, but which afterwards, as before, 
 was based in the main on the cavalry-service of the 
 nobility. The administration too remained as it was ; 
 the able ruler took steps with inexorable sternness against 
 the highway-robber as against the exacting official, and, 
 compared at least with the later Arabic and the Turkish 
 rule, the subjects of the Sassanid empire found themselves 
 prosperous and the state-chest full. 
 
 But the alteration in the position of the new kingdom 
 with reference to the Roman is significant. The Arsacids 
 never felt themselves quite on a level with the Caesars. 
 Often as the two states encountered each other in war 
 and peace as powers equal in weight, and decidedly 
 as the view of two great-powers dominated the Roman 
 East (p. i), there remained with the Roman power a 
 precedence similar to that which the holy Roman empire 
 of the German nation possessed throughout centuries, veiy 
 much to its hurt. Acts of subjection, such as the Par- 
 thian kings took upon themselves in presence of Tiberius 
 (p. 44) and of Nero (52), without being compelled to 
 them by extreme necessity, cannot be at all conceived 
 of on the Roman side. It cannot be accident that a gold 
 coin was never struck under the government of the Arsa- 
 cids, and the very first Sassanid ruler practised coining in 
 gold ; this is the most palpable sign of sovereignty un- 
 restricted by any duties of a vassal. To the claim of the 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 37 
 
 empire of the Caesars alone to the power of coining 
 money for universal circulation the Arsacids without 
 exception yielded, at least in so far that they themselves 
 refrained generally from coining, and left coinage in silver 
 and copper to the towns or the satraps ; the Sassanids again 
 struck gold pieces, as did king Darius. The great- 
 kingdom of the East at length demanded its full right ; 
 the world no longer belonged to the Romans alone. The 
 submissiveness of the Orientals and the supremacy of the 
 Occidentals were of the past. Accordingly, in place of 
 the relations between Romans and Parthians, as hitherto, 
 always reverting afresh to peace, there now came for 
 generations embittered hostility. 
 
 After having set forth the new state organisation, Parthian 
 with which the sinking Rome was soon to contend, we g^us 
 resume the thread of our narrative. Antoninus, son and Antoninus, 
 successor of Severus, not a warrior and statesman like his 
 father, but a dissolute caricature of both, must have had 
 the design — so far as in the case of such personages we 
 can speak of design at all — to bring the East entirely into 
 the Roman power. It was not difficult to place the 
 princes of Osrhoene and of Armenia, after they had been 
 summoned to the imperial court, under arrest, and to 
 declare these lives forfeited. But on the arrival of the 
 news a revolt broke out in Armenia. The Arsacid prince 
 Tiridates was proclaimed king, and invoked the protection 
 of the Parthians. Thereupon Antoninus put himself at 
 the head of a large military force, and appeared in the 
 East in the year 216, to put down the Armenians, and 
 in case of need also the Parthians. Tiridates himself at 
 once gave up the cause as lost, although the division sent 
 to Armenia subsequently encountered vehement resistance 
 there ; and he fled to the Parthians. The Romans de- 
 manded his surrender. The Parthians were not inclined on 
 his account to enter into a war, the more especially as just 
 then the two sons of king Vologasus V., Vologasus VI. 
 and Artabanus, were in bitter feud over the succession to 
 the throne. The former yielded when the Roman demand 
 was imperiously repeated, and delivered up Tiridates. 
 
88 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Thereupon the emperor desired from Artabanus, who had 
 meanwhile obtained recognition, the hand of his daughter 
 for the express object of thus obtaining the kingdom 
 by marriage, and of bringing East and West under one 
 rule. The rejection of this wild proposal 1 was the signal 
 for war ; the Romans declared it, and crossed the Tigris. 
 The Parthians were unprepared ; without encountering re- 
 sistance the Romans burnt down the towns and villages 
 in Adiabene, and ruthlessly destroyed even the old royal 
 tombs at Arbela. 2 But Artabanus made the utmost ex- 
 ertions for the next campaign, and put into the field 
 a powerful force in the spring of 217. Antoninus, who 
 had spent the winter in Edessa, was assassinated by his 
 officers just as he was setting out for this second cam- 
 paign. His successor Macrinus, unconfirmed in the 
 government and held in little repute, at the head, more- 
 over, of an army defective in discipline and tone and 
 shaken by the murder of the emperor, would gladly have 
 rid himself of a war wantonly instigated and assuming 
 very serious proportions. He sent the prisoners back to 
 the Parthian king, and threw the blame of the outrages 
 committed on his predecessor. But Artabanus was not 
 content with this ; he demanded, compensation for all the 
 devastation committed, and the evacuation of Mesopotamia. 
 Thus matters came to a battle at Nisibis, in which the 
 Romans had the worst. Nevertheless the Parthians, 
 partly because their levy seemed as though it would 
 break up, perhaps also under the influence of Roman 
 money, granted peace (2 1 8) on comparatively favourable 
 terms. Rome paid a considerable war compensation 
 (50,000,000 denarii), but retained Mesopotamia. Ar- 
 menia remained with Tiridates, but the latter took it as 
 in dependency on the Romans. In Osrhoene also the 
 old princely house was reinstated. 
 
 1 Such is the account of the trust- 2 If there is any truth in the men- 
 worthy Dio, lxxviii. i; the version tion of the Cadusians in the biography, 
 of Herodian, iv. II, that Artabanus c. 6, the Romans induced this wild 
 promised his daughter, and at the tribe, not subject to the government in 
 celebration of the betrothal - allowed the south-west of the Caspian Sea, to 
 Antoninus to cut down the Parthians fall at. the same time upon the Par- 
 present, is unauthenticated. thians. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 This was the last treaty of peace which the Arsacid King 
 dynasty concluded with Rome. Almost immediately after- Ardashir - 
 wards, and perhaps partly in consequence of this bargain, 
 which certainly, as things stood, might be looked upon 
 by the Orientals as an abandonment by their own govern- 
 ment of the victories achieved, the insurrection began, 
 which converted the state of the Parthians into a state 
 of the Persians. Its leader, king Ardashir or Artaxares 
 (A.D. 224-241) strove for several years with the adher- 
 ents of the old dynasty before he attained full success ; 1 
 after three great battles, in the last of which king Arta- 
 banus fell, he was master in the Parthian empire proper, 
 and could march into the Mesopotamian desert to subdue 
 the Arabs of Hatra and thence to advance against the 
 Roman Mesopotamia. But the brave and independent 
 Arabs defended themselves now against the Persians as 
 formerly against the Roman invasion, in their huge walls 
 with good success ; and Artaxares found himself led to 
 operate in the first instance against Media and Armenia, 
 where the Arsacids still maintained themselves, and the 
 sons of Artabanus had found a refuge. It was not till 
 about the year 230 that he turned against the Romans, 
 and not merely declared war against them, but demanded 
 back all the provinces which had formerly belonged to the 
 kingdom of his predecessors, Darius and Xerxes — in other 
 words, the cession of all Asia. To emphasise his threaten- 
 ing words, he led a mighty army over the Euphrates ; 
 Mesopotamia was occupied and Nisibis besieged ; the 
 enemy's cavalry appeared in Cappadocia and in Syria. 
 
 The Roman throne was then occupied by Severus Severus 
 Alexander, a ruler in whom nothing was warlike but the Alexander - 
 
 1 The subsequently received chron- 
 ology puts the beginning of the Sas- 
 sanid dynasty in the Seleucid year 
 538= 1st Oct. 226-7 a.d., or the 
 fourth (full) year of Severus Alex- 
 ander, reigning since spring 222 
 (Agathias, iv. 24). According to 
 other data king Ardashir numbered 
 the year from the autumn 223-4 A.D. 
 as his first, and so doubtless assumed 
 
 in this the title of great-king (N61- 
 deke, Tabari, p. 410). The last 
 dated coin as yet known of the older 
 system is of the year 539. When Dio 
 wrote between 230 and 234, Arta- 
 banus was dead and his adherents were 
 overpowered, and the advance of 
 Artaxares into Armenia and Mesopo- 
 tamia was expected. 
 
90 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 name, and for whom in reality his mother Mamaea con- 
 ducted the government. Urgent, almost humble proposals 
 of peace on the part of the Roman government remained 
 without effect ; nothing was left but the employment of 
 arms. The masses of the Roman army gathered together 
 from all the empire were divided ; the left wing took the 
 direction of Armenia and Media, the right that of Mesene 
 at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris, perhaps in the 
 calculation that they might in the former as in the latter 
 quarter have the support of the adherents of the Arsacids ; 
 the main army went to Mesopotamia. The troops were 
 numerous enough, but without discipline and tone ; a 
 Roman officer of high position at this time himself testifies 
 that they were pampered and insubordinate, refused to 
 fight, killed their officers, and deserted in crowds. The 
 main force did not get beyond the Euphrates, 1 for his 
 mother represented to the emperor that it was not his 
 business to fight for his subjects, but theirs to fight for 
 him. The right wing, assailed in the level country by the 
 Persian main force and abandoned by the emperor, was 
 cut up. Thereupon, when the emperor issued orders to the 
 wing which had pushed forward towards Media to draw 
 back, the latter also suffered severely in the winter retreat 
 through Armenia. If the matter went no further than 
 this sorry return of the great Oriental army to Antioch, 
 if no complete disaster occurred, and even Mesopotamia 
 remained in Roman power, this appears due, not to the 
 merit of the Roman troops or their leaders but to the fact 
 that the Persian levy was weary of the conflict and went 
 home. 2 But they went not for long, the more especially 
 
 1 The emperor remained probably in 
 Palmyra ; at least a Palmyrene inscrip- 
 tion, C. I. Gr. 4483, mentions the 
 iiri.B'qfj.la Oeov 'AXe^dvdpov. 
 
 2 The incomparably wretched ac- 
 counts of this war (relatively the best 
 is that drawn from a common source 
 in Herodian, Zonaras, and Syncellus, 
 p. 674) do not even decide the ques- 
 tion who remained victor in these 
 conflicts. While Herodian speaks 
 of an unexampled defeat of the 
 
 Romans, the Latin authorities, the 
 Biography as well as Victor, Eutro- 
 pius, and Rufius Festus, celebrate 
 Alexander as the conqueror of Ar- 
 taxerxes or Xerxes, and according to 
 these latter the further course of things 
 was favourable. Herodian vi. 6, 5, 
 offers the means of adjustment. Ac- 
 cording to the Armenian accounts 
 (Gutschmid, Zeitschr. der deutschen 
 tnorgenldnd. Gesellschaft, xxxi. 47) the 
 Arsacids with the support of the 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 91 
 
 as soon after, upon the murder of the last offshoot of the 
 dynasty of Severus, the several army-commanders and the 
 government in Rome began to fight about the occupation 
 of the Roman throne, and consequently were at one in 
 their concern for the affairs of external foes. Under 
 Maximinus (235-238) the Roman Mesopotamia fell into 
 the power of Ardashir, and the Persians once more pre- 
 pared to cross the Euphrates. 1 
 
 After the internal troubles were in some measure The Per- 
 pacified, and Gordian III., almost still a boy, under the GordiS 
 protection of the commandant of Rome and soon of his 
 father-in-law Furius Timesitheus, bore undisputed sway in 
 the whole empire, war was solemnly declared against the 
 Persians, and in the year 242 a great Roman army 
 advanced under the personal conduct of the emperor, or 
 rather of his father-in-law, into Mesopotamia. It had 
 complete success ; Carrhae was recovered, at Resaina 
 between Carrhae and Nisibis the army of the Persian king 
 Shahpuhr or Sapor (reigning 241-272), who shortly before 
 had followed his father Ardashir, was routed, and in con- 
 sequence of this victory Nisibis was occupied. All Meso- 
 potamia was reconquered ; it was resolved to march back 
 to the Euphrates, and thence down the stream against the 
 enemy's capital Ctesiphon. Unhappily Timesitheus died, 
 and his successor, Marcus Julius Philippus, a native of 
 Arabia from the Trachonitis, used the opportunity to set 
 aside the young ruler. When the army had accomplished 
 the difficult march through the valley of the Chaboras 
 towards the Euphrates, the soldiers in Circesium, at the 
 confluence of the Chaboras with the Euphrates, did not 
 find — in consequence, it is alleged, of arrangements made 
 by Philippus — the provisions and stores which they had 
 expected, and laid the blame of this on the emperor. 
 
 tribes of the Caucasus held their this accord the individual statements 
 
 ground in Armenia down to the year of Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 7, 17, and 
 
 237 against Ardashir ; this diversion nearly so the forged letter of Gordian 
 
 may be correct and may have tended to the Senate in the Biography, c. 27, 
 
 to the advantage of the Romans. from which the narrative, c. 26, is 
 
 1 The best account is furnished by ignorantly prepared ; Antioch was in 
 
 Syncellus, p. 683 and Zonaras, xii. 18, danger, but not in the hands of the 
 
 drawing from the same source. With Persians. 
 
92 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 Nevertheless the march in the direction of Ctesiphon was 
 begun, but at the very first station, near Zaitha (somewhat 
 below Mejadin), a number of insurgent guards killed the 
 emperor (in the spring or summer of 244), and proclaimed 
 their commandant, Philippus, as Augustus in his stead. 
 The new ruler did what the soldiers or at least the 
 guardsmen desired, and not merely gave up the intended 
 expedition against Ctesiphon, but led the troops at once back 
 to Italy. He purchased the permission to do so from the 
 conquered enemy by the cession of Mesopotamia and 
 Armenia, and so of the Euphrates frontier. But this con- 
 clusion of peace excited such indignation that the emperor 
 did not venture to put it in execution, and allowed the 
 garrisons to remain in the ceded provinces. 1 The fact 
 that the Persians, at least provisionally, acquiesced in this, 
 gives the measure of what they were then able to do. It 
 was not the Orientals, but the Goths, the pestilence that 
 raged for fifteen years, and the dissensions of the corps- 
 leaders quarrelling with one another for the crown, that 
 broke the last strength of the empire. 
 Palmyra. At this point, when the Roman East in its struggle 
 with the Persian is left to its own resources, it will be 
 appropriate to make mention of a remarkable state, which, 
 created by and for the desert-traffic, now for a short time 
 takes up a leading part in political history. The oasis of 
 Palmyra, in the native language Tadmor, lies half-way 
 between Damascus and the Euphrates. It is of import- 
 ance solely as intermediate station between the Euph- 
 rates and the Mediterranean ; this significance it was late 
 in acquiring, and early lost again, so that the flourishing 
 time of Palmyra coincides nearly with the period which 
 we are here describing. As to the rise of the town there 
 is an utter absence of tradition. 2 It is mentioned first on 
 
 1 So Zonaras, xii. 1 9, represents so far as the dependence of the vassal - 
 
 the course of affairs ; with this Zosi- king of Great Armenia after the peace 
 
 mus, hi. 33, agrees, and the later was doubtless merely nominal, 
 
 course of things shows that Armenia 2 The Biblical account ( I Kings ix. 
 
 was not quite in Persian possession. 18) as to the building of the town 
 
 If, according to Euagrius, v. 7, at that Thamar in Idumaea by king Solomon 
 
 time merely Lesser Armenia remained has only been transferred to Tadmor 
 
 Roman, this may not be incorrect, in by a misunderstanding doubtless old ; 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 93 
 
 occasion of the abode of Antonius in Syria in the year 
 713, when he made a vain attempt to possess himself of 41. 
 its riches ; the documents found there — the oldest dated 
 Palmyrene inscription is of the year 745 — hardly reach 9 . 
 much further back. It is not improbable that its flourish- 
 ing was connected with the establishment of the Romans 
 in the Syrian coast-region. So long as the Nabataeans 
 and the towns of Osrhoene were not directly Roman, the 
 Romans had an interest in providing another direct com- 
 munication with the Euphrates, and this thereupon led 
 necessarily by way of Palmyra. Palmyra was not a 
 Roman foundation ; Antonius took as the occasion for 
 that predatory expedition the neutrality of the merchants 
 who were the medium of traffic between the two great 
 states, and the Roman horsemen turned back, without hav- 
 ing performed their work, before the chain of archers which 
 the Palmyrenes opposed to the attack. But already in 
 the first imperial period the city must have been reckoned 
 as belonging to the empire, because the tax-ordinances of 
 Germanicus and of Corbulo issued for Syria applied also 
 for Palmyra ; in an inscription of the year 80 we meet 
 with a Claudian phyle there ; from Hadrian's time the city 
 calls itself Hadriana Palmyra, and in the third century it 
 even designates itself a colony. 
 
 The subjection of the Palmyrenes to the empire was, Military 
 however, of a different nature to the ordinary one, and de P end - 
 
 ence of 
 
 similar in some measure to the client -relation of the Palmyra 
 dependent kingdoms. Even in Vespasian's time Palmyra 
 is called an intermediate region between the two great 
 powers, and in every collision between the Romans and 
 Parthians the question was asked, what policy the Pal- 
 myrenes would pursue. We must seek the key to its 
 distinctive position in the relations of the frontier and 
 the arrangements made for frontier -protection. The 
 Syrian troops, so far as they were stationed on the 
 Euphrates itself, had their chief position at Zeugma, 
 
 at all events the erroneous reference the oldest testimony for its existence 
 
 of it to this town among the later (Hitzig, Zeitschr. der deutschen mor- 
 
 Jews (2 Chron. viii. 4, and the Greek genl. Gesellschaft, viii. 222). 
 translation of 1 Kings, ix. 18) form 
 
THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 opposite to Biredjik, at the great passage of the Euphrates. 
 Further down the stream, between the immediately Roman 
 and the Parthian territory was interposed that of Palmyra, 
 which reached to the Euphrates and included the next 
 important place of crossing at Sura opposite to the Mesopo- 
 tamian town Nicephorium (later Callinicon, now er-Ragga). 
 It is more than probable that the guarding of this import- 
 ant border- fortress as well as the securing of the desert-road 
 between the Euphrates and Palmyra, and also perhaps of 
 a portion of the road from Palmyra to Damascus, was 
 committed to the community of Palmyra, and that it was 
 thus entitled and bound to make the military arrange- 
 ments necessary for this far from slight task. 1 Subse- 
 
 1 This is nowhere expressly stated ; 
 but all the circumstances tell in favour 
 of it. That the Romano - Parthian 
 frontier, before the Romans estab- 
 lished themselves on the left bank of 
 the Euphrates, was on the right a 
 little below Sura, is most distinctly 
 said by Pliny {H. N. v. 26, 89: a 
 Sura proxime est Philiscum — comp. 
 p. 95, note I — oppidum Parthorum 
 ad Euphratem ; ab eo Seleuciam di- 
 erum decern navigatid), and there it 
 remained till the erection of the pro- 
 vince of Mesopotamia under Severus. 
 The Palmyrene of Ptolemy (v. 15, 
 24, 25) is a district of Coele-Syria, 
 which seems to embrace a good part 
 of the territory to the south of Pal- 
 myra, but certainly reaches as far as 
 the Euphrates and includes Sura ; 
 other urban centres besides Palmyra 
 seem not to be mentioned, and there 
 is nothing to stand in the way of our 
 taking this large district as civic terri- 
 tory. So long in particular as Meso- 
 potamia was Parthian, but subse- 
 quently also with reference to the 
 adjoining desert, a permanent protec- 
 tion of the frontier could not here be 
 dispensed with ; as indeed in the 
 fourth century, according to the tenor 
 of the Notitia, Palmyrene was strongly 
 occupied, the northern portion by the 
 troops of the Dux of Syria, Palmyra 
 itself and the southern half by those 
 of the Dux of Phoenice. That in 
 
 the earlier imperial period no Roman 
 troops were stationed here, is vouched 
 for by the silence of authors and the 
 absence of inscriptions, which in Pal- 
 myra itself are numerous. If in the 
 Tabula Peutingeriana it is remarked 
 under Sura : fines exercitus Syriatici 
 et commercium barbarorum, that is, 
 ' ' here end the Roman garrisons and 
 here is the place of exchange for the 
 traffic of the barbarians," this is only 
 saying, what at a later time is repeated 
 by Ammianus (xxiii. 3, 7 : Callinictim 
 munimentum robustum et commer- 
 candi opwiitate gratissimum) and 
 further by the emperor Honorius 
 {Cod. Just. iv. 63, 4), that Callinicon 
 was one of the few entrepots devoted 
 to the Romano - barbarian frontier- 
 traffic ; but it does not at all follow 
 from this as regards the time when 
 the Tabula originated, that these im- 
 perial troops were stationed there, 
 since in fact the Palmyrenes in general 
 belonged to the Syrian army and 
 might be thought of in using the 
 expression exercitus Syriaticus. The 
 city must have furnished a force of its 
 own in a way similar to that of the 
 princes of Numidia and of Pantica- 
 paeum. By this means alone we 
 come to understand as well the 
 rejection of the troops of Antonius as 
 the attitude of the Palmyrenes in the 
 troubles of the third century, and not 
 less the emergence of the numeri Pal- 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 95 
 
 quently doubtless the imperial troops were brought up 
 closer to Palmyra, and one of the Syrian legions was 
 moved to Danava between Palmyra and Damascus, and 
 the Arabian legion to Bostra ; after Severus united Meso- 
 potamia with the empire, even here both banks of the 
 Euphrates were in the Roman power, and the Roman 
 territory on the Euphrates ended no longer at Sura but 
 at Circesium, at the confluence of the Chaboras with the 
 Euphrates above Mejadin. Then Mesopotamia also was 
 strongly occupied with imperial troops. But the Mesopo- 
 tamian legions lay on the great road in the north near 
 Resaina and Nisibis, and even the Syrian and Arabian 
 troops did not supersede the need for the co-operation of 
 the Palmyrenes. Even the protection of Circesium and of 
 this part of the bank of the Euphrates may have been 
 entrusted to the Palmyrenes. It was not till after the 
 decline of Palmyra, and perhaps in compensation for it, 
 that Circesium 1 was made by Diocletian a strong fortress, 
 which thenceforth was here the basis of frontier-defence. 
 
 The traces of this distinctive position of Palmyra are Adminis- 
 demonstrable also in its institutions. The absence of the pendencf" 
 emperor's name on the Palmyrene coins is probably to be of Palmyra, 
 explained not from it, but from the fact that the com- 
 munity issued almost nothing but small money. But the 
 treatment of the language speaks clearly. From the rule 
 elsewhere followed almost without exception by the 
 Romans — of allowing in their immediate territory only 
 the use of the two imperial languages — Palmyra was 
 excepted. Here that language, which in the rest of Syria 
 and not less after the exile in Judaea was the usual 
 medium of private intercourse, but was restricted to the 
 latter, maintained its ground in public use, so long as the 
 city existed at all. Essential differences cannot be shown 
 between the Palmyrene Syriac and that of the other 
 
 myrenorum among the military novel- ante annis cum magnis provinciarum 
 
 ties of this epoch. contigerat damnis. Comp. Procopius 
 
 1 Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 2 : Cercu- de aed. ii. 6. Perhaps this place is 
 
 stum . . . Diocletianus exiguum ante not different from the $d\ya. or 
 
 hoc et suspectum muris turribusque $&\iya of Isidorus of Charax (mans, 
 
 circumdedit celsis, . . . ne vagaren- Parth. 1; Stephanus Byz. s. v.) and 
 
 tur per Syriam Persae ita ut paucis the Philiscum of Pliny (p. 94, note). 
 
9 6 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Palmyrene 
 magis- 
 trates. 
 
 regions just named ; the proper names, having not 
 seldom an Arabic or Jewish, or even Persian form, show 
 the striking mixture of peoples, and numerous words bor- 
 rowed from Greek or Latin show the influence of the 
 Occidentals. It becomes subsequently a rule to append 
 to the Syrian text a Greek one, which in a decree of the 
 Palmyrene common-council of the year 137 is placed 
 after the Palmyrene, but afterwards usually precedes it ; 
 but mere Greek inscriptions of native Palmyrenes are rare 
 exceptions. Even in votive inscriptions which Palmyrenes 
 set up to their native gods in Rome, 1 and in tombs of 
 Palmyrene soldiers that died in Africa or Britain, the Pal- 
 myrene rendering is added. So too in Palmyra — while the 
 Roman year was made the basis of dating as in the rest 
 of the empire — the names of the months were not the 
 Macedonian officially received in Roman Syria, but those 
 which were current in it in common intercourse at least 
 among the Jews, and were in use, moreover, among the 
 Aramaean tribes living under Assyrian and subsequently 
 Persian rule. 2 
 
 The municipal organisation was moulded in the main 
 after the pattern of the Greek municipality of the Roman 
 empire ; the designations for magistrates and council 3 and 
 even those of the colony are in the Palmyrene texts re- 
 
 1 Of the seven dedications, hitherto 
 found outside of Palmyra, to the 
 Palmyrene Malach Belos the three 
 brought to light in Rome (C. I. L. 
 vi. 51, 710; C. I. Gr. 6015) have 
 along with a Greek or Latin also a 
 Palmyrene text, two African (C. /. L. 
 viii. 2497, 8795 add.) and two Dacian 
 {Arch. epig. Mitth. aus Oesterreich, 
 vi. 109, in) merely Latin. One of 
 the latter was set up by P. Aelius 
 Theimes aduoviralis of Sarmizegetusa, 
 evidently a native of Palmyra, diis 
 patriis Malagbel et Bebellahamon et 
 Benefal et Manavat. 
 
 2 Whence these names of the 
 months come, is not clear ; they first 
 appear in the Assyrian cuneiform 
 writing, but are not of Assyrian origin. 
 In consequence of the Assyrian rule 
 
 they then remained in use within the 
 sphere of the Syrian language. Varia- 
 tions are found ; the second month, 
 the Dios of the Greek-speaking Syri- 
 ans, our November, is called among 
 the Jews Markeshvan, among the 
 Palmyrenes Kanun (Waddington, n. 
 2574^). We may add that these 
 names of the months, so far as they 
 came to be applied within the Roman 
 empire, are adapted, like the Mace- 
 donian, to the Julian calendar, so that 
 only the designation of the month 
 differs, the year-beginning (i Oct.) of 
 the Syro-Roman year finds uniformly 
 application to the Greek as to the 
 Aramaean appellations. 
 
 3 E.g. Archon, Grammateus, Proe- 
 dros, Syndikos, Dekaprotoi. 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 97 
 
 tained for the most part from the imperial languages. But 
 in administration the district retained a greater independ- 
 ence than is elsewhere assigned to urban communities. 
 Alongside of the civic officials we find, at least in the third 
 century, the city of Palmyra with its territory under a 
 separate " headman " of senatorial rank and Roman ap- 
 pointment, but chosen from the family of most repute in 
 the place ; Septimius Hairanes, son of Odaenathus, is sub- 
 stantially a prince of the Palmyrenes, 1 who was doubtless 
 not otherwise dependent on the legate of Syria than were 
 the client-princes on the neighbouring imperial governors 
 generally. A few years later we meet with his son, 2 
 Septimius Odaenathus, in the like position — indeed 
 even raised in rank — of hereditary prince. 3 Nevertheless 
 Palmyra formed a customs -district apart, in which the 
 customs were leased on account, not of the state, but of 
 the community. 4 
 
 he is called 6 Xa/nrpoTaros virariKos, 
 and so vir consularis, and in Greek 
 deair&TTjs, in Syriac m&ran. The 
 former designation is not a title of 
 office, but a statement of the class 
 in which he ranked ; so vir constclaris 
 stands not unfrequently after the name 
 quite like vir clarissimus [C. I. L. x. 
 p. 1 1 1 7 and elsewhere), and 6 \apnrpb- 
 raros vira.Tt.K6s is found alongside of 
 and before official titles of various 
 kinds, e.g. that of the proconsul of 
 Africa (C. I. Gr. 2979, where Xa/j.- 
 irp6Ta.Tos is absent), of the imperial 
 legate of Pontus and Bithynia ( C.I. Gr. 
 3747, 3748, 3771) and of Palestine 
 ( C. I. Gr. 4 1 5 1 ), of the governor of 
 Lycia and Pamphylia(C. I. Gr. 4272) ; 
 it is only in the age after Constan- 
 tine that it is in combination with the 
 name of the province employed as an 
 official title (f.^. C.I. Gr. 2596, 4266*). 
 From this, therefore, no inference is 
 to be drawn as to the legal position of 
 Odaenathus. Likewise, in the Syriac 
 designation of "lord," we may not 
 find exactly the ruler ; it is also given 
 to a procurator (Waddington 2606 = 
 Vogue 25). 
 
 4 Syria in the imperial period 
 formed an imperial customs-district of 
 
 1 This is shown by the inscription 
 of Palmyra (C. I. Gr. 4491, 4492 = 
 Waddington 2600 = Vogue, Insc. sent. 
 Palm. 22) set up to this Hairanes in the 
 year 251 by a soldier of the legion sta- 
 tioned in Arabia. His title is in Greek 
 6 XapLTrporaros ctvvk\t]tik6s, £'£a[pxos 
 ( = princeps) TLa\/j.v]pr]vQy, in Pal- 
 myrene " illustrious senator, head of 
 Tadmor." The epitaph (C. I. Gr. 
 4507 = Waddington 262 1 = Vogue,2i) 
 of the father of Hairanes, Septimios 
 Odaenathos, son of Hairanes, grand- 
 son of Vaballathos, great-grandson of 
 Nassoros, gives to him also senatorial 
 rank. 
 
 2 Certainly the father of this 
 Odaenathus is nowhere named ; but 
 it is as good as certain that he was 
 the son of the Hairanes just named, 
 and bore the name of his grandfather. 
 Zosimus, too, i. 39, terms him a 
 Palmyrene distinguished from the 
 days of his forefathers by the govern- 
 ment (dvdpa Iia\fj.vprqvbv ko.1 €k irpo- 
 ybvwv tt]s wapa tQv (iacrCXiuv a^usdivra 
 
 3 In the inscription Waddington 
 2603= Vogue 23, which the guild of 
 gold and silver workers of Palmyra 
 set up in the year 257 to Odaenathus 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
9 8 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Com- 
 mercial 
 position of 
 Palmyra. 
 
 The importance of Palmyra depended on the caravan- 
 traffic. The heads of the caravans (avvoSiapxai), which 
 went from Palmyra to the great entrepots on the Eu- 
 phrates, to Vologasias, the already mentioned Parthian 
 foundation not far from the site of the ancient Babylon, 
 and to Forath or Charax Spasinu, twin towns at its 
 mouth, close on the Persian Gulf, appear in the inscriptions 
 as the most respected city-burgesses, 1 and fill not merely 
 
 its own, and the imperial dues were 
 levied not merely on the coast but 
 also at the Euphrates-frontier, in par- 
 ticular at Zeugma. Hence it neces- 
 sarily follows that farther to the south, 
 where the Euphrates was no longer in 
 the Roman power, similar dues were 
 established on the Roman eastern 
 frontier. Now a decree of the coun- 
 cil of Palmyra of the year 137 informs 
 us that the city and its territory formed 
 a special customs-district, and the dues 
 were levied for the benefit of the town 
 upon all goods imported or exported. 
 That this territory lay beyond the 
 imperial dues, is probable — first, be- 
 cause, if there had existed an imperial 
 customs-line enclosing the Palmyrene 
 territory, the mention of it could not 
 well be omitted in that detailed enact- 
 ment ; secondly, because a community 
 of the empire enclosed by the imperial 
 customs-lines would hardly have had 
 the right of levying dues at the bound- 
 ary of its territory to this extent. We 
 shall thus have to discern in the levy- 
 ing of dues by the community of Pal- 
 myra the same distinctive position 
 which must be attributed to it in a 
 military point of view. Perhaps, on 
 the other hand, there was an impost 
 laid on it for the benefit of the im- 
 perial exchequer, possibly the deliver- 
 ing up of a quota of the produce of the 
 dues or a heightened tribute. Arrange- 
 ments similar to those for Palmyra 
 may have existed also for Petra and 
 Bostra ; for goods were certainly not 
 admitted here free of dues, and ac- 
 cording to Pliny, H. N. xii. 14, 65, 
 imperial dues from the Arabic frankin- 
 cense exported by way of Gaza seem 
 only to have been levied at Gaza on 
 
 the coast. The indolence of Roman 
 administration was stronger than its 
 fiscal zeal ; it may frequently have 
 devolved the inconvenient tolls of the 
 land-frontier away from itself on the 
 communities. 
 
 1 These caravans (awodlai) appear 
 on the Palmyrene inscriptions as fixed 
 companies, which undertake the same 
 journeys beyond doubt at definite in- 
 tervals under their foreman (<rwo- 
 di,apxys, Waddington, 2589, 2590, 
 2596) ; thus a statue is erected to 
 such a one by " the merchants who 
 went down with him to Vologasias " 
 (ot aiiv olvtQ KaTekOdvTes etVOAoyecrtdSa. 
 'tviropoi, Waddington 2599 of the year 
 247), or "up from Forath (comp. 
 Pliny, H. N. vi. 28, 145) and Volo- 
 gasias " (ot avvavafiavTes yuer' avrov 
 i/jLiropoi airb Qopadov k£ ' OXoyaai&dos, 
 Waddington, 2589 of the year 142), 
 or "up from Spasinu Charax " (ot aiiv 
 avrtp avafiavTes dtard Siraaivov HdpaKos, 
 Waddington, 2596 of the year 193 ; 
 similarly 2590 of the year 155). All 
 these conductors are men of stand- 
 ing furnished with lists of ancestors ; 
 their honorary monuments stand in the 
 great colonnade beside those of queen 
 Zenobia and her family. Specially 
 remarkable is one of them, Septimius 
 Vorodes, of whom there exists a series 
 of honorary pediments of theyears 262- 
 267 (Waddington, 2606-2610) ; he, 
 too, was a caravan-head (avaKo^laavra 
 rds avvoSlas iic tQv idiuv kclI jxaprvprj- 
 Bevra inrb rwv apxefxirdpuiv, Wadding- 
 ton, n. 2606 a ; consequently he de- 
 frayed the costs of the journey back 
 for the whole company, and was on 
 account of this liberality publicly 
 praised by the wholesale traders). But 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 99 
 
 the magistracies of their home, but in part also imperial 
 offices ; the great traders (apxefi7ropoc) and the guild of 
 workers in gold and silver testify to the importance of the 
 city for trade and manufactures, and not less is its pros- 
 perity attested by the still standing temples of the city and 
 the long colonnades of the cityhalls,as well as the massy and 
 richly decorated tombs. The climate is little favourable to 
 agriculture — the place lies near to the northern limit of 
 the date palm, and does not derive its Greek name from 
 it — but there are found in the environs the remains of 
 great subterranean aqueducts and huge water- reservoirs 
 artificially constructed of square blocks, with the help of 
 which the ground, now destitute of all vegetation, must 
 once upon a time have artificially developed a rich culture. 
 This riches, this national idiosyncrasy not quite set aside 
 even under Roman rule, and this administrative independ- 
 ence, explain in some measure the part of Palmyra about 
 the middle of the third century in the great crisis, to the 
 presentation of which we now return. 
 
 After the emperor Decius had fallen in the year 2 5 1 capture of 
 when fighting against the Goths in Europe, the government theem P e ror 
 of the empire, if at that time there was still an empire 
 and a government at all, left the East entirely to its fate. 
 While the pirates from the Black Sea ravaged the coasts 
 far and wide and even the interior, the Persian king Sapor 
 again assumed the aggressive. While his father had been 
 content with calling himself lord of Iran, he first desig- 
 nated himself — as did the succeeding rulers after his ex- 
 ample — the great-king of Iran and non-Iran (p. 83, note), 
 and thereby laid down, as it were, the programme of his 
 policy of conquest. In the year 252 or 253 he occupied 
 Armenia, or it submitted to him voluntarily, beyond doubt 
 carried likewise away by that resuscitation of the old Per- 
 sian faith and Persian habits ; the legitimate king Tiridates 
 sought shelter with the Romans, the other members of the 
 royal house placed themselves under the banners of the 
 
 he filled not merely the civic offices of {ducenarius) and argapetes (p. 104, 
 strategos and agoranomos, he was even note I ). 
 imperial procurator of the second class 
 
ioo THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 Persian. 1 After Armenia thus had become Persian, the 
 hosts of the Orientals overran Mesopotamia, Syria, and 
 Cappadocia ; they laid waste the level country far and 
 wide, but the inhabitants of the larger towns, first of all 
 the brave Edessenes, repelled the attack of enemies little 
 equipped for besieging. In the West, meanwhile at least, 
 a recognised government had been set up. The emperor 
 Publius Licinius Valerianus, an honest and well-disposed 
 ruler, but not resolute in character or equal to dealing 
 with difficulties, appeared at length in the East and re- 
 sorted to Antioch. Thence he went to Cappadocia, which 
 the Persian roving hordes evacuated. But the plague 
 decimated his army, and he delayed long to take up the 
 decisive struggle in Mesopotamia. At length he resolved 
 to bring help to the sorely pressed Edessa, and crossed 
 the Euphrates with his forces. There, not far from Edessa, 
 occurred the disaster which had nearly the same signi- 
 ficance for the Roman East as the victory of the Goths at 
 the mouth of the Danube and the fall of Decius — the 
 capture of the emperor Valerianus by the Persians (end 
 of 259 or beginning of 260). 2 As to the more precise cir- 
 cumstances the accounts are conflicting. According to one 
 version, when he was attempting with a weak band to reach 
 Edessa, he was surrounded and captured by the far superior 
 Persians. According to another, he, although defeated, 
 reached the beleaguered town, but, as he brought no suffi- 
 cient help and the provisions came to an end only the 
 more rapidly, he dreaded the outbreak of a military insur- 
 rection, and therefore delivered himself voluntarily into the 
 hands of the enemy. According to a third, he, reduced 
 to extremities, entered into negotiations with Sapor ; when 
 
 1 According to the Greek account basis is furnished by the Alexandrian 
 (Zonaras, xii. 21) king Tiridates takes coins, according to which Valerian 
 refuge with the Romans, but his sons was captured between 29th August259 
 take the side of the Persians ; accord- and 28th August 260. That after his 
 ing to the Armenian, king Chosro capture he was no longer regarded as 
 is murdered by his brethren, and emperor, is easily explained, seeing 
 Chosro's son, Tiridates, fled to the that the Persians compelled him in 
 Romans (Gutschmid, Zeitschrift der their interest to issue orders to his 
 deutschenmorgenl. Gesellsch. xxxi. 48). former subjects (continuation of Dio, 
 Perhaps the latter is to be preferred. Jr. 3). 
 
 2 The only fixed chronological 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIA NS. 
 
 101 
 
 the Persian king declined to treat with envoys, he ap- 
 peared personally in the enemy's camp, and was perfidiously 
 made a prisoner. 
 
 Whichever of these narratives may come nearest to The East 
 the truth, the emperor died in the captivity of the enemy, 1 emperor!" 
 and the consequence of this disaster was the forfeiture 
 of the East to the Persians. Above all Antioch, the 
 largest and richest city of the East, fell for the first time 
 since it was Roman into the power of the public foe, 
 and in good part through the fault of its own citizens. 
 Mareades, an Antiochene of rank, whom the council had 
 expelled for the embezzlement of public monies, brought 
 the Persian army to his native town ; whether it be a 
 fable that the citizens were surprised in the theatre itself 
 by the advancing foes, there is no doubt that they not 
 merely offered no resistance, but that a great part of the 
 lower population, partly in consideration of Mareades, partly 
 in the hope of anarchy and pillage, saw with pleasure 
 the entrance of the Persians. Thus the city with all its 
 treasures became the prey of the enemy, and fearful 
 ravages were committed in it ; Mareades indeed also was 
 — we know not why — condemned by king Sapor to 
 perish by fire. 2 Besides numerous smaller places, the 
 capitals of Cilicia and Cappadocia — Tarsus and Caesarea, 
 the latter, it is stated, a town of 400,000 inhabitants — 
 suffered the same fate. Endless trains of captives, who 
 were led like cattle once a day to the watering, covered 
 the desert-routes of the East. On the return home the 
 Persians, it is alleged, in order the more rapidly to cross 
 a ravine, filled it up with the bodies of the captives 
 
 1 The better accounts simply know 
 the fact that Valerian died in Persian 
 captivity. That Sapor used him as 
 a footstool in mounting his horse 
 (Lactantius, de Mort. per sec. 5 ; 
 Orosius, vii. 22, 4 ; Victor, Ep. 33), 
 and finally caused him to be flayed 
 (Lactantius, /. c. ; Agathias, iv. 23 ; 
 Cedrenus, p. 454) is a Christian 
 invention — a requital for the per- 
 secution of the Christians ordered by 
 Valerian. 
 
 2 The tradition according to which 
 Mareades (so Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 3 ; 
 Mariades in Malalas, 12, p. 295 ; 
 Mariadnes in contin. of Dio, fr. 1), 
 or, as he is here called, Cyriades, 
 had himself proclaimed as Augustus 
 ( Vit. trig. tyr. 1 ) is weakly at- 
 tested ; otherwise there might doubt- 
 less be found in it the occasion 
 why Sapor caused him to be put to 
 death. 
 
io2 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 whom they brought with them. It is more credible that 
 the great "imperial dam" (Bend- i- Kaiser) at Sostra 
 (Sinister) in Susiana, by which still at the present day 
 the water of the Pasitigris is conveyed to the higher-lying 
 regions, was built by these captives ; as indeed the 
 emperor Nero's architects had helped to build the capital 
 of Armenia, and generally in this domain the Occidentals 
 always maintained their superiority. The Persians 
 nowhere encountered resistance from the empire ; but 
 Edessa still held out, and Caesarea had bravely defended 
 itself, and had only fallen by treachery. The local 
 resistance gradually passed beyond a mere defensive 
 behind the walls of towns, and the breaking up of the 
 Persian hosts, brought about by the wide extent of the 
 conquered territory, was favourable to the bold partisan. 
 A self-appointed Roman leader, Callistus, 1 succeeded in 
 a happy coup de main; with the vessels which he had 
 brought together in the ports of Cilicia he sailed for 
 Pompeiopolis — which the Persians were just besieging, 
 while they at the same time laid waste Lycaonia, — killed 
 several thousand men, and possessed himself of the royal 
 harem. This induced the king, under pretext of celebrating 
 a festival that might not be put off, to go home at once 
 in such haste that, in order not to be detained, he 
 purchased from the Edessenes free passage through their 
 territory in return for all the Roman gold money which 
 he had captured as booty. Odaenathus, prince of 
 Palmyra, inflicted considerable losses on the bands 
 returning home from Antioch before they crossed the 
 Euphrates. But hardly was the most urgent danger 
 from the Persians obviated, when two of the most noted 
 among the army leaders of the East, left to themselves, 
 Fulvius Macrianus, the officer who administered the 
 chest and the depot of the army in Samosata, 2 and the 
 
 1 He is called Callistus in the 2 He was, according to the most 
 
 one tradition, doubtless traceable to trustworthy account, procurator suni- 
 
 Dexippus, in Syncellus, p. 716, and marum (ettI tQv kcl66\ov \6ywv 
 
 Zonaras, xii. 23, on the other hand, fiaaiXeus : Dionysius in Eusebius, H. 
 
 Ballista in the biographies of the E. vii. 10, 5), and so finance-minister 
 
 emperors and in Zonaras, xii. 24. with equestrian rank ; the continu- 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PARTHIAN S. 103 
 
 Callistus just mentioned, renounced allegiance to the 
 son and co- regent and now sole ruler Gallienus — for 
 whom, it is true, the East and the Persians were non- 
 existent — and, themselves refusing to accept the purple, 
 proclaimed the two sons of the former, Fulvius Macrianus 
 and Fulvius Quietus, emperors (261). This step taken 
 by the two distinguished generals had the effect of 
 obtaining recognition for the two young emperors in 
 Egypt and in all the East, with the exception of Palmyra, 
 the prince of which took the side of Gallienus. One 
 of them, Macrianus, went off with his father to the West, 
 in order to install this new government also there. But 
 soon fortune turned ; in Illyricum Macrianus lost a battle 
 and his life, not against Gallienus, but against another 
 pretender. Odaenathus turned against the brother who 
 remained behind in Syria ; at Hemesa, where the armies 
 met, the soldiers of Quietus replied to the summons to 
 surrender that they would rather submit to anything 
 than deliver themselves into the hands of a barbarian. 
 Nevertheless Callistus, the general of Quietus, betrayed 
 his master to the Palmyrene, 1 and thus ended also his 
 short government. 
 
 Therewith Palmyra stepped into the first place in the Govem- 
 
 , r ~ . , . . , - ment of 
 
 East. Gallienus, more than sufficiently occupied by tne odaena- 
 barbarians of the West and the military insurrections thus in ti 
 
 r kast. 
 
 everywhere breaking out there, gave to the prince oi 
 Palmyra, who alone had preserved fidelity to him in the 
 crisis just mentioned, an exceptional position without a 
 parallel, but under the prevailing circumstances readily 
 intelligible ; he, as hereditary prince, or, as he was now 
 called, king of Palmyra, became, not indeed joint ruler, 
 but independent lieutenant of the emperor for the East. 2 
 
 ator of Dio (Jr. 3 Mull.) expresses besides the end of Callistus, Odae- 
 
 this in the language of the later age nathus caused him to be put to death, 
 
 by k6/j.?]s tQv d-qaavpQv koL i<pe<rr&s 2 That Odaenathus, as well as 
 
 ttj dyopg. rod alrov. after him his son Vaballathus (apart, 
 
 ' 1 At least according to the report, of course, from the time after the 
 
 which forms the basis of the imperial rupture with Aurelian), were by no 
 
 biographies (vita Gallieni, 3, and means Augusti (as the wV. Gallieni, 12, 
 
 elsewhere). According to Zonaras, erroneously states), is shown both by 
 
 xii. 24, the only author who mentions the absence of the name of Augustus 
 
io4 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 The local administration of Palmyra was conducted under 
 him by another Palmyrene, at the same time as imperial 
 procurator and as his deputy. 1 Therewith the whole 
 imperial power, so far as it still subsisted at all in the 
 East, lay in the hand of the "barbarian," and the latter with 
 his Palmyrenes, who were strengthened by the remains of 
 the Roman army corps and the levy of the land, re-estab- 
 lished the sway of Rome alike rapidly and brilliantly. 
 Asia and Syria were already evacuated by the enemy. 
 Odaenathus crossed the Euphrates, relieved at length 
 the brave Edessenes, and retook from the Persians the 
 conquered towns Nisibis and Carrhae (264). Probably 
 Armenia also was at that time brought back under 
 
 on the coins and by the title possible 
 only for a subject, v{ir) tonsillaris) 
 — v(tto.tik6s), which, like the father 
 (p. 97, note 3), the son still bears. 
 The position of governor is designated 
 on the coins of the son by im(perator) 
 d(ux) R(omanorum) = avT(oKpaTwp) 
 cr(Tpar7]y6s) ; in agreement therewith 
 Zonaras (xii. 23, and again xii. 24) 
 and Syncellus (p. 716) state that 
 Gallienus appointed Odaenathus, on 
 account of his victory over the Persians 
 and Ballista, as (Trparriybs ttjs eqias, 
 or Trd<T7]s &va.To\rjs ; and the biographer 
 of Gallienus, 10, that he obtinuit 
 totius Orientis imperium. By this is 
 meant all the Asiatic provinces and 
 Egypt ; the added imperator = airo- 
 KpdTwp (comp. Trig. tyr. 15, 6, post 
 reditum de Perside — Herodes son of 
 Odaenathus — cum patrc imperator est 
 appellatus) is intended beyond doubt 
 to express the freer handling of power, 
 different from the usual authority of 
 the governor. — To this was added 
 further the now formally assumed title 
 of a king of Palmyra {Trig. tyr. 15, 
 2 : adsumpto nomine regali), which 
 also the son bears, not on the 
 Egyptian, but on the Syrian coins. 
 The circumstance that Odaenathus is 
 probably called vielekh malM, ' ' king 
 of kings," on an inscription set up in 
 August 271, and so after his death 
 and during the war of his adherents 
 with Aurelian (Vogue, n. 28), belongs 
 
 to the revolutionary demonstrations 
 of this period and forms no proof for 
 the earlier time. 
 
 1 The numerous inscriptions of 
 Septimius Vorodes, set up in the 
 years 262 to 267 (Waddington, 2606- 
 2610), and so in the lifetime of 
 Odaenathus, all designate him as 
 imperial procurator of the second 
 class {ducenarius), but at the same 
 time partly by the title dpyairirris, 
 which Persian word, current also 
 among the Jews, signifies ' ' lord of a 
 castle," "viceroy" (Levy, Zeitsch. 
 der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, 
 xviii. 90; Noldeke, id. xxiv. 107), 
 partly as diKaiod6T7]s tt)s ix-qrpo- 
 KoXuvLas, which, beyond doubt, is in 
 substance at any rate, if not in 
 language, the same office. Presumably 
 we must understand by it that office 
 on account of which the father of 
 Odaenathus is called the "head of 
 Tadmor" (p. 97, note 2) ; the one chief 
 of Palmyra competent for martial law 
 and for the administration of justice ; 
 only that, since extended powers were 
 given to the position of Odaenathus, 
 this post as a subordinate office is 
 filled by a man of equestrian rank. 
 The conjecture of Sachau {Zeitschr. 
 der d. morgenl. Gesellsch. xxxv. 738) 
 that this Vorodes is the "Wurud" 
 of a copper coin of the Berlin cabinet, 
 and that both are identical with the 
 elder son of Odaenathus, Herodes, 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PAR THIANS. 105 
 
 Roman allegiance. 1 Then he took — for the first time since 
 Gordianus — the offensive against the Persians, and marched 
 on Ctesiphon. In two different campaigns the capital of 
 the Persian kingdom was invested by him, and the neigh- 
 bouring region laid waste, and there was a successful 
 battle with the Persians under its walls. 2 Even the Goths, 
 whose predatory raids extended into the interior, retired 
 when he set out for Cappadocia. A development of 
 power of this sort was a blessing for the hard-pressed 
 empire, and at the same time a serious danger. Odae- 
 nathus no doubt observed all due formalities towards his 
 Roman lord-paramount, and sent the captured officers of 
 the enemy and the articles of booty to Rome for the 
 emperor, who did not disdain to triumph over them ; but 
 in fact the East under Odaenathus was not much less 
 independent than the West under Postumus, and we can 
 easily understand how the officers favourably disposed 
 towards Rome made opposition to the Palmyrene vice- 
 emperor, 3 and on the one hand there was talk of attempts 
 
 who was killed at the same time 
 with his father, is liable to serious 
 difficulties. Herodes and Orodes are 
 different names (in the Palmyrene 
 inscription, Waddington, 2610, the 
 two stand side by side) ; the son of 
 a senator cannot well fill an equestrian 
 office ; a procurator coining money 
 with his image is not conceivable 
 even for this exceptional state of 
 things. Probably the coin is not 
 Palmyrene at all. "It is," von 
 Sallet writes to me, "probably older 
 than Odaenathus, and belongs per- 
 haps to an Arsacid of the second 
 century A.D. ; it shows a head with 
 a headdress similar to the Sassanid ; 
 the reverse, S C in a chaplet of laurel, 
 appears imitated from the coins of 
 Antioch." — If subsequently, after the 
 breach with Rome in 271, on an 
 inscription of Palmyra (Waddington, 
 261 1 ) two generals of the Palmyrenes 
 are distinguished, 6 /xeyas arpaTri- 
 Acmjs, the historically known Zabdas, 
 and 6 ev66.Se OTpa.Trfka.T'qs, Zabbaeos, 
 the latter is, it may be presumed, just 
 the Argapetes. 
 
 1 The state of the case speaks in 
 favour of this ; evidence is wanting. 
 In the imperial biographies of this 
 epoch the Armenians are wont to be 
 adduced among the border peoples 
 independent of Rome ( Valer. 6 ; 
 7ng. tyr. 30, 7, 18; Aurel. 11, 
 27, 28, 41); but this is one of their 
 quite untrustworthy elements of em- 
 bellishment. 
 
 2 This more modest account (Eu- 
 tropius, ix. 10; vita Gallieni, 10; 
 Trig. tyr. 15, 4 ; Zos. i. 39, who 
 alone attests the two expeditions) 
 must be preferred to that which men- 
 tions the capture of the city (Syn- 
 cellus, p. 716). 
 
 3 This is shown by the accounts as 
 to Carinus (cont. of Dio, p. 8) and as 
 to Rufinus (p. 106, note 2). That after 
 the death of Odaenathus Heraclianus, 
 a general acting on Gallienus's orders 
 against the Persians, was attacked 
 and conquered by Zenobia {vita Gal- 
 lieni, 13, 5), is in itself not impossible, 
 seeing that the princes of Palmyra 
 possessed de here the chief command 
 in all the East, and such an action, 
 
io6 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book vm. 
 
 Govern- 
 ment of 
 Zenobia. 
 
 of Odaenathus to attach himself to the Persians, which 
 were alleged to have broken down only through Sapor's 
 arrogance, 1 while on the other hand the assassination of 
 Odaenathus at Hemesa in 266-7 was referred to instigation 
 of the Roman government. 2 The real murderer was a 
 brother's son of Odaenathus, and there are no proofs of 
 the participation of the government. At any rate the 
 crime made no change in the position of affairs. 
 
 The wife of the deceased, the queen Bat Zabbai, or 
 in Greek, Zenobia, a beautiful and sagacious woman of 
 masculine energy, 3 in virtue of the hereditary right to the 
 principate claimed for the son of herself and Odaenathus, 
 still in boyhood, Vaballathus or Athenodorus 4 — the elder, 
 Herodes, had perished with his father — the position of the 
 deceased, and in fact carried her point as well in Rome as 
 in the East : the regnal years of the son are reckoned 
 from the death of the father. For the son, not capable 
 of government, the mother took part in counsel and 
 action, 5 and she did not restrict herself to preserving the 
 
 even if it were suggested by Gallienus, 
 might be treated as offending against 
 this right, and this would clearly in- 
 dicate the strained relation ; but the 
 authority vouching it is so bad that 
 little stress can be laid on it. 
 
 1 This we learn from the charac- 
 teristic narrative of Petrus, fr. 10, 
 which is to be placed before fr. II. 
 
 2 The account of the continuator 
 of Dio, fr. 7, that the old Odaenathus 
 was put to death, as suspected of 
 treason, by one (not elsewhere men- 
 tioned) Rufinus, and that the younger, 
 when he had impeached this person 
 at the bar of the emperor Gallienus, 
 was dismissed on the declaration of 
 Rufinus that the accuser deserved 
 the same fate, cannot be correct as it 
 stands. But Waddington's proposal 
 to substitute Gallus for Gallienus, and 
 to recognise in the accuser the hus- 
 band of Zenobia, is not admissible, 
 since the father of this Odaenathus 
 was Hairanes, in whose case there 
 existed no ground at all for such an 
 execution, and the excerpt in its 
 whole character undoubtedly applies 
 
 to Gallienus. Rather must the old 
 Odaenathus have been the husband 
 of Zenobia, and the author have 
 erroneously assigned to Vaballathus, 
 in whose name the charge was 
 brought, his father's name. 
 
 3 All the details which are current 
 in our accounts of Zenobia originate 
 from the imperial biographies ; and 
 they will only be repeated by such as 
 do not know this source. 
 
 4 The name Vaballathus is given, 
 in addition to the coins and inscrip- 
 tions, by Polemius Silvius, p. 243 of 
 my edition, and the biographer of 
 Aurelian, c. 38, while he describes 
 as incorrect the statement that Odaen- 
 athus had left two sons, Timolaus 
 and Herennianus. In reality these 
 two persons emerging simply in the 
 imperial biographies appear along 
 with all that is connected with them 
 as invented by the writer, to whom 
 the thorough falsification of these 
 biographies is to be referred. Zosimus 
 too, i. 59, knows only of one son, who 
 went into captivity with his mother. 
 
 6 Whether Zenobia claimed for her- 
 
chap. ix. AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 107 
 
 state of possession, but on the contrary her courage or 
 her arrogance aspired to mastery over the whole imperial 
 domain of the Greek tongue. In the command over the 
 East, which was committed to Odaenathus and inherited 
 from him by his son, the supreme authority over Asia 
 Minor and Egypt may doubtless have been included ; 
 but de facto Odaenathus had in his power only Syria and 
 Arabia, and possibly Armenia, Cilicia, and Cappadocia. 
 Now an influential Egyptian, Timagenes, summoned the 
 queen to occupy Egypt ; accordingly she despatched her 
 chief general Zabdas with an army of, it is alleged, 70,000 
 men to the Nile. The land resisted with energy ; but 
 the Palmyrenes defeated the Egyptian levy and possessed 
 themselves of Egypt. A Roman admiral Probus attempted 
 to dislodge them again, and even vanquished them, so 
 that they set out for Syria ; but, when he attempted to 
 bar their way at the Egyptian Babylon not far from 
 Memphis, he was defeated by the better local knowledge 
 of the Palmyrene general Timagenes, and he put himself 
 to death. 1 When about the beginning of the year 270, 
 after the death of the emperor Claudius Aurelian came in 
 his stead, the Palmyrenes bore sway over Alexandria. 
 In Asia Minor too they made preparations to establish 
 themselves ; their garrisons were pushed forward as far as 
 Ancyra in Galatia, and even in Chalcedon opposite Byzan- 
 
 self formal joint-rule, cannot be cer- 
 tainly determined. In Palmyra she 
 names herself still after the rupture 
 with Rome merely fiaaLXlaar} (Wad- 
 dington, 261 1, 2628), in the rest of 
 the empire she may have laid claim 
 to the title Augusta, Se/fao-TTj ; for, 
 though there are no coins of Zenobia 
 from the period prior to the breach 
 with Rome, yet on the one hand the 
 Alexandrian inscription with fiaaiKla- 
 arijs kclI fiaaCkiws Trpoara^dvTwv (Eph. 
 epigr. iv. p. 25, p. 33) cannot lay 
 any claim to official redaction, and 
 on the other hand the inscription of 
 Byblos, C. I. Gr. 4503 b = Wadding- 
 ton, n. 261 1, gives in fact to Zenobia 
 the title 2e/3aar?} alongside of Clau- 
 dius or Aurelian, while it refuses it 
 
 to Vaballathus. This is so far intel- 
 ligible, as Augusta was an honorary 
 designation, Augustus an official one, 
 and thus that might well be conceded 
 to the wife which was refused to the 
 husband. 
 
 1 So Zosimus, i. 44, narrates the 
 course of events with which Zonaras, 
 xii. 27 and Syncellus, p. 721, in the 
 main agree. The report in the life 
 of Claudius, c. 11, is more displaced 
 than properly contradictory ; the first 
 half is only indicated by the naming 
 of Saba ; the narrative begins with 
 the successful attempt of Timagenes 
 to ward off the attack of Probus (here 
 Probatus). The view taken of this 
 by me in Sallet {Palmyra, p. 44) is 
 not tenable. 
 
io8 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 tium they had attempted to assert the rule of their queen. 
 All this happened without the Palmyrenes renouncing the 
 Roman government, nay probably on the footing that the 
 control of the East committed by the Roman government 
 to the prince of Palmyra was realised in this way, and 
 they taxed the Roman officers, who resisted the extension 
 of the Palmyrene rule, with rebellion against the imperial 
 orders ; the coins struck in Alexandria name Aurelianus 
 and Vaballathus side by side, and give the title of 
 Augustus only to the former. In substance, no doubt, 
 the East here detached itself from the empire, and the 
 latter was divided into two in the execution of an ordi- 
 nance wrung from the wretched Gallienus by necessity. 
 Aureiian The vigorous and prudent emperor, to whom the 
 
 Palmy! the dominion now had fallen, broke at once with the Pal- 
 renes. myrene co-ordinate government, which then could not 
 but have and had as its consequence, that Vaballathus 
 himself was proclaimed by his people as emperor. Egypt 
 was already, at the close of the year 270, brought back 
 to the empire after hard struggles by the brave general 
 Probus, afterwards the successor of Aureiian. 1 It is true 
 that the second city of the empire, Alexandria, paid for 
 this victory almost with its existence, as will be set forth 
 in the following section. More difficult was the reduction 
 of the remote Syrian oasis. All other Oriental wars of 
 the imperial period had chiefly been waged by imperial 
 troops having their home in the East ; here, where the 
 West had once more to subdue the revolted East, there 
 fought once more, as in the time of the free republic, 
 
 1 The determination of the date p. 32 Vail.) is put by Eusebius in 
 depends on the fact that the usurpa- his Chronicle in the first year of 
 tion-coins of Vaballathus cease already Claudius, by Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15, 
 in the fifth year of his Egyptian reign, under Aureiian ; the most exact re- 
 s'.*;. 29th August 270-71 ; the fact that port in Eusebius, H. Eccl. vii. 32, is 
 they are very rare speaks for the not dated. The reconquest of Egypt 
 beginning of the year. With this by Probus stands only in his bio- 
 essentially agrees the circumstance graphy, c. 9 ; it may have happened 
 that the storming of the Prucheion as it is told, but it is possible also 
 (which, we may add, was no part of the that in this thoroughly falsified source 
 city, but a locality close by the city on the history of Timagenes has been 
 the side of the great oasis ; Hierony- mutatis mutandis transferred to the 
 mus, vit. Hilarionis, c. 33, 34, vol. ii. emperor. 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 109 
 
 Occidentals against Orientals, 1 the soldiers of the Rhine 
 and of the Danube with those of the Syrian desert. The 
 mighty expedition began, apparently towards the close of 
 the year 271 ; without encountering resistance the Roman 
 army arrived at the frontier of Cappadocia ; here the 
 town of Tyana, which barred the Cilician passes, gave 
 serious opposition. After it had fallen, and Aurelian, by 
 gentle treatment of the inhabitants, had smoothed his 
 way to further successes, he crossed the Taurus, and, 
 passing through Cilicia, arrived in Syria. If Zenobia, as 
 is not to be doubted, had reckoned on active support 
 from the side of the Persian king, she found herself de- 
 ceived. The aged king Shapur did not interfere in this 
 war, and the mistress of the Roman East continued to be 
 left to her own military resources, of which perhaps even 
 a portion took the side of the legitimate Augustus. At 
 Antioch the Palmyrene chief force under the general 
 Zabdas stopped the emperor's way ; Zenobia herself was 
 present. A successful combat against the superior Pal- 
 myrene cavalry on the Orontes delivered into the hands 
 of Aurelian the town, which not less than Tyana received 
 full pardon — he justly recognised that the subjects of 
 the empire were hardly to be blamed, when they had 
 submitted to the Palmyrene prince appointed as com- 
 mander in chief by the Roman government itself. The 
 Palmyrenes, after having engaged in a conflict on their 
 retreat at Daphne, the suburb of Antioch, marched off, and 
 struck into the great route which leads from the capital 
 of Syria to Hemesa and thence through the desert to 
 Palmyra. 
 
 Aurelian summoned the queen to submit, pointing to Battle at 
 the notable losses endured in the conflicts on the Orontes. Hemesa - 
 These were Romans only, answered the queen ; the 
 Orientals did not yet admit that they were conquered. 
 
 1 This is perhaps what the report Raetians, Mauretanians, and the 
 
 on the battle of Hemesa, extracted guard. When he associates with 
 
 by Zosimus, i. 52, wished to bring these the troops of Tyana and some 
 
 out, when it enumerates among the divisions from Mesopotamia, Syria, 
 
 troops of Aurelian the Dalmatians, Phoenice, Palestine, this applies be- 
 
 Moesians, Pannonians, Noricans, yond doubt to the Cappadocian gar- 
 
1 1 o THE E UPHRA TES FR ONTIER book vni. 
 
 At Hemesa 1 she took her stand for the decisive battle. It 
 was long and bloody ; the Roman cavalry gave way and 
 broke up in flight ; but the legions decided, and victory 
 remained with the Romans, The march was more diffi- 
 cult than the conflict. The distance from Hemesa to 
 Palmyra amounts in a direct line to seventy miles, and, 
 although at that epoch of highly developed Syrian civilis- 
 ation the region was not waste in the same degree as at 
 present, the march of Aurelian still remains a considerable 
 feat, especially as the light horsemen of the enemy 
 swarmed round the Roman army on all sides. Aurelian, 
 however, reached his goal, and began the siege of the 
 strong and well-provisioned city ; more difficult than the 
 siege itself was the bringing up of provisions for the 
 besieging army. At length the courage of the princess 
 sank, and she escaped from the city to seek aid from the 
 Persians. Fortune still further helped the emperor. The 
 pursuing Roman cavalry took her captive with her son, 
 just when she had arrived at the Euphrates and was 
 about to embark in the rescuing boat ; and the town, 
 discouraged by her flight, capitulated (272). Aurelian 
 granted here too, as in all this campaign, full pardon to 
 the subdued burgesses. But a stern punishment was 
 decreed over the queen and her functionaries and officers. 
 Zenobia, after she had for years borne rule with mascu- 
 line energy, did not now disdain to invoke a woman's 
 privileges, and to throw the responsibility on her advisers, 
 of whom not a few, including the celebrated scholar, 
 Cassius Longinus, perished under the axe of the execu- 
 tioner. She herself might not be wanting from the 
 triumphal procession of the emperor, and she did not 
 
 risons, which had joined after the Hieronymus, chron. a. Abr. 2289 
 
 capture of Tyana, and to some depends), and in Syncellus, p. 721, 
 
 divisions of the armies of the East by the addition apud Immas, ev "Iyii- 
 
 favourably disposed to Rome, who /xcus, which place, lying 33 Roman 
 
 went over to Aurelian upon his miles from Antioch on the road to 
 
 marching into Syria. Chalcis, is far away from Hemesa. 
 
 1 By mistake Eutropius, ix. 13, The two chief accounts, in Zosimus 
 
 places the decisive battle hand longe and the biographer of Aurelian, agree 
 
 ab Antiochia : the mistake is height- in all essentials, 
 ened in Rufius, c. 24 (on whom 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 in 
 
 take the course of Cleopatra, but marched in golden 
 chains, as a spectacle to the Roman multitude, before the 
 chariot of the victor to the Roman capitol. But before 
 Aurelian could celebrate his victory he had to repeat it. 
 
 A few months after the surrender the Palmyrenes once Destruction 
 more rose, killed the small Roman garrison serving there, ofPalm > Ta - 
 and proclaimed one Antiochus 1 as ruler, while they at 
 the same time attempted to induce the governor of Meso- 
 potamia, Marcellinus, to revolt. The news reached the 
 emperor when he had just crossed the Hellespont. He 
 returned at once, and stood, earlier than friend or foe had 
 anticipated, once more before the walls of the insurgent 
 city. The rebels had not been prepared for this ; there 
 was this time no resistance, but also no mercy. Palmyra 
 was destroyed, the commonwealth dissolved, the walls 
 razed, the ornaments of the glorious temple of the sun 
 transferred to the temple which, in memory of this victory, 
 the emperor built to the sun-god of the East in Rome ; 
 only the forsaken halls and walls remained, as they still 
 stand in part at the present day. This occurred in the 
 year 273.2 The flourishing of Palmyra was artificial, 
 produced by the routes assigned to traffic and the great 
 public buildings dependent on it. Now the government 
 withdrew its hand from the unhappy city. Traffic sought 
 and found other paths ; as Mesopotamia was then viewed 
 as a Roman province and soon came again to the empire, 
 
 1 This is the name given by Zosi- by the conquest. According to the 
 mus, i. 60, and Polemius Silvius, dated inscriptions of Odaenathus and 
 p. 243; the Achilleus of the bio- Zenobia of August 271 (Waddington, 
 grapherof Aurelian, c. 31, seems aeon- 261 1), the rule of the queen was at 
 fusion with the usurper of the time of that time still intact. As an expe- 
 Diocletian. — That at the same time in dition of this sort, from the condi- 
 Egypt a partisan of Zenobia and at tions of the climate, could not well 
 the same time robber-chief, by name take place otherwise than in spring, 
 Firmus, rose against the government, the first capture of Palmyra must 
 is doubtless possible, but the statement have ensued in the spring of 272. 
 rests only on the imperial biographies, The most recent (merely Palmyrene) 
 and the details added sound very inscription which we know from that 
 suspiciously. quarter (Vogue, n. 116) is of August 
 
 2 The chronology of these events 272. The insurrection probably falls at 
 is not quite settled. The rarity of this time ; the second capture and the 
 the Syrian coins of Vaballathus as destruction somewhere in the spring of 
 Augustus shows that the rupture with the year 273 (in accordance with which, 
 Aurelian (end of 270) was soon followed I. 166, note 1, is to be corrected). 
 
112 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 and the territory of the Nabataeans as far as the port of 
 Aelana was in Roman hands, this intermediate station 
 might be dispensed with, and the traffic may have betaken 
 itself instead to Bostra or Beroea (Aleppo). The short 
 meteor-like splendour of Palmyra and its princes was 
 immediately followed by the desolation and silence which, 
 from that time down to the present day, enwrap the 
 miserable desert-village and the ruins of its colonnades. 
 Persian war The ephemeral kingdom of Palmyra was in its origin 
 of Cams. as j n -£ S f a jj closely bound up with the relations of the 
 Romans to the non-Roman East, but not less a part of 
 the general history of the empire. For, like the western 
 empire of Postumus, the eastern empire of Zenobia was 
 one of those masses into which the mighty whole seemed 
 then about to resolve itself. If during its subsistence its 
 leaders endeavoured earnestly to set limits to the onset 
 of the Persians, and indeed the development of its power 
 was dependent on that very fact,, not merely did it in its 
 collapse seek deliverance from those same Persians, but 
 probably in consequence of the revolt of Zenobia 
 Armenia and Mesopotamia were lost to the Romans, 
 and after the subjugation of Palmyra the Euphrates 
 again for a time formed the frontier. The queen, when 
 she arrived at it, hoped to find a reception among the 
 Persians ; and Aurelian omitted to lead the legions over 
 it, seeing that Gaul, along with Spain and Britain, still at 
 that time refused to recognise the government. He and 
 his successor Probus were not able to take up this struggle. 
 But when in the year 282, after the premature end of the 
 latter, the troops proclaimed the commander next in rank, 
 Marcus Aurelius Carus, as emperor, it was the first saying 
 of the new ruler that the Persians should remember this 
 choice, and he kept it. Immediately he advanced with 
 the army into Armenia and re-established the earlier 
 order there. At the frontier of the land he was met by 
 Persian envoys, who declared themselves ready to grant 
 all that was reasonable ; l but they were hardly listened 
 
 1 It throws no light on the position tions otherwise thoroughly apocryphal 
 of the Armenians, that in descrip- {vita Valer. 6 ; vita Aurel. 27, 28) 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PARTHIANS. 
 
 "3 
 
 to, and the march went on incessantly. Mesopotamia 
 too became once more Roman, and the Parthian residential 
 cities Seleucia and Ctesiphon were again occupied by 
 the Romans without encountering lengthened resistance — 
 to which the war between brothers then raging in the 
 Persian empire contributed its part. 1 The emperor had 
 just crossed the Tigris, and was on the point of penetrating 
 into the heart of the enemy's country, when he met his 
 death by violence, presumably by the hand of an assassin, 
 and thereby the campaign also met its end. But his 
 successor obtained in peace the cession of Armenia and 
 Mesopotamia ; 2 although Carus wore the purple little 
 more than a year, he re-established the imperial frontier 
 of Severus. 
 
 Some years afterwards (293) a new ruler, Narseh, Persianwar 
 son of king Shapur, ascended the throne of Ctesiphon, cietian Di ° 
 and declared war on the Romans in the year 296 for the 
 
 the Armenians after the catastrophe 
 of Valerian keep to the Persians, 
 and appear in the last crisis of the 
 Palmyrenes as allies of Zenobia by 
 the side of the Persians ; both are 
 obvious consequences from the general 
 position of things. That Aurelian 
 did not subdue Armenia any more 
 than Mesopotamia, is supported in 
 this case partly by the silence of the 
 authorities, partly by the account of 
 Synesius (de regno, p. 17) that the 
 emperor Carinus (rather Carus) had 
 in Armenia, close to the frontier of 
 the Persian territory, summarily dis- 
 missed a Persian embassy, and that 
 the young Persian king, alarmed by 
 its report, had declared himself ready 
 for any concession. I do not see 
 how this narrative can be referred to 
 Probus, as von Gutschmid thinks 
 (Zeitschr. d. deutsch. morgenl. Gesell. 
 xxxi. 50) ; on the other hand it suits 
 very well the Persian expedition of 
 Carus. 
 
 1 The reconquest of Mesopotamia 
 is reported only by the biographer, 
 c. 8 ; but at the outbreak of the 
 Persian war under Diocletian it is 
 Roman. There is mention at the 
 same place of internal troubles in the 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Persian empire; also in a discourse 
 held in the year 289 {Paneg. iii. c. 
 17) there is mention of the war, 
 which is waged against the king of 
 Persia — this was Bahram II. — by his 
 own brother Ormies or rather Hor- 
 mizd adscitis Sacis et Ruffis (?) et 
 Gellis (comp. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 
 479). We have altogether only some 
 detached notices as to this important 
 campaign. 
 
 2 This is stated clearly by Mamer- 
 tinus {Paneg. ii. 7, comp. ii. 10, iii. 6) 
 in the oration held in 289 : Syriam 
 velut amplexu suo tegebat Euphrates 
 antequam Diocletiano sponte (that is, 
 without Diocletian needing to have 
 recourse to arms, as is then further 
 set forth) se dederent regna Persarum ; 
 and further by another panegyrist of 
 the year 296 (Paneg. v. 3) : Partho 
 ttltra Tigrim reducto. Turns like 
 that in Victor, Caes. xxxix. 33, that 
 Galerius relictis finibus had marched 
 to Mesopotamia, or that Narseh, ac- 
 cording to Rufius Festus, c. 25, ceded 
 Mesopotamia in peace, cannot on the 
 other hand be urged ; and as little, 
 that Oriental authorities place the 
 Roman occupation of Nisibis in 609 
 Sel. =297/8 A.D. (Noldeke, Tabari, 
 
 m 
 
114 
 
 THE EUPHRATES FRONTIER book viii. 
 
 possession of Mesopotamia and Armenia. 1 Diocletian, who 
 then had the supreme conduct of the empire generally, 
 and of the East in particular, entrusted the management 
 of the war to his imperial colleague Galerius Maximianus, a 
 rough but brave general. The beginning was unfavourable. 
 The Persians invaded Mesopotamia and reached as far 
 as Carrhae; the Caesar led against them the Syrian 
 legions over the Euphrates at Nicephorium ; between 
 these two positions the armies encountered each other, 
 and the far weaker Roman force gave way. It was a 
 hard blow, and the young general had to submit to 
 severe reproaches, but he did not despair. For the next 
 campaign reinforcements were brought up from the 
 whole empire, and both rulers personally took the field ; 
 Diocletian took his position in Mesopotamia with the 
 chief force, while Galerius, reinforced by the flower of the 
 Illyrian troops that had in the meantime come up, met, 
 with a force of 25,000 men, the enemy in Armenia, and 
 inflicted on him a decisive defeat. The camp and the 
 treasure, nay, even the harem, of the great-king fell into 
 the hands of the warriors, and with difficulty Narseh 
 himself escaped from capture. In order to recover the 
 women and the children the king declared himself ready 
 to conclude peace on any terms ; his envoy Apharban 
 conjured the Romans to spare the Persians, saying that 
 the two empires, the Roman and the Parthian, were, as it 
 were, the two eyes of the world, and neither could dispense 
 with the other. It would have lain in the power of the 
 Romans to add one more to their Oriental provinces ; 
 the prudent ruler contented himself with regulating the 
 state of possession in the north-east. Mesopotamia 
 remained, as a matter of course, in the Roman possession ; 
 the important commercial intercourse with the neigh- 
 
 p. 50). If this were correct, the at that time Roman, is stated by 
 
 exact account as to the negotiations Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 1 1 ; for Meso- 
 
 for peace of 297 in Petrus Patricius, potamia the same follows from Eu- 
 
 fr. 14, could not possibly be silent as tropius, ix. 24. On the 1st March 
 
 to the cession of Mesopotamia and 296 peace was still subsisting, or at 
 
 merely make mention of the regula- any rate the declaration of war was 
 
 tion of the frontier-traffic. not yet known in the west {Paneg. 
 
 1 That Narseh broke into Armenia v. 10). 
 
CHAP. IX. 
 
 AND THE PAR THIANS. 
 
 bouring foreign land was placed under strict state- 
 control and essentially directed to the strong city of 
 Nisibis, the basis of the Roman frontier-guard in eastern 
 Mesopotamia. The Tigris was recognised as boundary 
 of the direct Roman rule, to such an extent, however, 
 that the whole of southern Armenia as far as the lake 
 Thospitis (lake of Van) and the Euphrates, and so the 
 whole upper valley of the Tigris, should belong to the 
 Roman empire. This region lying in front of Mesopotamia 
 did not become a province proper, but was administered 
 after the previous fashion as the Roman satrapy of 
 Sophene. Some decades later the strong fortress of 
 Amida (Diarbekir) was constructed here, thenceforth the 
 chief stronghold of the Romans in the region of the upper 
 Tigris. At the same time the frontier between Armenia 
 and Media was regulated afresh, and the supremacy of 
 Rome over that land, as over Iberia, was once more 
 confirmed. The peace did not impose important cessions 
 of territory on the conquered, but it established a frontier 
 favourable to the Romans, which for a considerable time 
 served in these much contested regions as a demarcation 
 of the two empires. 1 The polity of Trajan thereby 
 obtained its complete accomplishment ; at all events the 
 centre of gravity of the Roman rule shifted itself just at 
 this time from the West to the East. 
 
 1 The differences in the exception- 
 ally good accounts, particularly of 
 Petrus Patricius,/n 14, and Ammianus, 
 xxv. 7, 9, are probably only of a formal 
 kind. The fact that the Tigris was 
 to be the proper boundary of the 
 empire, as Priscus says, does not 
 exclude, especially considering the 
 peculiar character of its upper course, 
 the possibility of the boundary there 
 partially going beyond it; on the 
 contraiy, the five districts previously 
 named in Petrus appear to be adduced 
 just as beyond the Tigris, and to be 
 excepted from the following general 
 definition. The districts adduced by 
 Priscus here and, expressly as beyond 
 the Tigris, by Ammianus— these are 
 in both Arzanene, Carduene, and 
 Zabdicene, in Priscus Sophene and 
 
 Intilene ("rather Ingilene, in Ar- 
 menia Angel, now Egil " ; Kiepert), 
 in Ammianus Moxoene and Rehi- 
 mene (?) — cannot possibly all have 
 been looked on by the Romans as 
 Persian before the peace, when at 
 any rate Armenia was already Romano 
 iuri obnoxia (Ammianus, xxiii. 5, 11); 
 beyond doubt the more westerly of 
 them already then formed a part of 
 Roman Armenia, and stand here only 
 in so far as they were, in consequence 
 of the peace, incorporated with the 
 empire as the satrapy of Sophene. 
 That the question here concerned not 
 the boundary of the cession, but that 
 of the territory directly imperial, is 
 shown by the conclusion, which settles 
 the boundary between Armenia and 
 Media. 
 
n6 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SYRIA AND THE LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 Conquest It was very gradually that the Romans, after acquiring the 
 of Syria - western half of the coasts of the Mediterranean, resolved 
 on possessing themselves also of the eastern half. Not the 
 resistance, which they here encountered in comparatively 
 slight measure, but a well-founded fear of the denational- 
 ising consequences of such acquisitions, led to as prolonged 
 an effort as possible on their part merely to preserve de- 
 cisive political influence in those regions, and to the incor- 
 poration proper at least of Syria and Egypt taking place 
 only when the state was already almost a monarchy. 
 Doubtless the Roman empire became thereby geographi- 
 cally compact ; the Mediterranean Sea, the proper basis of 
 Rome after it was a great power, became on all sides a 
 Roman inland lake ; the navigation and commerce on its 
 waters and shores formed politically an unity to the ad- 
 vantage of all that dwelt around. But by the side of geo- 
 graphical compactness went national bipartition. Through 
 Greece and Macedonia the Roman state would never have 
 become binational, any more than the Greek cities of 
 Neapolis and Massalia had Hellenised Campania and 
 Provence. But, while in Europe and Africa the Greek 
 domain vanishes in presence of the compact mass of the 
 Latin, so much of the third continent as was drawn, with 
 the Nile-valley rightfully pertaining to it, into this cycle of 
 culture belonged exclusively to the Greeks, and Antioch 
 and Alexandria in particular were the true pillars of the 
 Hellenic development that attained its culmination in 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 117 
 
 Alexander — centres of Hellenic life and Hellenic culture, 
 and great cities, as was Rome. After having set forth in 
 the preceding chapter the conflict between the East and 
 West in and around Armenia and Mesopotamia, that filled 
 the whole period of the empire, we turn to describe the 
 relations of the Syrian regions, as they took shape at the 
 same time. What we mean is the territory which is 
 separated by the mountain-chain of Pisidia, Isauria, and 
 Western Cilicia from Asia Minor; by the eastern continua- 
 tion of these mountains and the Euphrates from Armenia 
 and Mesopotamia, by the Arabian desert from the Parthian 
 empire and from Egypt ; only it seemed fitting to deal 
 with the peculiar fortunes of Judaea in a special section. 
 In accordance with the diversity of political development 
 under the imperial government, we shall speak in the first 
 instance of Syria proper, the northern portion of this ter- 
 ritory, and of the Phoenician coast that stretches along 
 under the Libanus, and then of the country lying behind 
 Palestine — the territory of the Nabataeans. What was to 
 be said about Palmyra has already found its place in the 
 preceding chapter. 
 
 After the partition of the provinces between the em- Provincial 
 peror and the senate, Syria was under imperial adminis- s° vern - 
 tration, and was in the East, like Gaul in the West, m6nt ' 
 the central seat of civil and military control. This 
 governorship was from the beginning the most esteemed 
 of all, and only became in course of time all the more 
 thought of. Its holder, like the governor of the two Ger- 
 manies, wielded the command over four legions, and 
 while the administration of the inland Gallic districts was 
 taken away from the commanders of the Rhine-army and 
 a certain restriction was involved in the very fact of their 
 coordination, the governor of Syria retained the civil 
 administration of the whole large province undiminished, 
 and held for long alone in all Asia a command of the first 
 rank. Under Vespasian, indeed, he obtained in the 
 governors of Palestine and Cappadocia two colleagues 
 likewise commanding legions ; but, on the other hand, 
 through the annexation of the kingdom of Commagene, 
 
Il8 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 and soon afterwards of the principalities in the Libanus, 
 the field of his administration was increased. It was only 
 in the course of the second century that a diminution of 
 his prerogatives occurred, when Hadrian took one of the 
 four legions from the governor of Syria and handed it 
 over to the governor of Palestine. It was Severus who 
 at length withdrew the first place in the Roman military 
 hierarchy from the Syrian governor. After having subdued 
 the province — which had wished at that time to make 
 Niger emperor, as it had formerly done with its governor 
 Vespasian — amidst resistance from the capital Antioch in 
 particular, he ordained its partition into a northern and a 
 southern half, and gave to the governor of the former, 
 which was called Coele-Syria, two legions, to the governor 
 of the latter, the province of Syro-Phoenicia, one. 
 
 Syria may also be compared with Gaul, in so far as 
 this district of imperial administration was divided more 
 sharply than most into pacified regions and border-dis- 
 tricts needing protection. While the extensive coast of 
 Syria and the western regions generally were not exposed 
 to hostile attacks, and the protection on the desert frontier 
 against the roving Bedouins devolved on the Arabian and 
 Jewish princes, and subsequently on the troops of the 
 province of Arabia as also on the Palmyrenes, more than 
 on the Syrian legions, the Euphrates -frontier required, 
 particularly before Mesopotamia became Roman, a watch 
 against the Parthians similar to that on the Rhine against 
 the Germans. But if the Syrian legions came to be em- 
 ployed on the frontier, they could not be dispensed with 
 in western Syria as well. 1 The troops of the Rhine were 
 
 1 We cannot exactly determine the 
 standing quarters of the Syrian le- 
 gions ; yet what is here said is sub- 
 stantially assured. Under Nero the i oth 
 legion lay at Raphaneae, north-west 
 from Hamath (Josephus, Bell. Jud. 
 vii. 1,3); and at that same place, or 
 at any rate nearly in this region under 
 Tiberius the 6th (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 
 79) ; probably in or near Antioch the 
 1 2th under Nero (Josephus, Bell. Jud. 
 ii. 1 8, 19). At least one legion lay 
 
 on the Euphrates ; for the time before 
 the annexation of Commagene Jose- 
 phus attests this {Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3), 
 and subsequently one of the Syrian 
 legions had its headquarters in Samo- 
 sata (Ptolemaeus, v. 15, 11 ; inscrip- 
 tion from the time of Severus, C. I. L. 
 vi. 1409; Kin. Antonini, p. 186). 
 Probably the staffs of most of the 
 Syrian legions had their seat in the 
 western districts, and the ever-recur- 
 ring complaint that encamping in the 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 119 
 
 certainly there also on account of the Gauls ; yet the 
 Romans might say with justifiable pride that for the great 
 capital of Gaul and the three Gallic provinces a direct 
 garrison of 1200 men sufficed. But for the Syrian popu- 
 lation, and especially for the capital of Roman Asia, it was 
 not enough to station legions on the Euphrates. Not 
 merely on the edge of the desert, but also in the retreats 
 of the mountains there lodged daring bands of robbers, 
 who roamed in the neighbourhood of the rich fields and 
 large towns — not to the same extent as now, but constantly 
 even then — and, often disguised as merchants or soldiers, 
 pillaged the country houses and the villages. But even 
 the towns themselves, above all Antioch, required like 
 Alexandria garrisons of their own. Beyond doubt this 
 was the reason why a division into civil and military dis- 
 tricts, like that enacted for Gaul by Augustus, was never 
 even so much as attempted in Syria, and why the large 
 self-subsistent camp-settlements, out of which e.g. originated 
 Mentz on the Rhine, Leon in Spain, Chester in England, 
 were altogether wanting in the Roman East. But beyond 
 doubt this was also the reason why the Syrian army was 
 so much inferior in discipline and spirit to that of the 
 Western provinces ; why the stern discipline, which was 
 exercised in the military standing camps of the West, 
 never could take root in the urban cantonments of the 
 East. When stationary troops have, in addition to their 
 more immediate destination, the task of police assigned 
 to them, this of itself has a demoralising effect ; and only 
 too often, where they are expected to keep in check turbu- 
 lent civic masses, their own discipline in fact is thereby 
 undermined. The Syrian wars formerly described furnish 
 the far from pleasant commentary on this ; none of them 
 found an army capable of warfare in existence, and regu- 
 
 towns disorganised the Syrian army, particular the specially disturbed dis- 
 applies chiefly to this arrangement. It trict between Damascus and Bostra 
 is doubtful whether in the better times was strongly furnished with legion- 
 there existed headquarters proper of aries provided on the one hand by 
 the legions on the edge of the desert ; the command of Syria, on the other 
 at the frontier-posts there detachments by that of Arabia after its institution 
 of the legions were employed, and in by Trajan. 
 
120 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 larly there was need to bring up Occidental troops in order 
 to give the turn to the struggle. 
 Heiienising Syria in the narrower sense and its adjoining lands, 
 of Syria. the plain Qft\c\2. and Phoenicia, never had under the Roman 
 emperors a history properly so called. The inhabitants 
 of these regions belonged to the same stock as the inhabi- 
 tants of Judaea and Arabia, and the ancestors of the 
 Syrians and the Phoenicians were settled in a remote age 
 at one spot with those of the Jews and the Arabs, and 
 spoke one language. But while the latter clung to their 
 peculiar character and to their language, the Syrians and 
 the Phoenicians became Hellenised even before they 
 came under Roman rule. This Heiienising took effect 
 throughout in the formation of Hellenic polities. The 
 foundation for this had indeed been laid by the native 
 development, particularly by the old and great mercantile 
 cities on the Phoenician coast. But above all the forma- 
 tion of states by Alexander and the Alexandrids, just like 
 that of the Roman republic, had as its basis not the tribe, 
 but the urban community ; it was not the old Macedonian 
 hereditary principality, but the Greek polity that Alex- 
 ander carried into the East ; and it was not from tribes, but 
 from towns that he designed, and the Romans designed, to 
 constitute their empire. The idea of the autonomous 
 burgess -body is an elastic one, and the autonomy of 
 Athens and Thebes was a different thing from that of the 
 Macedonian and Syrian city, just as in the Roman circle 
 the autonomy of free Capua had another import than that 
 of the Latin colonies of the republic or even of the urban 
 communities of the empire ; but the fundamental idea is 
 everywhere that of self-administering citizenship sovereign 
 within its own ring-wall. After the fall of the Persian 
 empire, Syria, along with the neighbouring Mesopotamia, 
 was, as the military bridge of connection between the West 
 and the East, covered more than any other land with 
 Macedonian settlements. The Macedonian names of places 
 transferred thither to the greatest extent, and nowhere 
 else recurring in the whole empire of Alexander, show 
 that here the flower of the Hellenic conquerors of the East 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 121 
 
 was settled, and that Syria was to become for this state 
 the New-Macedonia ; as indeed, so long as the empire of 
 Alexander retained a central government, this had there its 
 seat. Then the troubles of the last Seleucid period had 
 helped the Syrian imperial towns to greater independence. 
 
 These arrangements the Romans found existing. Of 
 non- urban districts administered directly by the empire 
 there were probably none at all in Syria according to the 
 organisation planned by Pompeius, and, if the dependent 
 principalities in the first epoch of the Roman rule embraced 
 a great portion of the southern interior of the province, 
 these were withal mostly mountainous and poorly inhabited 
 districts of subordinate importance. Taken as a whole, 
 for the Romans in Syria not much was left to be done as 
 to the increase of urban development — less than in Asia 
 Minor. Hence there is hardly anything to be told from 
 the imperial period of the founding of towns in the strict 
 sense as regards Syria. The few colonies which were laid 
 out here, such as Berytus under Augustus and probably 
 also Heliopolis, had no other object than those conducted 
 to Macedonia, namely, the settlement of veterans. 
 
 How the Greeks and the older population in Syria Continu- 
 stood to one another, may be clearly traced by the very ° f the 
 local names. The majority of districts and towns here language 
 bear Greek names, in great part, as we have observed, unde^Hei- 
 derived from the Macedonian home, such as Pieria, An- lenism. 
 themusias, Arethusa, Beroea, Chalcis, Edessa, Europus, 
 Cyrrhus, Larisa, Pella, others named after Alexander or 
 the members of the Seleucid house, such as Alexandria, 
 Antioch, Seleucis and Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea, 
 Epiphaneia. The old native names maintain themselves 
 doubtless side by side, as Beroea, previously in Aramaean 
 Chalep, is also called Chalybon, Edessa or Hierapolis, pre- 
 viously Mabog, is called also Bambyce, Epiphaneia, pre- 
 viously Hamat, is also called Amathe. But for the most 
 part the older appellations give way before the foreign 
 ones, and only a few districts and larger places, such as 
 Commagene, Samosata, Hemesa, Damascus, are without 
 newly-formed Greek names. Eastern Cilicia has few 
 
122 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Macedonian foundations to show ; but the capital Tarsus 
 became early and completely Hellenised, and was long 
 before the Roman time one of the centres of Hellenic 
 culture. It was somewhat otherwise in Phoenicia ; the 
 mercantile towns of old renown, Aradus, Byblus, Berytus, 
 Sidon, Tyrus, did not properly lay aside the native names ; 
 but how here too the Greek gained the upper hand, is 
 shown by the Hellenising transformation of these same 
 names, and still more clearly by the fact that New- Aradus 
 is known to us only under the Greek name Antaradus, 
 and likewise the new town founded by the Tyrians, the 
 Sidonians, and the Aradians in common on this coast 
 only under the name Tripolis, and both have developed 
 their modern designations Tartus and Tarabulus from the 
 Greek. Already in the Seleucid period the coins in Syria 
 proper bear exclusively, and those of the Phoenician towns 
 most predominantly, Greek legends ; and from the be- 
 ginning of the imperial period the sole rule of Greek is 
 here an established fact. 1 The oasis of Palmyra alone, 
 not merely separated by wide stretches of desert, but also 
 preserving a certain political independence, formed, as we 
 saw (p. 95), an exception in this respect. But in inter- 
 course the native idioms were retained. In the mountains 
 of the Libanus and the Anti-Libanus, where in Hemesa 
 (Horns), Chalcis, Abila (both between Berytus and Dam- 
 ascus) small princely houses of native origin ruled till 
 towards the end of the first century after Christ, the 
 native language had probably the sole sway in the im- 
 perial period, as indeed in the mountains of the Druses 
 so difficult of access the language of Aram has only in 
 recent times yielded to Arabic. But two thousand years 
 ago it was in fact the language of the people in all Syria. 2 
 That in the case of the double -named towns the Syrian 
 designation predominated in common life just as did the 
 
 1 There is a coin of Byblus from sions (de Sanctis martyr. Opp. ed. 
 the time of Augustus with Greek and Paris, 1718, vol. ii. p. 651; Homil. 
 Phoenician legend (Imhoof-Blumer, xix. ibid. p. 188) to the erepoQwvia, 
 Monnaies grecques, 1883, p. 443). the /3dp/3apos <puivri of the Xaos in con- 
 
 2 Johannes Chrysostomus of An- trast to the language of the cultured, 
 tioch (t 407) points on several occa- 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 123 
 
 Greek in literature, appears from the fact that at the pre- 
 sent day Beroea-Chalybon is named Haleb (Aleppo), 
 Epiphaneia-Amathe Hamat, Hierapolis-Bambyce-Mabog 
 Membid, Tyre by its Aramaean name Sur; that the 
 Syrian town known to us from documents and authors 
 only as Heliopolis still bears at the present day its primitive 
 native name Baalbec, and, in general, the modern names 
 of places have come, not from the Greek, but from the 
 Aramaean. 
 
 In like manner the worship shows the continued life Worship, 
 of Syrian nationality. The Syrians of Beroea bring their 
 votive gifts with Greek legend to Zeus Malbachos, those 
 of Apamea to Zeus Belos, those of Berytus as Roman 
 citizens to Jupiter Balmarcodes — all deities, in which 
 neither Zeus nor Jupiter had real part. This Zeus Belos 
 is no other than the Malach Belos adored at Palmyra in 
 the Syriac language (p. 96, note 1). How vivid was, and 
 continued to be, the hold of the native worship of the gods 
 in Syria, is most clearly attested by the fact that the lady 
 of Hemesa, who by her marriage -relationship with the 
 house of Severus obtained for her grandson the imperial 
 dignity at the beginning of the third century, not content 
 with the boy's being called supreme Pontifex of the 
 Roman people, urged him also to entitle himself before 
 all Romans the chief priest of the native sun-god Elagab- 
 alus. The Romans might conquer the Syrians ; but the 
 Roman gods had in their own home yielded the field to 
 those of Syria. 
 
 No less are the numerous Syrian proper names that 
 have come to us mainly non-Greek, and double names are 
 not rare ; the Messiah is termed also Christus, the apostle 
 Thomas also Didymus, the woman of Joppa raised up by 
 Peter "the gazelle," Tabitha or Dorcas. But for litera- 
 ture, and presumably also for business-intercourse and 
 the intercourse of the cultured, the Syrian idiom was as 
 little in existence as the Celtic in the West ; in these Jam- 
 circles Greek exclusively prevailed, apart from the Latin bllchus - 
 required also in the East for the soldiers. A man of 
 letters of the second half of the second century, whom 
 
124 
 
 SYjRIA and the 
 
 book VIII. 
 
 Sohaemus the king of Armenia formerly mentioned (p. 76) 
 brought to his court, has inserted in a romance, which 
 has its scene in Babylon, some points of the history of 
 his own life that illustrate this relation. He is, he says, 
 a Syrian, not, however, one of the immigrant Greeks, 
 but of native lineage on the father's and mother's side, 
 Syrian by language and habits, acquainted also with the 
 Babylonian language and with Persian magic. But this 
 same man, who in a certain sense declines the Hellenic 
 character, adds that he had appropriated Hellenic culture ; 
 and he became an esteemed teacher of youth in Syria, 
 and a notable romance-writer of the later Greek literature. 1 
 If subsequently the Syrian idiom again became a 
 written language and developed a literature of its own, 
 this is to be traced not to an invigoration of national feel- 
 ing, but to the immediate needs of the propagation of 
 Christianity. That Syriac literature, which began with the 
 translation of the writings of the Christian faith into 
 Syriac, remained confined to the sphere of the specific 
 culture of the Christian clergy, and hence took up only 
 the small fragments of general Hellenic culture which the 
 theologians of that time found conducive to, or compatible 
 with, their ends ; 2 this authorship did not attain, and 
 doubtless did not strive after, any higher aim than the 
 transference of the library of the Greek monastery to the 
 Maronite cloisters. It hardly reaches further back than 
 to the second century of our era, and had its centre, 
 
 1 The extract of Photius from the 
 romance of Jamblichus, c. 17, which 
 erroneously makes the author a Baby- 
 lonian, is essentially corrected and sup- 
 plemented by the scholion upon it. 
 The private secretary of the great- 
 king, who comes among Trajan's 
 captives to Syria, becomes there 
 tutor of Jamblichus, and instructs 
 him in the " barbarian wisdom," is 
 naturally a figure of the romance 
 running its course in Babylon, which 
 Jamblichus professes to have heard 
 from this his instructor ; but charac- 
 teristic of the time is the Armenian 
 court-man-of-letters and princes' tutor 
 
 (for it was doubtless as " good rhetor " 
 that he was called by Sohaemus to 
 Valarshapat) himself, who in virtue of 
 his magical art not merely understands 
 the charming of flies and the conjuring 
 of spirits, but also predicts to Verus 
 the victory over Vologasus, and at the 
 same time narrates in Greek to the 
 Greeks stories such as might stand in 
 the Thousand and One Nights. 
 
 2 Syriac literature consists almost 
 exclusively of translations of Greek 
 works. Among profane writings 
 treatises of Aristotle and Plutarch 
 stand in the first rank, then practical 
 writings of a juristic or agronomic 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 125 
 
 not in Syria, but in Mesopotamia, particularly in Edessa, 1 
 where the native language had not become so entirely a 
 dialect as in the older Roman territory. 
 
 Among the manifold bastard forms which Hellenism Syro-Hei- 
 assumed in the course of its diffusion at once civilising- and le ?° mixed 
 
 ° culture. 
 
 degenerating, the Syro-Hellenic is doubtless that in which 
 the two elements are most equally balanced, but perhaps 
 at the same time that which has most decisively influenced 
 the collective development of the empire. The Syrians 
 received, no doubt, the Greek urban organisation and appro- 
 priated Hellenic language and habits ; nevertheless they 
 did not cease to feel themselves as Orientals, or rather as 
 organs of a double civilisation. Nowhere is this perhaps 
 more sharply expressed than in the colossal tomb-temple, Tomb of 
 which at the commencement of the imperial period Antiochus 
 Antiochus king of Commagene erected for himself on a ma gene" 
 solitary mountain-summit not far from the Euphrates. He 
 names himself in the copious epitaph a Persian ; the priest 
 of the sanctuary is to present to him the memorial-offering 
 in the Persian dress, as the custom of his family demands ; 
 but he calls the Hellenes also, like the Persians, the blessed 
 roots of his race, and entreats the blessing of all the gods 
 of Persis as of Macetis, that is of the Persian as well 
 as of the Macedonian land, to rest upon his descendants. 
 For he is the son of a native king of the family of the 
 Achaemenids and of a Greek prince's daughter of the 
 house of Seleucus ; and, in keeping with this, the images 
 on the one hand of his paternal ancestors back to the first 
 Darius, on the other hand of his maternal back to Alex- 
 ander's marshal, embellished the tomb in a long double 
 row. But the gods, whom he honours, are at the same 
 time Persian and Greek, Zeus Oromasdes, Apollon Mithras 
 Helios Hermes, Artagnes Herakles Ares, and the effigy 
 of this latter, for example, bears the club of the Greek hero 
 and at the same time the Persian tiara. This Persian 
 
 character, and books of popular en- Testament, the oldest text of the 
 
 tertainment, such as the romance of Syriac language known to us, probably 
 
 Alexander, the fables of Aesop, the originated in Edessa ; the aTpanQrai 
 
 sentences of Menander. of the Acts of the Apostles are here 
 
 1 The Syriac translation of the New called " Romans." 
 
126 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 prince, who calls himself at the same time a friend of the 
 Hellenes, and as loyal subject of the emperor a friend of 
 the Romans, as not less that Achaemenid called by Marcus 
 and Lucius to the throne of Armenia, Sohaemus, are true 
 representatives of the native aristocracy of imperial Syria, 
 which bears in mind alike Persian memories and the 
 Romano-Hellenic present. From such circles the Persian 
 worship of Mithra reached the West. But the popula- 
 tion, which was placed at the same time under this great 
 nobility Persian or calling itself Persian, and under the 
 government of Macedonian and later of Italian masters, 
 was in Syria, as in Mesopotamia and Babylonia, Aramaean ; 
 it reminds us in various respects of the modern Roumans 
 in presence of the upper ranks of Saxons and Magyars. 
 Certainly it was the most corrupt and most corrupting 
 element in the conglomerate of the Romano- Hellenic 
 peoples. Of the so-called Caracalla, who was born at 
 Lyons as son of an African father and a Syrian mother, it 
 was said that he united in himself the vices of three races, 
 Gallic frivolity, African savageness, and Syrian knavery. 
 Christi- This interpenetration of the East and Hellenism, 
 
 anity and wn ich has nowhere been carried out so completely as in 
 
 Neopla- . .... r * 
 
 tonism. Syria, meets us predominantly in the form of the good 
 and noble becoming ruined in the mixture. This, how- 
 ever, is not everywhere the case ; the later developments 
 of religion and of speculation, Christianity and Neoplaton- 
 ism, have proceeded from the same conjunction ; if with 
 the former the East penetrates into the West, the latter is 
 the transformation of the Occidental philosophy in the 
 sense and spirit of the East — a creation in the first instance 
 of the Egyptian Plotinus (204-270) and of his most con- 
 siderable disciple the Syrian Malchus or Porphyrius (233 
 till after 300), and thereafter pre-eminently cultivated in 
 the towns of Syria. For a discussion of these two 
 phenomena, so significant in the history of the world, 
 this is not the place ; but they may not be forgotten in 
 estimating the position of matters in Syria. 
 
 Antioch. The Syrian character finds its eminent expression in 
 
 the capital of the country and, before Constantinople was 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 127 
 
 founded, of the Roman East generally — inferior as respects 
 population only to Rome and Alexandria, and possibly 
 also to the Babylonian Seleucia — Antioch, on which it 
 appears requisite to dwell for a moment. The town, one 
 of the youngest in Syria and now of small importance, 
 did not become a great city by the natural circumstances 
 of commerce, but was a creation of monarchic policy. The 
 Macedonian conquerors called it into life, primarily from 
 military considerations, as a fitting central place for a rule 
 which embraced at once Asia Minor, the region of the 
 Euphrates, and Egypt, and sought also to be near to the 
 Mediterranean. 1 The like aim and the different methods of 
 the Seleucids and the Lagids find their true expression in 
 the similarity and the contrast of Antioch and Alexandria; 
 as the latter was the centre for the naval power and the 
 maritime policy of the Egyptian rulers, so Antioch was 
 the centre for the continental Eastern monarchy of the 
 rulers of Asia. The later Seleucids at different times 
 undertook large new foundations here, so that the city, 
 when it became Roman, consisted of four independent and 
 walled-in districts, all of which again were enclosed by 
 a common wall. Nor were immigrants from a distance 
 wanting. When Greece proper fell under the rule of the 
 Romans, and Antiochus the Great had vainly attempted 
 to dislodge them thence, he granted at least to the emi- 
 grant Euboeans and Aetolians an asylum in his capital. 
 In the capital of Syria, as in that of Egypt, a common- 
 wealth in some measure independent and a privileged 
 position were conceded to the Jews, and the position of 
 the towns as centres of the Jewish Diaspora was not the 
 weakest element in their development. Once made a 
 residency and the seat of the supreme administration of a 
 great empire, Antioch remained even in Roman times the 
 
 1 This is said by Diodorus, xx. 47, of only that, in the case of that founda- 
 
 the forerunner of Antioch, the town of tion, as the contemporary construction 
 
 Antigonea, situated about five miles of the port of Seleucia shows, the im- 
 
 farther up^ the river. Antioch was mediate connection with the Mediter- 
 
 for the Syria of antiquity nearly what ranean was designed, and hence the 
 
 Aleppo is for the Syria of the present town was laid out farther to the 
 
 day, the rendezvous of inland traffic ; west. 
 
I2 8 SYRIA AND THE book viii. 
 
 capital of the Asiatic provinces of Rome. Here resided 
 the emperors, when they sojourned in the East, and 
 regularly the governor of Syria ; here was struck the 
 imperial money for the East, and here especially, as well 
 as in Damascus and Edessa, were found the imperial 
 manufactories of arms. It is true that the town had lost 
 its military importance for the Roman empire ; and under 
 the changed circumstances the bad communication with 
 the sea was felt as a great evil, not so much on account of 
 the distance, as because the port — the town of Seleucia, 
 planned at the same time with Antioch — was little fitted 
 for large traffic. The Roman emperors from the Flavians 
 down to Constantius expended enormous sums to hew out 
 of the masses of rocks surrounding this locality the 
 requisite docks with their tributary canals, and to provide 
 sufficient piers ; but the art of the engineers, which at the 
 mouth of the Nile had succeeded in throwing up the 
 highest mounds, contended vainly in Syria with the insur- 
 mountable difficulties of the ground. As a matter of 
 course the largest town of Syria took an active part in 
 the manufactures and the commerce of this province, of 
 which we shall have to speak further on ; nevertheless it 
 was a seat of consumers more than of producers. 
 Daphne. In no city of antiquity was the enjoyment of life so 
 much the main thing, and its duties so incidental, as in 
 "Antioch upon Daphne," as the city was significantly 
 called, somewhat as if we should say " Vienna upon the 
 Prater." For Daphne 1 was a pleasure-garden, about five 
 miles from the city, ten miles in circumference, famous 
 for its laurel-trees, after which it was named, for its old 
 cypresses which even the Christian emperors ordered to be 
 spared, for its flowing and gushing waters, for its shining 
 temple of Apollo, and its magnificent much-frequented 
 festival of the ioth August. The whole environs of the 
 
 1 The space between Antioch and comp. vita Veri, 7) ; but when 
 
 Daphne was filled with country- Tacitus, Ann. ii. 83,names this suburb 
 
 houses and villas (Libanius, /r<? r/^r. Epidaphne, this is one _ of his most 
 
 ii. p. 213 Reiske), and there was also singular blunders. Plinius, H. N. v. 
 
 here a suburb Heraclea or else Daphne 27, 79, says correctly: Antiochia 
 
 (O. Miiller, Aniiq. Antioch, p. 44 ; Epidaphnes cognominata. 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 129 
 
 city, which lies between two wooded mountain-chains in 
 the valley of the Orontes abounding in water, fourteen 
 miles upward from its mouth, are even at the present day, 
 in spite of all neglect, a blooming garden and one of the 
 most charming spots on earth. No city in all the empire 
 excelled it in the splendour and magnificence of its public 
 structures. The chief street, which to the length of 
 thirty-six stadia, nearly four and a half miles, with a covered 
 colonnade on both sides, and a broad carriage-way in 
 the middle, traversed the city in a straight direction along 
 the river, was imitated in many ancient towns, but had 
 not its match even in imperial Rome. As the water ran into 
 every good house in Antioch, 1 so the people walked in those 
 colonnades through the whole city at all seasons protected 
 from rain as from the heat of the sun, and during the 
 evening also in lighted streets, of which we have no record 
 as to any other city of antiquity. 2 
 
 1 ' ' That wherein we especially beat 
 all," says the Antiochene Libanius, in 
 the Panegyric on his home delivered 
 under Constantius (i. 354 R.), after 
 having described the springs of 
 Daphne and the aqueducts thence to 
 the city, "is the water-supply of our 
 city ; if in other respects any one may 
 compete with us, all give way so soon 
 as we come to speak of the water, its 
 abundance and its excellence. In the 
 public baths every stream has the 
 proportions of a river, in the private 
 several have the like, and the rest not 
 much less. He who has the means 
 of laying out a new bath does so 
 without concern about a sufficient 
 flow of water, and has no need to fear 
 that, when ready, it will remain dry. 
 Therefore eveiy district of the city 
 (there were eighteen of these) care- 
 fully provides for the special elegance 
 of its bathing - establishment ; these 
 district-bathing-establishments are so 
 much finer than the general ones, as 
 they are smaller than these are, and 
 the inhabitants of the district strive to 
 surpass one another. One measures 
 the abundance of running water by 
 the number of the (good) dwelling- 
 houses ; for as many as are the dwel- 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 ling-houses, so many are also the 
 running waters, nay there are even 
 in individual houses often several ; 
 and the majority of the workshops 
 have also the same advantage. There- 
 fore we have no fighting at the public 
 wells as to who shall come first to 
 draw — an evil, under which so many 
 considerable towns suffer, when there 
 is a violent crowding round the wells 
 and outcry over the broken jars. 
 With us the public fountains flow for 
 ornament, since every one has water 
 within his doors. And this water is so 
 clear that the pail appears empty, and 
 so pleasant that it invites us to drink." 
 
 2 " Other lights," says the same 
 orator, p. 363, " take the place of the 
 sun's light, lamps which leave the 
 Egyptian festival of illumination far 
 behind ; and with us night is distin- 
 guished from day only by the difference 
 of the lighting ; diligent hands find no 
 difference and forge on, and he who 
 will sings and dances, so that Heph- 
 aestos and Aphrodite here share the 
 night between them." In the street- 
 sport which the prince Callus in- 
 dulged in, the lamps of Antioch were 
 very inconvenient to him (Ammianus, 
 xiv. 1, 9). 
 
13° 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 intellectual But amidst all this luxury the Muses did not find them- 
 mterests. se i ves a t home ; science in earnest and not less earnest 
 art were never truly cultivated in Syria and more especially 
 in Antioch. However complete was the analogy in other 
 respects between Egypt and Syria as to their development, 
 their contrast in a literary point of view was sharp ; the 
 Lagids alone entered on this portion of the inheritance 
 of Alexander the Great. While they fostered Hellenic 
 literature and promoted scientific research in an Aristo- 
 telian sense and spirit, the better Seleucids doubtless by 
 their political position opened up the East to the Greeks — 
 the mission of Megasthenes to king Chandragupta in 
 India on the part of Seleucus L, and the exploring of the 
 Caspian Sea by his contemporary the admiral Patrocles, 
 were epoch-making in this respect — but of immediate 
 interposition in literary interests on the part of the 
 Seleucids the history of Greek literature has nothing more 
 to tell than that Antiochus the Great, as he was called, 
 made the poet Euphorion his librarian. Perhaps the 
 history of Latin literature may make a claim to serious 
 scientific work on the part of Berytus, the Latin island in 
 the sea of Oriental Hellenism. It is perhaps no accident 
 that the reaction against the modernising tendency in 
 literature of the Julio-Claudian epoch, and the reintroduc- 
 tion of the language and writings of the republican time 
 into the school as into literature, originated with a Bery- 
 tian belonging to the middle class, Marcus Valerius 
 Probus, who in the schools that were left in his remote 
 home moulded himself still on the old classics, and then, 
 in energetic activity more as a critical author than as 
 strictly a teacher, laid the foundation for the classicism of 
 the later imperial period. The same Berytus became 
 later, and remained through the whole period of the empire, 
 for all the East, the seat of the study of jurisprudence re- 
 quisite towards an official career. As to Hellenic litera- 
 ture no doubt the poetry of the epigram and the wit of 
 the fetiilleton were at home in Syria ; several of the most 
 noted Greek minor poets, like Meleager, Philodemus of 
 Gadara, and Antipater of Sidon, were Syrians and unsur- 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 131 
 
 passed in sensuous charm as in refined versification ; and 
 the father of the feuilleton literature was Menippus of 
 Gadara. But these performances lie for the most part 
 before, and some of them considerably before, the imperial 
 period. 
 
 In the Greek literature of this epoch no province is so Minor 
 poorly represented as Syria ; and this is hardly an accident, llterature - 
 although, considering the universal position of Hellenism 
 under the empire, not much stress can be laid on the 
 home of the individual writers. On the other hand the 
 subordinate authorship which prevailed in this epoch 
 — such as stories of love, robbers, pirates, procurers, 
 soothsayers, and dreams, destitute of thought or form, 
 and fabulous travels — had probably its chief seat here. 
 Among the colleagues of the already- mentioned Jam- 
 blichus, author of the Babylonian history, his country- 
 men must have been numerous ; the contact of this Greek 
 literature with the Oriental literature of a similar kind 
 doubtless took place through the medium of Syrians. The 
 Greeks indeed had no need to learn lying from the Orien- 
 tals ; yet the no longer plastic but fanciful story-telling of 
 their later period has sprung from Scheherazade's horn of 
 plenty not from the pleasantry of the Graces. It is per- 
 haps not accidentally that the satire of this period, when 
 it views Homer as the father of lying travels, makes him 
 a Babylonian with the proper name of Tigranes. Apart 
 from this entertaining reading, of which even those were 
 somewhat ashamed who spent their time in writing or 
 reading it, there is hardly any other prominent name to be 
 mentioned from these regions than the contemporary of 
 that Jamblichus, Lucian of Commagene. He, too, wrote 
 nothing except, in imitation of Menippus, essays and fugi- 
 tive pieces after a genuinely Syrian type, witty and 
 sprightly in personal banter, but where this is at an end, 
 incapable of saying amid his laughter the earnest truth 
 or of even handling the plastic power of comedy. 
 
 This people valued only the day. No Greek region Daily life 
 has so few memorial-stones to show as Syria ; the great andamuse - 
 
 ■> ' o ments. 
 
 Antioch, the third city in the empire, has — to say nothing 
 
132 SYRIA AND THE book viii. 
 
 of the land of hieroglyphics and obelisks — left behind fewer 
 inscriptions than many a small African or Arabian village. 
 With the exception of the rhetorician Libanius from the 
 time of Julian, who is more well-known than important, 
 this town has not given to literature a single author's 
 name. The Tyanitic Messiah of heathenism, or his 
 apostle speaking for him, was not wrong in terming the 
 Antiochenes an uncultivated and half-barbarous people, 
 and in thinking that Apollo would do well to transform 
 them as well as their Daphne ; for " in Antioch, while the 
 cypresses knew how to whisper, men knew not how to 
 speak." In the artistic sphere Antioch had a leading 
 position only as respected the theatre and sports generally. 
 The exhibitions which captivated the public of Antioch 
 were, according to the fashion of this time, less strictly 
 dramatic than noisy musical performances, ballets, animal 
 hunts, and gladiatorial games. The applauding or hissing 
 of this public decided the reputation of the dancer through- 
 out the empire. The jockeys and other heroes of the 
 circus and theatre came pre-eminently from Syria. 1 The 
 ballet-dancers and the musicians, as well as the jugglers 
 and buffoons, whom Lucius Varus brought back from his 
 Oriental campaign — performed, so far as his part went, 
 in Antioch — to Rome, formed an epoch in the history of 
 Italian theatricals. The passion with which the public in 
 Antioch gave itself up to this pleasure is characteristically 
 shown by the fact, that according to tradition the gravest 
 disaster which befell Antioch in this period, its capture 
 by the Persians in 260 (p. 101), surprised the burgesses 
 of the city in the theatre, and from the top of the mount, 
 on the slope of which it was constructed, the arrows flew 
 
 1 The remarkable description of the races also. Laodicea sends abroad 
 
 empire from the time of Constantius jockeys, Tyre and Berytus actors, 
 
 (Muller, Geog. Min. ii. p. 213 ff.), the Caesarea dancers (pantomimi), Heli- 
 
 only writing of the kind in which the opolis on Lebanon flute-players (chor- 
 
 state of industry meets with a certain aulae), Gaza musicians {auditores, by 
 
 consideration, says of Syria in this which aKpoajxara is incorrectly ren- 
 
 respect : "Antioch has everything dered), Ascalon wrestlers (atkktae), 
 
 that one desires in abundance, but Castabala (strictly speaking in Cilicia) 
 
 especially its races. Laodicea, Bery- boxers." 
 tus, Tyre, Caesarea (in Palestine) have 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 133 
 
 into the ranks of the spectators. In Gaza, the most south- 
 erly town of Syria, where heathenism possessed a strong- 
 hold in the famous temple of Marnas, at the end of the 
 fourth century the horses of a zealous heathen and of a 
 zealous Christian ran at the races, and, when on that occa- 
 sion " Christ beat Marnas," St. Jerome tells us, numerous 
 heathens had themselves baptised. 
 
 All the great cities of the Roman empire doubtless immor- 
 vied with each other in dissoluteness of morals ; but in ality ' 
 this the palm probably belongs to Antioch. The decorous 
 Roman, whom the severe moral-portrait-painter of Trajan's 
 time depicts, as he turns his back on his native place, be- 
 cause it had become a city of Greeks, adds that the Achae- 
 ans formed the least part of the filth ; that the Syrian 
 Orontes had long discharged itself into the river Tiber, 
 and flooded Rome with its language and its habits, its 
 street-musicians, female harp-players and triangle-beaters, 
 and the troops of its courtesans. The Romans of 
 Augustus spoke of the Syrian female flute-player, the am- 
 bzibaia} as we speak of the Parisian cocotte. In the Syrian 
 cities, it is stated even in the last age of the republic by 
 Posidonius, an author of importance, who was himself 
 a native of the Syrian Apamea, the citizens have become 
 disused to hard labour ; the people there think only of 
 feasting and carousing, and all clubs and private parties 
 serve for this purpose ; at the royal table a garland is put 
 on every guest, and the latter is then sprinkled with Baby- 
 lonian perfume ; flute -playing and harp -playing sound 
 through the streets ; the gymnastic institutes are converted 
 into hot baths — by the latter is meant the institution ©f 
 the so-called Thermae, which probably first emerged in 
 Syria and subsequently became general ; they were in 
 substance a combination of the gymnasium and the hot- 
 bath. Four hundred years later matters went on after 
 quite a similar fashion in Antioch. The quarrel between 
 Julian and these townsmen arose not so much about the 
 emperor's beard, as because in this city of taverns, which, 
 as he expresses himself, has nothing in view but dancing 
 
 1 From the Syrian word abbubo, fife. 
 
134 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 and drinking, he regulated the prices for the hosts. The 
 religious system of the Syrian land was also, and especially, 
 pervaded by these dissolute and sensuous doings. The 
 cultus of the Syrian gods was often an appanage of the 
 Syrian brothel. 1 
 
 Antiochene It would be unjust to make the Roman government 
 ndicuie. responsible for this state of affairs in Syria ; it had been 
 the same under the government of the Diadochi, and 
 was merely transmitted to the Romans. But in the 
 history of this age the Syro- Hellenic element was an 
 essential factor, and, although its indirect influence was of 
 far more weight, it still in many ways made itself per- 
 ceptible . directly in politics. Of political partisanship 
 proper there can be still less talk in the case of the Anti- 
 ochenes of this and every age, than in the case of the 
 burgesses of the other great cities of the empire ; but 
 in mocking and disputation they apparently excelled all 
 others, even the Alexandrians that vied with them in this 
 respect. They never made a revolution, but readily and 
 earnestly supported every pretender whom the Syrian 
 army set up, Vespasian against Vitellius, Casius against 
 Marcus, Niger against Severus, always ready, where they 
 thought that they had support in reserve, to renounce 
 allegiance to the existing government. The only talent 
 which indisputably belonged to them — their mastery of 
 ridicule — they exercised not merely against the actors of 
 their stage, but no less against the rulers sojourning in 
 the capital of the East, and the ridicule was quite the 
 same against the actor as against the emperor ; it applied 
 to personal appearance and to individual peculiarities, 
 just as if their sovereign appeared only to amuse them 
 with his part. Thus there existed between the public of 
 Antioch and their rulers — particularly those who spent a 
 considerable time there, Hadrian, Verus, Marcus, Severus, 
 
 1 The little treatise, ascribed to this narrative — the source of Wie- 
 
 Lucian, as to the Syrian goddess at land's Kombabus — self-mutilation is 
 
 Hierapolis adored by all the East, at once celebrated and satirised in 
 
 furnishes a specimen of the wild and turn as an act of high morality and of 
 
 voluptuous fable - telling which was pious faith, 
 characteristic of the Syrian cultus. In 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 135 
 
 Julian — so to speak, a perpetual warfare of sarcasm, one 
 document of which, the reply of the last named emperor to 
 the " beard-mockers " of Antioch, is still preserved. While 
 this imperial man of letters met their sarcastic sayings 
 with satirical writings, the Antiochenes at other times 
 had to pay more severely for their evil speaking and their 
 other sins. Thus Hadrian withdrew from them the right 
 of coining silver ; Marcus withdrew the right of assembly, 
 and closed for some time the theatre. Severus took even 
 from the town the primacy of Syria, and transferred it to 
 Laodicea, which was in constant neighbourly warfare with 
 the capital ; and, if these two ordinances were soon again 
 withdrawn, the partition of the province, which Hadrian 
 had already threatened, was carried into execution, as we 
 have already said (p. 1 1 8), under Severus, and not least 
 because the government wished to humble the turbulent 
 great city. This city even made a mockery of its final 
 overthrow. When in the year 540 the Persian king 
 Chosroes Nushirvan appeared before the walls of Antioch 
 he was received from its battlements not merely with 
 showers of arrows but with the usual obscene sarcasms ; 
 and, provoked by this, the king not merely took the town 
 by storm, but carried also its inhabitants away to his 
 New- Antioch in the province of Susa. 
 
 The brilliant aspect of the condition of Syria was the Culture of 
 economic one ; in manufactures and trade Syria takes, 
 alongside of Egypt, the first place among the provinces of 
 the Roman empire, and even claims in a certain respect 
 precedence over Egypt. Agriculture throve under the 
 permanent state of peace, and under a sagacious admin- 
 istration which directed its efforts particularly to the 
 advancement of irrigation, to an extent which puts to 
 shame modern civilisation. No doubt various parts of 
 Syria are still at the present day of the utmost luxuri- 
 ance ; the valley of the lower Orontes, the rich garden 
 round Tripolis with its groups of palms, groves of oranges, 
 copses of pomegranates and jasmine, the fertile coast- 
 plain north and south of Gaza, neither the Bedouins nor 
 the Pashas have hitherto been able to make desolate. But 
 
 I 
 
136 
 
 SYJtfA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 their work is nevertheless not to be estimated lightly. 
 Apamea in the middle of the Orontes valley, now a rocky 
 wilderness without fields and trees, where the poor flocks 
 on the scanty pasturages are decimated by the robbers of 
 the mountains, is strewed far and wide with ruins, and 
 there is documentary attestation that under Quirinius the 
 governor of Syria, the same who is named in the Gospels, 
 this town with its territory included numbered 1 1 7,000 
 free inhabitants. Beyond question the whole valley of 
 the Orontes abounding in water — already at Hemesa it 
 is from 30 to 40 metres broad and one and a half to 
 three metres deep — was once a great seat of cultivation. 
 But even of the districts, which are now mere deserts, and 
 where it seems to the traveller of the present day im- 
 possible for man to live and thrive, a considerable portion 
 was formerly a field of labour for active hands. To 
 the east of Hemesa, where there is now not a green leaf 
 nor a drop of water, the heavy basalt-slabs of former oil- 
 presses are found in quantities. While at the present day 
 olives scantily grow only in the valleys of the Lebanon 
 abounding in springs, the olive woods must formerly have 
 stretched far beyond the valley of the Orontes. The 
 traveller now from Hemesa to Palmyra carries water with 
 him on the back of camels, and all this part of the route 
 is covered with the remains of former villas and hamlets. 1 
 The march of Aurelian along this route (p. 1 1 o) no army 
 could now undertake. Of what is at present called desert 
 a good portion is rather the laying waste of the blessed 
 labour of better times. « All Syria," says a description 
 of the earth from the middle of the fourth century, " over- 
 
 1 The Austrian engineer, Joseph 
 Tschernik (Petermann's Geogr. Mit- 
 theil. 1875, Erganzungsheft, xliv. p. 
 3, 9) found basalt-slabs of oil-presses 
 not merely on the desert plateau at 
 Kala'at el-Hossn between Hemesa 
 and the sea, but also to the number 
 of more than twenty eastward from 
 Hemesa at el - Ferklus, where the 
 basalt itself does not occur, as well 
 as numerous walled terraces and 
 mounds of ruins at the same place ; 
 
 with terracings on the whole stretch 
 of seventy miles between Hemesa and 
 Palmyra. Sachau (Reise in Syrien 
 und Mesopotamien, 1 883, p. 23, 55) 
 found remains of aqueducts at differ- 
 ent places of the route from Damascus 
 to Palmyra. The cisterns of Aradus 
 cut in the rock, already mentioned 
 by Strabo (xvi. 2, 13, p. 753), still 
 perform their service at the present 
 day (Renan, Phenicie, p. 40). 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 137 
 
 flows with corn, wine, and oil." But Syria was not even 
 in antiquity an exporting land, in a strict sense, for the 
 fruits of the earth, like Egypt and Africa, although the 
 noble wines were sent away, e.g. that of Damascus to 
 Persia, those of Laodicea, Ascalon, Gaza, to Egypt and 
 from thence as far as Ethiopia and India, and even the 
 Romans knew how to value the wine of Byblus, of Tyre, 
 and of Gaza. 
 
 Of far more importance for the general position of Manu- 
 the province were the Syrian manufactures. A series of factures - 
 industries, which came into account for export, were here 
 at home, especially of linen, purple, silk, glass. The 
 weaving of flax, practised from of old in Babylonia, was 
 early transplanted thence to Syria ; as that description 
 of the earth says : " Scytopolis (in Palestine), Laodicea, 
 Byblus, Tyrus, Berytus, send out their linen into all the 
 world," and in the tariff- law of Diocletian accordingly 
 there are adduced as fine linen goods those of the three 
 first-named towns alongside of those of the neighbouring 
 Tarsus and of Egypt, and the Syrian have precedence 
 over all. That the purple of Tyre, however many com- 
 petitors with it arose, always retained the first place, is 
 well known ; and besides the Tyrian there were in Syria 
 numerous purple dyeworks likewise famous on the coast 
 above and below Tyre at Sarepta, Dora, Caesarea, even 
 in the interior, in the Palestinian Neapolis and in Lydda. 
 The raw silk came at this epoch from China and especially 
 by way of the Caspian Sea, and so to Syria ; it was 
 worked up chiefly in the looms of Berytus and of Tyre, 
 in which latter place especially was prepared the purple 
 silk that was much in use and brought a high price. 
 The glass manufactures of Sidon maintained their primi- 
 tive fame in the imperial age, and numerous glass-vases 
 of our museums bear the stamp of a Sidonian manu- 
 facturer. 
 
 To the sale of these wares, which from their nature Commerce, 
 belonged to the market of the world, fell to be added the 
 whole mass of goods which came from the East by the 
 Euphrates-routps to the West. It is true that the Arabian 
 
138 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 and Indian imports at this time turned away from this 
 road, and took chiefly the route by way of Egypt ; but 
 not merely did the Mesopotamian traffic remain necessarily 
 with the Syrians ; the emporia also at the mouth of 
 the Euphrates stood in regular caravan-intercourse with 
 Palmyra (p. 98), and thus made use of the Syrian har- 
 bours. How considerable this intercourse was with the 
 eastern neighbours is shown by nothing so clearly as by 
 the similarity of the silver coinage in the Roman East 
 and in the Parthian Babylonia ; in the provinces of Syria 
 and Cappadocia the Roman government coined silver, 
 varying from the imperial currency, after the sorts and 
 the standards of the neighbouring empire. The Syrian 
 manufactures themselves, e.g. of linen and silk, were stimu- 
 lated by the very import of the similar Babylonian articles 
 of commerce, and, like these, the leather and skin goods, 
 the ointments, the spices, the slaves of the East, came 
 during the imperial period to a very considerable extent by 
 way of Syria to Italy and the West in general. But this 
 always remained characteristic of these primitive seats of 
 commercial intercourse, that the men of Sidon and their 
 countrymen, in this matter very different from the Egypt- 
 ians, not merely sold their goods to those of other lands, 
 but themselves conveyed them thither, and, as the ship- 
 captains in Syria formed a prominent and respected class, 1 
 so Syrian merchants and Syrian factories in the imperial 
 period were to be found nearly as much everywhere 
 as in the remote times of which Homer tells. The Tyrians 
 had such factories in the two great import -harbours of 
 Italy, Ostia and Puteoli, and, as these themselves in their 
 documents describe their establishments as the greatest and 
 most spacious of their kind, so in the description of the earth 
 which we have often quoted, Tyre is named the first place 
 of the East for commerce and traffic 2 ; in like manner 
 
 1 In Aradus, a town very populous 2 Totius orbis descriptio, c. 24 : 
 
 in Strabo's time (xvi. 2, 13, p. 753), nulla forte civitas Orientis est eius 
 
 there appears under Augustus a spissior in negotio. The documents 
 
 Trp6[3ov\os tui> vava.pxy<r&vT(i)j> (C. I. of the statio (C. I. Gr. 5853 ; C. I. L. 
 
 Gr. 4736 h, better in Renan, Mission x. 1601) give a lively picture of 
 
 de Phenicie, p. 31). these factories. They serve in the 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 i39 
 
 Strabo brings forward as a specialty at Tyre and at Aradus 
 the unusually high houses, consisting of many stories. 
 Berytus and Damascus, and certainly many other Syrian 
 and Phoenician commercial towns, had similar factories in 
 the Italian ports. 1 Accordingly we find, particularly in the 
 later period of the empire, Syrian merchants, chiefly Apa- 
 mean, settled not merely in all Italy but likewise in all 
 the larger emporia of the West, at Salonae in Dalmatia, 
 Apulum in Dacia, Malaca in Spain, but above all in Gaul 
 and Germany, e.g. at Bordeaux, Lyons, Paris, Orleans, 
 Treves, so that these Syrian Christians also, like the 
 Jews, live according to their own customs and make use 
 of their Greek in their meetings. 2 
 
 first instance for religious ends, that 
 is, for the worship of the Tyrian gods 
 at a foreign place ; for this object a 
 tax is levied at the larger station of 
 Ostia from the Tyrian mariners and 
 merchants, and from its produce there 
 is granted to the lesser a yearly con- 
 tribution of 1000 sesterces, which is 
 employed for the rent of the place 
 of meeting ; the other expenses are 
 raised by the Tyrians in Puteoli, 
 doubtless by voluntary contributions. 
 
 1 For Berytus this is shown by the 
 Puteolan inscription C. I. L. x. 1634 ; 
 for Damascus it is at least suggested 
 by that which is there set up (x. 1576) 
 to the Jupiter optimus maximus Dam- 
 ascenus. — We may add that it is here 
 apparent with how good reason Pute- 
 oli is called Little Delos. At Delos 
 in the last age of its prosperity, that 
 is, nearly in the century before the 
 Mithradatic war, we meet with Syrian 
 factories and Syrian worships in quite 
 a like fashion and in still greater 
 abundance ; we find there the guild 
 of the Herakleistae of Tyre (t6 kolvov 
 tGiv Tvploiv 'Hpa/cXei'o-TcDj' efxiropcjv Kal 
 vavKKrjpuv, C. I. Gr. 227 1 ) of the 
 Poseidoniastae of Berytus (rd Koivbv 
 BTjpvricov UocreidwviacrTusv ifMrbpwv Kal 
 vavKkqpuv Kal iydoxiw, Bull, de corr. 
 Hell, vii., p. 468), of the woshippers 
 of Adad and Atargatis of Heliopolis 
 (ib. vi. 495 f.), apart from the numer- 
 ous memorial-stones of Syrian mer- 
 
 chants. Comp. Homolle ib. viii. p. 
 no f. 
 
 2 When Salvianus (towards 450) 
 remonstrates with the Christians of 
 Gaul that they are in nothing better 
 than the heathens, he points (de gub. 
 Dei, iv. 14, 69) to the worthless 
 negoliatorum et Syricorum omnium 
 turbae, quae maiorem ferme civitatum 
 universarum partem occupaverunt. 
 Gregory of Tours relates that king 
 Guntchram was met at Orleans by 
 the whole body of citizens and ex- 
 tolled, as in Latin, so also in Hebrew 
 and in Syriac (viii. 1 : hinc lingua 
 Syrorum, hitic Latinortim, hinc . . . 
 Jtidaeorum in diversis laudibus varie 
 concrepabat), and that after a vacancy 
 in the episcopal see of Paris a Syrian 
 merchant knew how to procure it for 
 himself, and gave away to his country- 
 men the places belonging to it (x. 26 : 
 omnem scholam decessoris sui abiciens 
 Syros de genere suo ecclesiasticae domui 
 ministros esse statuit). Sidonius 
 (about 450) describes the perverse 
 world of Ravenna (Ep. 1, 8) with 
 the words : fenerantur clerici, Syri 
 psallunt ; negotiatores militant, mon- 
 achi negotianttir. Usqtie hodie, says 
 Hieronymus (in Ezech. 27, vol. v. 
 p. 513 Vail.) permanet in Syris 
 ingenitus negotiationis ardor, qui 
 per lotum mundum hccri cupiditate 
 discurrunt et tantam mercandi ha- 
 bent vesaniam, tit occupato nunc orbe 
 
Mo SYRIA AND THE book viii. 
 
 The state of things formerly described among the 
 Antiochenes and the Syrian cities generally becomes intel- 
 ligible only on this basis. The world of rank there consisted 
 of rich manufacturers and merchants, the bulk of the popu- 
 lation of the labourers and the mariners ; x and, as later the 
 riches acquired in the East flowed to Genoa and Venice, 
 so then the commercial gains of the West flowed back 
 to Tyre and Apamea. With the extensive field of traffic 
 that lay open to these traders on a great scale, and with 
 the on the whole moderate frontier and inland tolls, the 
 Syrian export trade, embracing a great part of the most 
 lucrative and most transportable articles, already brought 
 enormous capital sums into their hands ; and their business 
 was not confined to native goods. 2 What comfort of life 
 once prevailed here we learn, not from the scanty remains 
 of the great cities that have perished, but from the more 
 forsaken than desolated region on the right bank of the 
 Orontes, from Apamea on to the point where the river 
 
 Romano (written towards the end 
 of the fourth century) inter gladios et 
 miserorum neces quaerant divitias et 
 paupertatem periculis fugiant. Other 
 proofs are given by Friedlander, Sitten- 
 gesehichte, ii. 5 p. 67. Without doubt we 
 may be allowed to add the numerous 
 inscriptions of the West which pro- 
 ceed from Syrians, even if those do 
 not designate themselves expressly as 
 merchants. Instructive as to this 
 point is the Coemeterium of the small 
 north-Italian country-town Concordia 
 of the fifth century ; the foreigners 
 buried in it are all Syrians, mostly 
 of Apamea (C. I. L. iii. p. 1060) ; 
 likewise all the Greek inscriptions 
 found in Treves belong to Syrians 
 (C. I. Gr. 9891, 9892, 9893). These 
 inscriptions are not merely dated in 
 the Syrian fashion, but show also 
 peculiarities of the dialectic Greek 
 there {Hermes, xix. 423). — That this 
 Syro - Christian Diaspora, standing in 
 relation to the contrast between the 
 Oriental and Occidental clergy, may 
 not be confounded with the Jewish 
 Diaspora, is clearly shown by the 
 account in Gregorius ; it evidently 
 
 stood much higher, and belonged 
 throughout to the better classes. 
 
 1 This is partly so even at the 
 present day. The number of silk- 
 workers in Horns is estimated at 
 3000 (Tschernik, l.c.)j 
 
 2 One of the oldest (i.e. after 
 Severus and before Diocletian) epi- 
 taphs of this sort is the Latin-Greek 
 one found not far from Lyons (Wil- 
 manns, 2498; comp. Lebas-Wad- 
 dington, n. 2329) of a Qai/j.os 6 Kal 
 'Iov\iavbs Haddov (in Latin Tkaemus 
 Iulianus Satifil.), a native of Atheila 
 (de vico Athelafii), not far from Can- 
 atha in Syria (still called ' Atil, not 
 far from Kanawat in the Hainan), 
 and decurio in Canatha, settled in 
 Lyons (irdrpav ij/ce t£5' iirl 
 X&pv), and a wholesale tader there 
 for Aquitanian wares ([is irp]a<nv 'tx^v 
 ivwbp[io\v ayopaafjLu>t> [p.e]aTbv iic 'Akov- 
 iTavlrjs J>5' e7ri Aovyovdoijvoio — nego- 
 tiatori Lugiidimi et prov. Aquitanicd). 
 Accordingly these Syrian merchants 
 must not only have dealt in Syrian 
 goods, but have, with their capital 
 and their knowledge of business, prac- 
 tised wholesale trading generally. 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 141 
 
 turns towards the sea. In this district of about a hundred 
 miles in length there still stand the ruins of nearly a 
 hundred townships, with whole streets still recognisable, 
 the buildings with the exception of the roofs executed in 
 massive stone- work, the dwelling-houses surrounded by 
 colonnades, embellished with galleries and balconies, 
 windows and portals richly and often tastefully decorated 
 with stone arabesques, with gardens and baths laid out, 
 with farm-offices in the ground - story, stables, wine and 
 oil presses hewn in the rocks, 1 as also large burial cham- 
 bers likewise hewn in the rock, filled with sarcophagi, and 
 with the entrances adorned with pillars. Traces of public 
 life are nowhere met with ; it is the country-dwellings of 
 the merchants and of the manufacturers of Apamea and 
 Antioch, whose assured prosperity and solid enjoyment 
 of life are attested by these ruins. These settlements, of 
 quite a uniform character, belong throughout to the late 
 times of the empire, the oldest to the beginning of the 
 fourth century, the latest to the middle of the sixth, im- 
 mediately before the onslaught of Islam, under which 
 this prosperous and flourishing life succumbed. Christian 
 symbols and Biblical language are everywhere met with, 
 and likewise stately churches and ecclesiastical structures. 
 The development of culture, however, did not begin 
 merely under Constantine, but simply grew and became 
 consolidated in those centuries. Certainly those stone- 
 buildings were preceded by similar villa and garden 
 structures of a less enduring kind. The regeneration of 
 the imperial government after the confused troubles of 
 the third century has its expression in the upward im- 
 pulse which the Syrian mercantile world then received ; 
 but up to a certain degree this picture of it left to us 
 may be referred also to the earlier imperial period. 
 
 The relations of the Jews in the time of the Roman Jewish 
 
 empire were so peculiar and, one might say, so little traffic * 
 
 1 Characteristic is the Latin epi- 188, in this home of the "Apamean 
 gram on a press-house, C. I. L. iii. grape" (vita Elagabali, c. 21). 
 
142 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 dependent on the province which was named in the earlier 
 period after them, in the later rather by the revived name 
 of the Philistaeans or Palaestinenses, that, as we have 
 already said, it appeared more suitable to treat of them in a 
 separate section. The little which is to be remarked as 
 to the land of Palestine, especially the not unimportant 
 share of its maritime and partly also of its inland towns 
 in Syrian industry and Syrian trade, has already -been 
 mentioned in the exposition given above of these matters. 
 The Jewish Diaspora had already, before the destruction 
 of the temple, extended in such a way that Jerusalem, 
 even while it still stood, was more a symbol than a home, 
 very much as the city of Rome was for the so-called 
 Roman burgesses of later times. The Jews of Antioch 
 and Alexandria, and the numerous similar societies of 
 lesser rights and minor repute took part, as a matter of 
 course, in the commerce and intercourse of the places 
 where they dwelt. Their Judaism comes into account in 
 the case only perhaps so far as the feelings of mutual 
 hatred and mutual contempt, which had become developed 
 or rather increased since the destruction of the temple, 
 and the repeated national-religious wars between Jews and 
 non-Jews must have exercised their effect also in these 
 circles. As the Syrian merchants resident abroad met 
 together in the first instance for the worship of their 
 native deities, the Syrian Jew in Puteoli cannot well have 
 belonged to the Syrian merchant-guilds there ; and, if the 
 worship of the Syrian gods found more and more an echo 
 abroad, that which benefited the other Syrians drew one 
 barrier the more between the Syrians believing in Moses 
 and the Italians. If those Jews who had found a home 
 outside of Palestine, attached themselves beyond it not to 
 those who shared their dwelling-place but to those who 
 shared their religion, as they could not but do, they 
 thereby renounced the esteem and the toleration which 
 the Alexandrians and the Antiochenes and the like met 
 with abroad, and were taken for what they professed to 
 be — Jews. The Palestinian Jews of the West, however, 
 had for the most part not originated from mercantile emigra- 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 143 
 
 tion, but were captives of war or descendants of such, and 
 in every respect homeless ; the Pariah position which the 
 children of Abraham occupied, especially in the Roman 
 capital — that of the mendicant Jew, whose household 
 furniture consisted in his bundle of hay and his usurer's 
 basket, and for whom no service was too poor and too 
 menial — linked itself with the slave-market. Under these 
 circumstances we can understand why the Jews during the 
 imperial period played in the West a subordinate part 
 alongside of the Syrians. The religious fellowship of the 
 mercantile and proletarian immigrants told heavily on 
 the collective body of the Jews, along with the general 
 disparagement connected with their position. But that 
 Diaspora, as well as this, had little to do with Palestine. 
 
 There remains still a frontier territory to be looked at, Province of 
 which is not often mentioned, and which yet well deserves Arabia - 
 consideration ; it is the Roman province of Arabia. It 
 bears its name wrongly ; the emperor who erected it, 
 Trajan, was a man of big deeds but still bigger words. 
 The Arabian peninsula, which separates the region of 
 the Euphrates from the valley of the Nile, lacking in rain, 
 without rivers, on all sides surrounded by a rocky coast 
 poor in harbours, was little fitted for agriculture or for 
 commerce, and in old times by far the greater part of it 
 remained the undisputed heritage of the unsettled inha- 
 bitants of the desert. In particular the Romans, who 
 understood how to restrict their possession in Asia as in 
 Egypt better than any other of the changing powers in 
 the ascendant, never even attempted to subdue the Arabian 
 peninsula. Their few enterprises against its south-eastern 
 portion, the most rich in products, and from its relation to 
 India the most important also for commerce, will be set 
 forth when we discuss the business -relations of Egypt. 
 Roman Arabia, even as a Roman client-state and especially 
 as a Roman province, embraced only a moderate portion 
 of the north of the peninsula, but, in addition, the land to 
 
144 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the south and east of Palestine between this and the 
 great desert till beyond Bostra. At the same time with 
 this let us take into account the country belonging to 
 Syria between Bostra and Damascus, which is now usually 
 named after the Hauran mountains, according to its old 
 designation Trachonitis and Batanaea. 
 Conditions These extensive regions were only to be gained for 
 in eastern c ^ vmsat i° n under special conditions. The steppe-country 
 Syria. proper (Hamad) to the eastward from the region with 
 which we are now occupied as far as the Euphrates, was 
 never taken possession of by the Romans, and was incap- 
 able of cultivation ; only the roving tribes of the desert, 
 such as at the present day the Haneze, traverse it, to pas- 
 ture their horses and camels in winter along the Euphrates, 
 in summer on the mountains south of Bostra, and often to 
 change the pasture-ground several times in the year. The 
 pastoral tribes settled westward of the steppe, who pursue 
 in particular the breeding of sheep to a great extent, stand 
 already at a higher degree of culture. But there is mani- 
 fold room for agriculture also in these districts. The red 
 earth of the Hauran, decomposed lava, yields in its 
 primitive state much wild rye, wild barley, and wild oats, 
 and furnishes the finest wheat. Individual deep valleys 
 in the midst of the stone-deserts, such as the " seed-field," 
 the Ruhbe in the Trachonitis, are the most fertile tracts in 
 all Syria ; without ploughing, to say nothing of manuring, 
 wheat yields on the average eighty and barley a hundred- 
 fold, and twenty-six stalks from one grain of wheat are 
 not uncommon. Nevertheless no fixed dwelling-place was 
 formed here, because in the summer months the great heat 
 and the want of water and pasture compel the inhabitants 
 to migrate to the mountain pastures of the Hauran. But 
 there was not wanting opportunity even for fixed settlement. 
 The garden -quarter around the town of Damascus, 
 watered by the river Barada in its many arms, and the 
 fertile even now populous districts which enclose it on the 
 east, north, and south, were in ancient as in modern times 
 the pearl of Syria. The plain round Bostra, particularly 
 the so-called Nukra to the west of it, is at the present day 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 145 
 
 the granary for Syria, although from the want of rain on 
 an average every fourth harvest is lost, and the locusts 
 often invading it from the neighbouring desert remain a 
 scourge of the land which cannot be exterminated. 
 Wherever the water-courses of the mountains are led into 
 the plain, fresh life nourishes amidst them. " The fertility 
 of this region," says one who knows it well, " is inex- 
 haustible ; and even at the present day, where the 
 Nomads have left neither tree nor shrub, the land, so far 
 as the eye reaches, is like a garden." Even on the lava- 
 surfaces of the mountainous districts the lava-streams have 
 left not a few places (termed Ka' in the Hauran), free for 
 cultivation. 
 
 This natural condition has, as a rule, handed over the 
 country to shepherds and robbers. The necessarily noma- 
 dic character of a great part of the population leads to 
 endless feuds, particularly about places of pasture, and 
 to constant seizures of those regions which are suited for 
 fixed settlement ; here, still more than elsewhere, there is 
 need for the formation of such political powers as are in 
 a position to procure quiet and peace on a wider scale, 
 and for these there is no right basis in the population. 
 There is hardly a region in the wide world in which, so 
 much as in this case, civilisation has not grown up spon- 
 taneously, but could only be called into existence by the 
 ascendency of conquest from without. When military 
 stations hem in the roving tribes of the desert and force 
 those within the limit of cultivation to a peaceful pastoral 
 life, when colonists are conducted to the regions capable 
 of culture, and the waters of the mountains are led by 
 human hands into the plains, then, but only then, a cheer- 
 ful and plentiful life thrives in this region. 
 
 The pre-Roman period had not brought such blessings Greek in- 
 to these lands. The inhabitants of the whole territory as g^tem 
 far as Damascus belong to the Arabian branch of the great Syria. 
 Semitic stock ; the names of persons at least are through- 
 out Arabic. In it, as in northern Syria, Oriental and 
 Occidental civilisation met ; yet up to the time of the 
 empire the two had made but little progress. The lan- 
 VOL. II. 10 
 
146 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Arrange- 
 ments of 
 Pompeius. 
 
 64-63. 
 
 The terri- 
 tory of 
 Herod be- 
 yond the 
 Jordan. 
 
 guage and the writing, which the Nabataeans used, were 
 those of Syria and of the Euphrates-lands, and could only- 
 have come from thence to the natives. On the other 
 hand the Greek settlement in Syria extended itself, in part 
 at least, also to these regions. The great commercial 
 town of Damascus had become Greek with the rest of 
 Syria. The Seleucids had carried the founding of Greek 
 towns even into the region beyond the Jordan, especially 
 into the northern Decapolis ; further to the south at least 
 the old Rabbath Ammon had been converted by the 
 Lagids into the city of Philadelphia. But further away 
 and in the eastern districts bordering on the desert the 
 Nabataean kings were not much more than nominally 
 obedient to the Syrian or Egyptian Alexandrids, and coins 
 or inscriptions and buildings, which might be attributed 
 to pre-Roman Hellenism, have nowhere come to light. 
 
 When Syria became Roman, Pompeius exerted him- 
 self to strengthen the Hellenic urban system, which he 
 found in existence ; as indeed the towns of the Decapolis 
 subsequently reckoned their years from the year 690-91, 
 in which Palestine had been added to the empire. 1 But 
 in this region the government as well as the civilisation 
 continued to be left to the two vassal-states, the Jewish 
 and the Arabian. 
 
 Of the king of the Jews, Herod and his house, we 
 shall have to speak elsewhere ; here we have to mention 
 his activity in the extending of civilisation toward the 
 east. His field of dominion stretched over both banks of 
 the Jordan in all its extent, northwards as far at least as 
 
 1 That the Decapolis and the reor- 
 ganisation of Pompeius reached at last 
 as far as Kanata (Kerak), north-west 
 of Bostra, is established by the testi- 
 monies of authors and by the coins 
 dated from the Pompeian era (Wad- 
 dington on 2412, d). To the same 
 town probably belong the coins with 
 the name Tafi{e)lv(ia) KdvaOa, with 
 the name and dates of the same era 
 (Reichardt, Num. Zeitschrift, 1880, 
 p. 53); this place would accordingly 
 belong to the numerous ones re- 
 
 stored by Gabinius (Josephus, Arch. 
 xrv - S> 3)- Waddington no doubt (on 
 no. 2329) assigns these coins, so far 
 as he knew them, to the second place 
 of this name, the modern Kanawat, 
 the proper capital of the Hauran, to 
 the northward of Bostra ; but it is far 
 from probable that the organisation of 
 Pompeius and Gabinius extended so 
 far eastward. Presumably this second 
 city was younger and named after the 
 first, the most easterly town of the 
 Decapolis. 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 Chelbon north-west from Damascus, southward as far as 
 the Dead Sea, while the region farther to the east between 
 his kingdom and the desert was assigned to the king of 
 the Arabians. He and his descendants, who still bore 
 sway here after the annexation of the lordship of Jeru- 
 salem down to Trajan, and subsequently resided in Cae- 
 sarea Paneas in the southern Lebanon, had endeavoured 
 energetically to tame the natives. The oldest evidences 
 of a certain culture in these regions are doubtless the 
 cave-towns, of which there is mention in the Book of 
 Judges, large subterranean collective hiding-places made 
 habitable by air-shafts, with streets and wells, fitted to 
 shelter men and flocks, difficult to be found and, even 
 when found, difficult to be reduced. Their mere existence 
 shows the oppression of the peaceful inhabitants by the 
 unsettled sons of the steppe. " These districts," says 
 Josephus, when he describes the state of things in the 
 Hauran under Augustus, " were inhabited by wild tribes, 
 without towns and without fixed fields, who harboured with 
 their flocks under the earth in caves with narrow entrance 
 and wide intricate paths, but copiously supplied with water 
 and provisions were difficult to be subdued." Several of 
 these cave-towns contained as many as 400 head. A 
 remarkable edict of the first or second Agrippa, fragments 
 of which have been found at Canatha (Kanawat), summons 
 the inhabitants to leave off their " animal-conditions " and 
 to exchange their cavern-life for civilised existence. The 
 non-settled Arabs live chiefly by the plundering partly of 
 the neighbouring peasants, partly of caravans on the march ; 
 the uncertainty was increased by the fact that the petty 
 prince Zenodorus of Abila to the north of Damascus, in the 
 Anti-Libanus, to whom Augustus had committed the super- 
 intendence over the Trachon, preferred to make common 
 cause with the robbers and secretly shared in their gains. 
 Just in consequence of this the emperor assigned this region 
 to Herod, and his remorseless energy succeeded, in some 
 measure, in repressing this brigandage. The king appears 
 to have instituted on the east frontier a line of military 
 posts, fortified and put under royal commanders (eVa/j^ot)- 
 
148 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 He would have achieved still more if the Nabataean terri- 
 tory had not afforded the robbers an asylum ; this was 
 one of the causes of variance between him and his Arabian 
 colleague. 1 His Hellenising tendency comes into promi- 
 nence in this domain as strongly and less unpleasantly than 
 in his government at home. As all the coins of Herod 
 and the Herodians are Greek, so in the land beyond the 
 Jordan, while the oldest monument with an inscription 
 that we know — the Temple of Baalsamin at Canatha — 
 bears an Aramaean dedication, the honorary 'bases erected 
 there, including one for Herod the Great, 2 are bilingual 
 or merely Greek ; under his successors Greek rules alone. 
 The king- gy the side of the Jewish kings stood the formerly- 
 offlv. 134. mentioned (iv. 140) "king of Nabat," as he called himself. 
 Nabat. -phe residence of this Arabian prince was the city, known 
 to us only by its Greek name Petra, a rock -fastness 
 situated midway between the Dead Sea and the north- 
 east extremity of the Arabian Gulf, from of old an em- 
 porium for the traffic of India and Arabia with the region 
 of the Mediterranean. These rulers possessed the nor- 
 thern half of the Arabian peninsula ; their power extended 
 on the Arabian Gulf as far as Leuce Come opposite to the 
 Egyptian town of Berenice, in the interior at least as far 
 as the region of the old Thaema. 3 To the north of the 
 peninsula their territory reached as far as Damascus, 
 which was under their protection, 4 and even beyond 
 
 1 The " refugees from the tetrarchy ward fromTeima, the ancient Thaema, 
 of Philippus," who serve in the army there has recently been found by the 
 of Herodes Antipas, tetrarch of Gali- travellers Doughty and Huber, a 
 lee, and pass over to the enemy in the series of Nabataean inscriptions, which, 
 battle with Aretas the Arabian (Jose- in great part dated, reach from the 
 phus, Arch, xviii. 5, 1), are beyond time of Augustus down to the death 
 doubt Arabians driven out from the of Vespasian. Latin inscriptions are 
 Trachonitis. wanting, and the few Greek are of 
 
 2 Waddington, 2366 = Vogue, In- the latest period ; to all appearance, 
 scr. du Haonran, n. 3. Bilingual is on the conversion of the Nabataean 
 also the oldest epitaph of this region kingdom into a Roman province, the 
 from Suweda, Waddington, 2320= portion of the interior of Arabia that 
 Vogue, n. 1, the only one in the Hau- belonged to the former was given up 
 ran, which expresses the mute iota, by the Romans. 
 
 The inscriptions are so put on both 4 The city of Damascus voluntarily 
 
 monuments that we cannot determine submitted under the last Seleucids 
 
 which language takes precedence. about the time of the dictatorship of 
 
 3 At Medain Salih or Hijr, south- Sulla to the king of the Nabataeans 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 
 
 149 
 
 Damascus 1 , and enclosed as with a girdle the whole of 
 Palestinian Syria. The Romans, after taking possession 
 of Judaea, came into hostile contact with them, and 
 Marcus Scaurus led an expedition against them. At that 
 
 at the time, presumably the Aretas, 
 with whom Scaurus fought (Josephus, 
 Arch. xiii. 15). The coins with the 
 legend jSacnX^wj 'Kpirov <pCh£X\r]vos 
 (Eckhel, iii. 330; Luynes, Rev. de 
 Numism. 1858, p. 311), were perhaps 
 struck in Damascus, when this was 
 dependent on the Nabataeans ; the 
 reference of the number of the year on 
 one of them is not indeed certain, but 
 points, it may be presumed, to the 
 last period of the Roman republic. 
 Probably this dependence of the city 
 on the Nabataean kings subsisted so 
 long as there were such kings. From 
 the fact that the city struck coins with 
 the heads of the Roman emperors, 
 there follows doubtless its dependence 
 on Rome and therewith its self-admin- 
 istration, but not its non-dependence 
 on the Roman vassal - prince ; such 
 protectorates assumed shapes so vari- 
 ous that these arrangements might 
 well be compatible with each other. 
 The continuance of the Nabataean 
 rule is attested partly by the circum- 
 stance that the ethnarch of king Are- 
 tas in Damascus wished to have the 
 Apostle Paul arrested, as the latter 
 writes in the 2d Epistle to the Corinth- 
 ians, xi. 32, partly by the recently- 
 established fact (see following note) 
 that the rule of the Nabataeans to the 
 north-east of Damascus was still con- 
 tinuing under Trajan. — Those who 
 start, on the other hand, from the 
 view that, if Aretas ruled in Damascus, 
 the city could not be Roman, have 
 
 1 The Nabataean inscription found 
 recently near Dmer, to the north-east 
 of Damascus on the road to Palmyra 
 (Sachau, Zeitschr. der deutschen mor- 
 genl. Gesellschaft, xxxviii. p. 535), 
 dates from the month Ijjar of the year 
 410 according to the Roman (i.e. 
 Seleucid) reckoning, and the 24th 
 year of king Dabel, the last Naba- 
 taean one, and so from May 99 A.D., 
 
 attempted in various ways to fix the 
 chronology of that event in the life of 
 Paul. They have thought of the 
 complication between Aretas and the 
 Roman government in the last years 
 of Tiberius ; but from the course 
 which this took it is not probable that 
 it brought about a permanent change 
 in the state of possession of Aretas. 
 Melchior de Vogue (Melanges d'arch. 
 orientale, app. p. 33) has pointed out 
 that between Tiberius and Nero — 
 more precisely, between the years 33 
 and 62 (Saulcy, Num. de la terre 
 sainte, p. 36) — there are no imperial 
 coins of Damascus, and has placed the 
 rule of the Nabataeans there in this 
 interval, on the assumption that the 
 emperor Gaius showed his favour to 
 the Arabian as to so many others of the 
 vassal-princes, and invested him with 
 Damascus. But such interruptions of 
 coinage are of frequent occurrence, 
 and require no such profound explana- 
 tion. The attempt to find a chrono- 
 logical basis for the history of Paul's 
 life in the sway of the Nabataean 
 king at Damascus, and generally to 
 define the time of Paul's abode in this 
 city, must probably be abandoned. If 
 we may so far trust the representation 
 — in any case considerably shifted — 
 of the event in Acts ix., Paul went to 
 Damascus before his conversion, in 
 order to continue there the persecution 
 of the Christians in which Stephen 
 had perished, and then, when on his 
 conversion he took part on the con- 
 
 has shown that this district up to the 
 annexation of this kingdom remained 
 under the rule of the Nabataeans. We 
 may add that the fields of rule here 
 seem to have been, geographically, 
 thrown across each other ; thus the 
 tetrarch of Galilee and the Nabataean 
 king fought about the territory of 
 Gamala on the lake of Gennesaret 
 (Josephus, Arch, xviii. 51). 
 
SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 time their subjugation was not accomplished ; but it must 
 have ensued soon afterwards. 1 Under Augustus their king 
 Obodas was just as subject to the empire 2 as Herod the 
 king of the Jews, and rendered, like the latter, military- 
 service in the Roman expedition against southern Arabia. 
 Since that time the protection of the imperial frontier in 
 the south as in the east of Syria, as far up as to Damascus, 
 must have lain mainly in the hands of this Arabian king. 
 With his Jewish neighbour he was at .constant feud. 
 Augustus, indignant that the Arabian instead of seeking 
 justice at the hand of his suzerain against Herod, had 
 encountered the latter with arms, and that Obodas's son, 
 Harethath, or in Greek Aretas, after the death of his 
 father, instead of waiting for investiture, had at once 
 entered upon the dominion, was on the point of deposing 
 the latter and of joining his territory to the Jewish ; but 
 the misrule of Herod in his later years withheld him from 
 this step, and so Aretas was confirmed (about 747 U.C.). 
 Some decades later he began again warfare at his own 
 hand against his son-in-law, the prince of Galilee, Herod 
 Antipas, on account of the divorce of his daughter in 
 favour of the beautiful Herodias. He retained the upper 
 
 trary in Damascus for the Christians, Damascus, or the interval between 
 
 the Jews there resolved to put him to his second journey to Jerusalem and 
 
 death, in which case it must therefore the composition of the Galatian letter, 
 
 be presupposed that the officials of or the year of that composition itself. 
 Aretas, like Pilate, allowed free course 1 Perhaps through Gabinius (Ap- 
 
 to the persecution of heretics by the pian, Syr. 51). 
 
 Jews. Moreover, it follows from the 2 Strabo, xvi. 4, 21, p. 779. The 
 trustworthy statements of the Epistle coins of these kings, however, do not 
 to the Galatians, that the conversion show the emperor's head. But that 
 took place at Damascus (for the in the Nabataean kingdom dates might 
 viri<TTpe^a shows this), and Paul went run by the Roman imperial years is 
 from thence to Arabia ; further, that shown by the Nabataean inscription 
 he came three years after his con- of Hebran (Vogue, Syrie Centrale, 
 version for the first time, and seven- insc. n. 1 ), dated from the seventh year 
 teen years after it for the second time, of Claudius, and so from the year 47. 
 to Jerusalem, in accordance with which Hebran, a little to the north of Bostra, 
 the apocryphal accounts of the Book appears to have been reckoned also at a 
 of Acts as to his Jerusalem-journeys later time to Arabia (Lebas-Wadding- 
 are to be corrected (Zeller, Apostel- ton, 2287) ; and Nabataean inscrip- 
 tive, p. 216). But we cannot deter- tions of a public tenor are not met 
 mine exactly either the time of the with outside of the Nabataean state ; 
 death of Stephen, much less the time the few of the kind from Trachonitis 
 intervening between this and the are of a private nature, 
 flight of the converted Paul from 
 
chap.x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 151 
 
 hand, but the indignant suzerain Tiberius ordered the 
 governor of Syria to proceed against him. The troops 
 were already on the march, when Tiberius died (3 7) ; and 
 his successor, Gaius, who did not wish well to Antipas, 
 pardoned the Arabian. King Maliku or Malchus, the suc- 
 cessor of Aretas, fought under Nero and Vespasian in the 
 Jewish war as a Roman vassal, and transmitted his 
 dominion to his son Dabel, the contemporary of Trajan, 
 and the last of these rulers. More especially after the 
 annexation of the state of Jerusalem and the reducing of 
 the respectable dominion of Herod to the far from martial 
 kingdom of Caesarea Paneas, the Arabian was the most 
 considerable of the Syrian client-states, as indeed it fur- 
 nished the strongest among the royal contingents to the 
 Roman army besieging Jerusalem. This state even under 
 Roman supremacy refrained from the use of the Greek 
 language ; the coins struck under the rule of its kings 
 bear, apart from Damascus, an Aramaic legend. But 
 there appear the germs of an organised condition and of 
 civilised government. The coinage itself probably only 
 began after the state had come under Roman clientship. 
 The Arabian-Indian traffic with the region of the Medi- 
 terranean moved in great part along the caravan -route 
 watched over by the Romans, running from Leuce Come 
 by way of Petra to Gaza. 1 The princes of the Nabataean 
 kingdom made use, just like the community of Palmyra, 
 of Greek official designations for their magistrates, e.g. of 
 
 1 "Leuke Kome in the land of conveyed thither from Arabia in not 
 the Nabataeans," says Strabo under very large vessels. Therefore there is 
 Tiberius, xvi. 4, 23, p. 780, "is a great sent thither (diroaTiWeTai) a receiver 
 place of trade, whither and whence of the import-dues of a fourth of the 
 the caravan - traders (kc^X^"™/ 001 ) value, and for the sake of security a 
 go safely and easily from and to Petra centurion (eKarovTdpxn^) with men." 
 with so large numbers of men and As one belonging to the _ Roman em- 
 camels that they differ in nothing pire here mentions officials and sol- 
 from encampments." The Egyptian diers, these can only be Roman ; the 
 merchant also, writing under Vespa- centurion does not suit the army of 
 sian, in his description of the coasts the Nabataean king, and the form of 
 of the Red Sea (c. 19), mentions "the tax is quite the Roman. The bring- 
 port and the fortress {(ppotpiov) of ing of a client-state within the sphere 
 Leuce Come, whence the route leads of imperial taxation occurs elsewhere, 
 towards Petra to the king of the e.g. in the regions of the Alps. The 
 Nabataeans Malichas. It may be re- road from Petra to Gaza is mentioned 
 garded as the emporium for the goods by Plin. H. N. vi. 28, 144. 
 
152 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the titles of Eparch and of Strategos. If under Tiberius 
 the good order of Syria brought about by the Romans 
 and the security of the harvests occasioned by their mili- 
 tary occupation are made prominent as matters of boasting, 
 this is primarily to be referred to the arrangements made 
 in the client -states of Jerusalem or subsequently of 
 Caesarea Paneas and of Petra. 
 institution Under Trajan the direct rule of Rome took the place 
 vi f nc h e e o P f r °" of these two dient-states. In the beginning of his reign 
 Arabia. king Agrippa II. died, and his territory was united with 
 the province of Syria. Not long after, in the year 106, 
 the governor Aulus Cornelius Palma broke up the previous 
 dominion of the kings of Nabat, and made the greater 
 part of it into the Roman province of Arabia, while 
 Damascus went to Syria, and what the Nabataean king 
 had possessed in the interior of Arabia was abandoned by 
 the Romans. The erection of Arabia is designated as 
 subjugation, and the coins also which celebrate the taking 
 possession of it attest that the Nabataeans offered resist- 
 ance, as indeed generally the nature of their territory as 
 well as their previous attitude lead us to assume a relative 
 independence on the part of these princes. But the 
 historical significance of these events may not be sought 
 in warlike success ; the two annexations, which doubtless 
 went together, were no more than acts of administration 
 carried out perhaps by military power, and the tendency to 
 acquire these domains for civilisation and specially for 
 Hellenism was only heightened by the fact that the 
 Roman government took upon itself the work. The Hel- 
 lenism of the East, as summed up in Alexander, was a 
 church militant, a thoroughly conquering power pushing 
 its way in a political, religious, economic, and literary 
 point of view. Here, on the edge of the desert, under the 
 pressure of anti- Hellenic Judaism and in the hands of the 
 spiritless and vacillating government of the Seleucids, it 
 had hitherto achieved little. But now, pervading the 
 Roman system, it develops a motive power, which stands 
 related to the earlier, as the power of the Jewish and the 
 Arabian vassal-princes to that of the Roman empire. In 
 
chap.x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 153 
 
 this country, where everything depended and depends on 
 protecting the state of peace by the setting up of a superior 
 and standing military force, the institution of a legionary 
 camp in Bostra under a commander of senatorial rank 
 was an epoch-making event. From this centre the re- 
 quisite posts were established at suitable places and pro- 
 vided with garrisons. For example, the stronghold of 
 Namara (Nemara) deserves mention, a long day's march 
 beyond the boundaries of the properly habitable mountain- 
 land, in the midst of the stony desert, but commanding 
 the only spring to be found within it and the forts 
 attached to it in the already mentioned oasis of Ruhbe 
 and further on at Jebel Ses ; these garrisons together 
 control the whole foreland of the Hauran. Another series 
 of forts, placed under the Syrian command and primarily 
 under that of the legion posted at Danava (p. 95), and 
 laid out at uniform distances of three leagues apart, 
 secured the route from Damascus to Palmyra ; the best 
 known of them, the second in the series, was that of 
 Dmer (p. 149, n. 1), a rectangle of 300 and 3,50 paces 
 respectively, provided on every side with six towers and a 
 portal fifteen paces in breadth, and surrounded by a ring- 
 wall of sixteen feet thick, once faced outwardly with beau- 
 tiful blocks of hewn stone. 
 
 Never had such an aegis been extended over this land. The civffis- 
 It was not, properly speaking, denationalised. The Arabic easTsyna 
 names remained down to the latest time, although not under Ro- 
 unfrequently, just as in Syria (p. 121), a Romano-Hellenic 
 name is appended to the local one ; thus a sheikh names 
 himself "Adrianos or Soaidos, son of Malechos." 1 The 
 native worship also remains unaffected ; the chief deity of 
 the Nabataeans, Dusaris, is doubtless compared with 
 Dionysus, but regularly continues to be worshipped under 
 his local name, and down to a late period the Bostrenes 
 celebrate the Dusaria in honour of him. 2 In like manner 
 
 1 Waddington, 2196; 'Adpiavov ber, the birthday of Christ, had 
 rod Kai Hoaldov MdX^xov idvdpxov already been festally observed after 
 (TTparriyod vo/A&dwv rb fivrj/ieiov. an analogous manner at Rome in the 
 
 2 Epiphanius, Haeres. li. p. 483, festival of the Saturnalia, at Alex- 
 Dind., sets forth that the 25th Decern- andria in the festival (mentioned also 
 
154 SYRIA AND THE book vm. 
 
 Agriculture 
 and com- 
 merce. 
 
 in the province of Arabia temples continue to be conse- 
 crated, and offerings presented to Aumu or Helios, to 
 Vasaeathu, to Theandritos, to Ethaos. The tribes and 
 the tribal organisation no less continue : the inscriptions 
 mention lists of " Phylae " by the native name, and fre- 
 quently Phylarchs or Ethnarchs. But alongside of tradi- 
 tional customs civilisation and Hellenising make progress. 
 If from the time before Trajan no Greek monument can 
 be shown in the sphere of the Nabataean state, on the 
 other hand no monument subsequent to Trajan's time in the 
 Arabic language has been found there j 1 to all appearance 
 the imperial government suppressed at once upon the 
 annexation the written use of Arabic, although it certainly 
 remained the language proper of the country, as is attested 
 not only by the proper names but by the " interpreter of 
 the tax-receivers." 
 
 As to the advance of agriculture we have no witnesses 
 to speak ; but if, on the whole eastern and southern slope 
 of the Hauran, from the summits of the mountains down to 
 the desert, the stones, with which this volcanic plain was 
 once strewed, are thrown into heaps or arranged in long 
 rows, and thus the most glorious fields are obtained, we 
 may recognise therein the hand of the only government 
 which has governed this land as it might and should be 
 governed. In the Ledja, a lava-plateau thirteen leagues 
 long and eight to nine broad, which is now almost unin- 
 habited, there grew once vines and figs between the 
 streams of lava ; the Roman road connecting Bostra with 
 Damascus ran across it ; in the Ledji and around it are 
 
 in the decree of Canopus) of the born of her Dusares, that is the Only- 
 Kikellia, and in other heathen wor- 
 ships. "This takes place in Alexandria 
 at the so-called Virgin's shrine (K6piov) 
 . . . and if we ask people what this 
 mystery means, they answer and say 
 that to-day at this hour the Virgin has 
 given birth to the Eternal (rbv ai&va). 
 This takes place in like manner at 
 Petra, the capital of Arabia, in the 
 temple there, and in the Arabic lan- 
 guage they sing the praise of the 
 Virgin, whom they call in Arabic 
 Chaamu, that is the maiden, and Him 
 
 begotten of the Lord." The name 
 Chaamu is perhaps akin to the Aumu 
 or Aumos of the Greek inscriptions of 
 this region, who is compared with 
 Zei>s &vIk7]tos "HXtos (Waddington, 
 2392-2395, 2441, 2445, 2 4S6). 
 
 1 This is said apart from the re- 
 markable Arabo-Greek inscription (see 
 below) found in Harran, not far from 
 Zorava, of the year 568 A.D., set up 
 by the phylarch Asaraelos, son of 
 Talemos (Waddington, 2464). This 
 Christian is a precursor of Mohammed. 
 
CHAP. X. 
 
 LAND OF THE NAB A TAEANS. 
 
 155 
 
 counted the ruins of twelve larger and thirty-nine smaller 
 townships. It can be shown that, at the bidding of the 
 same governor who erected the province of Arabia, the 
 mighty aqueduct was constructed which led the water 
 from the mountains of the Hauran to Canatha (Kerak) in 
 the plain, and not far from it a similar one in Arrha 
 (Raha) — buildings of Trajan, which may be named by the 
 side of the port of Ostia and the Forum of Rome. The 
 flourishing of commercial intercourse is attested by the 
 very choice of the capital of the new province. Bostra 
 existed under the Nabataean government, and an inscrip- 
 tion of king Malichu has been found there ; but its mili- 
 tary and commercial importance begins with the introduc- 
 tion of direct Roman government. " Bostra," says Wetz- 
 stein, " has the most favourable situation of all the towns 
 in eastern Syria ; even Damascus, which owes its size to 
 the abundance of its water and to its situation protected 
 by the eastern Trachon, will excel Bostra only under a 
 weak government, while the latter under a strong and 
 wise government must elevate itself in a few decades to a 
 fabulous prosperity. It is the great market for the Syrian 
 desert : the high mountains of Arabia and Peraea, and its 
 long rows of booths of stone still in their desolation, 
 furnish evidence of the reality of an earlier, and the possi- 
 bility of a future, greatness." The remains of the Roman 
 road, leading thence by way of Salchat and Ezrak to 
 the Persian Gulf, show that Bostra was, along with Petra 
 and Palmyra, a medium of traffic from the East to the 
 Mediterranean. This town was probably constituted on 
 a Hellenic basis already by Trajan ; at least it is called 
 thenceforth the "new Trajanic Bostra," and the Greek 
 coins begin with Pius, while later the legend becomes 
 Latin in consequence of the bestowal of colonial rights 
 by Alexander. 
 
 Petra too had a Greek municipal constitution already 
 under Hadrian, and several other places subsequently 
 received municipal rights ; but in this territory of the 
 Arabians down to the latest period the tribe and the tribal 
 village preponderated. 
 
1 5 6 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 stone A peculiar civilisation was developed from the mixture 
 
 easlem gS ° f °f national and Greek elements in these regions during 
 Syria, the five hundred years between Trajan and Mohammed. 
 
 A fuller picture of it has been preserved to us than of 
 other forms of the ancient world, inasmuch as the struc- 
 tures of Petra, in great part worked out of the rock, and 
 the buildings in the Hauran, executed entirely of stone 
 owing to the want of wood, comparatively little injured by 
 the sway of the Bedouins which was here again installed 
 with Islam in its old misrule, are still to a considerable 
 degree extant to the present day, and throw a clear light 
 on the artistic skill and the manner of life of those cen- 
 turies. The above-mentioned temple of Baalsamin at 
 Canatha, certainly built under Herod, shows in its original 
 portions a complete diversity from Greek architecture and 
 in the structural plan remarkable analogies with the 
 temple-building of the same king in Jerusalem, while the 
 pictorial representations shunned in the latter are by no 
 means wanting here. A similar state of things has been 
 observed in the monuments found at Petra. Afterwards 
 further steps were taken. If under the Jewish and the 
 Nabataean rulers culture freed itself but slowly from the 
 influences of the East, a new time seems to have begun 
 here with the transfer of the legion to Bostra. " Building," 
 says an excellent French observer, Melchior de Vogue, 
 " obtained thereby an impetus which was not again arrested. 
 Everywhere rose houses, palaces, baths, temples, theatres, 
 aqueducts, triumphal arches ; towns sprang from the 
 ground within a few years with the regular construction 
 and the symmetrically disposed colonnades which mark 
 towns without a past, and which are as it were the inevitable 
 uniform for this part of Syria during the imperial period." 
 The eastern and southern slope of the Hauran shows 
 nearly three hundred such desolated towns and villages, 
 while there only five new townships now exist ; several of 
 the former, e.g. Busan, number as many as 800 houses of 
 one to two stories, built throughout of basalt, with well- 
 jointed walls of square blocks without cement, with doors 
 mostly ornamented and often provided with inscriptions, 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. i$7 
 
 the flat roof formed of stone-rafters, which are supported 
 by stone arches and made rain-proof above by a layer of. 
 cement. The town-wall is usually formed only by the backs 
 of the houses joined together, and is protected by numerous 
 towers. The poor attempts at re-colonising of recent 
 times find the houses habitable ; there is wanting only the 
 diligent hand of man, or rather the strong arm that pro- 
 tects it. In front of the gates lie the cisterns, often subter- 
 ranean, or provided with an artificial stone roof, many of 
 which are still at the present day, when this deserted seat 
 of towns has become pasturage, kept up by the Bedouins in 
 order to water their flocks from them in summer. The 
 style of building and the practice of art have doubtless 
 preserved some remains of the older Oriental type, e.g. 
 the frequent form, for a tomb, of the cube crowned with a 
 pyramid, perhaps also the pigeon-towers often added to 
 the tomb, still frequent in the present day throughout 
 Syria ; but, taken on the whole, the style is the usual 
 Greek one of the imperial period. Only the absence of 
 wood has here called forth a development of the stone 
 arch and the cupola, which technically and artistically 
 lends to these buildings an original character. In con- 
 trast to the customary repetition elsewhere usual of tradi- 
 tional forms there prevails here an architecture indepen- 
 dently suiting the exigencies and the conditions, moderate 
 in ornamentation, thoroughly sound and rational, and not 
 destitute even of elegance. The burial-places, which are 
 cut out in the rock-walls rising to the east and west of 
 Petra and in their lateral valleys, with their facades of 
 Doric or Corinthian pillars often placed in several tiers 
 one above another, and their pyramids and propylaea 
 reminding us of the Egyptian Thebes, are not artistically 
 pleasing, but imposing by their size and richness. Only 
 a stirring life and a high prosperity could display such 
 care for its dead. In presence of these architectural 
 monuments it is not surprising that the inscriptions make 
 mention of a theatre in the "village" (fcwfir)) Sakkaea 
 and a " theatre-shaped Odeon " in Canatha, and a local poet 
 of Namara in Batanaea celebrates himself as a " master 
 
i 5 8 
 
 SYRIA AND THE 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 The south- 
 Arabian 
 immigra- 
 tion be- 
 fore Mo- 
 hammed. 
 
 of the glorious art of proud Ausonian song." 1 Thus at 
 this eastern limit of the empire there was gained for Hel- 
 lenic civilisation a frontier-domain which may be com- 
 pared with the Romanised region of the Rhine ; the 
 arched and domed buildings of eastern Syria well stand 
 comparison with the castles and tombs of the nobles and 
 of the great merchants of Belgica. 
 
 But the end came. As to the Arabian tribes who 
 immigrated to this region from the south, the historical 
 tradition of the Romans is silent, and what the late records 
 of the Arabs report as to that of the Ghassanids and their 
 precursors, can hardly be fixed, at least as to chronology. 2 
 But the Sabaeans, after whom the place Borechath 
 (Breka to the north of Kanawat) is named, appear in fact 
 to be south- Arabian emigrants ; and these were already 
 settled here in the third century. They and their associ- 
 ates may have come in peace and become settled under 
 Roman protection, perhaps even may have carried to 
 Syria the highly-developed and luxuriant culture of south- 
 western Arabia. So. long as the empire kept firmly to- 
 gether and each of these tribes was under its own sheikh, 
 all obeyed the Roman lord-paramount. But in order the 
 better to meet the Arabians or — as they were now called 
 — Saracens of the Persian empire united under one king, 
 
 1 Atiaoviuv jxoiarji v\f/iv6ov irpiravis, 
 Kaibel, Epigr. 440. 
 
 2 According to the Arabian accounts 
 the Benu Salih migrated from the 
 region of Mecca (about 190 A.D., 
 according to the conjectures of Caussin 
 de Perceval, Hist, des Arabes, i. 212) 
 to Syria, and settled there alongside 
 of the Benu-Samaida, in whom Wad- 
 dington finds anew the <pv\7j So/xat- 
 07)vwv of an inscription of Suweda 
 (n. 2308). The Ghassanids, who 
 (according to Caussin, about 205) 
 migrated from Batn-Marr likewise to 
 Syria and to the same region, were 
 compelled by the Salihites, at the 
 suggestion of the Romans, to pay 
 tribute, and paid it for a time, until 
 they (according to the same, about the 
 year 292) overcame the Salihites, and 
 
 their leader Thalaba, son of Amos, 
 was recognised by the Romans as 
 phylarch. This narrative may con- 
 tain correct elements ; but our stan- 
 dard authority remains always the 
 account of Procopius, de bello Pers. i. 
 17, reproduced in the text. The 
 phylarchs of individual provinces of 
 Arabia {i.e. the province Bostra; Nov. 
 102 c.) and of Palestine {i.e. province 
 of Petra ; Procop. de bello Pers. i. 
 19), are older, but doubtless not much. 
 Had a sheikh-in-chief of this sort been 
 recognised by the Romans in the 
 times before Justinian, the Roman 
 authors and the inscriptions would 
 doubtless show traces of it ; but there 
 are no such traces from the period 
 before Justinian. 
 
chap. x. LAND OF THE NABATAEANS. 159 
 
 Justinian, during the Persian war in the year 531, placed 
 all the phylarchs of the Saracens subject to the Romans 
 under Aretas son of Gabalus — Harith Abu son of Cham- 
 inos among the Arabs — and bestowed on this latter the 
 title of king, which hitherto, it is added, had never 
 been done. This king of all the Arabian tribes settled 
 in Syria was still a vassal of the empire ; but, while he 
 warded off his countrymen, he at the same time prepared 
 the place for them. A century later, in the year 637, 
 Arabia and Syria succumbed to Islam. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 The history of the Jewish land is as little the history of 
 the Jewish people as the history of the States of the 
 Church is that of the Catholics ; it is just as requisite to 
 separate the two as to consider them together. 
 Judaea and The Jews in the land of the Jordan, with whom the 
 rule under 7 Romans had to do, were not the people who under their 
 the Seieu- judges and kings fought with Moab and Edom, and 
 listened to the discourses of Amos and Hosea. The 
 small community of pious exiles, driven out by foreign 
 rule, and brought back again by a change in the hands 
 wielding that rule, who began their new establishment 
 by abruptly repelling the remnants of their kinsmen left 
 behind in the old abodes and laying the foundation for 
 the irreconcilable feud between Jews and Samaritans — 
 the ideal of national exclusiveness and priestly control 
 holding the mind in chains — had long before the Roman 
 period developed under the government of the Seleucids 
 the so-called Mosaic theocracy, a clerical corporation with 
 the high-priest at its head, which, acquiescing in foreign 
 rule and renouncing the formation of a state, guarded the 
 distinctiveness of its adherents, and dominated them under 
 the aegis of the protecting power. This retention of the 
 national character in religious forms, while ignoring the 
 state, was the distinctive mark of the later Judaism. 
 Probably every idea of God is in its formation national ; 
 but no other God has been so from the outset the God 
 only of his people as Jahve, and no one has so remained 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 161 
 
 of the Has- 
 monaeans. 
 
 such without distinction of time and place. Those men 
 returning to the Holy Land, who professed to live accord- 
 ing to the statutes of Moses and in fact lived according 
 to the statutes of Ezra and Nehemiah, 1 had remained just 
 as dependent on the great-kings of the East, and subse- 
 quently on the Seleucids, as they had been by the waters 
 of Babylon. A political element no more attached to this 
 organisation than to the Armenian or the Greek Church 
 under its patriarchs in the Turkish empire ; no free 
 current of political development pervades this clerical 
 restoration ; none of the grave and serious obligations of 
 a commonwealth standing on its own basis hampered the 
 priests of the temple of Jerusalem in the setting up of 
 the kingdom of Jahve upon earth. 
 
 The reaction did not fail to come. That church- Kingdom 
 without-a-state could only last so long as a secular great 
 power served it as lord-protector or as bailiff. When the 
 kingdom of the Seleucids fell into decay, a Jewish com- 
 monwealth was created afresh by the revolt against foreign 
 rule, which drew its best energies precisely from the 
 enthusiastic national faith. The high priest of Salem 
 was called from the temple to the battlefield. The family 
 of the Hasmonaeans restored the empire of Saul and 
 David nearly in its old limits, and not only so, but these 
 warlike high priests renewed also in some measure the 
 former truly political monarchy controlling the priests. 
 But that monarchy, at once the product of, and the contrast 
 to, that priestly rule, was not according to the heart of 
 the pious. The Pharisees and the Sadducees separated 
 and began to make war on one another. It was not so 
 much doctrines and ritual differences that here confronted 
 each other, as, on the one hand, the persistence in a priestly 
 government which simply clung to religious ordinances 
 and interests, and otherwise was indifferent to the inde- 
 pendence and the self-control of the community ; on the 
 other hand, the monarchy aiming at political development 
 
 1 [This statement and several others a recent school of Old Testament 
 
 of a kindred tenor in this chapter criticism, as to which it may at least 
 
 appear to rest on an unhesitating be said : Adhnc sub iudice lis est. — 
 
 acceptance of views entertained by Tr.] 
 
 VOL. II. I I 
 
1 62 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 and endeavouring to procure for the Jewish people, by 
 righting and by treaty, its place once more in the poli- 
 tical conflict, of which the Syrian kingdom was at that 
 time the arena. The former tendency dominated the 
 multitude, the latter had the preponderance in intelligence 
 and in the upper classes ; its most considerable champion 
 was king Iannaeus Alexander, who during his whole reign 
 was at enmity not less with the Syrian rulers than with 
 iv. 133. his own Pharisees (iv. 139). Although it was properly 
 but the other, and in fact the more natural and more 
 potent, expression of the national revival, it yet by its 
 greater freedom of thinking and acting came into contact 
 with the Hellenic character, and was regarded especially 
 by its pious opponents as foreign and unbelieving. 
 The Jewish But the inhabitants of Palestine were only a portion, 
 mspora. an( j not ^ most i m p 0r tant portion, of the Jews ; the 
 Jewish communities of Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor, 
 Egypt, were far superior to those of Palestine even after 
 their regeneration by the Maccabees. The Jewish Dia- 
 spora in the imperial period was of more significance than 
 the latter ; and it was an altogether peculiar phenomenon. 
 
 The settlements of the Jews beyond Palestine grew 
 only in a subordinate degree out of the same impulse as 
 those of the Phoenicians and the Hellenes. From the 
 outset an agricultural people and dwelling far from the 
 coast, their settlements abroad were a non-free and com- 
 paratively late formation, a creation of Alexander or of 
 his marshals. 1 In those immense efforts at founding Greek 
 towns continued throughout generations, such as never 
 before and never afterwards occurred to a like extent, the 
 Jews had a conspicuous share, however singular it was to 
 invoke their aid in particular towards the Hellenising of 
 
 1 Whether the legal position of the by the bodies of Jews in the differ- 
 
 Jews in Alexandria is warrantably ent states of the Diadochi must, if it is 
 
 traced back by Josephus {contra Ap. not based on Alexander's ordinances, 
 
 ii. 4) to Alexander is so far doubtful, be traced to rivalry and imitation in 
 
 as, to the best of our knowledge, the founding of towns. The fact 
 
 not he, but the first Ptolemy, settled that Palestine was half Egyptian half 
 
 Jews in masses there (Josephus, Arch. Syrian, doubtless exercised an essen- 
 
 xii. 1. ; Appian, Syr. 50). The re- tial influence in the case of these 
 
 markable similarity of form assumed settlements. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 163 
 
 the East. This was the case above all with Egypt. The 
 most considerable of all the towns created by Alexander, 
 Alexandria on the Nile, was since the times of the first 
 Ptolemy, who after the occupation of Palestine transferred 
 thither a mass of its inhabitants, almost as much a city of 
 the Jews as of the Greeks, and the Jews there were to be 
 esteemed at least equal to those of Jerusalem in number, 
 wealth, intelligence, and organisation. In the first times 
 of the empire there was reckoned a million of Jews to 
 eight millions of Egyptians, and their influence, it may be 
 presumed, transcended this numerical proportion. We 
 have already observed that, in rivalry with these, the Jews 
 in the Syrian capital of the empire had been similarly 
 organised and developed (p. 127). The diffusion and the 
 importance of the Jews of Asia Minor are attested among 
 other things by the attempt which was made under 
 Augustus by the Ionian Greek cities, apparently after 
 joint concert, to compel their Jewish fellow townsmen 
 either to withdrawal from their faith or to full assumption 
 of civic burdens. Beyond doubt there were independently 
 organised bodies of Jews in all the new Hellenic founda- 
 tions, 1 and withal in numerous old Hellenic towns, even 
 in Hellas proper, e.g. in Corinth. The organisation was 
 placed throughout on the footing that the nationality of 
 the Jews with the far-reaching consequences drawn from 
 it by themselves was preserved, and only the use of the 
 Greek language was required of them. Thus amidst 
 this Graecising, into which the East was at that time 
 coaxed or forced by those in authority, the Jews of the 
 Greek towns became Greek-speaking Orientals. 
 
 That in the Jew -communities of the Macedonian Greek 
 towns the Greek language not merely attained to dominion langus 
 in the natural way of intercourse, but was a compulsory 
 
 1 The community of Jews in Smyrna lepuTarq rafieiip (drjmplovs) <a.<p, Kal to? 
 
 is mentioned in an inscription recently ^dveirQv'Iovdalwp (drjvaplovs) a. Taurus 
 
 found there (Reinach, Revue des rrjs eTriypacprjs to dvrlypacpov diroKeirai 
 
 etudes juives, 1883, p. 161) : 'Povcpeiva els rb dpxeiov. Simple collegia are, in 
 
 'lovdal(a) apx^vv ay uybs KareaKetjaaev penal threats of this sort, not readily 
 
 rb habpiov rots direXevddpois Kal dpifj.- put on a level with the state or the 
 
 (fx)a(riv (irjdtvos <5\(\) ov i^ovaiav %x 0VT °s community. 
 da\(/ai rivfc el d£ tis roX/xTjcret, duxxei t<£ 
 
164 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. book viii. 
 
 ordinance imposed upon them, seems of necessity to result 
 from the state of the case. In a similar way Trajan 
 subsequently Romanised Dacia with colonists from Asia 
 Minor. Without this compulsion, the external uniformity 
 in the foundation of towns could not have been carried 
 out, and this material for Hellenising generally could not 
 have been employed. The governments went in this 
 respect very far and achieved much. Already under the 
 second Ptolemy, and at his instigation, the sacred writings 
 of the Jews were translated into Greek in Egypt, and at 
 least at the beginning of the imperial period the know- 
 ledge of Hebrew among the Jews of Alexandria was 
 nearly as rare as that of the original languages of Scrip- 
 ture is at present in the Christian world ; there was nearly 
 as much discussion as to the faults of translation of the 
 so-called Seventy Alexandrians as on the part of pious 
 men among us regarding the errors of Luther's translation. 
 The national language of the Jews had at this epoch dis- 
 appeared everywhere from the intercourse of life, and 
 maintained itself only in ecclesiastical use somewhat like 
 the Latin language in the religious domain of Catholicism. 
 In Judaea itself its place had been taken by the Aramaic 
 popular language of Syria, akin no doubt to the Hebrew ; 
 the Jews outside of Judaea, with whom we are concerned, 
 had entirely laid aside the Semitic idiom, and it was not 
 till long after this epoch that the reaction set in, which 
 scholastically brought back the knowledge and the use 
 of it more generally among the Jews. The literary works, 
 which they produced at this epoch in great number, were 
 in the better times of the empire all Greek. If language 
 alone conditioned nationality, there would be little to tell 
 for this period as to the Jews. 
 Retention But with this linguistic compulsion, at first perhaps 
 aiity atl ° n severely felt, was combined the recognition of the distinct- 
 ive nationality with all its consequences. Everywhere in 
 the cities of the monarchy of Alexander the burgess-body 
 was formed of the Macedonians, that is, those really 
 Macedonian, or the Hellenes esteemed equal to them. By 
 the side of these stood, in addition to foreigners, the 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 165 
 
 natives, in Alexandria the Egyptians, in Cyrene the 
 Libyans and generally the settlers from the East, who had 
 indeed no other home than the new city, but were not 
 recognised as Hellenes. To this second category the Jews 
 belonged ; but they, and they only, were allowed to form, 
 so to speak, a community within the community, and — 
 while the other non-burgesses were ruled by the authorities 
 of the burgess-body — up to a certain degree to govern 
 themselves. 1 The " Jews," says Strabo, " have in Alexan- 
 dria a national head {edvap^i) of their own, who presides 
 over the people {IQvoi), and decides processes and disposes 
 of contracts and arrangements as if he ruled an independent 
 community." This was done, because the Jews indicated 
 a specific jurisdiction of this sort as required by their 
 nationality or — what amounts to the same thing — their 
 religion. Further, the general political arrangements had 
 respect in an extensive measure to the national-religious 
 scruples of the Jews, and accommodated them as far as 
 possible by exemptions. The privilege of dwelling together 
 was at least frequently added ; in Alexandria, e.g. two of 
 the five divisions of the city were inhabited chiefly by 
 Jews. This seems not to have been the Ghetto system, 
 but rather a usage resting on the basis of settlement to 
 begin with, and thereafter retained on both sides, whereby 
 conflicts with neighbours were in some measure obviated. 
 Thus the Jews came to play a prominent part in the 
 
 1 If the Alexandrian Jews subse- (in Josephus, Arch. xiv. 7, 2) as to 
 
 quently maintained that they were the four categories of that of Cyrene : 
 
 legally on an equal footing with the city-burgesses, husbandmen {yeupyol), 
 
 Alexandrian Macedonians (Josephus, strangers, and Jews. If we lay aside 
 
 contra Ap. ii. 4; Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 7) the metoeci, who have their legal 
 
 this was a misrepresentation of the home elsewhere, there remain as 
 
 true state of the case. They were Cyrenaeans having rights in their 
 
 clients in the first instance of the home the burgesses of full rights, that 
 
 Phyle of the Macedonians, probably is, the Hellenes and what were al- 
 
 the most eminent of all, and therefore lowed to pass as such, and the two 
 
 named after Dionysos (Theophilus, categories of those excluded from 
 
 ad Autolycum, ii. 7), and, because the active burgess-rights — the Jews, who 
 
 Jewish quarter was a part of this form a community of their own, and 
 
 Phyle, Josephus in his way makes the subjects, the Libyans, without 
 
 themselves Macedonians. The legal autonomy. This might easily be so 
 
 position of the population of the Greek shifted, that the two privileged cate- 
 
 towns of this category is most clearly gories should appear as having equal 
 
 apparent from the account of Strabo rights. 
 
JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Extent of Macedonian Hellenising of the East ; their pliancy and 
 lpora! a serviceableness on the one hand, their unyielding tenacity 
 on the other, must have induced the very realistic statesmen 
 who assigned this course of action, to resolve on such 
 arrangements. Nevertheless the extraordinary extent 
 and significance of the Jewish Diaspora, as compared with 
 the narrowness and poorness of their home, remains at 
 once a fact and a problem. In dealing with it we may 
 not overlook the circumstance that the Palestinian Jews 
 furnished no more than the nucleus for the Jews of other 
 countries. The Judaism of the older time was anything 
 but exclusive ; was, on the contrary, no less pervaded by 
 missionary zeal than were afterwards Christianity and 
 Islam. The Gospel makes reference to Rabbis who 
 traversed sea and land to make a proselyte ; the admission 
 of half-proselytes, of whom circumcision was not expected 
 but to whom religious fellowship was yet accorded, is an 
 evidence of this converting zeal and at the same time one 
 of its most effective means. Motives of very various kinds 
 came to the help of this proselytising. The civil privileges, 
 which the Lagids and Seleucids conferred on the Jews, 
 must have induced a great number of non-Jewish Orien- 
 tals and half-Hellenes to attach themselves in the new 
 towns to the privileged category of the non-burgesses. In 
 later times the decay of the traditional faith of the country 
 helped the Jewish propaganda. Numerous persons, 
 especially of the cultivated classes, whose sense of faith 
 and morality turned away with horror or derision from 
 what the Greeks, and still more from what the Egyptians 
 termed religion, sought refuge in the simpler and purer 
 Jewish doctrine renouncing polytheism and idolatry — a 
 doctrine which largely met the religious views resulting 
 from the development of philosophy among the cultured 
 and half-cultured circles. There is a remarkable Greek 
 moral poem, probably from the later epoch of the Roman 
 republic, which is drawn from the Mosaic books on such 
 a footing that it adopts the doctrine of monotheism and 
 the universal moral law, but avoids everything offensive 
 to the non-Jew and all direct opposition to the ruling 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 religion, evidently intended to gain wider acceptance for this 
 denationalised Judaism. Women in particular addicted 
 themselves by preference to the Jewish faith. When the 
 authorities of Damascus in the year 66 resolved to put to 
 death the captive Jews, it was agreed to keep this resolu- 
 tion secret, in order that the female population devoted to 
 the Jews might not prevent its execution. Even in the 
 West, where the cultivated circles were otherwise averse 
 to Jewish habits, dames of rank early formed an excep- 
 tion ; Poppaea Sabina, Nero's wife, sprung from a noble 
 family, was notorious for her pious Jewish faith and her 
 zealous protectorate of the Jews, as for other things less 
 reputable. Cases of formal transition to Judaism were 
 not rare ; the royal house of Adiabene for example — king 
 Izates and his mother Helena, as well as his brother and 
 successor — became at the time of Tiberius and of Claudius 
 in every respect Jews. It certainly was the case with all 
 those Jewish bodies, as it is expressly remarked of those 
 of Antioch, that they consisted in great part of proselytes. 
 
 This transplanting of Judaism to the Hellenic soil Hellenising 
 with the appropriation of a foreign language, however much ^g" 016 " 
 it took place with a retention of national individuality, Diaspora 
 was not accomplished without developing in Judaism itself 
 a tendency running counter to its nature, and up to a 
 certain degree denationalising it. How powerfully the 
 bodies of Jews living amidst the Greeks were influenced 
 by the currents of Greek intellectual life, may be traced in 
 the literature of the last century before, and of the first 
 after, the birth of Christ. It is imbued with Jewish ele- 
 ments ; and they are withal the clearest heads and the 
 most gifted thinkers, who seek admission either as Hellenes 
 into the Jewish, or as Jews into the Hellenic, system. 
 Nicolaus of Damascus, himself a Pagan and a noted 
 representative of the Aristotelian philosophy, pleaded, as a 
 scholar and diplomatist of king Herod, the cause of his 
 Jewish patron and of the Jews before Agrippa as before 
 Augustus ; and not only so, but his historical authorship 
 shows a very earnest, and for that epoch sigificant, attempt 
 to bring the East into the circle of Occidental research, 
 
i68 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book viii. 
 
 while the description still preserved of the youthful years 
 of the emperor Augustus, who came personally into close 
 contact with him, is a remarkable evidence of the love and 
 honour which the Roman ruler met with in the Greek 
 world. The dissertation on the Sublime, written in the 
 first period of the empire by an unknown author, one of 
 the finest aesthetic works preserved to us from antiquity, 
 certainly proceeds, if not from a Jew, at any rate from a 
 man who revered alike Homer and Moses. 1 Another 
 treatise, also anonymous, upon the Universe — likewise an 
 attempt, respectable of its kind, to blend the doctrine of 
 Aristotle with that of the Stoa — was perhaps written also 
 by a Jew, and dedicated certainly to the Jew of highest 
 repute and highest station in the Neronian age, Tiberius 
 Alexander (p. 204), chief of the staff to Corbulo and 
 Titus. The wedding of the two worlds of intellect meets 
 us most clearly in the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy, the 
 most acute and most palpable expression of a religious 
 movement, not merely affecting but also attacking the 
 essence of Judaism. The Hellenic intellectual develop- 
 ment conflicted with national religions of all sorts, inas- 
 much as it either denied their views or else filled them 
 with other contents, drove out the previous gods from the 
 minds of men and put into the empty places either nothing, 
 or the stars and abstract ideas. These attacks affected 
 also the religion of the Jews. There was formed a Neo- 
 Judaism of Hellenic culture, which dealt with Jehovah 
 not quite so badly, but yet not much otherwise, than the 
 cultivated Greeks and Romans with Zeus and Jupiter. 
 The universal expedient of the so-called allegorical inter- 
 pretation, whereby in particular the philosophers of the 
 Stoa everywhere in courteous fashion eliminated the 
 heathen national religions, suited equally well and equally 
 
 1 Pseudo-Longinus, wepl v\f/ovs, g : mean man (ofy ° tvx&v av-qp), after he 
 
 " Far better than the war of the gods has worthily apprehended and brought 
 
 in Homer is the description of the to expression the Divine power, at the 
 
 gods in their perfection and genuine very beginning of the Laws (Genesis, i. 
 
 greatness and purity, like that of 3): 'God said' — what? 'Let there be 
 
 Poseidon (Ilias, xiii. 18 ff.). Just so light, and there was light ; let the 
 
 writes the legislator of the Jews, no earth be, and the earth was.'" 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 ill for Genesis as for the gods of the Iliad • if Moses had 
 meant by Abraham in a strict sense understanding, by 
 Sarah virtue, by Noah righteousness, if the four streams 
 of Paradise were the four cardinal virtues, then the most 
 enlightened Hellene might believe in the Law. But this 
 pseudo-Judaism was also a power, and the intellectual 
 primacy of the Jews in Egypt was apparent above all in 
 the fact, that this tendency found pre-eminently its sup- 
 porters in Alexandria. 
 
 Notwithstanding the internal separation which had Fellowship 
 taken place among the Jews of Palestine and had but too generaUyT 5 
 often culminated directly in civil war, notwithstanding the 
 dispersion of a great part of the Jewish body into foreign 
 lands, notwithstanding the intrusion of foreign ingredients 
 into it and even of the destructive Hellenistic element 
 into its very core, the collective body of the Jews remained 
 united in a way, to which in the present day only the 
 Vatican perhaps and the Kaaba offer a certain analogy. 
 The holy Salem remained the banner, Zion's temple the 
 Palladium of the whole Jewish body, whether they obeyed 
 the Romans or the Parthians, whether they spoke Ar- 
 menian or Greek, whether even they believed in the old 
 Jahve or in the new, who was none. The fact that the 
 protecting ruler conceded to the spiritual chief of the Jews 
 a certain secular power signified for the Jewish body just 
 as much, and the small extent of this power just as little, 
 as the so-called States of the Church in their time signified 
 for Roman Catholics. Every member of a Jewish com- 
 munity had to pay annually to Jerusalem a didrachmon as 
 temple-tribute, which came in more regularly than the 
 taxes of the state ; every one was obliged at least once in 
 his life to sacrifice personally to Jehovah on the spot 
 which alone in the world was well -pleasing to Him. 
 Theological science remained common property ; the 
 Babylonian and Alexandrian Rabbins took part in it not 
 less than those of Jerusalem. The feeling, cherished with 
 unparalleled tenacity, of belonging collectively to one nation 
 — a feeling which had established itself in the community 
 of the returning exiles and had thereafter contributed to 
 
JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 create that distinctive position of the Jews in the Greek world 
 — maintained its ground in spite of dispersion and division. 
 Phiio. Most worthy of remark is the continued life of Judaism 
 itself in circles whose inward religion was detached from 
 it. The most noted and, for us, the single clearly palpable 
 representative of this tendency in literature, Philo, one 
 of the foremost and richest Jews of the time of Tiberius, 
 stands in fact towards the religion of his country in a 
 position not greatly differing from that of Cicero towards 
 the Roman ; but he himself believed that he was not 
 destroying but fulfilling it. For him as for every other 
 Jew, Moses is the source of all truth, his written direction 
 binding law, the feeling towards him reverence and devout 
 belief. This sublimated Judaism is, however, not quite 
 identical with the so-called faith in the gods of the Stoa. 
 The corporeality of God vanishes for Philo, but not His 
 personality, and he entirely fails in — what is the essence 
 of Hellenic philosophy — the transferring of the deity into 
 the breast of man ; it remains his view that sinful man is 
 dependent on a perfect being standing outside of, and above, 
 him. In like manner the new Judaism submits itself to 
 the national ritual law far more unconditionally than the 
 new heathenism. The struggle between the old and the 
 new faith was therefore of a different nature in the Jewish 
 circle than in the heathen, because the stake was a greater 
 one ; reformed heathenism contended only against the 
 old faith, reformed Judaism would in its ultimate conse- 
 quence destroy the nationality, which amidst the inunda- 
 tion of Hellenism necessarily disappeared with the refining 
 away of the native faith, and therefore shrank back from 
 drawing this consequence. Hence on Greek soil and in 
 Greek language the form, if not the substance, of the old 
 faith was retained and defended with unexampled ob- 
 stinacy, defended even by those who in substance surren- 
 dered before Hellenism. Philo himself, as we shall have 
 to tell further on, contended and suffered for the cause of 
 the Jews. But on that account the Hellenistic tendency 
 in Judaism never exercised an overpowering influence over 
 the latter, never was able to take its stand against the 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 171 
 
 national Judaism, and barely availed to mitigate its fana- 
 ticism and to check its perversities and crimes. In all 
 essential matters, especially when confronted with oppres- 
 sion and persecution, the differences of Judaism disappeared; 
 and, unimportant as was the Rabbinical state, the religious 
 communion over which it presided was a considerable and 
 in certain circumstances formidable power. 
 
 Such was the state of things which the Romans found The Ro- 
 confronting them when they entered on rule in the East. ™^f° t v ' 
 Conquest forces the hand of the conqueror not less than and juda- 
 of the conquered. The work of centuries, the Macedonian lsm 
 urban institutions, could not be undone either by the 
 Arsacids or by the Caesars ; neither Seleucia on the 
 Euphrates nor Antioch and Alexandria could be entered 
 upon by the following governments under the benefit of the 
 inventory. Probably in presence of the Jewish Diaspora 
 there the founder of the imperial government took, as in 
 so many other things, the policy of the first Lagid as 
 his guiding rule, and furthered rather than hampered the 
 Judaism of the East in its distinctive position ; and this 
 procedure thereupon became throughout the model for his 
 successors. We have already mentioned that the com- 
 munities of Asia Minor under Augustus made the attempt 
 to draw upon their Jewish fellow-citizens uniformly in the 
 levy, and no longer to allow them the observance of the 
 Sabbath ; but Agrippa decided against them and main- 
 tained the status quo in favour of the Jews, or rather, 
 perhaps, now for the first time legalised the exemption of 
 the Jews from military service and their Sabbath privilege, 
 that had been previously conceded according to circum- 
 stances only by individual governors or communities of 
 the Greek provinces. Augustus further directed the gover- 
 nors of Asia not to apply the rigorous imperial laws re- 
 specting unions and assemblies against the Jews; But the 
 Roman government did not fail to see that the exempt 
 position conceded to the Jews in the East was not compat- 
 ible with the absolute obligation of those belonging to the 
 empire to fulfil the services required by the state ; that the 
 guaranteed distinctive position of the Jewish body carried 
 
172 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 the hatred of race and under certain circumstances civil 
 war into the several towns; that the pious rule of the 
 authorities at Jerusalem over all the Jews of the empire 
 had a perilous range ; and that in all this there lay a 
 practical injury and a danger in principle for the state. 
 
 The internal dualism of the empire expresses itself in 
 nothing more sharply than in the different treatment of 
 the Jews in the respective domains of the Latin and Greek 
 languages. In the West autonomous bodies of Jews were 
 never allowed. There was toleration doubtless there for 
 the Jewish religious usages as for the Syrian and the 
 Egyptian, or rather somewhat less than for these ; 
 Augustus showed himself favourable to the Jewish colony 
 in the suburb of Rome beyond the Tiber, and made sup- 
 plementary allowance in his largesses for those who missed 
 them on account of the Sabbath. But he personally 
 avoided all contact with the Jewish worship as with the 
 Egyptian ; and, as he himself when in Egypt had gone 
 out of the way of the sacred ox, so he thoroughly ap- 
 proved the conduct of his son Gaius, when he went to the 
 East, in passing by Jerusalem. Under Tiberius in the 
 year 19 the Jewish worship was even prohibited along 
 with the Egyptian in Rome and in all Italy, and those 
 who did not consent openly to renounce it and to throw 
 the holy vessels into the fire were expelled from Italy — so 
 far as they could not be employed as useful for military 
 service in convict-companies, whereupon not a few became 
 liable to court-martial on account of their religious 
 scruples. If, as we shall see afterwards, this same em- 
 peror in the East almost anxiously evaded every conflict 
 with the Rabbi, it is here plainly apparent that he, the 
 ablest ruler whom the empire had, just as clearly per- 
 ceived the dangers of the Jewish immigration as the 
 unfairness and the impossibility of setting aside Judaism, 
 where it existed. 1 Under the later rulers, as we shall see 
 
 1 The Jew Philo sets down the But Josephus rather traces back what 
 
 treatment of the Jews in Italy to the happened in Italy to a scandal in the 
 
 account of Sejanus {Leg. 24; in Flacc. capital, which had been occasioned 
 
 1), that of the Jews in the East to by three Jewish pious swindlers 
 
 the account of the emperor himself, and a lady of rank converted to 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 173 
 
 in the sequel, the attitude of disinclination towards the 
 Jews of the West did not in the main undergo change, 
 although they in other respects follow more the example 
 of Augustus than that of Tiberius. They did not prevent the 
 Jews from collecting the temple-tribute in the form of 
 voluntary contributions and sending it to Jerusalem. They 
 were not checked, if they preferred to bring a legal dispute 
 before a Jewish arbiter rather than before a Roman 
 tribunal. Of compulsory levy for service, such as Tiberius 
 enjoined, there is no further mention afterwards in the 
 West. But the Jews never obtained in heathen Rome or 
 generally in the Latin West a publicly recognised dis- 
 tinctive position and publicly recognised separate courts. 
 Above all in the West — apart from the capital, which in 
 the nature of the case represented the East also, and 
 already in Cicero's time included in it a numerous body 
 of Jews — the Jewish communities nowhere had special 
 extent or importance in the earlier imperial period. 1 
 
 It was only in the East that the government yielded and in the 
 from the first, or rather made no attempt to change the East ' 
 existing state of things and to obviate the dangers thence 
 resulting; and accordingly, as the sacred books of the Jews 
 were first made known to the Latin world in the Latin 
 language by means of the Christians, the great Jewish 
 movements of the imperial period were restricted through- 
 out to the Greek East. Here no attempt was made 
 gradually to stop the spring of hatred towards the Jews 
 by assigning to them a separate position in law, but just 
 as little — apart from the caprice and perversities of indi- 
 vidual rulers — was the hatred and persecution of the Jews 
 fomented on the part of the government. In reality the 
 catastrophe of Judaism did not arise from the treatment 
 of the Jewish Diaspora in the East. It was simply the 
 
 Judaism ; and Philo himself states Jewish settlements abroad (in Philo, 
 
 that Tiberius, after the fall of Sejanus, Leg. ad Gaium, 36), names no country 
 
 allowed to the governors only certain westward of Greece, and among the 
 
 modifications in the procedure against strangers sojourning in Jerusalem, 
 
 the Jews. The policy of the emperor whom the Book of Acts, ii. 5 f., records, 
 
 and that of his ministers towards the only Romans are named from the 
 
 Jews was essentially the same. West. 
 1 Agrippa II., who enumerates the 
 
i74 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 Judaea 
 under the 
 republic. 
 
 relations, as they became fatefully developed, of the imperial 
 government to the Jewish Rabbinical state that not merely 
 brought about the destruction of the commonwealth of 
 Jerusalem, but further shook and changed the position 
 of the Jews in the empire generally. We turn to describe 
 the events in Palestine under the Roman rule. 
 
 The state of things in northern Syria was organised 
 by the generals of the republic, Pompeius and his imme- 
 diate successors, on such a footing, that the larger powers 
 that were beginning to be formed there were again 
 reduced, and the whole land was broken up into single 
 city-domains and petty lordships. The Jews were most 
 severely affected by this course ; not merely were they 
 obliged to give up all the possessions which they had 
 iv. 136. hitherto gained, particularly the whole coast (iv. 142), but 
 Gabinius had even broken up the empire formerly sub- 
 sisting into five independent self-administering districts, 
 and withdrawn from the high priest Hyrcanus his secular 
 iv. 151. privileges (iv. 158). Thus, as the protecting power was 
 restored on the one hand, so was the pure theocracy on 
 the other. 
 
 This, however, was soon changed. Hyrcanus, or rather 
 the minister governing for him, the Idumaean Antipater, 1 
 
 Antipater 
 the Idum- 
 aean. 
 
 1 Antipater began his career as 
 governor (crpari\yb^) of Idumaea (Jo- 
 sephus, Arch. xiv. I, 3), and is there 
 called administrator of the Jewish 
 kingdom (6 ruv 'lovdaluv iTrip.e\r)Tris 
 (Joseph. Arch. xiv. 8, 1 ), that is, nearly 
 first minister. More is not implied in 
 the narrative of Josephus coloured with 
 flattery towards Rome as towards 
 Herod {Arch. xiv. 8, 5 ; Bell. Jud. 
 i. 10, 3), that Caesar had left to 
 Antipater the option of himself de- 
 termining his position of power 
 (dwaareia), and, when the latter left 
 the decision with him, had appointed 
 him administrator (e7T(V/)07ros)of Judaea. 
 This is not, as Marquardt, Staatsalth. 
 v. 1, 408, would have it, the (at that 
 time not yet existing) Roman pro- 
 curatorship of the imperial period, 
 but an office formally conferred by the 
 Jewish ethnarch, an iiriTpoir-f), like that 
 
 mentioned by Josephus, Bell. Jud. 
 ii. 18, 6. In the official documents 
 of Caesar's time the high priest and 
 ethnarch Hyrcanus alone represents 
 the Jews ; Caesar gave to Antipater 
 what could be granted to the subjects 
 of a dependent state, Roman burgess- 
 rights and personal immunity (Jo- 
 sephus, Arch. xiv. 8, 3 ; Bell. Jud. 
 
 9» 5)> but he did not make him an 
 official of Rome. That Herod, driven 
 out of Judaea, obtained from the Ro- 
 mans a Roman officer's post possibly 
 in Samaria, is credible ; but the de- 
 signations crTpaTrjybs tt}$ KolXrjs "Zvplas 
 (Josephus, Arch. xiv. 9, 5, c. 11, 4), 
 or (TTpaTTjybs KoLXrjs HvpLas koI ~La.fj.a- 
 pelas (Bell. Jud. i. 10, 8) are at least 
 misleading, and with as much incor- 
 rectness the same author names Herod 
 subsequently, for the reason that he is 
 to serve as counsellor rots iirirpoireijovai 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 175 
 
 attained once more the leading position in southern Syria 
 doubtless through Gabinius himself, to whom he knew 
 how to make himself indispensable in his Parthian and 
 Egyptian undertakings (iv. 345). After the pillage of the iv. 329. 
 temple of Jerusalem by Crassus the insurrection of the 
 Jews thereby occasioned was chiefly subdued by him 
 
 35 5)- ^ was f° r him a fortunate dispensation that iv. 339. 
 the Jewish government was not compelled to interfere 
 actively in the crisis between Caesar and Pompeius, for 
 whom it, like the whole East, had declared. Nevertheless, 
 after the brother and rival of Hyrcanus, Aristobulus as 
 well as his son Alexander, had on account of their taking 
 part for Caesar lost their lives at the hands of the Pom- 
 peians, the second son, Antigonus, would doubtless after 
 Caesar's victory have been installed by the latter as ruler 
 in Judaea. But when Caesar, coming to Egypt after the 
 decisive victory, found himself in a dangerous position at 
 Alexandria, it was chiefly Antipater who delivered him 
 from it (iv. 452), and this carried the day; Antigonus had iv. 430. 
 to give way before the more recent, but more effective, 
 fidelity. 
 
 Caesar's personal gratitude was not the least Caesar's 
 element in promoting the formal restoration of the arran & e - 
 
 merits 
 
 Jewish state. The Jewish kingdom obtained the best 
 position which could be granted to a client-state, complete 
 freedom from dues to the Romans 1 and from military 
 
 ttjs Si/pt'as {Arch. xv. io, 3), even Romans, but for that there should be 
 
 Supfas '6\r\% iirirpoirov {Bell. Jud. i. granted to Hyrcanus, likewise at 
 
 20, 4), where Marquardt's \ change, Sidon,as anequivalentannually20,675 
 
 Staatsalth. v. i. 408, KolXrjs destroys bushels of grain, besides which the 
 
 the sense. people of Joppa paid also the tenth to 
 
 1 In the decree of Caesar in Jo- Hyrcanus. The whole narrative other- 
 
 sephus, Arch. xiv. 10, 5, 6, the read- wise shows that the Jewish state was 
 
 ing which results from Epiphanius is thenceforth free from payment of 
 
 the only possible one ; according to tribute ; the circumstance that Herod 
 
 this the land is freed from the tribute pays <j>6poi from the districts assigned 
 
 (imposed by Pompeius; Josephus, to Cleopatra which he leases from her 
 
 Arch. xiv. 4, 4) from the second year {Arch. xv. 4, 2, 4, c. 5, 3) only con- 
 
 of the current lease onward, and it is firms the rule. If Appian, B. C. v. 
 
 further ordained that the town of Joppa, 75, adduces among the kings on whom 
 
 which at that time passed over from Antonius laid tribute Herod for 
 
 Roman into Jewish possession, should Idumaea and Samaria, Judaea is not 
 
 continue indeed to deliver the fourth absent here without good reason ; 
 
 part of field - fruits at Sidon to the and even for these accessory lands the 
 
176 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book viii. 
 
 occupation and levy, 1 whereas certainly the duties and 
 the expenses of frontier-defence were to be undertaken 
 by the native government. The town of Joppa, and 
 thereby the connection with the sea, were given back, the 
 independence of internal administration as well as the 
 free exercise of religion was guaranteed ; the re-establish- 
 ment, hitherto refused, of the fortifications of Jerusalem 
 razed by Pompeius was allowed (707). Thus under the 
 name of the Hasmonaean prince, a half foreigner — for 
 the Idumaeans stood towards the Jews proper that returned 
 from Babylon nearly as did the Samaritans — governed 
 the Jewish state under the protection and according to 
 the will of Rome. The Jews with national sentiments 
 were anything but inclined towards the new government. 
 The old families, who led in the council of Jerusalem, 
 held in their hearts to Aristobulus, and, after his death, 
 to his son Antigonus. In the mountains of Galilee the 
 fanatics fought quite as much against the Romans as 
 against their own government ; when Antipater's son 
 Herod took captive Ezekias, the leader of this wild band, 
 and had caused him to be put to death, the priestly 
 council of Jerusalem compelled the weak Hyrcanus to 
 banish Herod under the pretext of a violation of reli- 
 gious precepts. The latter thereupon entered the Roman 
 army, and rendered good service to the Caesarian governor 
 of Syria against the insurrection of the last Pompeians. 
 But when, after the murder of Caesar, the republicans 
 
 tribute may have been remitted to 
 him by Augustus. The detailed and 
 trustworthy account as to the census 
 enjoined by Quirinius shows with 
 entire clearness that the land was 
 hitherto free from Roman tribute. 
 
 1 In the same decree it is said : koX 
 tiirus /XTjdels fi-qre (Lpxuv fxrjTe o~Tpa.T-qybs 
 Hj TrpecrpevTTjs ev rails 6'pois rwv 'lovSaluv 
 dvio-rg. ("perhaps (rwiara," Wilamo- 
 witz) avuixaxia-v /cat arpariwras i^iy (so 
 Wilamowitz, for ^ ra xp^/xara 
 
 toijtwv el<rirpaTTec9a.i r) ets 7ra/5a%et^ia- 
 alav #AA<£> rivl dvd/xari, dXY elvai 
 iravraxbOev dpeirrjpedaTOVs (comp. 
 Arch. xiv. 10, 2 : irapax^o.o-iav 8k 
 
 Kal xpiJMara irpdrreo-dai ov doKipidfa). 
 This corresponds in the main to the 
 formula of the charter, a little older, 
 for Termessus (C. I. L. i. n. 204) : 
 net quis magistrate prove magistrate 
 legates ne\ive\ quis alius meilites in 
 oppidum Ther?nesiim . . . agrumve 
 . . . hiemandi caussa introducito . . . 
 nisei senates noviinatim utei Ther- 
 mesum . . . in hibernacula meilites 
 deducanter decreverit. The marching 
 through is accordingly allowed. In 
 the Privilegium for Judaea the levy 
 seems, moreover, to have been pro- 
 hibited. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 177 
 
 gained the upper hand in the East, Antipater was again 
 the first who not merely submitted to the stronger but 
 placed the new holders of power under obligation to him 
 by a rapid levying of the contribution imposed by them. 
 
 Thus it happened that the leader of the republicans, 
 when he withdrew from Syria, left Antipater in his posi- 
 tion, and entrusted his son Herod even with a command 
 in Syria. Then, when Antipater died, poisoned as it was 
 said by one of his officers, Antigonus, who had found a 
 refuge with his father-in-law, the prince Ptolemaeus of 
 Chalcis, believed that the moment had come to set aside 
 his weak uncle. But the sons of Antipater, Phasael and 
 Herod, thoroughly defeated his band, and Hyrcanus 
 agreed to grant to them the position of their father, nay, 
 even to receive Herod in a certain measure into the 
 reigning house by betrothing to him his niece Mariamne. 
 Meanwhile the leaders of the republican party were beaten 
 at Philippi. The opposition in Jerusalem hoped now to 
 procure the overthrow of the hated Antipatrids at the 
 hands of the victors ; but Antonius, to whom fell the 
 office of arbiter, decidedly repelled their deputations first 
 in Ephesus, then in Antioch, and last in Tyre ; caused, 
 indeed, the last envoys to be put to death ; and con- 
 firmed Phasael and Herod formally as " tetrarchs nl of 
 the Jews (713). 
 
 Soon the vicissitudes of great policy dragged the 
 Jewish state once more into their vortex. The invasion of 
 the Parthians in the following year (714) put an end in 
 the first instance to the rule of the Antipatrids. The 
 pretender Antigonus joined them, and possessed himself 
 of Jerusalem and almost the whole territory. Hyrcanus 
 
 1 This title, which primarily de- Augustus. The juxtaposition of an 
 
 notes the collegiate tetrarchate, such ethnarch and two tetrarchs, as it 
 
 as was usual among the Galatians, was arranged in the year 713 for 
 
 was then more generally employed Judaea, according to Josephus (Arch. 
 
 for the rule of all together, nay, even xiv. 13, 1; Bell.Jud. i. 12, 5), 
 
 for the rule of one, but always as in is not again met with elsewhere • 
 
 rank inferior to that of king. In this Pherores tetrarch of Peraea under his 
 
 way, besides Galatia, it appears also brother Herodes {Bell. Jud. i. 24, 5) 
 
 in Syria, perhaps from the time of is analogous. 
 Pompeius, certainly from that of 
 
 VOL. II. r 0 
 
i 7 8 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 40. 
 
 Herod, 
 king of 
 Judaea. 
 
 Herod 
 under An- 
 tonius and 
 Cleopatra. 
 
 went as a prisoner to the Parthians : Phasael, the eldest 
 son of Antipater, likewise a captive, put himself to death 
 in prison. With great difficulty Herod concealed his 
 family in a rock-stronghold on the border of Judaea, and 
 went himself a fugitive and in search of aid first to Egypt, 
 and, when he no longer found Antonius there, to the two 
 holders of power just at that time ruling in new harmony 
 (714) at Rome. Readily they allowed him — as indeed 
 it was only in the interest of Rome — to gain back for 
 himself the Jewish kingdom ; he returned to Syria, so far 
 as the matter depended on the Romans, as recognised 
 ruler, and even equipped with the royal title. But, just 
 like a pretender, he had to wrest the land not so much 
 from the Parthians as from the patriots. He fought his 
 battles pre-eminently with the help of Samaritans and 
 Idumaeans and hired soldiers, and attained at length, 
 through the support of the Roman legions, to the posses- 
 sion of the long-defended capital. The Roman execu- 
 tioners delivered him likewise from his rival of many 
 years, Antigonus ; his own made havoc among the noble 
 families of the council of Jerusalem. 
 
 But the days of trouble were by no means over with 
 his installation. The Unfortunate expedition of Antonius 
 against the Parthians remained without consequences for 
 Herod, since the victors did not venture to advance into 
 Syria ; but he suffered severely under the ever increasing 
 claims of the Egyptian queen, who at that time more 
 than Antonius ruled the East ; her womanly policy, 
 primarily directed to the extension of her domestic power 
 and above all of her revenues, was far indeed from obtain- 
 ing at the hands of Antonius all that she desired, but she 
 wrested at any rate from the king of the Jews a portion 
 of his most valuable possessions on the Syrian coast and 
 in the territory lying between Egypt and Syria, nay, even 
 the rich balsam plantations and palm-groves of Jericho, 
 and laid upon him severe financial burdens. In order to 
 maintain the remnant of his rule, he was obliged either 
 himself to lease the new Syrian possessions of the queen 
 or to be guarantee for other lessees less able to pay. After 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 179 
 
 all these troubles, and in expectation of still worse de- 
 mands as little capable of being declined, the outbreak of 
 the war between Antonius and Caesar was hopeful for 
 him, and the fact that Cleopatra in her selfish perversity 
 released him from active participation in the war, because 
 he needed his troops to collect her Syrian revenues, was 
 a further piece of good fortune, since this facilitated his 
 submission to the victor. Fortune favoured him yet fur- 
 ther on his changing sides ; he was able to intercept a 
 band of faithful gladiators of Antonius, who were march- 
 ing from Asia Minor through Syria towards Egypt to 
 lend assistance to their master. When he, before resort- Herod 
 ing to Caesar at Rhodes to obtain his pardon, caused the under '* 
 last male offshoot of the Maccabaean house, the eighty- gUStUS ' 
 years old Hyrcanus, to whom the house of Antipater was 
 indebted for its position, to be at all events put to death, 
 he in reality exaggerated the necessary caution. Caesar 
 did what policy bade him do, especially as the support 
 of Herod was of importance for the intended Egyptian 
 expedition. He confirmed Herod, glad to be vanquished, 
 in his dominion, and extended it, partly by giving back 
 the possessions wrested from him by Cleopatra, partly by 
 further gifts ; the whole coast from Gaza to Strato's 
 Tower, the later Caesarea, the Samaritan region inserted 
 between Judaea and Galilee, and a number of towns to the 
 east of the Jordan thenceforth obeyed Herod. On the 
 consolidation of the Roman monarchy the Jewish princi- 
 pality was withdrawn from the reach of further external 
 crises. 
 
 From the Roman standpoint the conduct of the new Govem- 
 dynasty appears correct, in a way to draw tears from the ment of 
 eyes of the observer. It took part at first for Pompeius, Her ° d ' 
 then for Caesar the father, then for Cassius and Brutus, 
 then for the triumvirs, then for Antonius, lastly for Caesar 
 the son ; fidelity varies, as does the watchword. Never- 
 theless this conduct is not to be denied the merit of con- 
 sistency and firmness. The factions which rent the ruling 
 burgess-body, whether republic or monarchy, whether 
 Caesar or Antonius, in reality nowise concerned the depen- 
 
i8o 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 dent provinces, especially those of the Greek East. The 
 demoralisation which is combined with all revolutionary 
 change of government — the degrading confusion between in- 
 ternal fidelity and external obedience — was brought in this 
 case most glaringly to light ; but the fulfilment of duty, 
 such as the Roman commonwealth claimed from its 
 subjects, had been satisfied by king Herod to an extent 
 of which nobler and greater natures would certainly not 
 have been capable. In presence of the Parthians he con- 
 stantly, even in critical circumstances, held firmly to the 
 protectors whom he had once chosen, 
 in its re- From the standpoint of internal Jewish politics the 
 
 lation to government of Herod was the setting aside of the theo- 
 
 the Jews. & ° . 
 
 cracy, and in so far a continuance of, and in fact an advance 
 upon, the government of the Maccabees, as the separation 
 of the political and the ecclesiastical government was 
 carried out with the utmost precision in the contrast 
 between the all-powerful king of foreign birth and the 
 powerless high-priest often and arbitrarily changed. No 
 doubt the royal position was sooner pardoned in the Jewish 
 high -priest than in a man who was a foreigner and 
 incapable of priestly consecration ; and, if the Hasmo- 
 naeans represented outwardly the independence of Judaism, 
 the Idumaean held his royal power over the Jews in fee 
 from the lord-paramount. The reaction of this insoluble 
 conflict on a deeply-impassioned nature confronts us in 
 the whole life-career of the man, who causes much suffer- 
 ing, but has felt perhaps not less. At all events the 
 energy, the constancy, the yielding to the inevitable, the 
 military and political dexterity, where there was room for 
 it, secure for the king of the Jews a certain place in the 
 panorama of a remarkable epoch. 
 Herod's To describe in detail the government of Herod for 
 
 character a i mos t forty years — he died in the year 750 — as the 
 
 and [4. J J 1 1 11 1 
 
 aims. accounts of it preserved at great length allow us to do, is 
 not the task of the historian of Rome. There is probably 
 no royal house of any age in which bloody feuds raged in 
 an equal degree between parents and children, between 
 husbands and wives, and between brothers and sisters ; 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 181 
 
 the emperor Augustus and his governors in Syria turned 
 away with horror from the share in the work of murder 
 which was suggested to them ; not the least revolting trait 
 in this picture of horrors is the utter want of object in 
 most of the executions, ordained as a rule upon groundless 
 suspicion, and the despairing remorse of the perpetrator, 
 which constantly followed. Vigorously and intelligently 
 as the king took care of the interest of his country, so far 
 as he could and might, and energetically as, not merely 
 in Palestine but throughout the empire, he befriended the 
 Jews with his treasures and with his no small influence — - 
 for the decision of Agrippa favourable to the Jews in the 
 great imperial affair of Asia Minor (p. 171) they were 
 substantially indebted to him — he found love and fidelity 
 in Idumaea perhaps and Samaria, but not among the 
 people of Israel ; here he was, and continued to be, not 
 so much the man laden with the guilt of blood in many 
 forms, as above all the foreigner. As it was one of the 
 mainsprings of that domestic war, that his wife of the Has- 
 monaean family, the fair Mariamne, and their children 
 were regarded and dreaded by him more as Jews than as 
 his own, he himself gave expression to the feeling that he 
 was as much drawn towards the Greeks as repelled by the 
 Jews. It is significant that he had the sons, for whom in 
 the first instance he destined the succession, brought up 
 in Rome. While out of his inexhaustible riches he loaded 
 the Greek cities of other lands with gifts and embellished 
 them with temples, he built for the Jews no doubt also, 
 but not in the Jewish sense. The buildings of the circus 
 and theatre in Jerusalem itself, as well as the temples for 
 the imperial worship in the Jewish towns, were regarded 
 by the pious Israelite as a summons to blaspheme God. 
 His conversion of the temple in Jerusalem into a magnifi- 
 cent building was done half against the will of the devout ; 
 much as they admired the building, his introduction into 
 it of a golden eagle was taken more amiss than all the 
 sentences of death ordained by him, and led to a popular 
 insurrection, to which the eagle fell a sacrifice, and there- 
 upon doubtless the devotees as well, who tore it down. 
 
182 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Energy of Herod knew the land sufficiently not to let matters 
 his rule. come to extremities ; if it had been possible to Hellenise 
 it, the will to that effect would not have been wanting on 
 his part. In energy the Idumaean was not inferior to the 
 best Hasmonaeans. The construction of the great harbour 
 at Strato's Tower, or as the town entirely rebuilt by Herod 
 was thenceforth called, Caesarea, first gave to a coast poor 
 in harbours what it needed, and throughout the whole 
 period of the empire the town remained a chief emporium 
 of southern Syria. What the government was able to 
 furnish in other respects — development of natural resources, 
 intervention in case of famine and other calamities, above 
 all things internal and external security — was furnished 
 by Herod. The evil of brigandage was done away, and 
 the defence — so uncommonly difficult in these regions — 
 of the frontier against the roving tribes of the desert 
 was carried out with sternness and consistency. Thereby 
 the Roman government was induced to place under him 
 still further regions, Ituraea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, Bata- 
 naea. Thenceforth his dominion extended, as we have 
 already mentioned (p. 146), compactly over the region 
 beyond the Jordan as far as towards Damascus and to the 
 Hermon mountains ; so far as we can discern, after those 
 further assignments there was in the whole domain which 
 we have indicated no longer any free city or any rule 
 independent of Herod. The defence of the frontier itself 
 fell more on the Arabian king than on the king of the 
 Jews ; but, so far as it devolved on him, the series of well- 
 provided frontier-forts brought about here a general peace, 
 such as had not hitherto been known in those regions. 
 We can understand how Agrippa, after inspecting the 
 maritime and military structures of Herod, should have 
 discerned in him an associate striving in a like spirit to- 
 wards the great work of organising the empire, and should 
 have treated him in this sense. 
 The end of His kingdom had no lasting existence. Herod him- 
 Herod and se if apportioned it in his testament among his three sons, 
 
 the parti- , * ^ i i , 1 
 
 tion of his and Augustus confirmed the arrangement in the main, 
 kingdom. on \y placing the important port of Gaza and the Greek 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 183 
 
 towns beyond the Jordan immediately under the governor 
 of Syria. The northern portions of the kingdom were 
 separated from the mainland ; the territory last acquired 
 by Herod to the south of Damascus, Batanaea with the 
 districts belonging to it, was obtained by Philip ; Galilee 
 and Peraea, that is, the Transjordanic domain, so far as it 
 was not Greek, by Herod Antipas — both as tetrarchs ; 
 these two petty principalities continued, at first as separate, 
 then as united under Herod "the Great's" great-grandson 
 Agrippa II., with slight interruptions to subsist down to 
 the time of Trajan. We have already mentioned their 
 government when describing eastern Syria and Arabia 
 (p. 146 f.). Here it may only be added that these Hero- 
 dians continued to rule, if not with the energy, at least in 
 the sense and spirit of the founder of the dynasty. The 
 towns established by them — Caesarea, the ancient Paneas, 
 in the northern territory, and Tiberias in Galilee — had a 
 Hellenic organisation quite after the manner of Herod ; 
 characteristic is the proscription, which the Jewish Rabbis 
 on account of a tomb found at the laying out of Tiberias 
 decreed over the unclean city. 
 
 The main country, Judaea, along with Samaria on the Judaea 
 north and Idumaea on the south, was destined for Arche- Archdaus. 
 laus by his father's will. But this succession was not 
 accordant with the wishes of the nation. The orthodox, 
 that is, the Pharisees, ruled with virtual exclusiveness the 
 mass of the people ; and, if hitherto the fear of the Lord 
 had been in some measure kept down by the fear of the 
 unscrupulously energetic king, the mind of the great 
 majority of the Jews was set upon re-establishing under 
 the protectorate of Rome the pure and godly sacerdotal 
 government, as it had once been set up by the Persian 
 authorities. Immediately after the death of the old king 
 the masses in Jerusalem had congregated to demand the 
 setting aside of the high-priest nominated by Herod and 
 the ejection of the unbelievers from the holy city, where 
 the Passover was just to be celebrated ; Archelaus had 
 been under the necessity of beginning his government by 
 charging into these masses ; a number of dead were counted, 
 
184 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 and the observance of the festival was suspended. The 
 Roman governor of Syria — the same Varus, whose folly- 
 soon afterwards cost the Romans Germany — on whom it 
 primarily devolved to maintain order in the land during 
 the interregnum, had allowed these mutinous bands in 
 Jerusalem to send to Rome, where the occupation of the 
 Jewish throne was just being discussed, a deputation of 
 fifty persons to request the abolition of the monarchy ; and, 
 when Augustus gave audience to it, eight thousand Jews of 
 the capital escorted it to the temple of Apollo. The fanati- 
 cal Jews at home meanwhile continued to help themselves ; 
 the Roman garrison, which was stationed in the temple, was 
 assailed with violence, and pious bands of brigands filled 
 the land ; Varus had to call out the legions and to restore 
 quiet with the sword. It was a warning for the suzerain, 
 a supplementary justification of king Herod's violent but 
 effective government. But Augustus, with all the weak- 
 ness which he so often showed, particularly in later years, 
 while dismissing, no doubt, the representatives of those 
 fanatical masses and their request, yet executed in the 
 main the testament of Herod, and gave over the rule in 
 Jerusalem to Archelaus shorn of the kingly title, which 
 Augustus preferred for a time not to concede to the untried 
 young man ; shorn, moreover, of the northern territories, 
 and reduced also in military status by the taking away of 
 the defence of the frontier. The circumstance that at the 
 instigation of Augustus the taxes raised to a high pitch 
 under Herod were lowered, could but little better the 
 position of the tetrarch. The personal incapacity and 
 worthlessness of Archelaus were hardly needed, in addi- 
 tion, to make him impossible ; a few years later (6 A.D.) 
 Roman a Augustus saw himself compelled to depose him. Now he 
 
 province. 
 
 did at length the will of those mutineers ; the monarchy 
 was abolished, and while on the one hand the land was 
 taken into direct Roman administration, on the other hand, 
 so far as an internal government was allowed by the side 
 of this, it was given over to the senate of Jerusalem. This 
 procedure may certainly have been determined in part by 
 assurances given earlier by Augustus to Herod as regards 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 185 
 
 the succession, in part by the more and more apparent, 
 and in general doubtless justifiable, disinclination of the 
 imperial government to larger client -states possessing 
 some measure of independent self-movement. What took 
 place shortly before or soon after in Galatia, in Cappadocia, 
 in Mauretania, explains why in Palestine also the kingdom 
 of Herod hardly survived himself. But, as the immediate 
 government was organised in Palestine, it was even 
 administratively a bad retrograde step as compared with 
 the Herodian ; and above all the circumstances here were 
 so peculiar and so difficult, that the immediate contact 
 between the governing Romans and the governed Jews — 
 which certainly had been obstinately striven for by the 
 priestly party itself and ultimately obtained — redounded 
 to the benefit neither of the one nor of the other. 
 
 Judaea thus became in the year 6 A.D. a Roman pro- Provincial 
 vince of the second rank, 1 and, apart from the ephemeral ° r s anisa - 
 
 1 The statement of Josephus that 
 Judaea was attached to the province 
 of Syria and placed under its gover- 
 nor (Arch. xw\\.fin. : rov de 'ApxeXdov 
 %cipas viroreXovs Trpo<rvefir)del<T7]s ry 
 2vpwv; xviii. I, I : els ttjv 'lovdalwv 
 irpoadrjKriv rrjs Sup/as yevo^vqv ; c. 4, 
 6) appears to be incorrect ; on the 
 contrary, Judaea probably formed 
 thenceforth a procuratorial province of 
 itself. An exact distinction between 
 the de iure and de facto interference 
 of the Syrian governor may not be 
 expected in the case of Josephus. 
 The fact that he organised the new 
 province and conducted the first census 
 does not decide the question what 
 arrangement was assigned to it. 
 Where the Jews complain of their 
 procurator to the governor of Syria 
 and the latter interferes against him, 
 the procurator is certainly depend- 
 ent on the legate ; but, when L. 
 Vitellius did this (Josephus, Arch. 
 xviii. 4, 2), his power extended in 
 quite an extraordinary way over the 
 province (Tacitus, Ann. vi. 32; Staats- 
 recht, ii. 822), and in the other case the 
 words of Tacitus, Ann. xii. 54 : quia 
 Claudius ius statuendi etiam de pro- 
 
 curatoribus dederat, show that the 
 governor of Syria could not have pro- 
 nounced such a judgment in virtue of 
 his general jurisdiction. Both the ius 
 gladii of these procurators (Josephus, 
 Bell. Jud. ii. 8, I : M^XP' T °v Krelveiv 
 \a(3<hv Trapa. rod Kalaapos i^ovalav, 
 Arch, xviii. 1,1; vyrio-dfievos 'lovdaiwv 
 rrj iirl irao-iv ifyvalq.) and their whole 
 demeanour show that they did not 
 belong to those who, placed under an 
 imperial legate, attended only to 
 financial affairs, but rather, like the 
 procurators of Noricum and Raetia, 
 formed the supreme authority for the 
 administration of law and the com- 
 mand of the army. Thus the legates 
 of Syria had there only the position 
 which those of Pannonia had in Nori- 
 cum and the upper German legate in 
 Raetia. This corresponds also to 
 the general development of matters ; 
 all the larger kingdoms were on their 
 annexation not attached to the neigh- 
 bouring large governorships, whose 
 plenitude of power it was not the 
 tendency of this epoch to enlarge, but 
 were made into independent governor- 
 ships, mostly at first equestrian. 
 
186 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS, book vm. 
 
 restoration of the kingdom of Jerusalem under Claudius 
 in the years 41-44, thenceforth remained a Roman pro- 
 vince. Instead of the previous native princes holding 
 office for life and, under reservation of their being con- 
 firmed by the Roman government, hereditary, came an 
 official of the equestrian order, nominated and liable to 
 recall by the emperor. The port of Caesarea rebuilt by 
 Herod after a Hellenic model became, probably at once, the 
 seat of Roman administration. The exemption of the land 
 from Roman garrison, as a matter of course ceased, but, 
 as throughout in provinces of the second rank, the Roman 
 military force consisted only of a moderate number of 
 cavalry and infantry divisions of the inferior class ; subse- 
 quently one ala and five cohorts — about 3000 men — were 
 stationed there. These troops were perhaps taken over 
 from the earlier government, at least in great part formed 
 in the country itself, mostly, however, from Samaritans 
 and Syrian Greeks. 1 The province did not obtain a legion- 
 ary garrison, and even in the territories adjoining Judaea 
 there was stationed at the most one of the four Syrian 
 legions. To Jerusalem there came a standing Roman 
 commandant, who took up his abode in the royal castle, 
 with a weak standing garrison ; only during the time of 
 the Passover, when the whole land and countless strangers 
 flocked to the temple, a stronger division of Roman 
 soldiers was stationed in a colonnade belonging to the 
 temple. That on the erection of the province the 
 obligation of tribute towards Rome set in, follows 
 from the very circumstance that the costs of defend- 
 ing the land were thereby transferred to the imperial 
 government. After the latter had suggested a re- 
 duction of the payments at the installation of Arche- 
 laus, it is far from probable that on the annex- 
 ation of the country it contemplated an immediate 
 raising of them ; but doubtless, as in every newly- 
 
 1 According to Josephus {Arch. xx. Sebastenorum fought in the Jewish 
 8, 7, more exact than Bell. Jtid. ii. 13, war under Vespasian (Josephus, Bell. 
 7) the greatest part of the Roman Jud. ii. 12, 5). Comp. Eph. epigr. 
 troops in Palestine consisted of Cae- v. 194. There are no alae and ce- 
 sareans and Sebastenes. The ala hortes Iudaeorzim. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 187 
 
 acquired territory, steps were taken for a revision of 
 the previous land-register. 1 
 
 For the native authorities in Judaea as everywhere The native 
 the urban communities were, as far as possible, taken as authont,es - 
 a basis. Samaria, or as the town was now called, Sebaste, 
 the newly laid out Caesarea, and the other urban com- 
 munities contained in the former kingdom of Archelaus, 
 were self- administering, under superintendence of the 
 Roman authority. The government also of the capital 
 with the large territory belonging to it was organised in 
 a similar way. Already in the pre-Roman period under The Syn- 
 the Seleucids there was formed, as we saw (p. 160), in jemsaTenf 
 Jerusalem a council of the elders, the Synhedrion, or as 
 Judaised, the Sanhedrin. The presidency in it was held 
 by the high priest, whom each ruler of the land, if he was 
 not possibly himself high priest, appointed for the time. To 
 the college belonged the former high priests and esteemed 
 experts in the law. This assembly, in which the aristo- 
 cratic element preponderated, acted as the supreme spiritual 
 representative of the whole body of Jews, and, so far as 
 this was not to be separated from it, also as the secular 
 representative in particular of the community of Jeru- 
 salem. It is only the later Rabbinism that has by a 
 pious fiction transformed the Synhedrion of Jerusalem into 
 a spiritual institute of Mosaic appointment. It corre- 
 sponded essentially to the council of the Greek urban 
 constitution, but certainly bore, as respected its composition 
 as well as its sphere of working, a more spiritual character 
 
 1 The revenues of Herod amounted, in it was formed by the land-tax, the 
 according to Josephus, Arch. xvii. 1 1, amount of which we do not know ; in 
 4, to about 1200 talents, whereof the Syrian time it amounted at least 
 about IOO fell to Batanaea with the for a time to the third part of corn and 
 adjoining lands, 200 to Galilee and the half of wine and oil (1 Maccab. 
 Peraea, the rest to the share of Arche- x. 30) in Caesar's time for Joppa 
 laus ; in this doubtless the older a fourth of the fruit (p. 175, note), 
 Hebrew talent (of about ^390) is besides which at that time the temple- 
 meant, not, as Hultsch (Metrol. 2 , p. tenth still existed. To this was 
 605) assumes, the denarial talent (of added a number of other taxes and 
 about ^260), as the revenues of the customs, auction - charges, salt - tax, 
 same territory under Claudius are road and bridge moneys, and the like ; 
 estimated in the same Josephus (Arch, it is to these that the publicans of the 
 xix. 8, 2), at 12,000,000 denarii Gospels have reference, 
 (about ^500,000). The chief item 
 
i88 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 than belonged to the Greek representations of the com- 
 munity. To this Synhedrion and its high priest, who 
 was now nominated by the procurator as representative of 
 the imperial suzerain, the Roman government left or 
 committed that jurisdiction which in the Hellenic subject 
 communities belonged to the urban authorities and the 
 common councils. With indifferent short-sightedness it 
 allowed to the transcendental Messianism of the Pharisees 
 free course, and to the by no means transcendental land- 
 consistory — acting until the Messiah should arrive — 
 tolerably free sway in affairs of faith, of manners, and of 
 law, where Roman interests were not directly affected 
 thereby. This applied in particular to the administration 
 of justice. It is true that, as far as Roman burgesses 
 were concerned in the matter, justice in civil as in criminal 
 affairs must have been reserved for the Roman tribunals 
 even already before the annexation of the land. But 
 civil justice over the Jews remained even after that 
 annexation chiefly with the local authority. Criminal 
 justice over them was exercised by the latter probably in 
 general concurrently with the Roman procurator ; only 
 sentences of death could not be executed by it otherwise 
 than after confirmation by the imperial magistrate. 
 The Ro- In the main those arrangements were the inevitable 
 
 ™nciai r ° consequences of the abolition of the principality, and 
 govern- when the Jews had obtained this request of theirs, they in 
 fact obtained those arrangements along with it. Certainly 
 it was the design of the government to avoid, as far as 
 possible, harshness and abruptness in carrying them out. 
 Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, to whom as governor of 
 Syria the erection of the new province was entrusted, was 
 a magistrate of repute, and quite familiar with the affairs 
 of the East, and the several reports confirm by what they 
 say or by their silence the fact that the difficulties of the 
 state of things were known and taken into account. The 
 local coining of petty moneys, as formerly practised by 
 the kings, now took place in the name of the Roman 
 ruler ; but on account of the Jewish abhorrence of images 
 the head of the emperor was not even placed on the coins. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 189 
 
 Setting foot within the interior of the temple continued to 
 be forbidden in the case of every non-Jew under penalty 
 of death. 1 However averse was the attitude of Augustus 
 personally towards the Oriental worships (p. 172), he did 
 not disdain here any more than in Egypt to connect them 
 in their home with the imperial government ; magnificent 
 presents of Augustus, of Livia, and of other members 
 of the imperial house adorned the sanctuary of the Jews, 
 and according to appointment of the emperor the smoke 
 of the sacrifice of a bullock and two lambs rose daily 
 there to the " Supreme God." The Roman soldiers were 
 directed, when they were on service at Jerusalem, to leave 
 the standards with the effigies of the emperor at Caesarea, 
 and, when a governor under Tiberius omitted to do so, the 
 government ultimately answered the urgent entreaties of 
 the pious and left matters on the old footing. Indeed, when 
 the Roman troops were to march through Jerusalem on 
 an expedition against the Arabians, they obtained another 
 route for the march in consequence of the scruples enter- 
 tained by the priests against the images on the standards. 
 When that same governor dedicated to the emperor at the 
 royal castle in Jerusalem shields without imagery, and the 
 pious took offence at it, Tiberius commanded the same to 
 be taken away, and to be hung up in the temple of Augustus 
 at Caesarea. The festival dress of the high priest, which 
 was kept in Roman custody at the castle and hence had 
 to be purified from such profanation for seven days before 
 
 1 On the marble screen (dptcpa-KTos), 
 which marked off the inner court of 
 the temple, were placed for that 
 reason tablets of warning in the Latin 
 and Greek language (Josephus, Bell. 
 Jud. v. 5, 2 ; vi. 2, 4 ; Arch. xv. 
 11, 5). One of the latter, which has 
 recently been found {Revue Archeolo- 
 gique, xxiii. 1 8 72, p. 220), and is 
 now in the public museum of Con- 
 stantinople, is to this effect : pvf)6' tva. 
 dWoyevfj elcnropeijeadai evrbs tov irepl 
 rb lepbv rpvtpdicTov Kai TrepifioKov. 8s 
 d'&v \rj<p9fj, eavrq) atrios SaraL Bid to 
 i^aKoXovdeXv Qdvarov . The iota in the 
 dative is present, and the writing good 
 
 and suitable for the early imperial 
 period. These tablets were hardly set 
 up by the Jewish kings, who would 
 scarcely have added a Latin text, and 
 had no cause to threaten the penalty 
 of death with this singular anony- 
 mity. If they were set up by the 
 Roman government, both are ex- 
 plained ; Titus also says (in Josephus, 
 Bell. Jud. vi. 2, 4), in an appeal to 
 the Jews : oi>x y/xeis toi)s vireppdpTas 
 vfuv dvaipeiv eTrerpi^j/a/xev, kcLv "Pto/u.at6s 
 rts y ; — If the tablet really bears 
 traces of axe-cuts, these came from 
 the soldiers of Titus. 
 
JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 it was put on, was delivered up to the faithful upon their 
 complaint ; and the commandant of the castle was directed 
 to give himself no further concern about it Certainly it 
 could not be asked of the multitude that it should feel 
 the consequences of the incorporation less heavily, because 
 it had itself brought them about. Nor is it to be main- 
 tained that the annexation of the land passed off without 
 oppression for the inhabitants, and that they had no 
 ground to complain ; such arrangements have never been 
 carried into effect without difficulties and disturbances of 
 the peace. The number, moreover, of unrighteous and 
 violent deeds perpetrated by individual governors must 
 not have been smaller in Judaea than elsewhere. In the 
 very beginning of the reign of Tiberius the Jews, like the 
 Syrians, complained of the pressure of the taxes ; especially 
 the prolonged administration of Pontius Pilatus is charged 
 with all the usual official crimes by a not unfair observer. 
 But Tiberius, as the same Jew says, had during the 
 twenty-three years of his reign maintained the time- 
 hallowed holy customs, and in no part set them aside or 
 violated them. This is the more to be recognised, seeing 
 that the same emperor in the West interfered against the 
 Jews more emphatically than any other (p. 172), and thus 
 the long-suffering and caution shown by him in Judaea 
 cannot be traced back to personal favour for Judaism. 
 The Jewish • In spite of all this both the opposition on principle to 
 opposition. R oman government and the violent efforts at self- 
 help on the part of the faithful developed themselves even 
 in this time of peace. The payment of tribute was 
 assailed, not perchance merely because it was oppressive, 
 but as being godless. " Is it allowable," asks the Rabbi in 
 the Gospel, " to pay the census to Caesar ?" The ironical 
 answer which he received did not at any rate suffice for 
 all ; there were saints, though possibly not in great number, 
 who thought themselves polluted if they touched a coin 
 with the emperor's image. This was something new — an 
 advance in the theology of opposition ; the kings Seleucus 
 and Antiochus had at least not been circumcised, and had 
 likewise received tribute in silver pieces bearing their 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 191 
 
 image. Such was the theory ; the practical application of 
 it was made, not certainly by the high council of Jeru- 
 salem, in which, under the influence of the imperial 
 government, the more pliant notables of the land directed 
 the vote, but by Judas the Galilean from Gamala on 
 the lake of Gennesaret, who, as Gamaliel subsequently 
 reminded this high council, " stood up in the days of the 
 census, and behind him the people rose in revolt." He 
 spoke out what all thought, that the so-called census was 
 bondage, and that it was a disgrace for the Jew to recog- 
 nise another lord over him than the Lord of Zebaoth ; 
 but that He helped only those who helped themselves. 
 If not many followed his call to arms, and he ended his 
 life, after a few months, on the scaffold, the holy dead was 
 more dangerous to the unholy victors than the living man. 
 He and his followers were regarded by the later Jews 
 alongside of the Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes, as 
 the fourth " School ;" at that time they were called the 
 Zealots, afterwards they called themselves Sicarii, " men 
 of the knife." Their teaching was simple : God alone is 
 Lord, death indifferent, freedom all in all. This teaching 
 remained, and the children and grandchildren of Judas 
 became the leaders of the later insurrections. 
 
 If the Roman government had under the first two The em- 
 regents, taken on the whole, skilfully and patiently sufficed and°the a 
 for the task of repressing, as far as possible, these ex- Jews- 
 plosive elements, the next change on the throne brought 
 matters close to the catastrophe. The change was saluted 
 with rejoicing, as in the whole empire, so specially by the 
 Jews in Jerusalem and Alexandria ; and, after the unsoci- 
 able and unloved old man, the new youthful ruler Gaius 
 was extravagantly extolled in both quarters. But speedily 
 out of trifling occasions there was developed a formidable 
 quarrel. A grandson of the first Herod and of the beau- 
 tiful Mariamne, named after the protector and friend of 
 his grandfather Herod Agrippa, about the most worthless 
 and abandoned of the numerous Oriental princes' sons 
 living in Rome, but nevertheless or on that very account 
 the favourite and youthful friend of the new emperor, 
 
192 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 hitherto known solely by his dissoluteness and his debts, 
 had obtained from his protector, to whom he had been 
 the first to convey the news of the death of Tiberius, one of 
 the vacant Jewish petty principalities as a gift, and the title 
 Jew-hunt of king along with it. This prince in the year 38, on the 
 andria. X wa y to ^ s new kingdom, came to the city of Alexandria, 
 where he a few months previously had attempted as a 
 runaway bill-debtor to borrow among the Jewish bankers. 
 When he showed himself there in public in his regal dress 
 with his splendidly equipped halberdiers, this naturally 
 stirred up the non- Jewish inhabitants of the great city — 
 fond as it was of ridicule and of scandal — who bore 
 anything but good will to the Jews, to a corresponding 
 parody ; nor did the matter stop there. It culminated in 
 a furious hunting-out of the Jews. The Jewish houses 
 which lay detached were plundered and burnt ; the Jewish 
 ships lying in the harbour were pillaged ; the Jews that 
 were met with in the non-Jewish quarters were maltreated 
 and slain. But against the purely Jewish quarters they 
 could effect nothing by violence. Then the leaders lighted 
 on the whim of consecrating the synagogues, which were 
 the object of their marked attentions, so far as these 
 still stood, collectively as temples of the new ruler, and of 
 setting up statues of him in all of them — in the chief 
 synagogue a statue on a quadriga. That the emperor 
 Gaius deemed himself, as seriously as his confused mind 
 could do so, a real and corporeal god, everybody knew — 
 the Jews and the governor as well. The latter, Avillius 
 Flaccus, an able man, and, under Tiberius, an excellent 
 administrator, but now hampered by the disfavour in 
 which he stood with the new emperor, and expecting 
 every moment recall and impeachment, did not disdain 
 to use the opportunity for his rehabilitation. 1 He not 
 
 1 The special hatred of Gaius Jews imagined, because the governor 
 against the Jews (Philo, Leg. 20) was could not reasonably believe that he 
 not the cause, but the consequence, would recommend himself to the new 
 of the Alexandrian Jew-hunt. Since emperor by abandoning the Jews, the 
 therefore the understanding of the question certainly arises, why the 
 leaders of the Jew -hunt with the leaders of those hostile to the Jews 
 governor (Philo, in Flacc. 4) cannot chose this very moment for the Jew- 
 have subsisted on the footing that the hunt, and above all, why the governor, 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 193 
 
 merely gave orders by edict to put no hindrance in the 
 way of setting up the statues in the synagogues, but he 
 entered directly into the Jew-hunting. He ordained the 
 abolition of the Sabbath. He declared further in his 
 edicts that these tolerated foreigners had possessed them- 
 selves unallowably of the best part of the town ; they 
 were restricted to a single one of the five wards, and all 
 the other Jewish houses were abandoned to the rabble, 
 while masses of the ejected inhabitants lay without shelter 
 on the shore. No remonstrance was even listened to ; 
 eight and thirty members of the council of the elders, 
 which then presided over the Jews instead of the Ethnarch, 1 
 were scourged in the open circus before all the people. 
 Four hundred houses lay in ruins ; trade and commerce 
 were suspended ; the factories stood still. There was no 
 help left except with the emperor. Before him appeared 
 the two Alexandrian deputations, that of the Jews led 
 by the formerly (p. 170) mentioned Philo, a scholar of 
 Neojudaic leanings, and of a heart more gentle than 
 brave, but who withal faithfully took the part of his people 
 in this distress ; that of the enemies of the Jews, led by 
 Apion, also an Alexandrian scholar and author, the 
 " world's clapper " \cymbalum tnwidi], as the emperor 
 Tiberius called him, full of big words and still bigger lies, 
 
 whose excellence Philo so emphati- the earlier Augustan period the Jews 
 cally acknowledges, allowed it, and, in Alexandria were under an Ethnarch 
 at least in its further course, took {Geogr. xvii. 1, 13, p. 798, and in 
 personal part in it. Probably things Josephus, Arch. xiv. 7, 2). There- 
 occurred as they are narrated above : upon, when under Augustus the Eth- 
 hatred and envy towards the Jews narchos or Genarchos, as he was 
 had long been fermenting in Alex- called, died, a council of the elders 
 andria (Josephus, Bell. Jiid.\\. 18, 9; took his place (Philo, Leg. 10); yet 
 Thilo, Leg. 18) ; the abeyance of the Augustus, as Claudius states (Josephus, 
 old stern government, and the evident Arch. xix. 5, 2), "did not prohibit the 
 disfavour in which the prefect stood Jews from appointing an Ethnarch," 
 with Gaius, gave room for the tumult ; which probably is meant to signify 
 the arrival of Agrippa furnished the that the choice of a single president 
 occasion ; the adroit conversion of the was only omitted for this time, not 
 synagogues into temples of Gaius abolished once for all. Under Gaius 
 stamped the Jews as enemies of the there were evidently only elders of 
 emperor, and, after this was done, the Jewish body ; and also under 
 Flaccus must certainly have seized on Vespasian theseare metwith (Josephus, 
 the persecution to rehabilitate himself Bell. vii. 10, 1). An archon of the 
 thereby with the emperor. Jews in Antioch is named in Josephus, 
 1 When Strabo was in Egypt in Bell. vii. 3, 3. 
 VOL. II. 1 3 
 
194 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 of the most assured omniscience 1 and unlimited faith in 
 himself, conversant, if not with men, at any rate with 
 their worthlessness, a celebrated master of discourse as of 
 the art of misleading, ready for action, witty, unabashed, 
 and unconditionally loyal. The result of the discussion 
 was settled from the outset ; the emperor received the 
 deputies while he was inspecting the works designed in his 
 gardens, but instead of giving a hearing to the suppliants, 
 he put to them sarcastic questions, which the enemies of 
 the Jews in defiance of all etiquette accompanied with 
 loud laughter, and, as he was in good humour, he confined 
 himself to expressing his regret that these otherwise good 
 people should be so unhappily constituted as not to be able 
 to understand his innate divine nature — as to which he 
 was beyond doubt in earnest. Apion thus gained his 
 case, and, wherever it pleased the adversaries of the Jews, 
 the synagogues were changed into temples of Gaius. 
 The statue But the matter was not confined to these dedications 
 ofthe_em- introduced by the street-youth of Alexandria. In the 
 
 peror in the J J 
 
 temple of year 39 the governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, received 
 Jerusalem. orders from t ^ e emperor to march with his legions into 
 Jerusalem, and to set up in the temple the statue of the 
 emperor. The governor, an honourable official of the 
 school of Tiberius, was alarmed ; Jews from all the land, 
 men and women, gray-haired and children, flocked to him, 
 first to Ptolemais in Syria, then to Tiberias in Galilee, to 
 entreat his mediation that the outrage might not take 
 place ; the fields throughout the country were not tilled, 
 and the desperate multitudes declared that they would 
 rather suffer death by the sword or famine than be willing 
 to look on at this abomination. In reality the governor 
 ventured to delay the execution of the orders and to make 
 counter-representations, although he knew that his head 
 was at stake. At the same time the king Agrippa, lately 
 mentioned, went in person to Rome to procure from his 
 
 1 Apion spoke and wrote on all ceipts of Apicius ; but above all he 
 
 and sundry matters, upon the metals made his fortune by his discourses 
 
 and the Roman letters, on magic and upon Homer, which acquired for him 
 
 concerning the Hetaerae, on the early honorary citizenship in numerous 
 
 history of Egypt and the cookery re- Greek cities. He had discovered 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 195 
 
 friend the recall of the orders. The emperor in fact 
 desisted from his desire, in consequence, it is said, of his 
 good humour when under the influence of wine being 
 adroitly turned to account by the Jewish prince. But at 
 the same time he restricted the concession to the single 
 temple of Jerusalem, and sent nevertheless to the governor 
 on account of his disobedience a sentence of death, which 
 indeed, accidentally delayed, was not carried into exe- 
 cution. Gaius now resolved to break the resistance of the 
 Jews ; the enjoined march of the legions shows that he 
 had this time weighed beforehand the consequences of 
 his order. Since those occurrences the Egyptians, ready 
 to believe in his divinity, had his full affection just as the 
 obstinate and simple-minded Jews had his corresponding 
 hatred ; reserved as he was and accustomed to grant 
 favours in order afterwards to revoke them, the worst 
 could not but appear merely postponed. He was on the 
 point of departing for Alexandria in order there to receive 
 in person the incense of his altars ; and the statue, which 
 he thought of erecting to himself in Jerusalem, was — it is 
 said — quietly in preparation, when, in January 41, the 
 dagger of Chaerea delivered, among other things, the 
 temple of Jehovah from the monster. 
 
 The short season of suffering left behind it no outward Jewish dis 
 consequences ; with the god his altars fell. But yet the p0Sltl0ns - 
 traces of it remained on both sides. The history, which 
 is here being told, is that of an increasing hatred between 
 Jews and non-Jews, and in it the three years' persecution 
 of the Jews under Gaius marks a section and an advance. 
 The hatred of Jews and the Jew-hunts were as old as the 
 Diaspora itself ; these privileged and autonomous Oriental 
 communities within the Hellenic could not but develop 
 them as necessarily as the marsh generates the malaria. 
 
 that Homer had begun his Iliad of the suitors ; indeed he affirmed that 
 
 with the unsuitable word firjvis for he had conjured up Homer himself 
 
 the reason that the first two letters, from the nether world to question 
 
 as numerals, exhibit the number of him about his native country, and 
 
 the books of the two epics which he that Homer had come and had told 
 
 was to write ; he named the guest- it to him, but had bound him not to 
 
 friend in Ithaca, with whom he had betray it to others, 
 made inquiries as to the draught-board 
 
196 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book viii. 
 
 But such a Jew-hunt as the Alexandrian of the year 38, 
 instigated by defective Hellenism and directed at once by 
 the supreme authority and by the low rabble, the older 
 Greek and Roman history has not to show. The far 
 way from the evil desire of the individual to the evil deed 
 of the collective body was thus traversed, and it was 
 shown what those so disposed had to will and to do, 
 and were under circumstances also able to do. That this 
 revelation was felt also on the Jewish side, is not to be 
 doubted, although we are not in a position to adduce 
 documentary evidence in support of it. 1 But a far deeper 
 impression than that of the Jew-hunt at Alexandria was 
 graven on the minds of the Jews by the statue of the god 
 Gaius in the Holy of Holies. The thing had been done 
 once already ; a like proceeding of the king of Syria, 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, had been followed by the rising of 
 the Maccabees and the victorious restoration of the free 
 iii. 61. national state (iii. 64). That Epiphanes — the Anti- 
 Messiah who ushers in the Messiah, as the prophet Daniel 
 had, certainly after the event, delineated him — was thence- 
 forth to every Jew the prototype of abomination ; it was 
 no matter of indifference, that the same conception came 
 to be with equal warrant attached to a Roman emperor, 
 or rather to the image of the Roman ruler in general. 
 Since that fateful edict the Jews never ceased to dread 
 that another emperor might issue a like command ; and so 
 far certainly with reason, as according to the organisation 
 of the Roman polity such an enactment depended solely 
 on the momentary pleasure of the ruler for the time. 
 The A P o- This Jewish hatred of the worship of the emperor and of 
 John 336 of imperialism itself, is depicted with glowing colours in the 
 
 1 The writings of Philo, which of by what they found it convenient 
 
 bring before us this whole catastrophe to say, particularly in their works 
 
 with incomparable reality, nowhere written in Greek. If the Book of 
 
 strike this chord ; but, apart even from Wisdom and the third book of 
 
 the fact that this rich and aged man had Maccabees are in reality directed 
 
 in him more of the good man than of against the Alexandrian persecution 
 
 the good hater, it is obvious of itself of the Jews (Hausrath, Neutestam. 
 
 that these consequences of the occur- Zeitgesch. ii. 259 ff.) — which we may 
 
 rences on the Jewish side were not add is anything but certain — they are, if 
 
 publicly set forth. What the Jews possible, couched in a still tamer tone 
 
 thought and felt may not be judged than the writings of Philo. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. i97 
 
 Apocalypse of John, for which, chiefly on that account, 
 Rome is the harlot of Babylon and the common enemy 
 of mankind. 1 Still less matter of indifference was the 
 
 1 This is perhaps the right way of 
 apprehending the Jewish conceptions, 
 in which the positive facts regularly 
 run away into generalities. In the 
 accounts of the Anti-Messias and of 
 the Antichrist no positive elements 
 are found to suit the emperor Gaius ; 
 the view that would explain the name 
 Armillus, which the Talmud assigns 
 to the former, by the circumstance 
 that the emperor Gaius sometimes 
 wore women's bracelets (armillae, 
 Suetonius, Gai. 52), cannot be seri- 
 ously maintained. In the Apocalypse 
 of John — the classical revelation of 
 Jewish self-esteem and of hatred 
 towards the Romans — the picture of 
 the Anti-Messias is associated rather 
 with Nero, who did not cause his 
 image to be set up in the Holy of 
 Holies. This composition belongs, 
 as is well known, to a time and a 
 tendency, which still viewed Chris- 
 tianity as essentially a Jewish sect ; 
 those elected and marked by the 
 angel are all Jews, 12,000 from each 
 of the twelve tribes, and have prece- 
 dence over the "great multitude of 
 other righteous ones," i.e. of proselytes 
 (ch. vii. ; comp. ch. xii. 1). It 
 was written, demonstrably, after 
 Nero's fall, and when his return from 
 the East was expected. Now it is 
 true that a pseudo-Nero appeared im- 
 mediately after the death of the real 
 one, and was executed at the begin- 
 ning of the following year (Tacitus, 
 Hist. ii. 8, 9) ; but it is not of this 
 one that John is thinking, for the very 
 exact account makes no mention, as 
 John does, of the Parthians in the 
 matter, and for John there is a con- 
 siderable interval between the fall of 
 Nero and his return, the latter even 
 still lying in the future. His Nero 
 is the person who, under Vespasian, 
 found adherents in the region of the 
 Euphrates, whom king Artabanus 
 acknowledged under Titus and pre- 
 pared to reinstate in Rome by military 
 
 force, and whom at length the Par- 
 thians surrendered, after prolonged 
 negotiations, about the year 88, to 
 Domitian. To these events the 
 Apocalypse corresponds quite exactly. 
 
 On the other hand, in a writing of 
 this character no inference as to the 
 state of the siege at the time can 
 possibly be drawn, from the circum- 
 stance that, according to xi. 1, 2, only 
 the outer court, and not the Holy 
 of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem 
 was given into the power of the 
 heathen ; here everything in the de- 
 tails is imaginary, and this trait is 
 certainly either invented at pleasure 
 or, if the view be preferred, possibly 
 based on orders given to the Roman 
 soldiers, who were encamped in Jeru- 
 salem after its destruction, not to set 
 foot in what was formerly the Holy 
 of Holies. The foundation of the 
 Apocalypse is indisputably the de- 
 struction of the earthly Jerusalem, and 
 the prospect thereby for the first time 
 opened up of its future ideal restora- 
 tion ; in place of the razing of the 
 city which had taken place there can- 
 not possibly be put the mere expecta- 
 tion of its capture. If, then, it is 
 said of the seven heads of the dragon : 
 fia.<jChei$ ewTd elaiv oi irivre 'iireaav, 
 Kai eh iariv, 6 &\\os otiiro) 'fjkdev, ml 
 8rav fXdr) dXlyov avrbv Sel pelvac (xvii. 
 10), the five, presumably, are Augustus, 
 Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, the 
 sixth Vespasian, the seventh unde- 
 fined ; "the beast which was, and is 
 not, and is itself the eighth, but of 
 the seven," is, of course, Nero. The 
 undefined seventh is incongruous, like 
 so much in this gorgeous, but contra- 
 dictory and often tangled imagery ; 
 and it is added, not because the num- 
 ber seven was employed, which was 
 easily to be got at by including Caesar, 
 but because the writer hesitated to 
 predicate immediately of the reigning 
 emperor the short government of the 
 last ruler and his overthrow by the 
 
198 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. book viii. 
 
 parallel, which naturally suggested itself, of the conse- 
 quences. Mattathias of Modein had not been more than 
 Judas the Galilean ; the insurrection of the patriots 
 against the Syrian king was almost as hopeless as the 
 
 returning Nero. But one cannot pos- 
 sibly — as is done after others by 
 Renan — by including Caesar in the 
 reckoning, recognise in the sixth em- 
 peror, " who is," Nero, who imme- 
 diately afterward is designated as he 
 who "was and is not," and in the 
 seventh, who "has not yet come and 
 will not rule long," even the aged 
 Galba, who, according to Renan's 
 view, was ruling at the time. It is 
 clear that the latter does not belong 
 at all to such a series, any more than 
 Otho and Vitellius. 
 
 It is more important, however, to 
 oppose the current conception, accord- 
 ing to which the polemic is directed 
 against the Neronian persecution of the 
 Christians and the siege or the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem, whereas it is pointed 
 against the Roman provincial govern- 
 ment generally, and in particular 
 against the worship of the emperors. 
 If of the seven emperors Nero alone 
 is named (by his numerical expres- 
 sion), this is so, not because he was 
 the worst of the seven, but because 
 the naming of the reigning emperor, 
 while prophesying a speedy end of his 
 reign in a published writing, had its 
 risk, and some consideration towards 
 the one "who is" beseems even a 
 prophet. Nero's name was given up, 
 and besides, the legend of his healing 
 and of his return was in every one's 
 mouth ; thereby he has become for 
 the Apocalypse the representative of 
 the Roman imperial rule, and the 
 Antichrist. The crime of the monster 
 of the sea, and of his image and in- 
 strument, the monster of the land, is 
 not the violence to the city of Jeru- 
 salem (xi. 2) — which appears not as 
 their misdeed, but rather as a portion 
 of the world-judgment (in which case 
 also consideration for the reigning 
 emperor may have been at work) — 
 but the divine worship, which the 
 heathen pay to the monster of the 
 
 sea (xiii. 8 : TrpoffKvvqaovaiv avrbv 
 wavres ol KaroLKovvres iirl ttjs Y??s), 
 and which the monster of the land — 
 called for that reason also the pseudo- 
 prophet — demands and compels for 
 that of the sea (xiii. 12 : 7rotet rrjv 
 yrjv Kal robs Karoucovvras iv avrrj tva. 
 irpoo~Kvvr)o~ovo~LV to drjpiov to irp&Tov, oS 
 edepaTrevOr] i] TrXrjyr] tov davarov clvtov) ; 
 above all, he is upbraided with the 
 desire to make an image for the for- 
 mer (xiii. 14 : \iyuiv toIs KaroiKovaiv 
 ijrl TTjs yrjs, TroLrjaai elicbva. t<£ Oypiq) 8s 
 
 '^rjaev, comp. xiv. 9 ; xvi. 2 ; xix. 
 20). This, it is plain, is partly the 
 imperial government beyond the sea, 
 partly the lieutenancy on the Asiatic 
 continent, not of this or that province 
 or even of this or that person, but 
 generally such representation of the 
 emperor as the provincials of Asia and 
 Syria knew. If trade and commerce 
 appear associated with the use of the 
 Xa-payfia of the monster of the sea 
 (xiii. 16, 17), there lies clearly at 
 bottom an abhorrence of the image 
 and legend of the imperial money — 
 certainly transformed in a fanciful 
 way, as in fact Satan makes the image 
 of the emperor speak. These very 
 governors appear afterwards (xvii.) as 
 the ten horns, which are assigned to 
 the monster in its copy, and are here 
 called, quite correctly, the " ten 
 kings, which have not the royal dig- 
 nity, but have authority like kings ;" 
 the number, which is taken over from 
 the vision of Daniel, may not, it is 
 true, be taken too strictly. 
 
 In the sentences of death pro- 
 nounced over the righteous, John is 
 thinking of the regular judicial pro- 
 cedure on account of the refusal to 
 worship the emperor's image, such as 
 the Letters of Pliny describe (xiii. 15 : 
 Troirjar] 'iva 6V01 eav fx/) ivpoo'KVv^jO'tJiai.v 
 T7)v eiKova too dr/piov awoKTavOuo'iv, 
 comp. vi. 9 ; xx. 4). When stress is 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 199 
 
 insurrection against the monster beyond the sea. Historical 
 parallels in practical application are dangerous elements of 
 opposition ; only too rapidly does the structure of long 
 years of wise government come to be shaken. 
 
 The government of Claudius turned back on both Claudius 
 
 13 _ . t x. 1 ,1 and the 
 
 sides into the paths of Tiberius. In Italy there was Jews> 
 repeated, not indeed precisely the ejection of the Jews, 
 since there could not but arise a conviction that this course 
 was impracticable, but at any rate a prohibition of the 
 exercise of their worship 1 in common, which, it is true, 
 amounted nearly to the same thing and probably came as 
 little into execution. Alongside of this edict of intoler- 
 ance and in an opposite sense, by an ordinance embracing 
 the whole empire the Jews were freed from those public 
 
 laid on these sentences of death being 
 executed with special frequency in 
 Rome (xvii. 6 ; xvii. 24), what is 
 thereby meant is the execution of sen- 
 tences wherein men were condemned 
 to fight as gladiators or with wild 
 beasts, which often could not take 
 place on the spot where they were 
 pronounced, and, as is well known, 
 took place chiefly in Rome itself 
 (Modestinus, Dig. xlviii. 19, 31). 
 The Neronian executions on account 
 of alleged incendiarism do not formally 
 belong to the class of religious pro- 
 cesses at all, and it is only preposses- 
 sion that can refer the martyrs' blood 
 shed in Rome, of which John speaks, 
 exclusively or pre-eminently to these 
 events. The current conceptions as 
 to the so-called persecutions of the 
 Christians labour under a defective 
 apprehension of the rule of law and 
 the practice of law subsisting in the 
 Roman empire ; in reality the perse- 
 cution of the Christians was a stand- 
 ing matter as was that of robbers ; 
 only such regulations were put into 
 practice at times more gently or 
 even negligently, at other times more 
 strictly, and were doubtless on occa- 
 sion specially enforced from high 
 quarters. The "war against the 
 saints" is only a subsequent interpo- 
 lation on the part of some, for whom 
 
 John's words did not suffice (xiii. 7). 
 The Apocalypse is a remarkable evi- 
 dence of the national and religious 
 hatred of the Jews towards the Occi- 
 dental government ; but to illustrate 
 with these colours the Neronian tale 
 of horrors, as Renan does in parti- 
 cular, is to shift the place of the facts 
 and to detract from their depth of 
 significance. The Jewish national 
 hatred did not wait for the conquest 
 of Jerusalem to originate it, and it 
 made, as might be expected, no dis- 
 tinction between the good and the 
 bad Caesar ; its Anti-Messias is named 
 Nero, doubtless, but not less Ves- 
 pasian or Marcus. 
 
 1 The circumstance that Suetonius 
 {Claud. 25) names a certain Chrestus 
 as instigator of the constant troubles 
 in Rome, that had in the first instance 
 called forth these measures (accord- 
 ing to him the expulsion from Rome ; 
 in contrast to Dio, Ix. 6) has been 
 without sufficient reason conceived as 
 a misunderstanding of the movement 
 called forth by Christ among Jews 
 and proselytes. The Book of Acts 
 xviii. 2, speaks only of the expulsion of 
 the Jews. At any rate it is not to be 
 doubted that, with the attitude at that 
 time of the Christians to Judaism, 
 they too fell under the edict. 
 
200 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book viii. 
 
 obligations which were not compatible with their religious 
 convictions ; whereby, as respected service in war particu- 
 larly, there was doubtless conceded only what hitherto 
 it had not been possible to compel. The exhortation, 
 expressed at the close of this edict, to the Jews to exercise 
 now on their part also greater moderation, and to refrain 
 from the insulting of persons of another faith, shows that 
 there had not been wanting transgressions also on the 
 Jewish side. In Egypt as in Palestine the religious 
 arrangements were, at least on the whole, re-established 
 as they had subsisted before Gaius, although in Alexan- 
 dria the Jews hardly obtained back all that they had 
 possessed j 1 the insurrectionary movements, which had 
 broken out, or were on the point of breaking out, in the 
 one case as in the other, thereupon disappeared of them- 
 selves. In Palestine Claudius even went beyond the 
 Agrippa. system of Tiberius and committed the whole former terri- 
 tory of Herod to a native prince, that same Agrippa who 
 accidentally had come to be friendly with Claudius and 
 useful to him in the crises of his accession. It was cer- 
 tainly the design of Claudius to resume the system fol- 
 lowed at the time of Herod and to obviate the dangers 
 of the immediate contact between the Romans and Jews. 
 But Agrippa, leading an easy life and even as a prince in 
 constant financial embarrassment, good-humoured, more- 
 over, and more disposed to be on good terms with his 
 subjects than with the distant protector, gave offence in 
 various ways to the government, for example, by the 
 strengthening the walls of Jerusalem, which he was for- 
 bidden to carry further ; and the towns that adhered to 
 the Romans, Caesarea and Sebaste, as well as the troops 
 organised in the Roman fashion, were disinclined to him. 
 When he died early and suddenly in the year 44, it 
 appeared hazardous to entrust the position, important in 
 
 1 The Jews there at least appear them in so striking a manner, the 
 
 later to have had only the fourth of Jewish authors Josephus and Philo, 
 
 the five wards of the city in their pos- who lay stress on all the imperial 
 
 session (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 18, 8). marks of favour shown to the Jews, 
 
 Probably, if the 400 houses that were would not have been silent on the 
 
 razed had been given back again to subject. 
 
JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 201 
 
 a political as in a military point of view, to his only son 
 of seventeen years of age, and those who wielded power in 
 the cabinet were reluctant to let out of their hands the 
 lucrative procuratorships. The Claudian government had 
 here, as elsewhere, lighted on the right course, but had not 
 the energy to carry it out irrespective of accessory con- 
 siderations. A Jewish prince with Jewish soldiers might 
 exercise the government in Judaea for the Romans ; the 
 Roman magistrate and the Roman soldiers offended pro- 
 bably still more frequently through ignorance of Jewish 
 views than through intentional action in opposition to 
 them, and whatever they might undertake was on their 
 part in the eyes of believers an offence, and the most 
 indifferent occurrence a religious outrage. The demand 
 for mutual understanding and agreement was on both 
 sides just as warranted of itself as it was impossible of 
 execution. But above all a conflict between the Jewish 
 lord of the land and his subjects was a matter of tolerable 
 indifference for the empire ; every conflict between the 
 Romans and the Jews in Jerusalem widened the gulf 
 which yawned between the peoples of the West and the 
 Hebrews living along with them ; and the danger lay, 
 not in the quarrels of Palestine, but in the incompatibility 
 of the members of the empire of different nationalities who 
 were now withal coupled together by fate. 
 
 Thus the ship was driving incessantly towards the Prepara 
 
 hi- i. i j. tl0n for 
 
 whirlpool. In this ill-fated voyage all taking part lent 
 
 insurrec 
 
 their help — the Roman government and its adminis- ti° n - 
 trators, the Jewish authorities and the Jewish people. 
 The former indeed continued to show a willingness to 
 meet as far as possible all claims, fair and unfair, of the 
 Jews. When in the year 44 the procurator again entered 
 Jerusalem, the nomination of the high -priest and the 
 administration of the temple-treasure, which were com- 
 bined with the kingly office and in so far also with the 
 procuratorship, were taken from him and transferred to 
 a brother of the deceased king Agrippa, king Herod of 
 Chalcis, as well as, after his death in the year 48, to his 
 successor the younger Agrippa already mentioned. The 
 
202 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 Roman chief magistrate, on the complaint of the Jews 
 caused a Roman soldier, who, on occasion of orders to 
 plunder a Jewish village, had torn in pieces a roll of the 
 law, to be put to death. The whole weight of Roman 
 imperial justice fell, according to circumstances, even upon 
 the higher officials ; when two procurators acting alongside 
 of one another had taken part for and against in the 
 quarrel of the Samaritans and the Galileans, and their 
 soldiers had fought against one another, the imperial 
 governor of Syria, Ummidius Quadratus, was sent with 
 extraordinary full powers to Syria to punish and to 
 execute; in reality one of the guilty persons was sent into 
 banishment, and a Roman military tribune named Celer 
 was publicly beheaded in Jerusalem itself. But alongside 
 of these examples of severity stood others of a weakness 
 partaking of guilt ; in that same process the second at 
 least as guilty procurator Antonius Felix escaped punish- 
 ment, because he was the brother of the powerful menial 
 Pallas and the husband of the sister of king Agrippa. Still 
 more than with the official abuses of individual adminis- 
 trators must the government be chargeable with the fact 
 that it did not strengthen the power of the officials and 
 the number of the troops in a province so situated, and 
 continued to recruit the garrison almost exclusively from 
 the province. Insignificant as the province was, it was a 
 wretched stupidity and an ill-applied parsimony to treat it 
 after the traditional pattern ; the seasonable display of a 
 crushing superiority of force and unrelenting sternness, a 
 governor of higher rank, and a legionary camp, would have 
 saved to the province and the empire great sacrifices of 
 money, blood, and honour. 
 High- But not less at least was the fault of the Jews. The 
 
 mi'e. Stly highpriestly rule, so far as it went — and the government 
 Ananias. was but too much inclined to allow it free scope in all 
 internal affairs — was, even according to the Jewish ac- 
 counts, at no time conducted with so much violence and 
 worthlessness as in that from the death of Agrippa to the 
 outbreak of the war. The best-known and most influen- 
 tial of these priest-rulers was Ananias son of Nebedaeus, 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 203 
 
 the " whitewashed wall," as Paul called him, when this 
 spiritual judge bade his attendants smite him on the 
 mouth, because he ventured to defend himself before the 
 judgment-seat. It was laid to his charge that he bribed 
 the governor, and that by a corresponding interpretation 
 of Scripture he alienated from the lower clergy the tithe- 
 sheaves. 1 As one of the chief instigators of the war 
 between the Samaritans and the Galileans, he had stood 
 before the Roman judge. Not because the reckless 
 fanatics preponderated in the ruling circles, but because 
 these instigators of popular tumults and organisers of trials 
 for heresy lacked the moral and religious authority where- 
 by the moderate men in better times had guided the mul- 
 titude, and because they misunderstood and misused the 
 indulgence of the Roman authorities in internal affairs, 
 they were unable to mediate in a peaceful sense between 
 the foreign rule and the nation. It was under their very 
 rule that the Roman authorities were assailed with the 
 wildest and most irrational demands, and popular move- 
 ments arose of grim absurdity. Of such a nature was 
 that violent petition, which demanded and obtained the 
 blood of a Roman soldier on account of the tearing up 
 of a roll of the law. Another time there arose a popular 
 tumult, which cost the lives of many men, because a 
 Roman soldier had exhibited in the temple a part of his 
 body in unseemly nudity. Even the best of kings could 
 not have absolutely averted such lunacy ; but even the 
 most insignificant prince would not have confronted the 
 fanatical multitude with so little control of the helm as 
 these priests. 
 
 The proper result was the constant increase of the The 
 
 H * 1 T < i 1 Zea1 ' 
 
 new Maccabees. It has been customary to put the out- 
 break of the war in the year 66 ; with equal and perhaps 
 better warrant we might name for it the year 44. Since 
 the death of.Agrippa warfare in Judaea had never ceased, 
 and alongside of the local feuds, which Jews fought out 
 
 1 The question was, apparently, xviii. 28), to the priest generally, or to 
 whether the gift of the tenth sheaf the high priest (Ewald, Jiid. Gesch. 
 belonged to Aaron the priest (Numb, vi. 3 635). 
 
204 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 with Jews, there went on constantly the war of the Roman 
 troops against the seceders in the mountains, the Zealots, 
 as the Jews named them, or according to Roman designa- 
 tion, the Robbers. Both names were appropriate ; here 
 too alongside of the fanatics the decayed or decaying 
 elements of society played their part — at any rate after 
 the victory one of the first steps of the Zealots was to burn 
 the bonds for debt that were kept in the temple. Every 
 one of the abler procurators, onward from the first Cus- 
 pius Fadus, swept the land of them, and still the hydra 
 appeared afresh in greater strength. The successor of 
 Fadus, Tiberius Julius Alexander, himself sprung from a 
 Jewish family, a nephew of the above-mentioned Alexan- 
 drian scholar Philo, caused two sons of Judas the Galilean, 
 Jacob and Simon, to be crucified ; this was the seed of 
 the new Mattathias. In the streets of the towns the 
 patriots preached aloud the war, and not a few followed 
 to the desert ; these bands set on fire the houses of the 
 peaceful and rational people who refused to take part with 
 them. If the soldiers seized bandits of this sort, they 
 carried off in turn respectable people as hostages to the 
 mountains ; and very often the authorities agreed to 
 release the former in order to liberate the latter. At the 
 same time the " men of the knife " began in the capital 
 their dismal trade ; they murdered, doubtless also for 
 money — as their first victim the priest Jonathan is named, 
 as commissioning them in that case, the Roman pro- 
 curator Felix — but, if possible, at the same time as 
 patriots, Roman soldiers or countrymen of their own 
 friendly to the Romans. How, with such dispositions, . 
 should wonders and signs have failed to appear, and persons 
 who, deceived or deceiving, roused thereby the fanaticism 
 of the masses ? Under Cuspius Fadus the miracle-monger 
 Theudas led his faithful adherents to the Jordan, assuring 
 them that the waters would divide before them and swal- 
 low up the pursuing Roman horsemen, as in the times of 
 king Pharaoh. Under Felix another worker of wonders, 
 named from his native country the Egyptian, promised 
 that the walls of Jerusalem would collapse like those of 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 205 
 
 Jericho at the trumpet blast of Joshua ; and thereupon 
 four thousand knife-men followed him to the Mount of 
 Olives. In the very absurdity lay the danger. The great 
 mass of the Jewish population were small farmers, who 
 ploughed their fields and pressed their oil in the sweat of 
 their brow — more villagers than townsmen, of little culture 
 and powerful faith, closely linked to the free bands in the 
 mountains, and full of reverence for Jehovah and his 
 priests in Jerusalem as well as full of aversion towards the 
 unclean strangers. The war there was not a war between 
 one power and another for the ascendency, not even 
 properly a war of the oppressed against the oppressors for 
 the recovery of freedom ; it was not daring statesmen, 1 
 but fanatical peasants that began and waged it, and paid 
 for it with their blood. It was a further stage in the 
 history of national hatred ; on both sides continued 
 living together seemed impossible, and they encountered 
 each other with the thought of mutual extirpation. 
 
 The movement, through which the tumults were changed Outbreak of 
 into war, proceeded from Caesarea. In this urban com- J-ecJonTn 
 munity — originally Greek, and then remodelled by Herod Caesarea. 
 after the pattern of the colonies of Alexander — which had 
 
 1 It is nothing but an empty fancy, 
 when the statesman Josephus, in his 
 preface to his History of the war, puts 
 it as if the Jews of Palestine had 
 reckoned on the one hand upon a 
 rising of the Euphrates-lands, on the 
 other hand, upon the troubles in Gaul 
 and the threatening attitude of the 
 Germans and on the crises of the year 
 of four emperors. The Jewish war 
 had long been in full course when 
 Vindex appeared against Nero, and 
 the Druids really did what is here 
 assigned to the Rabbis ; and, how- 
 ever great was the importance of the 
 Jewish Diaspora in the lands of the 
 Euphrates, a Jewish expedition from 
 that quarter against the Romans of 
 the East was almost as inconceivable 
 as from Egypt and Asia Minor. 
 Doubtless some free-lances came from 
 thence, as e.g. some young princes of 
 the zealously Jewish royal house of 
 
 Adiabene (Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 19, 
 2 ; vi. 6, 4), and suppliant embassies 
 went thither from the insurgents (ib. 
 vi. 6, 2) ; but even money hardly 
 flowed to the Jews from this quarter 
 in any considerable amount. This 
 statement is characteristic of the author 
 more than of the war. If it is easy to 
 understand how the Jewish leader of 
 insurgents and subsequent courtier of 
 the Flavians was fond of comparing 
 himself with the Parthians exiled at 
 Rome, it is the less to be excused 
 that modern historical authorship 
 should walk in similar paths, and in 
 endeavouring to apprehend these 
 events as constituent parts of the his- 
 tory of the Roman court and city or 
 even of the Romano-Parthian quarrels, 
 should by this insipid introduction of 
 so-called great policy obscure the 
 fearful necessity of this tragic develop- 
 ment. 
 
206 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 developed into the first seaport of Palestine, Greeks and 
 Jews dwelt, equally entitled to civic privileges, without 
 distinction of nation and confession, the latter superior in 
 number and property. But the Hellenes, after the model 
 of the Alexandrians, and doubtless under the immediate 
 impression of the occurrences of the year 38, impugned 
 the right of citizenship of the Jewish members of the 
 community by way of complaint to the supreme authority. 
 The minister of Nero, 1 Burrus (f 62), decided in their 
 favour. It was bad to make citizenship in a town formed 
 on Jewish soil and by a Jewish government a privilege of 
 the Hellenes ; but it may not be forgotten how the Jews 
 behaved just at that time towards the Romans, and how 
 naturally they suggested to the Romans the conversion of 
 the Roman capital and the Roman head-quarters of the 
 province into a purely Hellenic urban community. The 
 decision led, as might be conceived, to vehement street 
 tumults, in which Hellenic scoffing and Jewish arrogance 
 seem to have almost balanced each other, particularly in 
 the struggle for access to the synagogue; the Roman 
 authorities interfered, as a matter of course, to the disad- 
 vantage of the Jews. These left the town, but were com- 
 pelled by the governor to return, and then all of them 
 were slain in a street riot (6th August 66). This the 
 government had at any rate not commanded, and cer- 
 tainly had not wished ; powers were unchained which 
 they themselves were no longer able to control. 
 Outbreakof If here the enemies of the Jews were the assailants, 
 rectionTn tne J ews were s0 in Jerusalem. Certainly their defenders 
 Jerusalem. i n the narrative of these occurrences assure us that the 
 procurator of Palestine at the time, Gessius Florus, in 
 order to avoid impeachment on account of his malad- 
 ministration, wished to provoke an insurrection by the 
 excessive measure of his torture ; and there is no doubt 
 that the governors of that time considerably exceeded the 
 
 1 Josephus (Arch, xx. 8, 9), makes as prefect ; but certainly the same 
 
 him indeed secretary of Nero for person is meant. He is calied 
 
 Greek correspondence, although he, TrcuSayoryfo with him as with Tacitus, 
 
 where he follows Roman sources Ann. xiii. 2 : rector imperatoriae iu- 
 
 (xx. 8, 2), designates him correctly ventae. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 207 
 
 usual measure of worthlessness and oppression. But, if 
 Florus in fact pursued such a plan, it miscarried. For 
 according to these very reports the prudent and the pos- 
 sessors of property among the Jews, and with them king 
 Agrippa II., familiar with the government of the temple, 
 and just at that time present in Jerusalem — he had mean- 
 while exchanged the rule of Chalcis for that of Batanaea 
 — lulled the masses so far, that the riotous assemblages 
 and the interference against them kept within the measure 
 that had been usual in the country for years. But the 
 advances made by Jewish theology were more dangerous 
 than the disorder of the streets and the robber patriots of 
 the mountains. The earlier Judaism had in a liberal 
 fashion opened the gates of its faith to foreigners ; it is 
 true that only those who belonged, in the strict sense, to 
 their religion were admitted to the interior of the Temple, 
 but as proselytes of the gate all were admitted without 
 ceremony into the outer courts, and even the non-Jew 
 was here allowed to pray on his part and offer sacrifices 
 to the Lord Jehovah. Thus, as we have already men- 
 tioned (p. 189), sacrifice was offered daily there for the 
 Roman emperor on the basis of an endowment of Augus- 
 tus. These sacrifices of non-Jews were forbidden by the Eieazar. 
 master of the temple at this time, Eieazar, son of the 
 above-mentioned high priest Ananias, a passionate young 
 man of rank, personally blameless and brave and, so far, 
 an entire contrast to his father, but more dangerous through 
 his virtues than the latter was through his vices. Vainly it 
 was pointed out to him that this was as offensive for the 
 Romans as dangerous for the country, and absolutely at 
 variance with usage ; he resolved to abide by the im- 
 provement of piety and the exclusion of the sovereign 
 of the land from worship. Believers in Judaism had for 
 long been divided into those who placed their trust in the 
 Lord of Zebaoth alone and endured the Roman rule till 
 it should please Him to realise the kingdom of heaven on 
 earth, and the more practical men, who had resolved to 
 establish the kingdom of heaven with their own hand and 
 held themselves assured of the help of the Lord of Hosts 
 
208 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. book viii. 
 
 in the pious work, or, by their watchwords, into the Phari- 
 sees and the Zealots. The number and the repute of the 
 latter were constantly on the increase. An old saying 
 was discovered that about this time a man would proceed 
 from Judaea and gain the dominion of the world ; people 
 believed this the more readily because it was so very 
 absurd, and the oracle contributed not a little to render 
 the masses more fanatical, 
 struggle of The moderate party perceived the danger, and resolved 
 victory of to P ut down the fanatics by force ; it asked for troops 
 the Zealots, from the Romans in Caesarea and from king Agrippa. 
 
 From the former no support came ; Agrippa sent a 
 number of horsemen. On the other hand the patriots 
 and the knife-men flocked into the city, among them the 
 wildest Manahim, also one of the sons of the oft-named 
 Judas of Galilee. They were the stronger, and soon were 
 masters in all the city. The handful of Roman soldiers, 
 which kept garrison in the castle adjoining the temple, 
 was quickly overpowered and put to death. The neigh- 
 bouring king's palace, with the strong towers belonging 
 to it, where the adherents of the moderate party, a number 
 of Romans under the tribune Metilius, and the soldiers of 
 Agrippa were stationed, offered as little resistance. To 
 the latter, on their desire to capitulate, free departure was 
 allowed, but was refused to the Romans ; when they at 
 length surrendered in return for assurance of life, they 
 were first disarmed, and then put to death with the single 
 exception of the officer, who promised to undergo circum- 
 cision and so was pardoned as a Jew. Even the leaders 
 of the moderates, including the father and the brother of 
 Eleazar, became the victims of the popular rage, which 
 was still more savagely indignant at the associates of the 
 Romans than at the Romans themselves. Eleazar was 
 himself alarmed at his victory ; between the two leaders 
 of the fanatics, himself and Manahim, a bloody hand- 
 to-hand conflict took place after the victory, perhaps 
 on account of the broken capitulation : Manahim 
 was captured and executed. But the holy city was 
 free, and the Roman detachment stationed in Jerusalem 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 209 
 
 was annihilated; the new Maccabees had conquered, like 
 the old. 
 
 Thus, it is alleged on the same day, the 6th August Extension 
 66, the non-Jews in Caesarea had massacred the Jews, of the J ew ' 
 and the Jews in Jerusalem had massacred the non-Jews . s w r ' 
 and thereby was given on both sides the signal to proceed 
 with this patriotic work acceptable to God. In the neigh- 
 bouring Greek towns the Hellenes rid themselves of the 
 resident Jews after the model of Caesarea. For example, 
 in Damascus all the Jews were in the first instance shut 
 up in the gymnasium, and, on the news of a misfortune to 
 the Roman arms, were by way of precaution all of them 
 put to death. The same or something similar took place 
 in Ascalon, in Scytopolis, Hippos, Gadara, wherever the 
 Hellenes were the stronger. In the territory of king 
 A grippa, inhabited mainly by Syrians, his energetic inter- 
 vention saved the lives of the Jews of Caesarea Paneas 
 and elsewhere. In Syria Ptolemais, Tyre, and more or 
 less the other Greek communities followed ; only the two 
 greatest and most civilised cities, Antioch and Apamea, 
 as well as Sidon, were exceptions. To this is probably 
 due the fact that this movement did not spread in the 
 direction of Asia Minor. In Egypt not merely did the 
 matter come to a popular riot, which claimed numerous 
 victims, but the Alexandrian legions themselves had to 
 charge the Jews. — In necessary reaction to these Jewish 
 " vespers " the insurrection victorious in Jerusalem im- 
 mediately seized all Judaea and organised itself every- 
 where, with similar maltreatment of minorities, but in 
 other respects with rapidity and energy. 
 
 It was necessary to interfere as speedily as possible, Vain expe- 
 and to prevent the further extension of the conflagration : £ itio . n of 
 
 1 \e it. Cestius 
 
 on the first news the Roman governor of Syria, Gaius Gaiius. 
 Cestius Gallus, marched with his troops against the in- 
 surgents. He brought up about 20,000 Roman soldiers 
 and 13,000 belonging to client-states, without including 
 the numerous Syrian militia ; took Joppa, where the whole 
 body of citizens was put to death ; and already in Sep- 
 tember stood before, and in fact in, Jerusalem itself. But 
 VOL. II. 1 a 
 
210 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 he could not breach the strong walls of the king's palace 
 and of the temple, and as little made use of the oppor- 
 tunity several times offered to him of getting possession 
 of the town through the moderate party. Whether the 
 task was insoluble or whether he was not equal to it, 
 he soon gave up the siege, and purchased even a hasty 
 retreat by the sacrifice of his baggage and of his rear- 
 guard. Thus Judaea in the first instance, including 
 Idumaea and Galilee, remained in, or came into, the hands 
 of the exasperated Jews ; the Samaritan district also was 
 compelled to join. The mainly Hellenic coast towns, 
 Anthedon and Gaza, were destroyed, Caesarea and the 
 other Greek towns were retained with difficulty. If the 
 rising did not go beyond the boundaries of Palestine, that 
 was not the fault of the government, but was rather due 
 to the national dislike of the Syro- Hellenes towards the 
 Jews. 
 
 The Jewish The government in Rome took things in earnest, as 
 ™ arof . earnest they were. Instead of the procurator an imperial 
 
 Vespasian. J _, . TT 7 
 
 legate was sent to Palestine, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, 
 a prudent man and an experienced soldier. He obtained 
 for the conduct of the war two legions of the West, which 
 in consequence of the Parthian war were accidentally still 
 in Asia, and that Syrian legion which had suffered least 
 in the unfortunate expedition of Cestius, while the Syrian 
 army under the new governor, Gaius Licinius Mucianus — 
 Gallus had seasonably died — by the addition of another 
 legion was restored to the status which it had before. 1 To 
 
 1 It is not quite clear what were Since, excepting Syria, no Asiatic 
 
 the arrangements for the forces occupy- province was at that time furnished 
 
 ing Syria after the Parthian war was with legions, and the governor of 
 
 ended in the year 63. At its close Syria certainly in times of peace had 
 
 there were seven legions stationed in never more than four legions, the 
 
 the East, the four originally Syrian, Syrian army beyond doubt had at 
 
 3d Gallica, 6th Ferrata, 10th Fre- that time been brought back, or at 
 
 tensis, 12th Fulminata, and three least ought to have been brought 
 
 brought up from the West, the 4th back, to this footing. The four 
 
 Scythica from Moesia (I. 213), the legions which accordingly were to 
 
 5 th Macedonica, probably from the remain in Syria were, as this was 
 
 same place (I. 219; for which pro- most natural, the four old Syrian 
 
 bably an upper German legion was ones ; for the 3d had in the year 70 
 
 sent to Moesia I. 132), the 15th just marched from Syria to Moesia 
 
 Apollinaris from Pannonia (I. 219). (Suetonius, Vesp. 6; Tacitus, Hist. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 211 
 
 these burgess-troops and their auxiliaries were added the 
 previous garrison of Palestine, and lastly the forces of the 
 four client -kings of the Commagenians, the Hemesenes, 
 the Jews, and the Nabataeans, together about 50,000 
 men, including among them 1 5,000 king's soldiers. 1 In 
 the spring of the year 67 this army was brought together 
 at Ptolemais and advanced into Palestine. After the 
 
 ii. 74), and that the 6th, 10th, 12th 
 belonged to the army of Cestius 
 follows from Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 
 18, 9, c. 19, 7; vii. 1, 3. Then, 
 when the Jewish war broke out, seven 
 legions were again destined for Asia, 
 and of these four for Syria (Tacitus, 
 Hist. i. 10), three for Palestine; the 
 three legions added were just those 
 employed for the Parthian war, the 
 4th, 5th, 15th, which perhaps at that 
 time were still in course of marching 
 back to their old quarters. The 4th 
 probably went at that time defini- 
 tively to Syria, where it thenceforth 
 remained ; on the other hand, the 
 Syrian army gave off the loth to 
 Vespasian, presumably because this 
 had suffered least in the campaign of 
 Cestius. In addition he received the 
 5 th and the 15th. The 5 th and the 
 10th legions came from Alexandria 
 (Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. i, 3, c. 4, 
 2) ; but that they were brought up 
 from Egypt cannot well be conceived, 
 not merely because the 10th was one 
 of the Syrian, but especially because 
 the march by land from Alexandria 
 on the Nile to Ptolemais through the 
 middle of the insurgent territory at 
 the beginning of the Jewish war could 
 not have been so narrated by Josephus. 
 Far more probably Titus went by ship 
 from Achaia to Alexandria on the 
 Gulf of Issus, the modern Alex- 
 andretta, and brought the two legions 
 thence to Ptolemais. The orders to 
 march may have reached the 15th 
 somewhere in Asia Minor, since 
 Vespasian, doubtless in order to take 
 them over, went to Syria by land 
 (Josephus, Bell. Jud. iii. 1, 3). To 
 these three legions, with which Ves- 
 pasian began the war, there was added 
 
 under Titus a further one of the Syrian, 
 the 1 2 th. Of the four legions that 
 occupied Jerusalem the two previously 
 Syrian remained in the East, the 10th 
 in Judaea, the 12th in Cappadocia, 
 while the 5th returned to Moesia, 
 and the 15th to Pannonia (Josephus, 
 Bell. Jud. vii. 1, 3 c. 5, 3). 
 
 1 To the three legions there belonged 
 five alae and eighteen cohorts, and 
 the army of Palestine consisting of 
 one ala and five cohorts. These 
 auxilia numbered accordingly 3000 
 alarians and (since among the twenty- 
 three cohorts ten were 1000 strong, 
 thirteen 720, or probably rather only 
 420 strong ; for instead of the 
 startling QaKoalovs we expect rather 
 TpiaKoalovs QAkovto) 16,240 (or, if 
 720 is retained, 19,360) cohortales. 
 To these fell to be added 1000 horse- 
 men from each of the four kings, and 
 5000 Arabian archers, with 2000 
 from each of the other three kings. 
 This gives together — reckoning the 
 legion at 6000 men — 52,240 men, 
 and so towards 60,000, as Jose- 
 phus {Bell. Jud. iii. 4, 2) says. 
 But as the divisions are thus all cal- 
 culated at the utmost normal strength, 
 the effective aggregate number can 
 hardly be estimated at 50,000. These 
 numbers of Josephus appear in the 
 main trustworthy, just as the analogous 
 ones for the army of Cestius (Bell. 
 Jud. ii. 18, 9); whereas his figures, 
 resting on the census, are throughout 
 measured after the scale of the 
 smallest village in Galilee numbering 
 15,000 inhabitants (Bell. Jud. iii. 3, 
 2), and are historically as useless as 
 the figures of Falstaff. It is but 
 seldom, e.g. at the siege of Jotapata, 
 that we recognise reported numbers. 
 
212 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. book viii. 
 
 insurgents had been emphatically repulsed by the weak 
 garrison of the town of Ascalon, they had not further 
 attacked the cities which took part with the Romans ; 
 the hopelessness, which pervaded the whole movement, 
 expressed itself in the renouncing at once of all offensive. 
 When the Romans thereupon passed over to the aggressive, 
 the insurgents nowhere confronted them in the open field, 
 and in fact did not even make attempts to bring relief 
 to the several places assailed. Certainly the cautious 
 general of the Romans did not divide his troops, but kept 
 at least the three legions together throughout. Never- 
 theless, as in most of the individual townships a number 
 — often probably but small — of the fanatics exercised 
 terror over the citizens, the resistance was obstinate, and 
 the Roman conduct of the war neither brilliant nor 
 rapid. 
 
 First and Vespasian employed the whole first campaign (67) in 
 
 second brineing into his power the fortresses of the small district 
 
 campaigns. fc> » 
 
 of Galilee and the coast as far as Ascalon ; but before 
 the little town of Jotapata the three legions lay encamped 
 for forty-five days. During the winter of 67-8 a legion 
 lay in Scytopolis, on the south border of Galilee, the two 
 others in Caesarea. Meanwhile the different factions in 
 Jerusalem fell upon one another and were in most 
 vehement conflict ; the good patriots, who were at the 
 same time for civil order, and the still better patriots, 
 who, partly in fanatical excitement, partly from delight 
 in mob-riot, wished to bring about and turn to account 
 a reign of terror, fought with each other in the streets 
 of the city, and were only at one in accounting every 
 attempt at reconciliation with the Romans a crime worthy 
 of death. The Roman general, on many occasions 
 summoned to take advantage of this disorder, adhered to 
 the course of advancing only step by step. In the second 
 year of the war he caused the Transjordanic territory in 
 the first instance, particularly the important towns of 
 Gadara and Gerasa, to be occupied, and then took up 
 his position at Emmaus and Jericho, whence he took 
 military possession of Idumaea in the south and Samaria 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 213 
 
 in the north, so that Jerusalem in the summer of the 
 year 68 was surrounded on all sides. 
 
 The siege was just beginning when the news of the stoppage 
 death of Nero arrived. Thereby de iure the mandate ofthewar 
 conferred on the legate became extinct, and Vespasian, 
 not less cautious in a political than in a military point 
 of view, in fact suspended his operations until new orders 
 as to his attitude. Before these arrived from Galba, the 
 good season of the year was at an end. When the spring 
 of 69 came, Galba was overthrown, and the decision was 
 in suspense between the emperor of the Roman body- 
 guard and the emperor of the army on the Rhine. It 
 was only after Vitellius's victory in June 69 that Vespasian 
 resumed operations and occupied Hebron ; but very soon 
 all the armies of the East renounced their allegiance to 
 the former and proclaimed the previous legate of Judaea 
 as emperor. The positions at Emmaus and Jericho were 
 indeed maintained in front of the Jews ; but, as the 
 German legions had denuded the Rhine to make their 
 general emperor, so the flower of the army went from 
 Palestine, partly with the legate of Syria, Mucianus, to 
 Italy, partly with the new emperor and his son Titus to 
 Syria and onward to Egypt, and it was only after the 
 war of the succession was ended, at the close of the 
 year 69, and the rule of Vespasian was acknowledged 
 throughout the empire, that the latter entrusted his son 
 with the termination of the Jewish war. 
 
 Thus the insurgents had entirely free sway in Titus 
 Jerusalem from the summer of 66 till the spring of 70. jf^aiem 
 What the combination of religious and national fanaticism, 
 the noble desire not to survive the downfall of their 
 fatherland, the consciousness of past crimes and of inevi- 
 table punishment, the wild promiscuous tumult of all 
 noblest and all basest passions in these four years of 
 terror brought upon the nation, had its horrors intensified 
 by the fact that the foreigners were only onlookers in the 
 matter, and all the evil was inflicted directly by Jews 
 upon Jews. The moderate patriots were soon over- 
 powered by the zealots with the help of the levy of the 
 
214 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 rude and fanatical inhabitants of the Idumaean villages 
 (end of 68), and their leaders were slain. The zealots 
 thenceforth ruled, and all the bonds of civil, religious, and 
 moral order were dissolved. Freedom was granted to the 
 slaves, the high priests were appointed by lot, the ritual 
 laws were trodden under foot and scoffed at by those very 
 fanatics whose stronghold was the temple, the captives in 
 the prisons were put to death, and it was forbidden on 
 pain of death to bury the slain. The different leaders 
 fought with their separate bands against one another : 
 John of Gischala with his band brought up from Galilee ; 
 Simon, son of Gioras from Gerasa, the leader of a band 
 of patriots formed in the south, and at the same time of 
 the Idumaeans in revolt against John ; Eleazar, son of 
 Simon, one of the champions against Cestius Gallus. 
 The first maintained himself in the porch of the temple, 
 the second in the city, the third in the Holy of Holies ; 
 and there were daily combats in the streets of the city 
 between Jews and Jews. Concord came only through 
 the common enemy ; when the attack began, Eleazar's 
 little band placed itself under the orders of John, and 
 although John in the temple and Simon in the city con- 
 tinued to play the part of masters, they, while quarrelling 
 among themselves, fought shoulder to shoulder against 
 the Romans. 
 
 Task of the The task of the assailants was not an easy one. It 
 assailants. . g true arm y 5 which had received in place of the 
 
 detachments sent to Italy a considerable contingent from 
 the Egyptian and the Syrian troops, was quite sufficient 
 for the investment ; and, in spite of the long interval 
 which had been granted to the Jews to prepare for the 
 siege, their provisions were inadequate, the more especially 
 as a part of them had been destroyed in the street 
 conflicts, and, as the siege began about the time of the 
 Passover, numerous strangers who had come on that 
 account to Jerusalem were also shut in. But though 
 the mass of the population soon suffered distress, the 
 combatant force took what they needed where they found 
 it, and, well provided as they were, they carried on the 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 215 
 
 struggle without reference to the multitudes that were 
 famishing and soon dying of hunger. The young general 
 could not make up his mind to a mere blockade ; a siege 
 with four legions, brought to an end in this way, would 
 yield to him personally no glory, and the new government 
 needed a brilliant feat of arms. The town, everywhere 
 else defended by inaccessible rocky slopes, was assailable 
 only on the north side ; here, too, it was no easy labour 
 to reduce the threefold rampart-wall erected without regard 
 to cost from the rich treasures of the temple, and further 
 within the city to wrest the citadel, the temple, and the 
 three vast towers of Herod from a strong, fanatically 
 inspired, and desperate garrison. John and Simon not 
 merely resolutely repelled the assaults, but often attacked 
 with good success the troops working at the trenches, 
 and destroyed or burnt the besieging machines. 
 
 But the superiority of numbers and the art of war Destruction 
 decided for the Romans. The walls were stormed, and 
 thereafter the citadel Antonia ; then, after long resistance, 
 first the porticoes of the temple went on fire, and further 
 on the ioth Ab (August) the temple itself, with all the 
 treasures accumulated in it for six centuries. Lastly, 
 after fighting in the streets which lasted for a month, 
 on the 8th Elul (September) the last resistance in the town 
 itself was broken, and the holy Salem was razed. The 
 bloody work had lasted for five months. The sword and 
 the arrow, and still more famine, had claimed countless 
 victims ; the Jews killed every one so much as suspected 
 of deserting, and forced women and children in the city 
 to die of hunger ; the Romans just as pitilessly put to 
 the sword the captives or crucified them. The combatants 
 that remained, and particularly the two leaders, were 
 drawn forth singly from the sewers, in which they had 
 taken refuge. At the Dead Sea, just where once king 
 David and the Maccabees in their utmost distress had 
 found a refuge, the remnants of the insurgents still held 
 out for years in the rock-castles Machaerus and Massada, 
 till at length, as the last of the free Jews, Eleazar grandson 
 of Judas the Galilean, and his adherents put to death first 
 
2l6 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book viii. 
 
 Breaking 
 up of the 
 Jewish cen- 
 tral power. 
 
 their wives and children, and then themselves. The work 
 was done. That the emperor Vespasian, an able soldier, 
 did not disdain on account of such an inevitable success 
 over a small long- subject people to march as victor 
 to the Capitol, and that the seven -armed candelabrum 
 brought home from the Holy of Holies of the temple is 
 still to be seen at the present day on the honorary arch 
 which the imperial senate erected to Titus in the market 
 of the capital, 1 gives no high conception of the warlike 
 spirit of this time. It is true that the deep aversion, 
 which the Occidentals cherished towards the Jewish 
 people, made up in some measure for what was wanting 
 in martial glory, and if the Jewish name was too vile for 
 the emperors to assign it to themselves, like those of the 
 Germans and the Parthians, they deemed it not beneath 
 their dignity to prepare for the populace of the capital 
 this triumph commemorative of the victor's pleasure in 
 the misfortunes of others. 
 
 The work of the sword was followed by a change of 
 policy. The policy pursued by the earlier Hellenistic 
 states, and taken over from them by the Romans — which 
 reached in reality far beyond mere tolerance towards 
 foreign ways and foreign faith, and recognised the Jews 
 in their collective character as a national and religious 
 community — had become impossible. In the Jewish 
 insurrection the dangers had been too clearly brought to 
 light, which this formation of a national -religious union 
 — on the one hand rigidly concentrated, on the other 
 spreading over the whole East and having ramifications 
 even in the West — involved. The central worship was 
 accordingly once for all set aside. This resolution of the 
 
 the town of Hierusolyma, which up 
 to his time had either been besieged 
 in vain by all generals, kings, and 
 peoples, or not assailed at all." The 
 historic knowledge of this singular 
 document, which ignores not merely 
 Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes, but their own Pompeius, 
 stands on the same level with its 
 extravagance in the praise of a very 
 ordinary feat of arms. 
 
 1 This arch was erected to Titus 
 after his death by the imperial senate. 
 Another, dedicated to him during his 
 short government by the same senate 
 in the circus (C I. Z. vi. 944) 
 specifies even with express words as 
 the ground of erecting the monument, 
 "because he, according to the pre- 
 cept and direction and under the 
 superintendence of his father, subdued 
 the people of the Jews and destroyed 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 217 
 
 government stood undoubtedly fixed, and had nothing 
 in common with the question, which cannot be answered 
 with certainty, whether the destruction of the temple took 
 place by design or by accident ; if, on the one hand, the 
 suppression of the worship required only the closing of 
 the temple and the magnificent structure might have 
 been spared, on the other hand, had the temple been 
 accidentally destroyed, the worship might have been 
 continued in a temple rebuilt. No doubt it will always 
 remain probable that it was not the chance of war that 
 here prevailed, but the flames of the temple were rather 
 the programme for the altered policy of the Roman 
 government with reference to Judaism. 1 More clearly 
 even than in the events at Jerusalem the same change is 
 marked in the closing — which ensued at the same time 
 on the order of Vespasian — of the central sanctuary of 
 the Egyptian Jews, the temple of Onias, not far from 
 Memphis, in the Heliopolitan district, which for centuries 
 stood alongside of that of Jerusalem, somewhat as the 
 translation by the Alexandrian Seventy stood side by 
 side with the Old Testament ; it too was divested of its 
 votive gifts, and the worship of God in it was forbidden. 
 
 In the further carrying out of the new order of things 
 the high priesthood and the Synhedrion of Jerusalem 
 disappeared, and thereby the Jews of the empire lost their 
 outward supreme head and their chief authority having 
 jurisdiction hitherto generally in religious questions. The 
 annual tribute — previously at least tolerated — on the 
 part of every Jew, without distinction of dwelling-place, 
 to the temple did not certainly fall into abeyance, but 
 was with bitter parody transferred to the Capitoline 
 
 1 The account of Josephus, that resolved to destroy the temple, does 
 
 Titus with his council of war resolved not proceed from Tacitus, and whether 
 
 not to destroy the temple, excites the preference is not to be given to it, 
 
 suspicion by the manifest intention of although it bears traces of Christian 
 
 it, and, as the use made of Tacitus in revision. This view further commends 
 
 the chronicle of Sulpicius Severus is itself through the fact that the dedi- 
 
 completely proved by Bernays, it may cation addressed to Vespasian of the 
 
 certainly well be a question whether Argonautica of the poet Valerius Flac- 
 
 his quite opposite account (Ckron. ii. cus celebrates the victor of Solyma, 
 
 30, 6), that the council of war had who hurls the fiery torches. 
 
218 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vni. 
 
 Jupiter, and his representative on earth, the Roman 
 emperor. From the character of the Jewish institutions 
 the suppression of the central worship involved dissolu- 
 tion of the community of Jerusalem. The city was not 
 merely destroyed and burnt down, but was left lying in 
 ruins, like Carthage and Corinth once upon a time ; its 
 territory, public as well as private land, became imperial 
 domain. 1 Such of the citizens of the populous town as 
 had escaped famine or the sword came under the hammer 
 of the slave market. Amidst the ruins of the destroyed 
 town was pitched the camp of the legion, which, with its 
 Spanish and Thracian auxiliaries, was thenceforth to do 
 garrison duty in the Jewish land. The provincial troops 
 hitherto recruited in Palestine itself were transferred 
 elsewhere. In Emmaus, in the immediate neighbourhood 
 of Jerusalem, a number of Roman veterans were settled, 
 but urban rights were not conferred on this place. On 
 the other hand, the old Sichem, the religious centre of 
 the Samaritan community, perhaps a Greek city even 
 from the time of Alexander the Great, was now reorganised 
 in the forms of Hellenic polity under the name Flavia 
 Neapolis. The capital of the land, Caesarea, hitherto a 
 Greek urban community, obtained as " first Flavian 
 colony" Roman organisation and Latin as the language 
 of business. These were essays towards the Occidental 
 municipalising of the Jewish land. Nevertheless Judaea 
 proper, though depopulated and impoverished, remained 
 still Jewish as before ; the light in which the government 
 looked upon the land is shown by the thoroughly anomalous 
 permanent military occupation, which, as Judaea was not 
 situated on the frontier of the empire, can only have been 
 destined to keep down the inhabitants. 
 
 The Herodians, too, did not long survive the de- 
 
 1 That the emperor took this land keeping with the expropriation that 
 
 for himself (Idlav ai/ry rr\v x^P av land was by way of grace assigned 
 
 4>v\&ttwv) is stated byjosephus, Bell, elsewhere to individual Jewish land- 
 
 Jud. vii. 6, 6 ; not in accord with owners (Josephus, vit. 16). We 
 
 this is his command iracrav yrjv may add that the territory was prob- 
 
 awo56o-9at tuv 'lovBaluv (I. c), in ably employed as an endowment for 
 
 which doubtless there lurks an error the legion stationed there (Eph. epigr. 
 
 or a copyist's mistake. It is in ii. n. 696 ; Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 54). 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. 
 
 219 
 
 struction of Jerusalem. King Agrippa II., the ruler of The end of 
 Caesarea Paneas and of Tiberias, had rendered faithful JJ^ 6 ™" 
 service to the Romans in the war against his country- 
 men, and had even scars, honourable at least in a military 
 sense, to show from it ; besides, his sister Berenice, a 
 Cleopatra on a small scale, held the heart of the conqueror 
 of Jerusalem captive with the remnant of her much 
 asserted charms. So he remained personally in possession 
 of the dominion ; but after his death, some thirty years 
 later, this last reminiscence of the Jewish state was 
 merged in the Roman province of Syria. 
 
 No hindrances were put in the way of the Jews Further 
 exercising their religious customs either in Palestine or l r f e fu tm T ent 
 
 0 0 01 the Jews. 
 
 elsewhere. Their religious instruction itself, and the 
 assemblies in connection with it of their law -teachers 
 and law -experts, were at least permitted in Palestine ; 
 and there was no hindrance to these Rabbinical unions 
 attempting to put themselves in some measure in the 
 room of the former Synhedrion of Jerusalem, and to fix 
 their doctrine and their laws in the groundwork of the 
 Talmud. Although individual partakers in the Jewish 
 insurrection who fled to Egypt and Cyrene produced 
 troubles there, the bodies of Jews outside of Palestine, so 
 far as we see, were left in their previous position. Against 
 the Jew-hunt, which just about the time of the destruction 
 of Jerusalem was called forth in Antioch by the circum- 
 stance that the Jews there .had been publicly charged by 
 one of their renegade comrades in the faith with the 
 intention of setting the town on fire, the representative 
 of the governor of Syria interfered with energy, and did 
 not allow what was proposed — that they should compel 
 the Jews to sacrifice to the gods of the land and to 
 refrain from keeping the Sabbath. Titus himself, when 
 he came to Antioch, most distinctly dismissed the leaders 
 of the movement there with their request for the ejection 
 of the Jews, or at least the cancelling of their privileges. 
 People shrank from declaring war on the Jewish faith 
 as such, and from driving the far-branching Diaspora 
 to extremities ; it was enough that Judaism was in 
 
220 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 its political representation deleted from the common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The conse- The alteration in the policy pursued since Alexander's 
 quencesof t j me towards Judaism amounted in the main to the 
 
 the catas- .,, . - ,. , . . . . rii 
 
 trophe. withdrawing from this religious society unity of leader- 
 ship and external compactness, and to the wresting out 
 of the hands of its leaders a power which extended not 
 merely over the native land of the Jews, but over the 
 bodies of Jews generally within and beyond the Roman 
 empire, and certainly in the East was prejudicial to the 
 unity of imperial government. The Lagids as well as 
 the Seleucids, and not less the Roman emperors of the 
 Julio-Claudian dynasty, had put up with this ; but the 
 immediate rule of the Occidentals over Judaea had 
 sharpened the contrast between the imperial power and 
 this power of the priests to such a degree, that the 
 catastrophe set in with inevitable necessity and brought 
 its consequences. From a political standpoint we may 
 censure, doubtless, the remorselessness of the conduct of 
 the war — which, moreover, is pretty much common to 
 this war with all similar ones in Roman history — but 
 hardly the religious -political dissolution of the nation 
 ordained in consequence of it. If the axe was laid at the 
 root of institutions which had led, and could not but with 
 a certain necessity lead, to the formation of a party like 
 that of the zealots, there was but done what was right 
 and necessary, however severely and unjustly in the 
 special case the individual might be affected by it. 
 Vespasian, who gave the decision, was a judicious and 
 moderate ruler. The question concerned was one not 
 of faith but of power ; the Jewish church-state, as head 
 of the Diaspora, was not compatible with the absoluteness 
 of the secular great -state. From the general rule of 
 toleration the government did not even in this case 
 depart ; it waged war not against Judaism but against 
 the high priest and the Synhedrion. 
 The Nor did the destruction of the temple wholly fail in 
 
 Christians, this its aim. There were not a few Jews and still more 
 proselytes, particularly in the Diaspora, who adhered 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 221 
 
 more to the Jewish moral law and to Jewish Monotheism 
 than to the strictly national form of faith ; the whole 
 respectable sect of the Christians had inwardly broken 
 off from Judaism and stood partly in open opposition to 
 the Jewish ritual. For these the fall of Jerusalem was 
 by no means the end of things, and within this extensive 
 and influential circle the government obtained in some 
 measure what it aimed at by breaking up the central seat 
 of the Jewish worship. The separation of the Christian 
 faith common to the nations from the national Jewish, 
 the victory of the adherents of Paul over those of Peter, 
 was essentially promoted by the abeyance of the Jewish 
 central cultus. 
 
 But among the Jews of Palestine, where the language Palestinian 
 spoken was not Hebrew indeed, but Aramaic, and J ews- 
 among the portion of the Diaspora which clung firmly 
 to Jerusalem, the breach between Judaism and the rest of 
 the world was deepened by the destruction of the temple. 
 The national -religious exclusiveness, which the govern- 
 ment wished to obviate, was in this narrow circle rather 
 strengthened by the violent attempt to break it down, 
 and driven, in the first instance, to further desperate 
 struggles. 
 
 Not quite fifty years after the destruction of Jeru- The Jewish 
 salem, in the year 1 1 6, 1 the Jews of the eastern Medi- T s r ^fn nder 
 terranean rose against the imperial government. The 
 rising, although undertaken by the Diaspora, was of a 
 purely national character in its chief seats, Cyrene, Cyprus, 
 Egypt, directed to the expulsion of the Romans as of the 
 Hellenes, and, apparently, to the establishment of a sepa- 
 rate Jewish state. It ramified even into Asiatic territory, 
 and seized Mesopotamia and Palestine itself. When the 
 insurgents were victorious they conducted the war with 
 the same exasperation as the Sicarii in Jerusalem ; they 
 killed those whom they seized — the historian Appian, 
 a native of Alexandria, narrates how he, running from 
 
 1 Eusebius, H. E. iv. 2, puts the the penultimate year of Trajan ; and 
 outbreak on the 18th, and so, accord- therewith Dio, lxviii. 32, agrees, 
 ing to his reckoning (in the Chronicle), 
 
222 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. book vm. 
 
 them for his life, with great difficulty made his escape to 
 Pelusium — and often they put the captives to death under 
 excruciating torture, or compelled them — just as Titus 
 formerly compelled the Jews captured in Jerusalem — to 
 fall as gladiators in the arena in order to delight the eyes 
 of the victors. In Cyrene 220,000, in Cyprus even 
 240,000 men are said to have been thus put to death by 
 them. On the other hand, in Alexandria, which does not 
 appear itself to have fallen into the hands of the Jews, 1 
 the besieged Hellenes slew whatever Jews were then in 
 the city. The immediate cause of the rising is not clear. 
 The blood of the zealots, who had taken refuge at Alex- 
 andria and Cyrene, and had there sealed their loyalty to 
 the faith by dying under the axe of the Roman execu- 
 tioner, may not have flowed in vain ; the Parthian war, 
 during which the insurrection began, so far promoted 
 it, as the troops stationed in Egypt had probably been 
 called to the theatre of war. To all appearance it was 
 an outbreak of the religious exasperation of the Jews, 
 which had been glowing in secret like a volcano since the 
 destruction of the temple and broke out after an incal- 
 culable manner into flames, of such a kind as the East 
 has at all times produced and produces ; if the insurgents 
 really proclaimed a Jew as king, this rising certainly had, 
 like that in their native country, its central seat in the 
 great mass of the common people. That this Jewish 
 rising partly coincided with the formerly- mentioned (p. 
 68) attempt at liberation of the peoples shortly before 
 subdued by the emperor Trajan, while the latter was in 
 the far East at the mouth of the Euphrates, gave to it 
 even a political significance ; if the successes of this ruler 
 melted away under his hands at the close of his career, 
 the Jewish insurrection, particularly in Palestine and Meso- 
 potamia, contributed its part to that result. In order to 
 put down the insurrection the troops had everywhere to 
 
 1 Eusebius himself (in Syncellus) of this a restoration of Alexandria de- 
 says only : 'Adpiavbs 'lovdalovs Kara stroyed by the Jews, of which Euse- 
 'AXe^avdpiwv araaid^ovTas eicdXao-ev. bius, H. E. iv. 2, and Dio, Ixviii. 32, 
 The Armenian and Latin translations know nothing, 
 appear to have erroneously made out 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 223 
 
 take the field ; against the " king " of the Cyrenaean Jews, 
 Andreas or Lukuas, and the insurgents in Egypt, Trajan 
 sent Quintus Marcius Turbo with an army and fleet ; 
 against the insurgents in Mesopotamia, as was already 
 stated, Lusius Quietus — two of his most experienced 
 generals. The insurgents were nowhere able to offer 
 resistance to the compact troops, although the struggle 
 was prolonged in Africa as in Palestine to the first times 
 of Hadrian, and similar punishments were inflicted on this 
 Diaspora as previously on the Jews of Palestine. That 
 Trajan annihilated the Jews in Alexandria, as Appian 
 says, is hardly an incorrect, although perhaps a too blunt 
 expression for what took place ; for Cyprus it is attested 
 that thenceforth no Jew might even set foot upon the 
 island, and death there awaited even the shipwrecked 
 Israelites. If our traditional information was as copious 
 in regard to this catastrophe as in regard to that of Jeru- 
 salem, it would probably appear as its continuation and 
 completion, and in some sense also as its explanation ; 
 this rising shows the relation of the Diaspora to the 
 home -country, and the state within a state, into which 
 Judaism had developed. 
 
 Even with this second overthrow the revolt of Judaism The Jewish 
 against the imperial power was not at an end. We Hadrian^ 
 cannot say that the latter gave further provocation to it ; 
 ordinary acts of administration, which were accepted 
 without opposition throughout the empire, affected the 
 Hebrews just where the full resisting power of the 
 national faith had its seat, and thereby called forth, probably 
 to the surprise of the governors themselves, an insurrection 
 which was in fact a war. If the emperor Hadrian, when 
 his tour through the empire brought him to Palestine, 
 resolved in the year 130 to re-erect the destroyed holy 
 city of the Jews as a Roman colony, he certainly did not 
 do them the honour of fearing them, and had no thought 
 of propagating religious-political views ; but he ordained 
 that this legionary camp should — as shortly before or soon 
 afterwards was the case on the Rhine, on the Danube, in 
 Africa — be connected with an urban community recruit- 
 
224 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. book viii. 
 
 ing itself primarily from the veterans, which received its 
 name partly from its founder, partly from the god to whom 
 at that time the Jews paid tribute instead of Jehovah. 
 Similar was the state of the case as to the prohibition of 
 circumcision ; it was issued, as will be observed at a later 
 point, probably without any design of thereby making 
 war on Judaism as such. As may be conceived, the 
 Jews did not inquire as to the motives for that founding 
 of the city and for this prohibition, but felt both as an 
 attack on their faith and their nationality, and answered 
 it by an insurrection which, neglected at first by the 
 Romans, thereupon had not its match for intensity and 
 duration in the history of the Roman imperial period. 
 The whole body of the Jews at home and abroad was 
 agitated by the movement and supported more or less 
 openly the insurgents on the Jordan j 1 even Jerusalem 
 fell into their hands, 2 and the governor of Syria and 
 indeed the emperor Hadrian appeared on the scene of 
 conflict. The war was led, significantly enough, by the 
 priest Eleazar 3 and the bandit-chief Simon, surnamed Bar- 
 Kokheba, i.e. son of the stars, as the bringer of heavenly 
 help, perhaps as Messiah. The financial power and the 
 organisation of the insurgents are testified by the silver 
 and copper coins struck through several years in the name 
 of these two. After a sufficient number of troops was 
 brought together, the experienced general Sextus Julius 
 
 1 This is shown by the expressions 
 of Dio, lxix. 13 : ol awavTaxov yrjs 
 'lovdaioi and ir&vrjs tbs eiwciv lavovixivrj^ 
 iirl toijt(]) r??s oIkov^vtis. 
 
 2 If, according to the contemporary 
 Appian {Syr. 50), Hadrian once more 
 destroyed (Kar^aKafe) the town, this 
 proves as well that it was preceded by 
 an at least in some measure complete 
 formation of the colony, as that it was 
 captured by the insurgents. Only 
 thereby is explained the great loss 
 which the Romans suffered (Fronto, 
 de bello Parth. p. 2 1 8 Nab. : Hadriano 
 imperium obtinente qtiantum militum 
 a Iudaesis . . . caesum ; Dio, lxix. 
 14) ; and it accords at least well with 
 this, that the governor of Syria, Pub- 
 
 licius Marcellus, left his province to 
 bring help to his colleague Tineius 
 Rufus (Eusebius, H. E. iv. 6 ; Bor- 
 ghesi, Opp. iii. 64), in Palestine 
 (C. I. Gr. 4033, 4034). 
 
 3 That the coins with this name 
 belong to the Hadrianic insurrection 
 is now proved (v. Sallet, Zeiischr. jiir 
 Numism. v. no); this is conse- 
 quently the Rabbi Eleazar from 
 Modein of the Jewish accounts 
 (Ewald, Gesch. Isr. vii. 2 , 418 ; Schiirer, 
 Lehrbuch, p. 357). That the Simon 
 whom these coins name partly with 
 Eleazar, partly alone, is the Bar- 
 Kokheba of Justin Martyr and Euse- 
 ibus is at least very probable. 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 225 
 
 Severus gained the upper hand, but only by a gradual and 
 slow advance ; quite as in the war under Vespasian no 
 pitched battle took place, but one place after another cost 
 time and blood, till at length after a three years' warfare 1 
 the last castle of the insurgents, the strong Bether, not 
 far from Jerusalem, was stormed by the Romans. The 
 numbers handed down to us in good accounts of 50 
 fortresses taken, 985 villages occupied, 580,000 that 
 fell, are not incredible, since the war was waged with 
 inexorable cruelty, and the male population was probably 
 everywhere put to death. 
 
 In consequence of this rising the very name of the Judaea 
 vanquished people was set aside ; the province was thence- Hadrian 
 forth termed, not as formerly Judaea, but by the old name 
 of Herodotus Syria of the Philistines, or Syria Palaestina. 
 The land remained desolate ; the new city of Hadrian 
 continued to exist, but did not prosper. The Jews were 
 prohibited under penalty of death from even setting foot 
 in Jerusalem ; the garrison was doubled ; the limited terri- 
 tory between Egypt and Syria, to which only a small strip 
 of the Transjordanic domain on the Dead Sea belonged, 
 and which nowhere touched the frontier of the empire, 
 was thenceforth furnished with two legions. In spite of 
 all these strong measures the province remained disturbed, 
 primarily doubtless in consequence of the bandit-habits 
 long interwoven with the national cause. Pius issued 
 orders to march against the Jews, and even under Severus 
 there is mention of a war against Jews and Samaritans. 
 But no movements on a great scale among the Jews 
 recurred after the Hadrianic war. 
 
 It must be acknowledged that these repeated out- Position of 
 breaks of the animosity fermenting in the minds of the Second 
 Jews against the whole of their non-Jewish fellow-citizens and third 
 did not change the general policy of the government. centuries - 
 
 1 Dio (lxix. 12) calls the war pro- the first or from the second year of 
 
 tracted (o\1t' 6\iyoxp6vios) ; Eusebius the deliverance of Israel. We have 
 
 in his Chronicle puts its beginning in not trustworthy dates ; the Rabbinic 
 
 the sixteenth, its end in the eighteenth tradition (Schiirer, Lehrbuch, p. 361) 
 
 or nineteenth year of Hadrian ; the is not available in this respect, 
 coins of the insurgents are dated from 
 
 VOL. II. I 5 
 
226 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Like Vespasian, the succeeding emperors maintained, as 
 respects the Jews in the main, the general standpoint of 
 political and religious toleration ; and not only so, but the 
 exceptional laws issued for the Jews were, and continued 
 to be, chiefly directed to release them from such general 
 civil duties as were not compatible with their habits and 
 their faith, and they are therefore designated directly as 
 privileges. 1 
 
 Since the time of Claudius, whose suppression of Jewish 
 worship in Italy (p. 199) is at least the last measure of 
 the sort which we know of, residence and the free exercise 
 of religion in the whole empire appear to have been in 
 law conceded to the Jew. It would have been no wonder 
 if those insurrections in the African and Syrian provinces 
 had led to the expulsion generally of the Jews settled 
 there ; but restrictions of this sort were enacted, as we 
 saw, only locally, e.g. for Cyprus. The Greek provinces 
 always remained the chief seat of the Jews ; even in the 
 capital in some measure bilingual, whose numerous body 
 of Jews had a series of synagogues, these formed a portion 
 of the Greek population of Rome. Their epitaphs in 
 Rome are exclusively Greek ; in the Christian church at 
 Rome developed from this Jewish body the baptismal 
 confession was uttered in Greek down to a late period, 
 and throughout the first three centuries the authorship 
 was exclusively Greek. But restrictive measures against 
 the Jews appear not to have been adopted even in the 
 Latin provinces ; through and with Hellenism the Jewish 
 system penetrated into the West, and there too com- 
 munities of Jews were found, although they were still in 
 number and importance even now, when the blows directed 
 against the Diaspora had severely injured the Jew-com- 
 munities of the East, far inferior to the latter. 
 Corporat- Political privileges did not follow of themselves from 
 ive unions, the toleration of worship. The Jews were not hindered 
 
 1 Biography of Alexander, c. 22 : to light — a position, which certainly 
 
 Iudaeis privilegia reservavit, Christ- rests in its turn on the fact that the 
 
 ianos esse passns est. Clearly the former represent a nation the latter 
 
 privileged position of the Jews as com- do not. 
 pared with the Christians comes here 
 
CHAP. XI. 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 227 
 
 in the construction of their synagogues and proseuchae 
 any more than in the appointment of a president for the 
 same (dp^tcrvvayoyyos;), as well as of a college of elders 
 (apxovres), with a chief elder (yepovo-tdp^^) at its head. 
 Magisterial functions were not meant to be connected 
 with these positions ; but, considering the inseparableness 
 of the Jewish church-organisation and the Jewish adminis- 
 tration of law, the presidents probably everywhere exer- 
 cised, like the bishops in the Middle Ages, a jurisdiction, 
 although merely de Jacto. The bodies of Jews in the 
 several towns were not recognised generally as corpora- 
 tions, certainly not, for example, those of Rome ; yet 
 there subsisted at many places on the ground of local 
 privileges such corporative unions with ethnarchs or, as 
 they were now mostly called, patriarchs at their head. 
 Indeed, in Palestine we find at the beginning of the third 
 century once more a president of the whole Jewish body, 
 who, in virtue of hereditary sacerdotal right, bears sway 
 over his fellow-believers almost like a ruler, and has power 
 even over life and limb, and whom the government at 
 least tolerates. 1 Beyond question this patriarch was for 
 the Jews the old high priest, and thus, under the eyes 
 and under the oppression of the foreign rule, the obstinate 
 people of God had once more reconstituted themselves, and 
 in so far overthrown Vespasian's work. 
 
 As respects the bringing of the Jews under obligations Public 
 of public service, their exemption from serving in war as servicei 
 incompatible with their religious principles had long since 
 been and continued to be recognised. The special poll- 
 
 1 In order to make good that even I, who have long lived in the land of 
 
 in bondage the Jews were able to this people, have myself experienced 
 
 exercise a certain self-administration, and ascertained." The patriarch of 
 
 Origen (about the year 226) writes to Judaea already makes his appearance 
 
 Africanus, c. 14: "How much even in the letter forged in the name of 
 
 now, where the Romans rule and the Hadrian in the biography of the 
 
 Jews pay to them the tribute (to tyrant Saturninus (c. 8), in the ordi- 
 
 SidpaxfJ-ov), has the president of the nances first in the year 392 (C. Th. 
 
 people (6 idvdpxvs) among them in his xvi. 8, 8). Patriarchs as presidents 
 
 power with permission of the emperor of individual Jewish communities, for 
 
 (avyxupovvTos Kalaapos) ? Even courts which the word from its signification 
 
 are secretly held according to the is better adapted, meet us already in 
 
 law, and even on various occasions the ordinances of Constantine I. 
 
 sentence of death is pronounced. This (C. Th. xvi. 8, 1, 2). 
 
228 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 tax to which they were subject, the old temple-payment, 
 might be regarded as a compensation for this exemption, 
 though it had not been imposed in this sense. For other 
 services, as e.g. for the undertaking of wardships and muni- 
 cipal offices, they were at least from the time of Severus 
 regarded in general as capable and under obligation, but 
 those which ran counter to their " superstition " were 
 remitted to them ; x in connection with which we have to 
 take into account that exclusion from municipal offices 
 became more and more converted from a slight into a 
 privilege. Even in the case of state offices in later times 
 a similar course was probably pursued. 
 Forbidding The only serious interference of the state-power with 
 cision CUm Jewish customs concerned the ceremony of circumcision ; 
 
 the measures directed against this, however, were probably 
 not taken from a religious-political standpoint, but were 
 connected with the forbidding of castration, and arose 
 doubtless in part from misunderstanding of the Jewish 
 custom. The evil habit of mutilation, becoming more and 
 more prevalent, was first brought by Domitian within the 
 sphere of penal offences ; when Hadrian, making the 
 precept more stringent, placed castration under the law of 
 murder, circumcision appears also to have been appre- 
 hended as castration, 2 which certainly could not but be 
 felt and was felt (p. 224) by the Jews as an attack upon 
 their existence, although this was perhaps not its intention. 
 Soon afterwards, probably in consequence of the insurrec- 
 tion thereby occasioned, Pius allowed the circumcision of 
 children of Jewish descent, while otherwise even that of 
 the non-free Jew and of the proselyte was to involve, 
 afterwards as before, the penalty of castration for all par- 
 
 1 The jurists of the third century tration in the Hadrianic edict, Dig. 
 lay down this rule, appealing to an xlviii. 8, 4, 2, and of circumcision in 
 edict of Severus {Dig. xxvii. I, 15, 6; Paulus, Sent. v. 22, 3, 4, and Modes- 
 1. 2, 3, 3). According to the ordi- tinus, Dig. xlviii. 8, 11 pr., naturally 
 nance of the year 321 (C. Th. xvi. 8, suggests this point of view. The 
 3) this appears even as a right, not as statement that Severus Judaeos fieri 
 a duty of the Jews, so that it depended sub gravi poena vetuit {Vita, 17), 
 on them to undertake or decline the is doubtless nothing but the enforce- 
 office. ment of this prohibition. 
 
 2 The analogous treatment of cas- 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. 
 
 229 
 
 ticipating in it. This was in so far also of political 
 importance, as thereby the formal passing over to Juda- 
 ism became a penal offence ; and probably the prohibi- 
 tion in this very sense was not remitted but maintained. 1 
 It must have contributed its part to the abrupt demarca- 
 tion of the Jews from the non-Jews. 
 
 If we look back on the fortunes of Judaism in the Altered 
 epoch from Augustus to Diocletian, we recognise a P° sl * lon °. f 
 
 r 0 > e> the Jews in 
 
 thorough transformation of its character and of its pOSl- the imperial 
 
 tion. It enters upon this epoch as a national and religious penod - 
 power firmly concentrated round its narrow native land — 
 a power which even confronts the imperial government in 
 and beyond Judaea with arms in hand, and in the field of 
 faith evolves a mighty propagandist energy. We can 
 understand that the Roman government would not tolerate 
 the adoration of Jehovah and the faith of Moses on another 
 footing than that on which the cultus of Mithra and the 
 faith of Zoroaster were tolerated. The reaction against 
 this exclusive and self-centred Judaism came in the 
 crushing blows directed by Vespasian and Hadrian against 
 the Jewish land, and by Trajan against the Jews of the 
 Diaspora, the effect of which reached far beyond the 
 immediate destruction of the existing society and the 
 reduction of the repute and power of the Jews as a body. 
 In fact, the later Christianity and the later Judaism were 
 the consequences of this reaction of the West against the 
 East. The great propagandist movement, which carried 
 the deeper view of religion from the East into the West, 
 was liberated in this way, as was already said (p. 220 f), from 
 the narrow limits of Jewish nationality ; if it by no means 
 gave up the attachment to Moses and the prophets, it 
 necessarily became released at any rate from the govern- 
 ment of the Pharisees, which had gone to pieces. The 
 Christian ideals of the future became universal, since there 
 was no longer a Jerusalem upon earth. But as the en- 
 larged and deepened faith, which with its nature changed 
 
 1 The remarkable account in Ori- de iure the penalty of death, although 
 
 gen's treatise against Celsus, ii. 13 it is not clear how far this found 
 
 (written about 250), shows that the application to Samaritans or Sicarii. 
 circumcision of the non-Jew involved 
 
230 
 
 JUDAEA AND THE JEWS. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 also its name, arose out of these disasters, so not less the 
 narrowed and hardened orthodoxy, which found a rallying 
 point, if no longer in Jerusalem, at any rate in hatred 
 towards those who had destroyed it, and still more in 
 hatred towards the more free and higher intellectual 
 movement which evolved Christianity out of Judaism. 
 The external power of the Jews was broken, and risings, 
 such as took place in the middle of the imperial period, 
 are not subsequently met with ; the Roman emperors were 
 done with the state within the state, and, as the properly 
 dangerous element — the propagandist diffusion — passed 
 over to Christianity, the confessors of the old faith, who 
 shut themselves off from the New Covenant, were set aside, 
 so far as the further general development was con:erned. 
 Altered But if the legions could destroy Jerusalem, they could 
 
 Judaism"^ not raze Judaism itself; and what on the one side was 
 a remedy, exercised on the other the effect of a poison. 
 Judaism not only remained, but it became an altered 
 thing. There is a deep gulf between the Judaism of the 
 older time, which seeks to spread its faith, which has its 
 temple-court filled with the Gentiles, and which has its 
 priests offering daily sacrifices for the emperor Augustus, 
 and the rigid Rabbinism, which knew nothing and wished 
 to know nothing of the world beyond Abraham's bosom 
 and the Mosaic law. Strangers the Jews always were, 
 and had wished to be so ; but the feeling of estrangement 
 now culminated within them as well as against them 
 after a fearful fashion, and rudely were its hatefil and 
 pernicious consequences drawn on both sides. From the 
 contemptuous sarcasm of Horace against the intruding 
 Jew from the Roman Ghetto there is a wide step to the 
 solemn enmity which Tacitus cherishes against this scum 
 of the human race, to which everything pure is impure 
 and everything impure pure ; in the interval lie those 
 insurrections of the despised people, and the necessity of 
 conquering it and of expending continuously money and 
 men for its repression. The prohibitions of malt-eating 
 the Jew, which are constantly recurring in the inperial 
 ordinances, show that those words of the cultured were 
 
chap. xi. JUDAEA AND THE JE WS. 
 
 231 
 
 translated, as might be expected, by their inferiors into 
 deeds. The Jews, on their part, did not mend the matter. 
 They turned away from Hellenic literature, which was now 
 regarded as polluting, and even rebelled against the use 
 of the Greek translation of the Bible ; the ever-increasing 
 purification of faith turned not merely against the Greeks 
 and the Romans, but quite as much against the "half- 
 Jews" of Samaria and against the Christian heretics ; the 
 reverence toward the letter of the Holy Scriptures rose to 
 a giddy height of absurdity, and above all an — if possible — 
 still holier tradition established itself, in the fetters of which 
 all life and thought were benumbed. The gulf between that 
 treatise on the Sublime which ventures to place Homer's 
 Poseidon shaking land and sea and Jehovah, who creates 
 the shining sun, side by side, and the beginnings of the 
 Talmud which belong to this epoch, marks the con- 
 trast between the Judaism of the first and that of the 
 third century. The living together of Jews and non-Jews 
 showed itself more and more to be just as inevitable, as 
 under the given conditions it was intolerable ; the con- 
 trast in faith, law, and manners became sharpened, and 
 mutual arrogance and mutual hatred operated on both 
 sides with morally disorganising effect. Not merely was 
 their conciliation not promoted in these centuries, but 
 its realisation was always thrown further into the distance, 
 the more its necessity was apparent. This exasperation, 
 this arrogance, this contempt, as they became established 
 at that time, were indeed only the inevitable growth of a 
 perhaps not less inevitable sowing .; but the heritage of 
 these times is still at the present day a burden on man- 
 kind. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 The an- The two kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, which had so 
 
 nexation of , . . ..... , , . 
 
 Egypt long striven and vied with each other in every respect, fell 
 nearly about the same time without resistance into the 
 power of the Romans. If these made no use of the 
 81. alleged or real testament of Alexander II. (f 673) and 
 did not then annex the land, the last rulers of the Lagid 
 house were confessedly in the position of clients of Rome ; 
 the senate decided in disputes as to the throne, and after 
 the Roman governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius, had with 
 his troops brought back the king Ptolemaeus Auletes to 
 
 55- iv. 153- Egypt (699 ; comp. iv. 160), the Roman legions did not 
 again leave the land. Like the other client-kings, the 
 rulers of Egypt took part in the civil wars on the sum- 
 mons of the government recognised by them or rather 
 imposing itself on them ; and, if it must remain unde- 
 cided what part Antonius in the fanciful eastern empire 
 of his dreams had destined for the native land of the 
 wife whom he loved too well (p. 25), at any rate the 
 government of Antonius in Alexandria, as well as the last 
 struggle in the last civil war before the gates of that city, 
 belongs as little to the special history of Egypt as the 
 battle of Actium to that of Epirus. But doubtless this 
 catastrophe, and the death connected with it of the last 
 prince of the Lagid house, gave occasion for Augustus not 
 to fill up again the vacant throne, but to take the kingdom 
 of Egypt under his own administration. This annexation 
 of the last portion of the coast of the Mediterranean to the 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 233 
 
 sphere of direct Roman administration, and the settlement, 
 coincident with it in point of time and of organic connec- 
 tion, of the new monarchy, mark — as regards the constitu- 
 tion and administration of the huge empire respectively — 
 the turning-point, the end of the old and the beginning of 
 a new epoch. 
 
 The incorporation of Egypt into the Roman empire Egypt ex- 
 was accomplished after an abnormal fashion, in so far as imperial 
 the principle — elsewhere dominating the state — of dyarchy, possession. 
 i.e. of the joint rule of the two supreme imperial powers, 
 the princeps and the senate, found — apart from some sub- 
 ordinate districts — no application in Egypt alone ; x but, on 
 the contrary, in this land the senate as such, as well as 
 every individual of its members, were cut off from all par- 
 ticipation in the government, and indeed senators and 
 persons of senatorial rank were even prohibited from 
 setting foot in this province. 2 We may not apprehend 
 this possibly as if Egypt were connected with the rest of 
 the empire only by a personal union ; the princeps is, 
 according to the meaning and spirit of the Augustan 
 organisation, an integral and permanently acting element 
 of the Roman polity just like the senate, and his rule over 
 Egypt is quite as much a part of the imperial rule as is 
 the rule of the proconsul of Africa. 3 We may rather 
 
 1 This exclusion of the joint rule of the equestrian commandants of the 
 
 the senate as of the senators is indi- legion instead of the senatorial, as 
 
 cated by Tacitus {Hist. i. 11) with was the rule in Egypt, the exclusion 
 
 the words that Augustus wished to of the senatorial government finds its 
 
 have Egypt administered exclusively most palpable expression, 
 by his personal servants (domi retinere ; 3 This ordinance holds only for 
 
 comp. Staatsrecht, ii. p. 963). In Egypt, not for the other territories 
 
 principle this abnormal form of govern- administered by non-senators. How 
 
 ment was applicable for all the pro- essential it appeared to the govern- 
 
 vinces not administered by senators, ment, we see from the constitutional 
 
 the presidents of which were also at and religious apparatus called into 
 
 the outset called chiefly praefecti requisition to secure it {Trig. tyr. c. 
 
 (C. /. L. v. p. 809, 902). But at 22). 
 
 the first division of the provinces 3 The current assertion that pro- 
 
 between emperor and senate there vincia is only by an abuse of lan- 
 
 was probably no other of these but guage put for the districts not adminis- 
 
 just Egypt ; and subsequently the tered by senators is not well founded, 
 
 distinction here came into sharper Egypt was private property of the 
 
 prominence, in so far as all the other emperor just as much or just as little 
 
 provinces of this category obtained no as Gaul and Syria — yet Augustus him- 
 
 legions. For in the emergence of self says {Mon. Ancyr. 5, 24) : 
 
234 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 illustrate the position of the case in state-law by saying 
 that the British Empire would find itself in the same 
 plight if the ministry and Parliament should be taken into 
 account only for the mother- land, whereas the colonies 
 should have to obey the absolute government of the 
 Empress of India. What motives determined the new 
 monarch at the very outset of his sole rule to adopt this 
 deeply influential and at no time assailed arrangement, 
 and how it affected the general political relations, are 
 matters belonging to the general history of the empire ; 
 here we have to set forth how the internal relations of 
 Egypt shaped themselves under the imperial rule. 
 
 What held true in general of all Hellenic or Hellenised 
 territories — that the Romans, when annexing them to 
 the empire, preserved the once existing institutions, and 
 introduced modifications only where these seemed 
 absolutely necessary — found application in its full 
 compass to Egypt. 
 
 Like Syria, Egypt, when it became Roman, was a 
 land of twofold nationality ; here too alongside of, and 
 over, the native stood the Greek — the former the slave, 
 the latter the master. But in law and in fact the rela- 
 tions of the two nations in Egypt were wholly different 
 from those of Syria. 
 Greek and Syria, substantially already in the pre-Roman and 
 towns. ian entirely in the Roman epoch, came under the government 
 of the land only after an indirect manner ; it was broken 
 up, partly into principalities, partly into autonomous urban 
 districts, and was administered, in the first instance, 
 by the rulers of the land or municipal authorities. In 
 Egypt, 1 on the other hand, there were neither native 
 princes nor imperial cities after the Greek fashion. The 
 two spheres of administration into which Egypt was 
 
 Aegyptum imperio populi Romani the possessions subject to the Lagids. 
 
 adzed, and assigns to the governor, Cyrene was similarly organised (p. 
 
 since he as eques could not be pro 165). But the properly Egyptian 
 
 praetore, by special law the same juris- government was never applied to 
 
 diction in processes as the Roman prae- southern Syria and to the other ter- 
 
 tors had (Tacitus, Ann. xii. 60). ritories which were for a longer or 
 
 1 As a matter of course what is a shorter time under the power of 
 
 here meant is the land of Egypt, not Egypt. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 235 
 
 divided — the " land " (17 %copa) of the Egyptians, with its 
 originally thirty-six districts (vofiot), and the two Greek 
 cities, Alexandria in lower and Ptolemais in upper 
 Egypt 1 — were rigidly separated and sharply opposed to 
 each other, and yet in a strict sense hardly different. 
 The rural, like the urban, district was not merely marked 
 off territorially, but the former as well as the latter was 
 a home-district ; the belonging to each was independent 
 of dwelling-place and hereditary. The Egyptian from 
 the Chemmitic nome belonged to it with his dependents, 
 just as much when he had his abode in Alexandria as 
 the Alexandrian dwelling in Chemmis belonged to the 
 burgess-body of Alexandria. The land -district had for 
 its centre always an urban settlement, the Chemmitic, for 
 example, the town of Panopolis, which grew up round 
 the temple of Chemmis or of Pan, or, as this is expressed 
 in the Greek mode of conception, each nome had its 
 metropolis ; so far each land -district may be regarded 
 also as a town-district. Like the cities, the nomes also 
 became in the Christian epoch the basis of the episcopal 
 dioceses. The land-districts were based on the arrange- 
 ments for worship which dominated everything in Egypt ; 
 the centre for each one is the sanctuary of a definite 
 deity, and usually it bears the name of this deity or of 
 the animal sacred to the same ; thus the Chemmitic 
 district is called after the god Chemmis, or, according 
 to Greek equivalent, Pan ; other districts after the dog, 
 the lion, the crocodile. But, on the other hand, the 
 town -districts are not without their religious centre; 
 the protecting god of Alexandria is Alexander, the 
 protecting god of Ptolemais the first Ptolemy, and the 
 priests, who are installed in the one place as in the 
 other for this worship and that of their successors, are 
 the Eponymi for both cities. The land-district is quite 
 destitute of autonomy : administration, taxation, justice, 
 are placed in the hands of the royal officials, 2 and the 
 
 1 To these falls to be added Nau- deed in some measure lies beyond 
 
 cratis, the oldest Greek town already the bounds of Egypt, 
 founded in Egypt before the Ptolemies, 2 There was not wanting of course 
 
 and further Paraetonium, which in- a certain joint action, similar to that 
 
236 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 collegiate system, the Palladium of the Greek as of the 
 Roman commonwealth, was here in all stages absolutely 
 excluded. But in the two Greek cities it was not much 
 otherwise. There was doubtless a body of burgesses 
 divided into phylae and demes, but no common council ; x 
 the officials were doubtless different and differently 
 named from those of the nomes, but were also through- 
 out officials of royal nomination and likewise without 
 collegiate arrangement. Hadrian was the first to give to 
 an Egyptian township, Antinoopolis, laid out by him in 
 memory of his favourite drowned in the Nile, urban rights 
 according to the Greek fashion ; and subsequently Severus, 
 perhaps as much out of spite to the Antiochenes as for 
 the benefit of the Egyptians, granted to the capital of 
 Egypt and to the town of Ptolemais, and to several other 
 Egyptian communities, not urban magistrates indeed, but 
 
 which is exercised by the regiones 
 and the vici of self - administering 
 urban communities ; to this category 
 belongs what we meet with of ago- 
 ranomy and gymnasiarchy in the 
 nomes, as also the erection of honorary 
 memorials and the like, all of which, 
 we may add, make their appearance 
 only to a small extent and for the 
 most part but late. According to 
 the edict of Alexander (C. I. Gr. 
 495 7> 1- 34) the strategoi do not 
 seem to have been, properly speaking, 
 nominated by the governor, but only 
 to have been confirmed after an 
 examination ; we do not know who 
 had the proposing of them. 
 
 1 The position of matters is clearly 
 apparent in the inscription set up at 
 the beginning of the reign of Pius to 
 the well-known orator Aristides by 
 the Egyptian Greeks (C. /. Gr. 
 4679) ; as dedicants are named r\ iroXis 
 tup 'AXefap 5 piuiv Kal 'Ep/jLoiiroXis i) 
 fieydXrj Kal 7) (3ov\i] i] 'Avrivoiwv viwv 
 EXXijj'aw Kal ol iv rip M\ra rrjs 
 Alyi!nrTov Kal ol rbv Q-qfiaCKov vofibv 
 oiKovvres "EWrjves. Thus only An- 
 tinoopolis, the city of the "new 
 Hellenes," has a Boule ; Alexandria 
 appears without this, but as a Greek 
 city in the aggregate. Moreover 
 
 there take part in this dedication the 
 Greeks living in the Delta and those 
 living in Thebes, but of the Egyptian 
 towns Great - Hermopolis alone, on 
 which probably the immediate vicinity 
 of Antinoopolis has exercised an in- 
 fluence. To Ptolemais Strabo (xvii. 
 I, 42, p. 813) attributes a o-tfo-rrina 
 TroXiTiKbv tv t£ 'EWrjPiKqi rpdnip ; 
 but in this we may hardly think of 
 more than what belonged to the 
 capital according to its constitution 
 more exactly known to us — and so 
 specially of the division of the bur- 
 gesses into phylae. That the pre- 
 Ptolemaic Greek city Naucratis 
 retained in the Ptolemaic time the 
 Boule, which it doubtless had, is 
 possible, but cannot be decisive for 
 the Ptolemaic arrangements. — Dio's 
 statement (ii. 17) that Augustus left 
 the other Egyptian towns with their 
 existing organisation, but took the 
 common council from the Alexand- 
 rians on account of their untrust- 
 worthiness, rests doubtless on mis- 
 understanding, the more especially as, 
 according to it, Alexandria appears 
 slighted in comparison with the other 
 Egyptian communities, which is not 
 at all in keeping with probability. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 237 
 
 at any rate an urban council. Hitherto, doubtless, in 
 official language the Egyptian town calls itself Nomos, the 
 Greek Polis, but a Polis without Archontes and Bouleutae 
 is a meaningless name. So was it also in the coinage. 
 The Egyptian nomes did not possess the right of coining ; 
 but still less did Alexandria ever strike coins. Egypt is, 
 among all the provinces of the Greek half of the empire, 
 the only one which knows no other than royal money. 
 Nor was this otherwise even in the Roman period. The 
 emperors abolished the abuses that crept in under the last 
 Lagids ; Augustus set aside their unreal copper coinage, 
 and when Tiberius resumed the coinage of silver he gave 
 to the Egyptian silver money just as real value as to the 
 other provincial currency of the empire. 1 But the character 
 of the coinage remained substantially the same. 2 There 
 is a distinction between Nomos and Polis as between the 
 god Chemmis and the god Alexander ; in an administrative 
 respect there is not any difference. Egypt consisted of 
 a majority of Egyptian and of a minority of Greek 
 townships, all of which were destitute of autonomy, and 
 all were placed under the immediate and absolute 
 administration of the king and of the officials nominated 
 by him. 
 
 1 The Egyptian coining of gold 
 naturally ceased with the annexation 
 of the land, for there was in the 
 Roman empire only imperial gold. 
 With the silver also Augustus dealt 
 in like manner, and as ruler of Egypt 
 caused simply copper to be struck, 
 and even this only in moderate 
 quantities. At first Tiberius coined, 
 after 27-28 A.D. , silver money for 
 Egyptian circulation, apparently as 
 token-money, as the pieces correspond 
 nearly in point of weight to four, in 
 point of silver value to one, of the 
 Roman denarius (Feuardent, Numis- 
 matique, j&gypte ancienne, ii. p. xi. ). 
 But as in legal currency the Alex- 
 andrian drachma was estimated as 
 obolus (consequently as a sixth, not 
 as a fourth ; comp. Rom. Miinzwesen, 
 p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius 
 {Hermes, v. p. 136), and the pro- 
 
 vincial silver always lost as compared 
 with the imperial silver, the Alex- 
 andrian tetradrachmon of the silver 
 value of a denarius has rather been 
 estimated at the current value of 
 two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly 
 down to Commodus, from whose time 
 the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is 
 essentially a copper coin, the same 
 has been quite as much a coin of 
 value as the Syrian tetradrachmon 
 and the Cappadocian drachma ; they 
 only left to the former the old name 
 and the old weight. 
 
 2 That the emperor Hadrian, 
 among other Egyptising caprices, 
 gave to the nomes as well as to his 
 Antinoopolis for once the right of 
 coining, which was thereupon done 
 subsequently on a couple of occasions, 
 makes no alteration in the rule. 
 
2 3 8 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Absence of It was a consequence of this, that Egypt alone of all 
 a land-diet, ^ Roman provinces had no general representation. The 
 diet is the collective representation of the self-administer- 
 ing communities of the province. But in Egypt there was 
 none such ; the nomes were simply imperial or rather 
 royal administrative districts, and Alexandria not merely 
 stood virtually alone, but was likewise without proper 
 municipal organisation. The priest standing at the head 
 of the capital of the country might doubtless call himself 
 "chief priest of Alexandria and all Egypt" (p. 248, note), 
 and has a certain resemblance to the Asiarch and the 
 Bithyniarch of Asia Minor, but the deep diversity of the 
 organisations is thereby simply concealed. 
 The gov- The rule bore accordingly in Egypt a far different 
 
 theL 6 agidt char acter than in the rest of the domain of Greek and 
 Roman civilisation embraced under the imperial govern- 
 ment. In the latter the community administers throughout ; 
 the ruler of the empire is, strictly taken, only the common 
 president of the numerous more or less autonomous 
 bodies of burgesses, and alongside of the advantages of 
 self-administration its disadvantages and dangers every- 
 where appear. In Egypt the ruler is king, the inhabitant 
 of the land is his subject, the administration that of a 
 domain. This administration, in principle as haughtily and 
 absolutely conducted as it was directed to the equal welfare 
 of all subjects without distinction of rank and of estate, was 
 the peculiarity of the Lagid government, developed pro- 
 bably more from the Hellenising of the old Pharaonic rule 
 than from the urban organisation of the universal empire, 
 as the great Macedonian had conceived it, and as it was 
 most completely carried out in the Syrian New-Macedonia 
 (p. 120). The system required a king not merely leading 
 the army in his own person, but engaged in the daily 
 labour of administration, a developed and strictly dis- 
 ciplined hierarchy of officials, scrupulous justice towards 
 high and low ; and as these rulers, not altogether without 
 ground, ascribed to themselves the name of benefactor 
 (eve py err)?), so the monarchy of the Lagids may be 
 compared with that of Frederick, from which it was in 
 
chap. xii. EGYPT. 239 
 
 its principles not far removed. Certainly Egypt had 
 also experienced the reverse side, the inevitable collapse 
 of the system in incapable hands. But the standard 
 remained ; and the Augustan principate alongside of the 
 rule of the senate was nothing but the intermarriage of 
 the Lagid government with the old urban and federal 
 development. 
 
 A further consequence of this form of government Egypt and 
 was the undoubted superiority, more especially from a Idmn^sYra- 
 fmancial point of view, of the Egyptian administration tr- 
 over that of the other provinces. We may designate 
 the pre-Roman epoch as the struggle of the financially 
 dominant power of Egypt with the Asiatic empire, filling, 
 so far as space goes, the rest of the East ; under the 
 Roman period this was continued in a certain sense in 
 the fact that the imperial -finances stood forth superior 
 in contrast to those of the senate, especially through the 
 exclusive possession of Egypt. If it is the aim of the 
 state to work out the utmost possible amount from its 
 territory, in the old world the Lagids were absolutely 
 the masters of statecraft. In particular they were in this 
 sphere the instructors and the models of the Caesars. 
 How much the Romans drew out of Egypt we are not 
 able to say with precision. In the Persian period Egypt 
 had paid an annual tribute of 700 Babylonish talents 
 of silver, about £200,000 ; the annual income of the 
 Ptolemies from Egypt, or rather from their possessions 
 generally, amounted in their most brilliant period to 
 14,800 Egyptian silver talents, or £2,850,000, and 
 besides 1,500,000 artabae = 591,000 hectolitres of 
 wheat ; at the end of their rule fully 6000 talents, or 
 £1,250,000. The Romans drew from Egypt annually 
 the third part of the corn necessary for the consumption 
 of Rome, 20,000,000 Roman bushels 1 = 1,740,000 
 
 1 This figure is given by the so- 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to 
 
 called Epitome of Victor, c. 1, for be understood, according to c. 6, as 
 
 the time of Augustus. After this meant), or 26§ millions of Roman 
 
 payment was transferred to Con- bushels (Hultsch, Metrol. p. 628), 
 
 stantinople there went thither under to which falls further to be added the 
 
 Justinian {Ed. xiii. c. 8) annually similar payment to the town of Alex- 
 
240 EGYPT. book viii. 
 
 hectolitres ; a part of it, however, was certainly derived 
 from the domains proper, another perhaps supplied in 
 return for compensation, while, on the other hand, the 
 Egyptian tribute was assessed, at least for a great part, 
 in money, so that we are not in a position even approxi- 
 mately to determine the Egyptian income of the Roman 
 exchequer. But not merely by its amount was it of 
 decisive importance for the Roman state-economy, but 
 because it served as a pattern in the first instance for 
 the domanial possessions of the emperors in the other 
 provinces, and generally for the whole imperial administra- 
 tion, as this falls to be explained when we set it forth. 
 Privileged But if the communal self-administration had no place 
 theHei ° f * n ^"SY^' anc ^ * n ^is respect a real diversity does not 
 lenes. exist between the two nations of which this state, just 
 like the Syrian, was composed, there was in another 
 respect a barrier erected between them, to which Syria 
 offers no parallel. According to the arrangement of the 
 Macedonian conquerors, the belonging to an Egyptian 
 locality disqualified for all public offices and for the 
 better military service. Where the state made gifts to 
 its burgesses these were restricted to those of the Greek 
 communities ; l on the other hand, the Egyptians only 
 paid the poll-tax ; and even from the municipal burdens, 
 which fell on the settlers of the individual Egyptian 
 district, the Alexandrians settled there were exempted. 2 
 Although in the case of trespass the back of the Egyptian 
 as of the Alexandrian had to suffer, the latter might 
 boast, and did boast, that the cane struck him, and not 
 the lash, as in the case of the former. 3 Even the 
 
 andria, introduced by Diocletian. To X^Pf ( n °t iv rrj iroXei) on account of 
 
 the shipmasters for the freight to Con- their business from the Xarovpytai 
 
 stantinople 8000 solidi = ^5000 were %wpiKa/. 
 
 annually paid from the state-chest. 3 "There subsist," says the Alex- 
 
 1 At least Cleopatra on a distribu- andrian Jew Philo (in Flacc. 10), 
 tion of grain in Alexandria excluded ' ' as respects corporal chastisement 
 the Jews ( Josephus, contra Ap. ii. 5), (twv ^aariyuv), distinctions in our 
 and all the more, consequently, the city according to the rank of those 
 Egyptians. to be chastised ; the Egyptians are 
 
 2 The edict of Alexander (C. I. chastised with different scourges and 
 Gr. 4957)> !■ 33 ff-> exempts the by others, but the Alexandrians with 
 ivyevels 'AX^avdpels dwelling iv rfj canes (<rn-&6a.is ; anddr} is the stem of 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 241 
 
 acquiring of better burgess - rights was forbidden to the 
 Egyptians. 1 The burgess -lists of the two large Greek 
 towns organised by and named after the two founders 
 of the empire in lower and upper Egypt embraced in 
 them the ruling population, and the possession of the 
 franchise of one of these towns was in the Egypt of the 
 Ptolemies the same as the possession of the Roman 
 franchise was in the Roman empire. What Aristotle 
 recommended to Alexander — to be a ruler (^yefjboov) to 
 the Hellenes and a master to the barbarians, to provide 
 for the former as friends and comrades, to use the latter 
 like animals and plants — the Ptolemies practically carried 
 out in all its extent. The king, greater and more free 
 than his instructor, carried in his mind the higher idea 
 of transforming the barbarians into Hellenes, or at least 
 of replacing the barbarian settlements by Hellenic, and to 
 this idea his successors almost everywhere, and particularly 
 in Syria, allowed ample scope. 2 In Egypt this was not the 
 case. Doubtless its rulers sought to keep touch with the 
 natives, particularly in the religious sphere, and wished not 
 to rule as Greeks over the Egyptians, but rather as earthly 
 gods over their subjects in common ; but with this the in- 
 equality of rights on the part of the subjects was quite com- 
 patible, just as the preference de hire and de facto of the 
 nobility was quite as essential a part of the government of 
 Frederick as the equality of justice towards gentle and simple. 
 
 the palm-leaf), and by the Alex- 
 andrian cane - bearers " {criraQ-qfpbpoi, 
 perhaps bacillarius). He afterwards 
 complains bitterly that the elders of 
 his community, if they were to be 
 scourged at all, should not have been 
 provided at least with decorous bur- 
 gess-lashes (rats tXevBepLwrtpais Kal 
 TroXiTiKUT^pais fidari^iv). 
 
 1 Josephus, contra Ap. ii. 4, p.6vois 
 AlyvTrrloLS ol Kijpioi vvv 'PupLaioi TTjS 
 olKOVfjAvris fxeTakaixfiaveiv rjtrTivoaouv 
 iroKirelas aTreiprjKacriv. 6, Aegyptiis 
 neque regum quisquam videtur ius 
 civitatis fuisse largitus neque nunc 
 quilibet imperatorum (comp. Eph. 
 epigr. v. p. 13). The same upbraids 
 his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 native Egyptian, had denied his home 
 and given himself out as an Alex- 
 andrian. — Individual exceptions are 
 not thereby excluded. 
 
 2 Alexandrian science, too, pro- 
 tested in the sense of the king against 
 this proposition (Plutarch, de fort. 
 Alex. i. 6) ; Eratosthenes designated 
 civilisation as not peculiar to the 
 Hellenes alone, and not to be denied 
 to all barbarians, e.g. not to the 
 Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the 
 Carthaginians ; men were rather to 
 be divided into "good" and "bad" 
 (Strabo, i. fin. p. 66). But of this 
 theory no practical application was 
 made to the Egyptian race even under 
 the Lagids. 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Personal As the Romans in the East generally continued the 
 
 privileges wor k G f the Greeks, so the exclusion of the native 
 Roman Egyptians from the acquiring of Greek citizenship not 
 period. merely continued to subsist, but was extended to the 
 Roman citizenship. The Egyptian Greek, on the other 
 hand, might acquire the latter just like any other non- 
 burgess. Entrance to the senate, it is true, was as little 
 allowed to him as to the Roman burgess from Gaul 
 (p. 89), and this restriction remained much longer in 
 force for Egypt than for Gaul j 1 it was not till the 
 beginning of the third century that it was disregarded in 
 isolated cases, and it held good, as a rule, even in the 
 fifth. In Egypt itself the positions of the upper officials, 
 that is, of those acting for the whole province, and likewise 
 the officers' posts, were reserved for Roman citizens in 
 the form of the knight's horse being required as a 
 qualification for them ; this was given by the general 
 organisation of the empire, and similar privileges had in 
 fact been possessed in Egypt by the Macedonians in 
 contrast to the other Greeks. The offices of the second 
 rank remained under the Roman rule, as previously, 
 closed to the Egyptian Egyptians, and were filled 
 with Greeks, primarily with the burgesses of Alexandria 
 and Ptolemais. If in the imperial war- service for the 
 first class Roman citizenship was required, they, at any 
 rate in the case of the legions stationed in Egypt itself, 
 not seldom admitted the Egyptian Greek on the foot- 
 ing that Roman citizenship was conferred on him upon 
 occasion of the levy. For the category of auxiliary 
 troops the admission of the Greeks was subject to no 
 limitation ; but the Egyptians were little or not at all 
 employed for this purpose, while they were employed 
 afterwards in considerable number for the lowest class, 
 the naval force still in the first imperial times formed of 
 slaves. In the course of time the slighting of the native 
 
 1 Admission to the equestrian posi- note 2). Yet we meet early with 
 
 tions was at least rendered difficult : individual Alexandrians in equestrian 
 
 non est ex albo index patre Aegyptio offices, like Tiberius Julius Alexander 
 
 (C. I. L. iv. 1943 ; comp. Staatsrecht, (p. 246, note), 
 ii. 919, note 2 ; Eph. epigr. v. p. 13, 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 243 
 
 Egyptians doubtless had its rigour relaxed, and they 
 more than once attained to Greek, and by means of it 
 also to Roman, citizenship ; but on the whole the Roman 
 government was simply the continuation, as of the Greek 
 rule, so also of the Greek exclusiveness. As the 
 Macedonian government had contented itself with Alex- 
 andria and Ptolemais, so in this province alone the 
 Romans did not found a single colony. 1 
 
 The linguistic arrangement in Egypt remained Native 
 essentially under the Romans as the Ptolemies had ^euage. 
 settled it. Apart from the military, among whom the 
 Latin alone prevailed, the business -language for the 
 intercourse of the upper posts was the Greek. Of the 
 native language, which, radically different from the 
 Semitic as from the Arian languages, is most nearly 
 akin perhaps to that of the Berbers in North Africa, and 
 of the native writing, the Roman rulers and their governors 
 never made use ; and, if already under the Ptolemies a 
 Greek translation had to be appended to official docu- 
 ments written in Egyptian, at least the same held good 
 for these their successors. Certainly the Egyptians were 
 not prohibited from making use, so far as it seemed 
 requisite according to ritual or otherwise appropriate, of 
 the native language and of its time -hallowed written 
 signs ; in this old home, moreover, of the use of writing 
 in ordinary intercourse the native language, alone familiar 
 to the great public, and the usual writing must necessarily 
 have been allowed not merely in the case of private 
 contracts, but even as regards tax -receipts and similar 
 documents. But this was a concession, and the ruling 
 Hellenism strove to enlarge its domain. The effort to 
 create for the views and traditions prevailing in the land 
 an universally valid expression also in Greek gave an 
 extension to the system of double names in Egypt 
 such as we see nowhere else. All Egyptian gods whose 
 
 1 If the words of Pliny {H. N. v. 31, Alexander, gone beyond the thought 
 
 128) are accurate, that the island of of Aristotle. But there can be no 
 
 Pharos before the harbour of Alexandria doubt as to the point, that after the 
 
 was a colonia Caesaris didatoris (comp. annexation of Egypt there never was 
 
 544. iv. 574), the dictator has here too, like a Roman colony there. 
 
244 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 names were not themselves current among the Greeks, 
 like that of Isis, were equalised with corresponding or else 
 not corresponding Greek ones ; perhaps the half of the 
 townships and a great number of persons bore as well 
 a native as a Greek appellation. Gradually Hellenism 
 in this case prevailed. The old sacred writing meets us 
 on the preserved monuments last under the emperor 
 Decius about the middle of the third, and its more 
 current degenerated form last about the middle of the fifth 
 century ; both disappeared from common use considerably 
 earlier. The neglect and the decay of the native elements 
 of civilisation are expressed in these facts. The language 
 of the land itself maintained its ground still for long 
 afterwards in remote places and in the lower ranks, and 
 only became quite extinct in the seventeenth century, 
 after it — the language of the Copts — had, just like the 
 Syriac, experienced in the later imperial period a limited 
 regeneration in consequence of the introduction of 
 Christianity and of the efforts directed to the production 
 of a national-Christian literature. 
 Aboiitionof In the government the first thing that strikes us is 
 court. Cn the suppression of the court and of its residency, the 
 necessary consequence of the annexation of the land by 
 Augustus. There was left doubtless as much as could 
 be left. On the inscriptions written in the native 
 language, and so merely for Egyptians, the emperors are 
 termed, like the Ptolemies, kings of upper and lower 
 Egypt, and the elect of the Egyptian native gods, and 
 indeed withal — which was not the case with the 
 Ptolemies — great-kings. 1 Dates were reckoned in Egypt, 
 
 1 The titles of Augustus run with retained from the Greek. The title 
 
 the Egyptian priests to the following of Augustus occurs first in the case 
 
 effect : " The beautiful boy, lovely of Tiberius in an Egyptian translation 
 
 through worthiness to be loved, the [nii ^w), and with the retention of the 
 
 prince of princes, elect of Ptah and Greek 2e/3aor6s first under Domitian. 
 
 Nun the father of the gods, king of The title of the fair, lovely boy, 
 
 upper Egypt and king of lower which in better times was wont to be 
 
 Egypt, lord of the two lands, Auto- given only to the children proclaimed 
 
 krator, son of the sun, lord of diadems, as joint - rulers, afterwards became 
 
 Kaisar, ever living, beloved by Ptah stereotyped, and is found employed, 
 
 and Isis ; " in this case the proper as for Caesarion and Augustus, so 
 
 names "Autokrator, Kaisar," are also for Tiberius, Claudius, Titus, 
 
chap. xii. EGYPT. 245 
 
 as previously, according to the current calendar of the 
 country and its royal year passing over to the Roman 
 rulers ; the golden cup which every year the king threw 
 into the swelling Nile was now thrown in by the Roman 
 viceroy. But these things did not reach far. The Roman 
 ruler could not carry out the part of the Egyptian king, 
 which was incompatible with his imperial position. The 
 new lord of the land had unpleasant experiences in his 
 representation by a subordinate on the very first occasion 
 of his sending a governor to Egypt ; the able officer and 
 talented poet, who had not been able to refrain from 
 inscribing his name also on the Pyramids, was deposed on 
 that account and thereby ruined. It was inevitable that 
 limits should here be set. The affairs, the transaction 
 of which according to the system of Alexander devolved 
 on the prince personally 1 not less than according to the 
 arrangement of the Roman principate, might be managed 
 by the Roman governor as by the native king ; king he 
 might neither be nor seem. 2 That was to a certainty 
 deeply and severely felt in the second city of the world. 
 The mere change of dynasty would not have told so very 
 heavily. But a court like that of the Ptolemies, regulated 
 according to the ceremonial of the Pharaohs, king and 
 queen in their dress as gods, the pomp of festal 
 processions, the reception of the priesthoods and of 
 ambassadors, the court-banquets, the great ceremonies of 
 the coronation, of the taking the oath, of marriage, of 
 burial, the court-offices of the bodyguards and the chief 
 of that guard (ap^iaco/u,aTO(j>vXa^), of the introducing 
 chamberlain (etVayyeXeu?), of the chief master of the 
 table (ap%e&eaTpo$), of the chief master of the huntsmen 
 
 Domitian. It is more important that 1 If people knew, king Seleucus 
 
 in deviation from the older title, as was wont to say (Plutarch, An seni, 
 
 it is found, e.g. in Greek on the 1 1 ), what a burden it was to write and 
 
 inscription of Rosetta (C. I. Gr. to read so many letters, they would 
 
 4697), in the case of the Caesars not take up the diadem if it lay at 
 
 from Augustus onward the title their feet. 
 
 "prince of princes" is appended, by 2 That he wore other insignia than 
 
 which beyond doubt it was intended the officers generally (Hirschfeld, 
 
 to express their position of great-king, Verw. Gesch. p. 271), it is hardly 
 
 which the earlier kings had not. allowable to infer from vita Hadr. 4. 
 
246 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 {apyiKvvr]<yQi), the cousins and friends of the king, the 
 wearers of decorations — all this was lost for the Alex- 
 andrians once for all with the transfer of the seat of the 
 ruler from the Nile to the Tiber. Only the two famous 
 Alexandrian libraries remained there, with all their 
 belongings and staff, as a remnant of the old regal 
 magnificence. Beyond question Egypt lost by being 
 dispossessed of its rulers very much more than Syria ; 
 both nations indeed were in the powerless position of 
 having to acquiesce in what was contrived for them, and 
 not more here than there was a rising for the lost 
 position of a great power so much as thought of. 
 The The administration of the land lay, as has been already 
 
 officials. said> in the hands of the « deputy," that is, the viceroy ; 
 
 for, although the new lord of the land, out of respect for 
 his position in the empire, refrained as well for himself as 
 for his delegates of higher station from the royal appella- 
 tions in Egypt, he yet in substance conducted his rule 
 throughout as successor of the Ptolemies, and the whole 
 civil and military supreme power was combined in his 
 hand and that of his representative. We have already 
 observed that neither non-burgesses nor senators might 
 fill this position ; it was sometimes committed to Alex- 
 andrians, if they had attained to burgess-rights, and by 
 way of exception to equestrian rank. 1 We may add that 
 this office stood at first before all the rest of the non- 
 senatorial in rank and influence, and subsequently was 
 inferior only to the commandership of the imperial guard. 
 Besides the officers proper, in reference to whom the only 
 departure from the general arrangement was the exclusion 
 of the senator and the lower title, thence resulting, of the 
 commandant of the legion {praefecius instead of legatus), 
 
 1 Thus Tiberius Julius Alexander, afterwards took up once more in the 
 
 an Alexandrian Jew, held this gover- Jewish war of Titus. He must have 
 
 norship in the last years of Nero been one of the ablest officers of this 
 
 (p. 204) ; certainly he belonged to a epoch. To him is dedicated the 
 
 very rich family of rank, allied by pseudo - Aristotelian treatise irepl 
 
 marriage even with the imperial house, ko<t/j,ov (p. 168), evidently composed 
 
 and he had distinguished himself in by another Alexandrian Jew (Bernays, 
 
 the Parthian war as chief of the staff Gesammelte Abhandl. ii. 278). 
 of Corbulo — a position which he soon 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 247 
 
 there acted alongside of and under the governor, and 
 likewise for all Egypt, a supreme official for justice and 
 a supreme finance -administrator, both likewise Roman 
 citizens of equestrian rank, and apparently not borrowed 
 from the administrative scheme of the Ptolemies, but 
 attached and subordinated to the governor after a fashion 
 applied also in other imperial provinces. 1 
 
 All other officials acted only for individual districts, and 
 were in the main taken over from the Ptolemaic arrange- 
 ment. That the presidents of the three provinces of lower, 
 middle, and upper Egypt, provided — apart from the com- 
 mand — with the same sphere of business as the governor, 
 were taken in the time of Augustus from the Egyptian 
 Greeks, and subsequently, like the superior officials proper, 
 from the Roman knighthood, deserves to be noted as a symp- 
 tom of the increasing tendency in the course of the imperial 
 period to repress the native element in the magistracy. 
 
 Under these superior and intermediate authorities 
 stood the local officials, the presidents of the Egyptian 
 as of the Greek towns, along with the very numerous 
 subalterns employed in the collecting of the revenue and 
 
 jurisdiction was not exclusive; "many 
 processes," says Strabo, " are decided 
 by the official administering justice " 
 (that he assigned guardians, we learn 
 from Dig. i. 20, 2), and according to 
 the same it devolved on the Idiologus 
 in particular to confiscate for the ex- 
 chequer the bona vacantia et caduca. 
 — This does not exclude the view 
 that the Roman iuridicus came in place 
 of the older court of thirty with the 
 apx^iKaaT-qs at its head (Diodorus, 
 i. 75), who was Egyptian, and may 
 not be confounded with the Alex- 
 andrian apxiSiKaar-q?, had moreover 
 perhaps been set aside already before the 
 Roman period, and that the Idiologus 
 originated out of the subsistence in 
 Egypt of a claim of the king on 
 heritages, such as did not occur to 
 the same extent in the rest of the 
 empire, which latter view Lumbroso 
 (Recherches, p. 285) has made very 
 probable. 
 
 1 Unmistakably the iuridicus Ae- 
 gypti (C. I. L. x. 6976; also missus 
 in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem, Bull. 
 deW Inst. 1856, p. 142 ; iuridicus 
 Alexandreae, C. vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 
 8934; Dig. i. 20, 2), and the idiologus 
 ad Aegyptum (C. x. 4862 ; procurator 
 ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu, Eph. 
 ep. v. p. 30, and C. I. Gr. 3751 ; 
 6 yvdificop tov Idiov \6yov, C. I. Gr . 
 4957, v. 44, comp. v. 39), are 
 modelled on the assistants associated 
 with the legates of the imperial pro- 
 vinces for the administration of justice 
 {legati iuridict) and the finances 
 {procuraiores provinciae ; Staatsrecht 
 I 2 , p. 223, note 5). That they were 
 appointed for the whole land, and 
 were subordinate to the praefectus 
 Aegypti, is stated by Strabo expressly 
 (xvii. 1, 12, p. 797). and this as- 
 sumption is required by the frequent 
 mention of Egypt in their style and 
 title as well as by the turn in the edict 
 C. I. Gr. 4957, v. 39. But their 
 
248 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the manifold imposts laid on business-dealings, and again 
 in the individual district the presidents of the sub-districts 
 and of the villages — positions, which were looked upon 
 more as burdens than as honours, and were imposed by 
 the higher officials upon persons belonging to, or settled 
 in, the locality, to the exclusion, however, of the Alex- 
 andrians ; the most important among them, the presidency 
 of the nome, was filled up every three years by the 
 governor. The local authorities of the Greek towns were 
 different as to number and title ; in Alexandria in par- 
 ticular four chief officials acted, the priest of Alexander, 1 
 
 of Rome from Hadrian's time (C. /. 
 Gr. 5900 : apxiepei 'AXe£av8peias Kal 
 Aiyuwrov irdar)^ Aeviciy TotAi'y Ovrjcr- 
 t'ivu} Kal e"KicrraTr\ rod Movtxeiov Kal iirl 
 ruv ev 'Pdi/nrj j3i(3XiodrjK£>J> 'PoifxaiKwy re 
 Kal EXXtjvikup Kal £ttI ttjs TraideLas 
 Adpiavov, eTricrTokei rod avrov avroKpd- 
 ropos) ; the proper title i^rjyrjT-qs, was 
 avoided out of Egypt, because it 
 usually denoted the sexton. If the 
 chief priesthood, as the tenor of the 
 inscription suggests, is to be assumed 
 as having been at that time permanent, 
 the transition from the annual tenure 
 to the at least titular, and not seldom 
 also real, tenure for life repeats itself, 
 as is well known, in the sacerdotia of the 
 provinces, to which this Alexandrian 
 one did not indeed belong, but the 
 place of which it represented in Egypt 
 (p. 238). That the priesthood and 
 the presidency of the Museum are two 
 distinct offices is shown by the in- 
 scription itself. We learn the same 
 from the inscription of a royal chief 
 physician of a good Lagid period, 
 who is withal as well exegete as pre- 
 sident of the Museum (Xpfoep/uLov 
 JlpaKXelrov 'AXe^avdpia top. o~vyy evrj 
 fiaaiXe'us UroXe/j-alov Kal e^7]yrjr^v Kal 
 eirl rdv larpCov Kal £irio-TaT7}v tov 
 Movadov). But the two monuments 
 at the same time suggest that the 
 post of first official of Alexandria and 
 the presidency of the Museum were 
 frequently committed to the same 
 man, although in the Roman time 
 the former was conferred by the 
 prefect, the latter by the emperor. 
 
 1 The ei^^-njs, according to Strabo, 
 xvii. 1, 12, p. 797, the first civic 
 official in Alexandria under the Ptole- 
 mies as under the Romans, and en- 
 titled to wear the purple, is certainly 
 identical with the year-priest in the 
 testament of Alexander appearing in 
 the Alexander-romance very well in- 
 structed in such matters (iii. 33, p. 
 149, Miiller). As the Exegetes 
 has, along with his title, doubtless 
 to be taken in a religious sense, the 
 im/j.e'Xeia twi> rrj ir6\ec xP r l (r ' l l x03V t that 
 priest of the romance is iiri/xeXio-rris 
 Trjs iroXews. The romance- writer will 
 not have invented the payment with 
 a talent and the hereditary character 
 any more than the purple and the 
 golden chaplet ; the hereditary ele- 
 ment, in reference to which Lumbroso 
 [TEgitto al tempo dei Greet e Romani, 
 p. 152) recalls the i^rjyyiTrjs Zvapxos 
 of the Alexandrian inscriptions (C. I. 
 Gr. 4688, 4976 a), is presumably 
 to be conceived to the effect that a 
 certain circle of persons was called 
 by hereditary right, and out of these 
 the governor appointed the year-priest. 
 This priest of Alexander (as well as 
 of the following Egyptian kings, ac- 
 cording to the stone of Canopus and 
 that of Rosetta, C. I. Gr. 4697), was 
 under the earlier Lagids the eponym 
 for Alexandrian documents, while 
 later as under the Romans the kings' 
 names come in for that purpose. Not 
 different from him probably was the 
 "chief priest of Alexandria and all 
 Egypt,*' of an inscription of the city 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 249 
 
 the town-clerk (v7rop,vr]p,aTO'ypd<po<;), 1 the supreme judge 
 (apxiBifcacTTris), and the master of the night-watch (yv/cre- 
 ptvos o-TpaTTjyos). That they were of more consequence 
 than the strategoi of the nomes, is obvious of itself, and 
 is shown clearly by the purple dress belonging to the first 
 Alexandrian official. We may add that they originate 
 likewise from the Ptolemaic period, and are nominated 
 for a time by the Roman government, like the presidents 
 of the nomes, from the persons settled therein. Roman 
 officials of imperial nomination are not found among these 
 urban presidents. But the priest of the Mouseion, who is 
 at the same time president of the Alexandrian Academy of 
 Sciences and also disposes of the considerable pecuniary 
 means of this institute, is nominated by the emperor ; in 
 like manner the superintendency of the tomb of Alexander 
 and the buildings connected with it, and some other import- 
 ant positions in the capital of Egypt, were filled up by the 
 government in Rome with officials of equestrian rank. 2 
 
 As a matter of course, Alexandrians and Egyptians insurrec- 
 were drawn into those movements of pretenders which tlons- 
 had their origin in the East, and regularly participated in 
 them ; in this way Vespasian, Cassius, Niger, Macrianus 
 (p. 103), Vaballathus the son of Zenobia, Probus, were here 
 proclaimed as rulers. But the initiative in all those cases 
 was taken neither by the burgesses of Alexandria nor by 
 the little esteemed Egyptian troops ; and most of those 
 revolutions, even the unsuccessful, had for Egypt no con- 
 sequences specially felt. But the movement connected 
 with the name of Zenobia (p. 107) became almost as fate- 
 ful for Alexandria and for all Egypt as for Palmyra. In 
 town and country the Palmyrene and the Roman par- 
 tisans confronted each other with arms and blazinsr 
 
 In the 
 Palmyrene 
 period. 
 
 1 Not to be confounded with the 
 similar office which Philo (in Flacc. 
 16) mentions and Lucian (Apolog. 12) 
 held ; this was not an urban office, 
 but a subaltern's post in the praefec- 
 ture of Egypt, in Latin a commentariis 
 or ab actis. 
 
 2 This is the procurator Neaspoleos 
 et mausolei Alexandriae (C. I. L. 
 
 viii. 8934 ; Henzen, 6929). Officials 
 of a like kind and of like rank, but 
 whose functions are not quite clear, 
 are the procurator ad Mercurium 
 Alexandreae (C. I. L. x. 3847), and 
 the procurator Alexandreae Pelusii 
 (C. vi. 1024). The Pharos also is 
 placed under an imperial freedman 
 (C. vi. 8582). 
 
2$Q 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 torches in their hands. On the south frontier the bar- 
 barian Blemyes advanced, apparently in agreement with 
 the portion of the inhabitants of Egypt favourable to 
 Palmyra, and possessed themselves of a great part of 
 upper Egypt. 1 In Alexandria the intercourse between 
 the two hostile quarters was cut off; it was difficult and 
 dangerous even to forward letters. 2 The streets were 
 filled with blood and with dead bodies unburied. The 
 diseases thereby engendered made even more havoc than 
 the sword ; and, in order that none of the four steeds of 
 destruction might be wanting, the Nile also failed, and 
 famine associated itself with the other scourges. The 
 population melted away to such an extent that, as a con- 
 temporary says, there were formerly more gray-haired 
 men in Alexandria than there were afterwards citizens. 
 
 When Probus, the general sent by Claudius, at length 
 gained the upper hand, the Palmyrene partisans, including 
 the majority of the members of council, threw themselves 
 into the strong castle of Prucheion in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the city ; and, although, when Probus 
 promised to spare the lives of those that should come out, 
 the great majority submitted, yet a considerable portion 
 of the citizens persevered to the uttermost in the struggle 
 of despair. The fortress, at length reduced by hunger 
 (270), was razed and lay thenceforth desolate ; but the 
 city lost its walls. The Blemyes still maintained them- 
 
 1 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 Zosi- 
 mus, i. 71, that Ptolemais fell away to 
 the Blemyes (comp. Easebius, Hist. 
 Eccl. vii. 32). Aurelian only nego- 
 tiated with these {Vita, 34, 41) ; it 
 was Probus who first drove them 
 again out of Egypt (Zosimus, I.e. ; 
 Vita, 17). 
 
 2 We still possess letters of this 
 sort, addressed by the bishop of the 
 city, at that time Dionysius (t 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 r\ fxeaaiTdrrj tt?s 
 7r6Xews 656s, consequently the street 
 furnished with colonnades, running 
 from the Lochias point right through 
 the town (comp. Lumbroso, FEgitto 
 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, Ixxvii. 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. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 251 
 
 selves for years in the land ; the emperor Probus first 
 wrested from them again Ptolemais and Coptos, and drove 
 them out of the country. 
 
 The state of distress, which these troubles prolonged Revolt 
 through a series of years, must have produced, may pro- "ledan 1 
 bably thereupon have brought to an outbreak, the only 
 revolution that can be shown to have arisen in Egypt. 1 
 Under the government of Diocletian, we do not know why 
 or wherefore, as well the native Egyptians as the burgesses 
 of Alexandria rose in revolt against the existing govern- 
 ment. Lucius Domitius Domitianus and Achilleus were 
 set up as opposition-emperors, unless possibly the two 
 names denote the same person ; the revolt lasted from 
 three to four years, the towns Busiris in the Delta and 
 Coptos not far from Thebes were destroyed by the troops 
 of the government, and ultimately under the leading of 
 Diocletian in person in the spring of 297 the capital was 
 reduced after an eight months' siege. Nothing testifies 
 so clearly to the decline of the land, rich, but thoroughly 
 dependent on inward and outward peace, as the edict 
 issued in the year 302 by the same Diocletian, that a 
 portion of the Egyptian grain hitherto sent to Rome 
 should for the future go to the benefit of the Alexandrian 
 burgesses. 2 This was certainly among the measures which 
 aimed at the decapitalising of Rome ; but the supply 
 would not have been directed towards the Alexandrians, 
 whom this emperor had truly no cause to favour, unless 
 they had urgently needed it. 
 
 Economically Egypt, as is well-known, is above all the Agricui- 
 land of agriculture. It is true that the " black earth " — ture ' 
 that is the meaning of the native name for the country, 
 Chemi — is only a narrow stripe on either side of the 
 mighty Nile flowing from the last rapids near Syene, the 
 
 1 The alleged Egyptian tyrants, Theod. xiv. 26, 2. Stated distribu- 
 Aemilianus, Firmus, Saturninus, are tions of com had already been in- 
 at least not attested as such. The stituted earlier in Alexandria, but 
 so-called description of the life of the apparently only for persons old and 
 second is nothing else than the sadly decayed, and — it may be conjectured 
 disfigured catastrophe of Prucheion. — on account of the city, not of the 
 
 2 Chr. Pasch. p. 514; Procopius, state (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vii. 21). 
 Hist. arc. 26 ; Gothofred. on Cod. 
 
252 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 southern limit of Egypt proper, for 550 miles in a copious 
 stream, through the yellow desert extending right and 
 left, to the Mediterranean Sea ; only at its lower end the 
 " gift of the river," the Nile-delta, spreads itself out on 
 both sides between the manifold arms of its mouth. The 
 produce of these tracts depends year by year on the Nile 
 and on the sixteen cubits of its flood-mark — the sixteen 
 children playing round their father, as the art of the 
 Greeks represented the river-god ; with good reason the 
 Arabs designate the low cubits by the name of the angels 
 of death, for, if the river does not reach its full height, 
 famine and destruction come upon the whole land of Egypt. 
 But in general Egypt — where the expenses of cultivation 
 are singularly low, wheat bears an hundred fold, and the 
 culture of vegetables, of the vine, of trees, particularly the 
 date-palm, as well as the rearing of cattle, yield good pro- 
 duce — is able not merely to feed a dense population, but 
 also to send corn in large quantity abroad. This led to 
 the result that, after the installation of the foreign rule, 
 not much of its riches was left to the land itself. The 
 Nile rose at that time nearly as in the Persian period and 
 as it does to-day, and the Egyptian toiled chiefly for other 
 lands ; and thereby in the first instance Egypt played an 
 important part in the history of imperial Rome. After 
 the grain-cultivation in Italy itself had decayed and Rome 
 had become the greatest city of the world, it needed con- 
 stant supplies of moderately -priced transmarine grain ; 
 and the principate strengthened itself above all by the 
 solution of the far from easy economic problem how to 
 make the supply of the capital financially possible and to 
 render it secure. This solution depended on the possession 
 of Egypt, and, in as much as here the emperor bore 
 exclusive sway, he kept Italy with its dependencies in 
 check through Egypt. When Vespasian seized the 
 dominion he sent his troops to Italy, but he went in 
 person to Egypt and possessed himself of Rome through 
 the corn-fleet. Wherever a Roman ruler had, or is alleged 
 to have had, the idea of transferring the seat of govern- 
 ment to the East, as is told us of Caesar, Antonius, Nero, 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 253 
 
 Geta, there the thoughts were directed, as if spontaneously, 
 not to Antioch, although this was at that time the regular 
 court-residence of the East, but towards the birthplace 
 and the stronghold of the principate — to Alexandria. 
 
 For that reason, accordingly, the Roman government 
 applied itself more zealously to the elevation of agriculture 
 in Egypt than anywhere else. As it is dependent on the 
 inundation of the Nile, it was possible to extend consider- 
 ably the surface fitted for cultivation by systematically 
 executed water-works, artificial canals, dykes, and reser- 
 voirs. In the good times of Egypt, the native land of the 
 measuring-chain and of artificial building, much was done 
 for it, but these beneficent structures fell, under the last 
 wretched and financially oppressed governments, into sad 
 decay. Thus the Roman occupation introduced itself 
 worthily by Augustus subjecting the canals of the Nile to 
 a thorough purifying and renewal by means of the troops 
 stationed in Egypt. If at the time of the Romans taking 
 possession a full harvest required a state of the river of 
 fourteen cubits, and at eight cubits failure of the harvest 
 occurred, at a later period, after the canals were put into 
 order, twelve cubits were enough for a full harvest, and 
 eight cubits still yielded a sufficient produce. Centuries 
 later the emperor Probus not merely liberated Egypt from 
 the Ethiopians but also restored the water-works on the 
 Nile. It may be assumed, generally, that the better suc- 
 cessors of Augustus administered in a similar sense, and 
 that especially with the internal peace and security hardly 
 interrupted for centuries, Egyptian agriculture stood in a 
 permanently nourishing state under the Roman principate. 
 What reflex effect this state of things had on the Egypt- 
 ians themselves we are not able to follow out more 
 exactly. To a great extent the revenues from Egypt 
 rested on the possession of the imperial domains, which 
 in Roman as in earlier times formed a considerable part 
 of the whole area \ x here, especially considering the small 
 
 1 In the town of Alexandria there xxii. n, 6; Siaatsrecht, ii. 963, 
 appears to have been no landed pro- note 1); but otherwise private pro- 
 perty in the strict sense, but only a perty in the soil prevailed also in 
 sort of hereditary lease (Ammianus, Egypt, in the sense in which the pro- 
 
254 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 book VIII. 
 
 cost of cultivation, only a moderate proportion of the 
 produce must have been left to the small tenants who 
 provided it, or a high money-rent must have been im- 
 posed. But even the numerous, and as a rule smaller, 
 owners must have paid a high land-tax in corn or in 
 money. The agricultural population, contented as it was, 
 remained probably numerous in the imperial period ; but 
 certainly the pressure of taxation, as well in itself as on 
 account of the expenditure of the produce abroad, lay as 
 a heavier burden on Egypt under the Roman foreign rule 
 than under the by no means indulgent government of the 
 Ptolemies. 
 
 Of the economy of Egypt agriculture formed but a 
 part ; as it in this respect stood far before Syria, so it had 
 the advantage of a high prosperity of manufactures and 
 commerce as compared with the essentially agricultural 
 Africa. The linen manufacture in Egypt was at least 
 equal in age, extent, and renown to the Syrian, and main- 
 tained its ground through the whole imperial period, 
 although the finer sorts at this epoch were especially 
 manufactured in Syria and Phoenicia j 1 when Aurelian 
 
 vincial law knows such a thing at all. 
 There is often mention of domanial 
 possession e.g. Strabo, xvii. I, 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 Egypt- 
 ian domains and thereby exasperated 
 the Alexandrians (Dio, Ixvi. 8) — be- 
 yond 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 Ro- 
 man period still as extensive as for- 
 merly, may be doubted ; as also 
 whether otherwise large estates or 
 small properties predominated ; petty 
 husbandry was certainly general. We 
 possess figures neither for the doman- 
 ial 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, /. c p. 
 289, 293) may have hardly sufficed. 
 Export of grain otherwise from Egypt 
 needed the consent of the governor 
 (Hirschfeld, Annona, p. 23), doubt- 
 less because otherwise scarcity might 
 easily set in in the thickly-peopled 
 land. Yet this arrangement was cer- 
 tainly 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). 
 
 1 In the edict of Diocletian among 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 255 
 
 extended the contributions made from Egypt to the 
 capital of the empire to other articles than corn, linen 
 cloth and tow were not wanting among them. In fine 
 glass wares, both as regards colouring and moulding, the 
 Alexandrians held decidedly the first place, in fact, as 
 they thought, the monopoly, in as much as certain best 
 sorts were only to be prepared with Egyptian material. 
 Indisputably they had such a material in the papyrus. 
 This plant, which in antiquity was cultivated in masses on 
 the rivers and lakes of lower Egypt, and flourished no- 
 where else, furnished the natives as well with nourishment 
 as with materials for ropes, baskets, and boats, and fur- 
 nished writing materials at that time for the whole writing 
 world. What produce it must have yielded, we may 
 gather from the measures which the Roman senate took, 
 when once in the Roman market the papyrus became 
 scarce and threatened to fail ; and, as its laborious pre- 
 paration could only take place on the spot, numberless 
 men must have subsisted by it in Egypt. The deliveries 
 of Alexandrian wares introduced by Aurelian in favour of 
 the capital of the empire extended, along with linen, to 
 glass and papyrus. 1 The intercourse with the East must 
 have had a varied influence on Egyptian manufactures as 
 regards supply and demand. Textures were manufactured 
 there for export to the East, and that in the fashion 
 required by the usage of the country ; the ordinary clothes 
 of the inhabitants of Habesh were of Egyptian manufac- 
 ture ; the gorgeous stuffs especially of the weaving in 
 colours and in gold skilfully practised at Alexandria went 
 to Arabia and India. In like manner the glass beads 
 prepared in Egypt played the same part in the commerce 
 of the African coast as at the present day. India pro- 
 cured partly glass cups, partly unwrought glass for its 
 
 the five fine sorts of linen the first 1 It was related of a rich man in 
 
 four are Syrian or Cilician (of Tarsus) Egypt that he had lined his palace 
 
 and the Egyptian linen appears not with glass instead of with marble, and 
 
 merely in the last place, but is also that he possessed papyrus and lime 
 
 designated as Tarsian- Alexandrian, enough to provide an army with them 
 
 that is, prepared in Alexandria after ( Vita Firmi, 3). 
 the Tarsian model. 
 
256 EGYPT. book viii. 
 
 own manufacture ; even at the Chinese court the glass 
 vessels, with which the Roman strangers did homage to 
 the emperor, are said to have excited great admiration. 
 Egyptian merchants brought to the king of the Axomites 
 (Habesh) as standing presents gold and silver vessels 
 prepared after the fashion of that country, to the civilised 
 rulers of the South-Arabian and Indian coast among 
 other gifts also statues, probably of bronze, and musical 
 instruments. On the other hand the materials for the 
 manufacture of luxuries which came from the East, 
 especially ivory and tortoise-shell, were worked up 
 hardly perhaps in Egypt, chiefly, in all probability, at 
 Rome. Lastly, at an epoch, which never had its match 
 in the West for magnificent public buildings, the costly 
 building materials supplied by the Egyptian quarries 
 came to be employed in enormous masses outside of 
 Egypt ; the beautiful red granite of Syene, the green 
 breccia from the region of Koser, the basalt, the alabaster, 
 after the time of Claudius the gray granite, and especially 
 the porphyry of the mountains above Myos Hormos. 
 The working of them was certainly effected for the most 
 part on imperial account by penal colonists ; but the 
 transport at least must have gone to benefit the whole 
 country and particularly the city of Alexandria. The 
 extent to which Egyptian traffic and Egyptian manufac- 
 tures were developed is shown by an accidentally-pre- 
 served notice as to the cargo of a transport ship (atcaros:), 
 distinguished by its size, which under Augustus brought 
 to Rome the obelisk now standing at the Porta del Popolo 
 with its base; it carried, besides 200 sailors, 1200 pas- 
 sengers, 400,000 Roman bushels (34,000 hectolitres) of 
 wheat, and a cargo of linen cloth, glass, paper, and pepper. 
 " Alexandria," says a Roman author of the third century, 1 
 
 1 That the alleged letter of Hadrian departure had heaped on his son Verus, 
 
 ( Vita Saturnini, 8) is a late fabrica- while on the other hand it is estab- 
 
 tion, is shown e.g. by the fact, that lished that this Servianus was executed 
 
 the emperor in this highly friendly at the age of ninety in the year 136, 
 
 letter addressed to his father-in-law, because he had disapproved the adop- 
 
 Servianus, complains of the injuries tion of Verus, which had taken place 
 
 which the Alexandrians at his first shortly before. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 257 
 
 " is a town of plenty, of wealth, and of luxury, in which 
 nobody goes idle ; this one is a glass-worker, that one a 
 paper-maker, the third a linen-weaver ; the only god is 
 money." This held true proportionally of the whole land. 
 
 Of the commercial intercourse of Egypt with the Egyptian 
 regions adjoining it on the south, as well as with Arabia oftheMedi- 
 and India, we shall speak more fully in the sequel. The terranean. 
 traffic with the countries of the Mediterranean comes less 
 into prominence in the traditional account, partly, doubt- 
 less, because it belonged to the ordinary course of things, 
 and there was not often occasion to make special mention 
 of it. The Egyptian corn was conveyed to Italy by 
 Alexandrian shipmasters, and in consequence of this there 
 arose in Portus near Ostia a sanctuary modelled on the 
 Alexandrian temple of Sarapis with a mariner's guild ; l 
 but these transport-ships would hardly be concerned to 
 any considerable extent in the sale of the wares going 
 from Egypt to the West. This sale lay probably just as 
 much, and perhaps more, in the hands of the Italian ship- 
 owners and captains than of the Egyptian ; at least there 
 was already under the Lagids a considerable Italian settle- 
 ment in Alexandria, 2 and the Egyptian merchants had 
 not the same diffusion in the West as the Syrian. 3 The 
 ordinances of Augustus, to be mentioned afterwards, which 
 remodelled the commercial traffic on the Arabian and 
 Indian Seas, found no application to the navigation of 
 
 1 The vatiiiKiipoi rod iropevTiicov With this well comports the fact, that 
 
 'AXe^avSpeivov ar6\ov, who set up the the first appearance of the Alexandrian 
 
 stone doubtless belonging to Portus, fleet in the spring was a festival for 
 
 C. I. Gr. 5889, were the captains of Puteoli (Seneca, Ep. 77, 1). 
 these grain-ships. From the Sera- 2 This is shown by the remarkable 
 
 peum of Ostia we possess a series of Delian inscriptions, Eph. epigr. i. 
 
 inscriptions (C. I. L. xiv. 47), accord- p. 600, 602. 
 
 ing to which it was in all parts a copy 3 Already in the Delian inscriptions 
 
 of that at Alexandria ; the president of the last century of the republic the 
 
 is at the same time kirip.ikqTiyi iravrbs Syrians predominate. The Egyptian 
 
 rod 'A\e£av5pebov <rr6\ov (C. I. Gr. deities had doubtless a much revered 
 
 5973)- Probably these transports shrine there, but among the numer- 
 
 were employed mainly with the car- ous priests and dedicators we meet 
 
 riage of grain, and this consequently only a single Alexandrian (Hauvette- 
 
 took place by succession, to which also Besnault, Bull, de corr. Hell. vi. 316 
 
 the precautions adopted by the em- f. ). Guilds of Alexandrian merchants 
 
 peror Gaius in the straits of Reggio are known to us at Tomi (I. 310, note) 
 
 (Josephus, Arch. xix. 2, 5) point, and at Perinthus (C. I. Gr. 2024). 
 VOL. II. I/ 
 
258 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the Mediterranean ; the government had no interest in 
 favouring the Egyptian merchants more than the rest in 
 its case. The traffic there remained, presumably, as it 
 was. 
 
 Population. Egypt was thus not merely occupied, in its portions 
 capable of culture, with a dense agricultural population, 
 but also as the numerous and in part very considerable 
 hamlets and towns enable us to recognise, a manufac- 
 turing land, and hence accordingly by far the most 
 populous province of the Roman empire. The old Egypt 
 is alleged to have had a population of seven millions ; 
 under Vespasian there were counted in the official lists 
 seven and a half millions of inhabitants liable to poll tax, 
 to which fall to be added the Alexandrians and other 
 Greeks exempted from poll tax, so that the population, 
 apart from the slaves, is to be estimated at least at eight 
 millions of persons. As the area capable of cultivation 
 may be estimated at present at 10,500 English square 
 miles, and for the Roman period at the most at 14,700, 
 there dwelt at that time in Egypt on the average about 
 520 persons to the square mile. 
 
 When we direct our glance upon the inhabitants of 
 Egypt, the two nations inhabiting the country — the great 
 mass of the Egyptians and the small minority of the 
 Alexandrians — are circles thoroughly different, 1 although 
 the contagious power of vice and the similarity of character 
 belonging to all vice have instituted a bad fellowship of 
 evil between the two. 
 Egyptian The native Egyptians must not have been far different 
 
 manners. either in position or in character from their modern 
 descendants. They were contented, sober, capable of 
 labour, and active, skilful artisans and mariners, and adroit 
 merchants, adhering to old customs and to old faith. 
 If the Romans assure us that the Egyptians were proud 
 
 1 After Juvenal has described the andrian festival of Sarapis, notorious 
 
 wild drinking bouts of the native for its unbridled licentiousness (Strabo, 
 
 Egyptians in honour of the local gods xvii. I, 17, p. 801) : horrida sane 
 
 of the several nomes, he adds that Aegyptus, sed luxuria quantum ipse 
 
 therein the natives were in no respect notavi, barbara famoso non cedit turba 
 
 inferior to the Canopus, i.e. the Alex- Canopo (Sat. xv. 44). - 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 259 
 
 of the scourge-marks received for perpetrating frauds 
 in taxation, 1 these are views derived from the stand- 
 point of the tax officials. There was no want of good 
 germs in the national culture ; with all the superiority of 
 the Greeks in the intellectual competition of the two so 
 utterly different races, the Egyptians in turn had the 
 advantage of the Hellenes in various and essential things, 
 and they felt this too. Lastly, it is at any rate the 
 reflection of their own feeling, when the Egyptian priests 
 of the Greek conversational literature ridicule the so-called 
 historical research of the Hellenes and its treatment of 
 poetical fables as real tradition from primitive past times, 
 saying that in Egypt they made no verses, but their whole 
 ancient history was described in the temples and monu- 
 ments ; although now, indeed, there were but few who 
 knew it, since many monuments were destroyed, and 
 tradition was made to perish through the ignorance and 
 the indifference of later generations. But this well -war- 
 ranted complaint carried in itself hopelessness ; the vener- 
 able tree of Egyptian civilisation had long been marked 
 for cutting down. Hellenism penetrated with its decom- 
 posing influence even to the priesthood itself. An 
 Egyptian temple -scribe Chaeremon, who was called to 
 the court of Claudius as teacher of Greek philosophy for 
 the crown-prince, attributed in his Egyptian History the 
 elements of Stoical physics to the old gods of the country, 
 and expounded in this sense the documents written in the 
 native character. In the practical life of the imperial 
 period the old Egyptian habits come into consideration 
 almost only as regards the religious sphere. Religion was 
 for this people all in all. The foreign rule in itself was 
 willingly borne, we might say hardly felt, so long as it did 
 not touch the sacred customs of the land and what was 
 therewith connected. It is true that in the internal 
 government of the country nearly everything had such 
 a connection — writing and language, priestly privileges and 
 priestly arrogance, the manners of the court and the cus- 
 
 1 Ammianus, xxii. 16, 23 : Eru- fitiando tributa plurimas in corpore 
 bescit apud {Aegyptios), si qui non in- vibices ostendat. 
 
26o 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 toms of the country ; the care of the government for the 
 sacred ox living at the moment, the provisions made for its 
 burial at its decease, and for the finding out of the fitting 
 successor, were accounted by these priests and this 
 people as the test of the capacity of the ruler of the 
 land for the time, and as the measure of the respect 
 and homage due to him. The first Persian king intro- 
 duced himself in Egypt by giving back the sanctuary of 
 Neith in Sais to its destination — that is, to the priests ; 
 the first Ptolemy, when still a Macedonian governor, 
 brought back the images of the Egyptian gods, that had 
 been carried off to Asia, to their old abode, and restored 
 to the gods of Pe and Tep the land-gifts estranged from 
 them ; for the sacred temple-images brought home from 
 Persia in the great victorious expedition of Euergetes the 
 native priests convey their thanks to the king in the 
 famous decree of Canopus in the year 238 B.C.; the cus- 
 tomary insertion of the living rulers male or female in the 
 circle of the native gods these foreigners acquiesced in for 
 themselves just as did the Egyptian Pharaohs. The 
 Roman rulers followed their example only to a limited 
 extent. As respects title they doubtless entered, as we saw 
 (p. 244, note) in some measure into the native cultus, but 
 avoided withal, even in the Egyptian setting, the customary 
 predicates that stood in too glaring a contrast to Occi- 
 dental views. When these favourites of Ptah and of Isis 
 took steps in Italy against the Egyptian worship of the 
 gods as against the Jewish, they, as may readily be 
 understood, betrayed nothing of such love beyond the 
 hieroglyphs, and even in Egypt nowise took part in the 
 service of the native gods. However obstinately the reli- 
 gion of the land was still retained under the foreign rule 
 among the Egyptians proper, the Pariah position in which 
 these found themselves alongside of the ruling Greeks and 
 Romans, necessarily told heavily on the cultus and the 
 priests ; and of the leading position, the influence, the 
 culture of the old Egyptian priestly order but scanty 
 remains were discernible under the Roman government. 
 On the other hand, the indigenous religion, from the out- 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 261 
 
 set disinclined to beauty of form and spiritual transfigura- 
 tion, served, in and out of Egypt, as a starting-point and 
 centre for all conceivable pious sorcery and sacred fraud 
 — it is enough to recall the thrice -greatest Hermes at 
 home in Egypt, with the literature attaching to his name 
 of tractates and marvel-books, as well as the correspond- 
 ing widely diffused practice. But in the circles of the 
 natives the worst abuses were connected at this epoch with 
 their cultus — not merely drinking-bouts continued through 
 many days in honour of the individual local deities, with 
 the unchastity thereto appertaining, but also permanent 
 religious feuds between the several districts for the pre- 
 cedence of the ibis over the cat, or of the crocodile over 
 the baboon. In the year 127 A.D., on such an occasion, 
 the Ombites in southern Egypt were suddenly assailed by 
 a neighbouring community 1 at a drinking-festival, and the 
 victors are said to have eaten one of the slain. Soon 
 afterwards the community of the Hound, in defiance of the 
 community of the Pike, consumed a pike, and the latter in 
 defiance of the other consumed a hound, and thereupon a 
 war broke out between these two nomes, till the Romans 
 interfered and chastised both parties. Such incidents 
 were of ordinary occurrence in Egypt. Nor was there a 
 want otherwise of troubles in the land. The very first 
 viceroy of Egypt appointed by Augustus had, on account 
 of an increase of the taxes, to send troops to upper Egypt, 
 and not less, perhaps likewise in consequence of the pres- 
 sure of taxation, to Heroonpolis at the upper end of the 
 Arabian Gulf. Once, under the emperor Marcus, a rising Revolt 
 of the native Egyptians assumed even a threatening °*^ rd 
 character. When in the marshes, difficult of access, on men." 
 the coast to the east of Alexandria — the so-called " cattle- 
 pastures " (bucolia), which served as a place of refuge for 
 criminals and robbers, and formed a sort of colony of 
 them — some people were seized by a division of Roman 
 troops, the whole banditti rose to liberate them, and the 
 
 1 This was according to Juvenal but the list of the Ravennate chro- 
 Tentyra, which must be a mistake, if nicler, iii. 2, names the two places 
 the well known Tentyra is meant ; together. 
 
262 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 population of the country joined the movement. The 
 Roman legion from Alexandria went to oppose them, but 
 it was defeated, and Alexandria itself had almost fallen 
 into the hands of the insurgents. The governor of the 
 East, Avidius Cassius, arrived doubtless with his troops, 
 but did not venture on a conflict against the superiority of 
 numbers, and preferred to provoke dissension in the league 
 of the rebels ; after the one band ranged itself against 
 the other the government easily mastered them all. This 
 so-called revolt of the herdsmen probably bore, like such 
 peasant wars for the most part, a religious character ; the 
 leader Isidorus, the bravest man of Egypt, was by station 
 a priest ; and the circumstance that for the consecration of 
 the league, after taking the oath, a captive Roman officer 
 was sacrificed and eaten by those who swore, was as well 
 in keeping with it as with the cannibalism of the Ombite 
 war. An echo of these events is preserved in the stories 
 of Egyptian robbers in the late -Greek minor literature. 
 Much, moreover, as they may have given trouble to the 
 Roman administration, they had not a political object, 
 and interrupted but partially and temporarily the general 
 tranquillity of the land. 
 Alexandria. By the side of the Egyptians stood the Alexandrians, 
 somewhat as the English in India stand alongside of the 
 natives of the country. Generally, Alexandria was re- 
 garded in the imperial period before Constantine's time as 
 the second city of the Roman empire and the first com- 
 mercial city of the world. It numbered at the end of the 
 Lagid rule upwards of 300,000 free inhabitants, in the 
 imperial period beyond doubt still more. The compari- 
 son of the two great capitals that grew up in rivalry on 
 the Nile and on the Orontes yields as many points of simi- 
 larity as of contrast. Both were comparatively new cities, 
 monarchical creations out of nothing, of symmetrical plan 
 and regular urban arrangements. Water ran into every 
 house in Alexandria as at Antioch. In beauty of site and 
 magnificence of buildings the city in the valley of the 
 Orontes was as superior to its rival as the latter excelled 
 it in the favourableness of the locality for commerce on 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 263 
 
 a large scale and in the number of the population. The 
 great public buildings of the Egyptian capital, the royal 
 palace, the Mouseion dedicated to the Academy, above all 
 the temple of Sarapis, were marvellous works of an earlier 
 epoch, whose architecture was highly developed ; but the 
 Egyptian capital, in which few of the Caesars set foot, has 
 nothing corresponding to set off against the great number 
 of imperial structures in the Syrian residency. 
 
 The Antiochenes and Alexandrians stood on an equal Aiexan- 
 footing in insubordination and eagerness to oppose the F "onde. 
 government ; we may add also in this, that the two 
 cities, and Alexandria more particularly, nourished pre- 
 cisely under and through the Roman government, and had 
 much more reason to thank it than to play the Fronde. 
 The attitude of the Alexandrians to their Hellenic rulers 
 is attested by the long series of nicknames, in part still 
 used at the present day, for which the royal Ptolemies 
 without exception were indebted to the public of their 
 capital. The Emperor Vespasian received from the 
 Alexandrians for the introducing of a tax on salt fish the 
 title of the " sardine-dealer " (Jtv&iotrdicrns) ; the Syrian 
 Severus Alexander that of the "chief Rabbin;" but the 
 emperors came rarely to Egypt, and the distant and 
 foreign rulers offered no genuine butt for this ridicule. In 
 their absence the public bestowed at least on the viceroys 
 the same attention with persevering zeal ; even the pros- 
 pect of inevitable chastisement was not able to put to 
 silence the often witty and always saucy tongue of these 
 townsmen. 1 Vespasian contented himself in return for 
 that attention shown to him with raising the poll-tax 
 about six farthings, and got for doing so the further name 
 of the " sixfarthing-man ;" but their sayings about Severus 
 Antoninus, the petty ape of Alexander the Great and the 
 favourite of Mother Jocasta, were to cost them more 
 dearly. The spiteful ruler appeared in all friendliness, 
 * and allowed the people to keep holiday for him, but then 
 ordered his soldiers to charge into the festal multitude, so 
 
 1 Seneca, ad Helv. 19,6: loquax et provincia . . . etiam periculosi sales 
 in contumelias praefectorum ingeniosa placent. 
 
264 EG YPT. BOOK VIIL 
 
 that for days the squares and streets of the great city ran 
 with blood ; in fact, he enjoined the dissolution of the 
 Academy and the transfer of the legion into the city 
 itself — neither of which, it is true, was carried into 
 effect. 
 
 Aiexan- But while in Antioch, as a rule, the matter did not go 
 
 tunSits. beyond sarcasm, the Alexandrian rabble took on the 
 slightest pretext to stones and to cudgels. In street uproar, 
 says an authority, himself Alexandrian, the Egyptians are 
 before all others ; the smallest spark suffices here to kindle 
 a tumult. On account of neglected visits, on account of 
 the confiscation of spoiled provisions, on account of exclu- 
 sion from a bathing establishment, on account of a dispute 
 between the slave of an Alexandrian of rank and a Roman 
 foot-soldier as to the value or non-value of their respective 
 slippers, the legions were under the necessity of charging 
 among the citizens of Alexandria. It here became 
 apparent that the lower stratum of the Alexandrian popu- 
 lation consisted in greater part of natives ; in these riots 
 the Greeks no doubt acted as instigators, as indeed the 
 rhetors, that is, in this case the inciting orators, are 
 expressly mentioned ; l but in the further course of the 
 matter the spite and the savageness of the Egyptian 
 proper came into the conflict. The Syrians were cowardly, 
 and as soldiers the Egyptians were so too ; but in a street 
 tumult they were able to develop a courage worthy of a 
 better cause. 2 The Antiochenes delighted in race-horses 
 like the Alexandrians ; but among the latter no chariot 
 race ended without stone-throwing and stabbing. Both 
 cities were affected by the persecution of the Jews under 
 
 1 Dio Chrysostum says in his ad- 2 Dio Cassius, xxxix. 58 : " The 
 
 dress to the Alexandrians (Or. xxxii. Alexandrians do the utmost in all 
 
 p. 663 Reiske) : " Because now (the respects as to daring, and speak out 
 
 intelligent) keep in the background everything that occurs to them. In 
 
 and are silent, there spring up among war and its terrors their conduct is 
 
 you endless disputes and quarrels and cowardly ; but in tumults, which with 
 
 disorderly clamour, and bad and un- them are very frequent and very serious, 
 
 bridled speeches, accusers, aspersions, they without scruple come to mortal 
 
 trials, a rabble of orators." In the blows, and for the sake of the success of 
 
 Alexandrian Jew-hunt, which Philo the moment account their life nothing, 
 
 so drastically describes, we see these nay, they go to their destruction as if 
 
 mob-orators at work. the highest things were at stake." 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 265 
 
 the emperor Gaius ; but in Antioch an earnest word of the 
 authorities sufficed to put an end to it, while thousands of 
 human lives fell a sacrifice to the Alexandrian outbreak 
 instigated by some clowns with a puppet-show. The 
 Alexandrians, it was said, when a riot arose, gave them- 
 selves no peace till they had seen blood. The Roman 
 officers and soldiers had a difficult position there. "Alex- 
 andria," says a reporter of the fourth century, " is entered 
 by the governors with trembling and despair, for they fear 
 the justice of the people ; where a governor perpetrates a 
 wrong, there follows at once the setting of the palace on 
 fire and stoning." The naive trust in the rectitude of 
 this procedure marks the stand-point of the writer, who 
 belonged to this "people." The continuation of this 
 Lynch-system, dishonouring alike to the government and to 
 the nation, is furnished by what is called Church-history, 
 in the murder of the bishop Georgius, alike obnoxious to 
 the heathen and to the orthodox, and of his associates 
 under Julian, and that of the fair freethinker Hypatia by 
 the pious community of Bishop Cyril under Theodosius 
 II. These Alexandrian tumults were more malicious, 
 more incalculable, more violent than the Antiochene, but 
 just like these, not dangerous either for the stability of 
 the empire or even for the individual government. Mis- 
 chievous and ill-disposed lads are very inconvenient, but 
 not more than inconvenient, in the household as in the 
 commonwealth. 
 
 In religious matters also the two cities had an analogous Aiexan- 
 position. To the worship of the land, as the native popu- WO rstiip. 
 lation retained it in Syria as in Egypt, the Alexandrians 
 as well as the Antiochenes were disinclined in its original 
 shape. But the Lagids, as well as the Seleucids, were 
 careful of disturbing the foundations of the old religion of 
 the country ; and, merely amalgamating the older national 
 views and sacred rites with the pliant forms of the Greek 
 Olympus, they Hellenised these outwardly in some measure; 
 they introduced, e.g. the Greek god of the lower world 
 Pluto into the native worship, under the hitherto little 
 mentioned name of the Egyptian god Sarapis, and then 
 
266 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 gradually transferred to this the old Osiris worship. 1 
 Thus the genuinely Egyptian Isis and the pseudo-Egypt- 
 ian Sarapis played in Alexandria nearly the same part as 
 Belus and Elagabalus in Syria, and made their way in a 
 similar manner with these, although less strongly and with 
 more vehement opposition, by degrees into the Occidental 
 worship of the imperial period. As regards the immorality 
 developed on occasion of these religious usages and festi- 
 vals, and the unchastity approved and stimulated by 
 priestly blessing, neither city was in a position to upbraid 
 the other. 
 
 Down to a late time the old cultus retained its 
 firmest stronghold in the pious land of Egypt. 2 The 
 
 1 The " pious Egyptians " offered 
 resistance, as Macrobius, Sat. i. 7, 
 1 4, reports, but iyrannide Ptolemae- 
 orztm pressi hos quoque deos (Sarapis 
 and Saturnus) in cultum recipere Alex- 
 andrinoritm more, apud qiws potis- 
 simum colebantur, coacti sunt. As 
 they thus had to present bloody sacri- 
 fices, which was against their ritual, 
 they did not admit these gods, at least 
 into the towns ; nullum Aegypti oppi- 
 dum intra mtiros suos aut Satumi 
 aul Sarapis fanum recepit. 
 
 2 The often - quoted anonymous 
 author of a description of the empire 
 from the time of Constantius, a good 
 heathen, praises Egypt particularly on 
 account of its exemplary piety : "No- 
 where are the mysteries of the gods so 
 well celebrated as there from of old 
 and still at present." Indeed, he 
 adds, some were of opinion that the 
 Chaldaeans — he means the Syrian 
 cultus — worshipped the gods better ; 
 but he held to what he had seen 
 with his own eyes — ' ' Here there are 
 shrines of all sorts and magnificently 
 adorned temples, and there are found 
 numbers of sacristans and priests and 
 prophets and believers and excellent 
 theologians, and all goes on in its 
 order ; you find the altars everywhere 
 blazing with flame and the priests 
 with their fillets and the incense- 
 vessels with deliciously fragrant 
 spices." Nearly from the same time 
 
 (not from Hadrian), and evidently 
 also from a well-informed hand, pro- 
 ceeds another more malicious de- 
 scription (vita Saturnini, 8): "He 
 who in Egypt worships Sarapis is also 
 a Christian, and those who call them- 
 selves Christian bishops likewise adore 
 Sarapis ; every grand Rabbi of the 
 Jews, every Samaritan, every Christian 
 clergyman is there at the same time 
 a sorcerer, a prophet, a quack (aliptes). 
 Even when the patriarch comes to 
 Egypt some demand that he pray to 
 Sarapis, others that he pray to Christ. " 
 This diatribe is certainly connected 
 with the circumstance that the Chris- 
 tians declared the Egyptian god to be 
 the Joseph of the Bible, the son of 
 Sara, and rightfully carrying the 
 bushel. The position of the Egyptian 
 orthodox party is apprehended in a 
 more earnest spirit by the author, 
 belonging presumably to the third 
 century, of the Dialogue of the Gods, 
 preserved in a Latin translation among 
 the writings attributed to Appuleius, 
 in which the thrice-greatest Hermes 
 announces things future to Asklepios : 
 "Thou knowest withal, Asklepios, 
 that Egypt is a counterpart of heaven, 
 or, to speak more correctly, a trans- 
 migration and descent of the whole 
 heavenly administration and activity ; 
 indeed, to speak still more correctly, 
 our fatherland is the temple of the 
 whole universe. And yet a time will 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 267 
 
 restoration of the old faith, as well scientifically in the 
 philosophy annexed to it as practically in the repelling of 
 the attacks directed by the Christians against Polytheism, 
 and in the revival of the heathen temple-worship and the 
 heathen divination, had its true centre in Alexandria. 
 Then, when the new faith conquered this stronghold also, 
 the character of the country remained nevertheless true to 
 itself; Syria was the cradle of Christianity, Egypt was 
 the cradle of monachism. Of the significance and the 
 position of the Jewish body, in which the two cities like- 
 wise resembled each other, we have already spoken in 
 another connection (p. 163). Immigrants called by the 
 government into the land like the Hellenes, the Jews were 
 doubtless inferior to these and were liable to poll-tax 
 like the Egyptians, but accounted themselves, and were 
 accounted, more than these. Their number amounted 
 under Vespasian to a million, about the eighth part of the 
 whole population of Egypt, and, like the Hellenes, they 
 dwelt chiefly in the capital, of the five wards of which two 
 were Jewish. In acknowledged independence, in repute, 
 culture, and wealth, the body of Alexandrian Jews was 
 even before the destruction of Jerusalem the first in the 
 world ; and in consequence of this a good part of the last 
 act of the Jewish tragedy, as has been already set forth, 
 was played out on Egyptian soil. 
 
 Alexandria and Antioch were pre-eminently seats of ™e^ 
 wealthy merchants and manufacturers ; but in Antioch world of 
 
 Alexandria. 
 
 set in, when it would appear as if seem incredible to thy coming genera- 
 Egypt had vainly with pious mind in tions, only words will be preserved 
 diligent service cherished the divine, on the stones to tell of thy pious 
 when all sacred worship of the gods deeds, and Egypt will be inhabited 
 will be without result and a failure, by the Scythian or Indian or other 
 For the deity will betake itself back such from the neighbouring barbarian 
 into heaven, Egypt will be forsaken, land. New rights will be introduced, 
 and the land, which was the seat of a new law, nothing holy, nothing 
 religious worships, will be deprived religious, nothing worthy of heaven 
 of the presence of divine power and and of the celestials will be heard or 
 left to its own resources. Then will in spirit believed. A painful separa- 
 tes consecrated land, the abode of tion of the gods from men sets in ; 
 shrines and temples, be densely filled only the bad angels remain there, to 
 with graves and corpses. O Egypt, mingle among mankind " (according 
 Egypt, of thy worships only rumours to Bernays's translation, Ges. Abh. i. 
 will be preserved, and even these will 330). 
 
268 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 there was wanting the seaport and its belongings, and, 
 however stirring matters were on the streets there, they 
 bore no comparison with the life and doings of the Alex- 
 andrian artisans and sailors. On the other hand, for enjoy- 
 ment of life, dramatic spectacles, dining, pleasures of love, 
 Antioch had more to offer than the city in which " no one 
 went idle." Literary pursuits proper, linking themselves 
 especially with the rhetorical exhibitions — such as we 
 sketched in the description of Asia Minor — fell into the 
 background in Egypt, 1 doubtless more amidst the pres- 
 sure of the affairs of the day than through the influence of 
 the numerous and well-paid savants living in Alexandria, 
 and in great part natives of it. These men of the 
 Museum, of whom we shall have to speak further on, 
 did not prominently affect the character of the town as a 
 whole, especially if they did their duty in diligent work. 
 But the Alexandrian physicians were regarded as the 
 best in the whole empire ; it is true that Egypt was no 
 less the genuine home of quacks and of secret remedies, 
 and of that strange civilised form of the " shepherd- 
 medicine," in which pious simplicity and speculating deceit 
 draped themselves in the mantle of science. Of the 
 thrice-greatest Hermes we have already made mention 
 (p. 261) ; the Alexandrian Sarapis, too, wrought more 
 marvellous cures in antiquity than any one of his 
 colleagues, and he infected even the practical emperor 
 Vespasian, so that he too healed the blind and lame, but 
 only in Alexandria. 
 Schoiai>iife Although the place which Alexandria occupies, or 
 andria!' seems to occupy, in the intellectual and literary develop- 
 ment of the later Greece and of Occidental culture 
 generally cannot be fitly estimated in a description of the 
 
 1 When the Romans ask from the Egyptian ; for this people, no doubt, 
 
 famous rhetor Proaeresios (end of the pursues versemaking passionately, but 
 
 third and beginning of the fourth earnest oratory (6 a-wovhoXa '"EpfjLTjs) 
 
 century) one of his disciples for a is not at home among them." The 
 
 professorial chair, he sends to them remarkable resumption of Greek 
 
 Eusebius from Alexandria ; " as re- poetry in Egypt, to which, e.g. the 
 
 spects rhetoric," it is said of the epic of Nonnus belongs, lies beyond 
 
 latter (Eunapius, Proaer. p. 92 Boiss. ), the bounds of our narrative, 
 "it is enough to say that he was an 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 269 
 
 local circumstances of Egypt, but only in the delineation 
 of this development itself, the Alexandrian scholarship 
 and its continuation under the Roman government are 
 too remarkable a phenomenon not to have its general 
 position touched on in this connection. We have already 
 observed (p. 126) that the blending of the Oriental and 
 the Hellenic intellectual world was accomplished pre- 
 eminently in Egypt alongside of Syria ; and if the new 
 faith which was to conquer the West issued from Syria, 
 the science homogeneous with it — that philosophy which, 
 alongside of and beyond the human mind, acknowledges 
 and proclaims the supra -mundane God and the divine 
 revelation — came pre-eminently from Egypt : probably 
 already the new Pythagoreanism, certainly the philo- 
 sophic Neo-Judaism — of which we have formerly spoken 
 (p. 170) — as well as the new Platonism, whose founder, 
 the Egyptian Plotinus, was likewise already mentioned 
 (p. 126). Upon this interpenetration of Hellenic and 
 Oriental elements, that was carried out especially in 
 Alexandria, mainly depends the fact, that — as falls to be 
 set forth more fully in surveying the state of things in 
 Italy — the Hellenism there in the earlier imperial period 
 bears pre-eminently an Egyptian form. As the old-new 
 wisdoms associated with Pythagoras, Moses, Plato, pene- 
 trated from Alexandria into Italy, so Isis and her 
 belongings played the first part in the easy, fashionable 
 piety, which the Roman poets of the Augustan age and 
 the Pompeian temples from that of Claudius exhibit to 
 us. Art as practised in Egypt prevails in the Campanian 
 frescoes of the same epoch, as in the Tiburtine villa of 
 Hadrian. In keeping with this is the position which 
 Alexandrian erudition occupies in the intellectual life of 
 the imperial period. Outwardly it is based on the care 
 of the state for intellectual interests, and would with 
 more warrant link itself to the name of Alexander than 
 to that of Alexandria ; it is the realisation of the thought 
 that in a certain stage of civilisation art and science 
 must be supported and promoted by the authority and 
 the resources of the state, the consistent sequel of the 
 
270 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 brilliant moment in the world's history which placed 
 Alexander and Aristotle side by side. It is not our 
 intention here to inquire how in this mighty conception 
 truth and error, the injuring and elevating of the intellectual 
 life, became mingled, nor is the scanty after -bloom 
 of the divine singing and of the high thinking of the 
 free Hellenes to be once more placed side by side with 
 the rank and yet also noble produce of the later 
 collecting, investigating, and arranging. If the institu- 
 tions which sprang from this thought could not, or, what 
 was worse, could only apparently, renew to the Greek 
 nation what was irrecoverably lost, they granted to it 
 on the still free arena of the intellectual world the only 
 possible compensation, and that, too, a glorious one. For 
 us the local circumstances are above all to be taken into 
 account. Artificial gardens are in some measure in- 
 dependent of the soil, and it is not otherwise with these 
 scientific institutions ; only that they from their nature 
 are directed towards the courts. Material support may be 
 imparted to them otherwise ; but more important than 
 this is the favour of the highest circles, which swells their 
 sails, and the connections, which, meeting together in the 
 great centres, replenish and extend these circles of science. 
 In the better time of the monarchies of Alexander there 
 were as many such centres as there were states, and that 
 of the Lagid court was only the most highly -esteemed 
 among them. The Roman republic had brought the 
 others one after another into its power, and had set aside 
 with the courts also the scientific institutes and circles 
 belonging to them. The fact that the future Augustus, 
 when he did away with the last of these courts, allowed 
 the learned institutes connected with it to subsist, is a 
 genuine, and not the worst, indication of the changed 
 times. The more energetic and higher Philhellenism 
 of the government of the Caesars was distinguished to 
 its advantage from that of the republic by the fact that 
 it not merely allowed Greek literati to earn money in 
 Rome, but viewed and treated the great guardianship of 
 Greek science as a part of the sovereignty of Alexander. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 271 
 
 No doubt, as in this regeneration of the empire as a 
 whole, the building-plan was grander than the building. 
 The royally patented and pensioned Muses, whom the 
 Lagids had called to Alexandria, did not disdain to 
 accept the like payments also from the Romans ; and 
 the imperial munificence was not inferior to the earlier 
 regal. The funds of the library of Alexandria and the 
 fund of free places for philosophers, poets, physicians, and 
 scholars of all sorts, 1 as well as the immunities granted 
 to these, were not diminished by Augustus, and were 
 increased by the emperor Claudius — with the injunction, 
 indeed, that the new Claudian academicians should have 
 the Greek historical works of the singular founder publicly 
 read year by year in their sittings. With the first library 
 in the world Alexandria retained at the same time, 
 through the whole imperial period, a certain primacy of 
 scientific work, until Islam burnt the library and killed 
 the ancient civilisation. It was not merely the opportunity 
 thus offered, but at the same time the old tradition and 
 turn of mind of these Hellenes, which preserved for the 
 city that precedence, as indeed among the scholars 
 the native Alexandrians are prominent in number and 
 importance. In this epoch numerous and respectable 
 labours of erudition, particularly philological and physical, 
 proceeded from the circle of the savants " of the Museum," 
 as they entitled themselves, like the Parisians "of the 
 Institute " ; but the literary importance, which the Alex- 
 andrian and the Pergamene court -science and court -art 
 
 1 A "Homeric poet" Ik Movaeiov 
 is ready to sing the praise of Memnon 
 in four Homeric verses, without add- 
 ing a word of his own (C. /. Gr. 
 4748). Hadrian makes an Alex- 
 andrian 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 Philo- 
 stratus, Vit. Soph. i. 22, 3 c. 25, 3. 
 A (pi\6ao<pos airb Movcrelov in Halicar- 
 nassus {Bull, de corr. Hell. iv. 405). 
 At a later period, when the circus 
 was everything, we find a noted 
 pugilist — perhaps, one may say — as 
 
 an honorary member of the philo- 
 sophical class (inscription from Rome, 
 C. I. Gr. 5914 : vewicbpos rod fieyd- 
 [\ov 2apa7rt5]os ical tQv iv t<£ M.ovael(p 
 [<ret,Tov]fi4v(av dre\Qv <f>Ckoa6(p<j3v ; 
 comp. ib. 4724, and Firmicus Mater- 
 nus, de errore prof. rel. 13, 3). 01 
 ev 'E^cry &irb rod Mowet'ou larpol 
 (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. 
 
272 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 had in the better epoch of Hellenism for the whole 
 Hellenic and Hellenising world, was never even remotely- 
 attached to the Romano -Alexandrian. The cause lay- 
 not in the want of talents or in other accidents, least of 
 all in the fact that places in the Museum were bestowed 
 by the emperor sometimes according to gifts and always 
 according to favour, and the government dealt with them 
 quite as with the horse of the knight and the posts of 
 officials of the household ; the case was not otherwise 
 at the older courts. Court- philosophers and court- poets 
 remained in Alexandria, but not the court ; it was here 
 very clearly apparent that the main matter was not 
 pensions and rewards, but the contact — quickening for 
 both sides — of great political and great scientific work. 
 The latter doubtless presented itself for the new monarchy 
 and brought its consequences with it ; but the place for 
 it was not Alexandria : this bloom of political develop- 
 ment justly belonged to the Latins and to the Latin 
 capital. The Augustan poetry and Augustan science 
 attained, under similar circumstances, to a similar im- 
 portant and pleasing development with that attained by 
 the Hellenistic at the court of the Pergamenes and the 
 earlier Ptolemies. Even in the Greek circle, so far as the 
 Roman government operated upon it in the sense of the 
 Lagids, this development was linked more with Rome than 
 with Alexandria. It is true that the Greek libraries of 
 the capital were not equal to the Alexandrian, and there 
 was no institute in Rome comparable to the Alexandrian 
 Museum. But a position at the Roman libraries opened 
 up relations to the court. The professorship of Greek 
 rhetoric in the capital, instituted by Vespasian, filled up 
 and paid for by the government, gave to its holder, 
 although he was not an officer of the household in the 
 same sense as the imperial librarian, a similar position, 
 and was regarded, doubtless on that account, as the chief 
 professorial chair of the empire. 1 But, above all, the 
 office of imperial cabinet secretary in its Greek division 
 was the most esteemed and the most influential position 
 
 1 '0 &vw dpbvos in Philostratus, Vit. Soph. ii. 10, 5. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 273 
 
 to which a Greek man of letters could at all attain. 
 Transference from the Alexandrian academy to such an 
 office in the capital was demonstrably promotion. 1 Even 
 apart from all which the Greek literati otherwise found 
 in Rome alone, the court-positions and the court-offices 
 were enough to draw the most distinguished of them 
 thither rather than to the Egyptian " free table." The 
 learned Alexandria of this time became a sort of 
 "jointure" of Greek science, worthy of respect and useful, 
 but of no pervading influence on the great movement of 
 culture or mis-culture of the imperial period ; the places 
 in the Museum were, as was reasonable, not seldom 
 bestowed on scholars of note from abroad, and for the 
 institution itself the books of the library were of more 
 account than the burgesses of the great commercial and 
 manufacturing city. 
 
 The military circumstances of Egypt laid down, just The 
 as in Syria, a double task for the troops there ; the pro- E &yp tian 
 tection of the south frontier and of the east coast, which army ' 
 indeed may not be remotely compared with that required 
 for the line of the Euphrates, and the maintenance of 
 internal order in the country as in the capital. The 
 Roman garrison consisted, apart from the ships stationed 
 at Alexandria and on the Nile, which seem chiefly to 
 have served for the control of the customs, under Augustus 
 of three legions, along with the not numerous auxiliary 
 troops belonging to them, about 20,000 men. This was 
 about half as many as he destined for all the Asiatic 
 provinces — which was in keeping with the importance 
 of this province for the new monarchy. But the occupy- 
 
 1 Examples are Chaeremon, the Rome and imperial cabinet secretary 
 
 teacher of Nero, previously installed (Suidas, I.e.); L. Julius Vestinus 
 
 in Alexandria (Suidas, Aiov6<rLos'A\e£- under Hadrian, who, even after the 
 
 avdpetis ; comp. Zeller, Hermes, xi. presidency of the Museum, filled the 
 
 430* and above, p. 259) ; Dionysius, same positions as Dionysius in Rome 
 
 son of Glaucus, at first in Alexandria, (p. 248 note), known also as a phiio- 
 
 successor of Chaeremon, then from logical author. 
 Nero down to Trajan librarian in 
 
 VOL. II. !3 
 
274 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 ing force was probably even under Augustus himself 
 diminished about a third, and then under Domitian by 
 about a further third. At first two legions were stationed 
 outside of the capital ; but the main camp, and soon the 
 only one, lay before its gates, where Caesar the younger 
 had fought out the last battle with Antonius, in the 
 suburb called accordingly Nicopolis. The suburb had its 
 own amphitheatre and its own imperial popular festival, 
 and was quite independently organised ; so that for a 
 time the public amusements of Alexandria were thrown 
 into the shade by those of Nicopolis. The immediate 
 watching of the frontier fell to the auxiliaries. The same 
 causes therefore which relaxed discipline in Syria — the 
 police-character of their primary task and their immediate 
 contact with the great capital — came into play also for 
 the Egyptian troops ; to which fell to be added, that the 
 bad custom of allowing to the soldiers with the standards 
 a married life or at any rate a substitute for it, and of 
 filling up the troop from their camp-children, had for 
 long been naturalised among the Macedonian soldiers of 
 the Ptolemies, and soon prevailed also among the Romans, 
 at least up to a certain degree. Accordingly, the Egypt- 
 ian corps, in which the Occidentals served still more 
 rarely than in the other armies of the East, and which 
 was recruited in great part from the citizens and the 
 camp of Alexandria, appears to have been among all the 
 sections of the army the least esteemed ; as indeed also 
 the officers of this legion, as was already observed, were 
 inferior in rank to those of the rest. 
 
 The properly military task of the Egyptian troops 
 was closely connected with the measures for the elevation 
 of Egyptian commerce. It will be convenient to take 
 the two together, and to set forth in connection, in the 
 first instance, the relations to the continental neighbours 
 in the south, and then those to Arabia and India. 
 Aethiopia Egypt reaches on the south, as was already remarked, 
 
 as far as the barrier which the last cataract, not far from 
 Syene (Assouan), opposes to navigation. Beyond Syene 
 begins the stock of the Kesch, as the Egyptians call them, 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 275 
 
 or, as the Greeks translated it, the dark-coloured, the 
 Aethiopians, probably akin to the Axomites to be after- 
 wards mentioned, and, although perhaps sprung from the 
 same root as the Egyptians, at any rate confronting them 
 in historical development as a foreign people. Further 
 to the south follow the Nahsiu of the Egyptians, that is, 
 the Blacks, the Nubians of the Greek, the modern Negroes.' 
 The kings of Egypt had in better times extended their 
 rule far into the interior, or at least emigrant Egyptians 
 had established for themselves here dominions of their 
 own ; the written monuments of the Pharaonic govern- 
 ment go as far as above the third cataract to Dongola, 
 where Nabata (near Nuri) seems to have been the 
 centre of their settlements ; and considerably further up 
 the stream, some six days' journey to the north of Khar- 
 toum, near Shendy, in Sennaar, in the neighbourhood 
 of the long forgotten Aethiopian town Meroe, are found 
 groups of temples and pyramids, although destitute of 
 writing. When Egypt became Roman, all this develop- 
 ment of power was long a matter of the past ; and beyond 
 Syene there ruled an Aethiopian stock under queens, who 
 regularly bore the name or the title Candace, 1 and resided 
 in that once Egyptian Nabata in Dongola ; a people at 
 a low stage of civilisation, predominantly shepherds, in a 
 position to bring into the field an army of 30,000, but 
 equipped with shields of ox-hides, armed mostly not with 
 swords, but with axes or lances and iron-mounted clubs, 
 predatory neighbours, not a match for the Romans in 
 combat. In the year 730 or 731 these invaded the 24 , 23 . 
 Roman territory— as they asserted, because the presidents 
 of the nearest nomes had injured them — as the Romans 
 thought, because the Egyptian troops were then to a 
 large extent occupied in Arabia, and they hoped to be 
 able to plunder with immunity. In reality they over- War with 
 came the three cohorts who covered the frontier, and candace 
 dragged away the inhabitants from the nearest Egyptian 
 
 1 The eunuch of Candace, who Candace reigned also in Nero's time 
 reads in Isaiah (Acts of the Apostles, (Plinius, H. N. vi. 29, 182) 
 viu. 27) is well known; and a 
 
276 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 districts — Philae, Elephantine, Syene — as slaves, and the 
 statues of the emperor, which they found there, as tokens 
 of victory. But the governor, who just then took up the 
 administration of the province, Gaius Petronius, speedily 
 requited the attack; with 10,000 infantry and 800 
 cavalry he not merely drove them out, but followed them 
 along the Nile into their own land, defeated them empha- 
 tically at Pselchis (Dekkeh), and stormed their strong- 
 hold Premis (Ibrim), as well as the capital itself, which 
 he destroyed. It is true that the queen, a brave woman, 
 renewed the attack next year and attempted to storm 
 Premis, where a Roman garrison had been left ; but 
 Petronius brought seasonable relief, and so the Aethiopian 
 queen determined to send envoys and to sue for peace. 
 The emperor not merely granted it, but gave orders to 
 evacuate the subject territory, and rejected the proposal 
 of his governor to make the vanquished tributary. This 
 event, otherwise not important, is remarkable in so far as 
 just then the definite resolution of the Roman govern- 
 ment became apparent, to maintain absolutely the Nile 
 valley as far as the river was navigable, but not at all to 
 contemplate taking possession of the wide districts on the 
 upper Nile. Only the tract from Syene, where under 
 Augustus the frontier-troops were stationed, as far as 
 Hiera Sycaminos (Maharraka), the so-called Twelve-mile- 
 land (AwSe/cao-^/oti/o?), while never organised as a nome 
 and never viewed as a part of Egypt, was yet regarded 
 as belonging to the empire ; and at least under Domitian 
 the posts were even advanced as far as Hiera Sycaminos. 1 
 1 That the imperial frontier reached the Egyptians and Aethiopiansj but 
 
 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 im- 
 perial 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 
 
 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 ab- 
 solutely that the place where the 
 inscription was found belonged to the 
 empire ; but that of a land-measuring 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 277 
 
 On that footing substantially the matter remained. The 
 Oriental expedition planned by Nero (p. 61) was cer- 
 tainly intended to embrace Aethiopia ; but it did not go 
 beyond the preliminary reconnoitring of the country by 
 Roman officers as far as Meroe. The relations with the 
 neighbours on the Egyptian southern frontier down to 
 the middle of the third century must have been on the 
 whole of a peaceful kind, although there were not wanting 
 minor quarrels with that Candace and with her successors, 
 who appear to have maintained their position for a con- 
 siderable time, and subsequently perhaps with other tribes, 
 that attained to ascendency beyond the imperial bounds. 
 
 It was not till the empire was unhinged in the period The 
 of Valerian and Gallienus, that the neighbours broke over Blem y es - 
 this boundary. We have already mentioned (p. 250) that 
 the Blemyes settled in the mountains on the south-east fron- 
 tier, formerly obeying the Aethiopians, a barbarous people 
 of revolting savageness, who even centuries later had 
 not abandoned human sacrifices, advanced at this epoch 
 independently against Egypt, and by an understanding 
 with the Palmyrenes occupied a good part of upper Egypt, 
 and held it for a series of years. The vigorous emperor 
 Probus drove them out ; but the inroads once begun did 
 not cease, 1 and the emperor Diocletian resolved to draw 
 
 soldier of the year 33 (n. 5101), and Aethiops et Indus intreinuit, in an 
 
 that of a praesidhim of the year 84 oration probably held in the year 296 
 
 (Talmis, n. 5042 f.), as well as numer- (Paneg. v. 5), apply to such a ren- 
 
 ous others certainly presuppose it. Be- contre, not to the Egyptian insurrec- 
 
 yond the frontier indicated no similar tion ; and the oration of the year 289 
 
 stone has ever been found ; for the speaks of attacks of the Blemyes 
 
 remarkable inscription of the regina (Paneg. iii. 17). — Procopius, Bell. 
 
 (C. /. L. iii. 83), found at Messaurat, Pers. i. 19, reports the cession of the 
 
 to the south of Shendy (16 0 25' lat., "Twelve-mile-territory" to the Nubi- 
 
 5 leagues to the south of the ruins ans. It is mentioned as standing under 
 
 of Naga), the most southern of all the dominion, not of the Nubians, but 
 
 known Latin inscriptions, now in the of the Blemyes by Olympiodorus, fr. 
 
 Berlin Museum, has been set up, not 37, Mull, and the inscription of Silko, 
 
 by a Roman subject, but presumably C. I. Gr. 5072. The fragment re- 
 
 by an envoy of an African queen, cently brought to light of a Greek 
 
 who was returning from Rome, and heroic poem as to the victory of a late 
 
 who spoke Latin perhaps only in Roman emperor over the Blemyes is 
 
 order to show that he had been in referred by Biicheler (Rhein. Mus. 
 
 Rome. xxxix. 279 f.) to that of Marcianus, in 
 
 1 The tropaea Niliaca, sub quibus the year 451 (comp. Priscus, fr. 27). 
 
278 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 back the frontier. The narrow "Twelve-mile-land" de- 
 manded a strong garrison, and brought in little to the 
 state. The Nubians, who roamed in the Libyan desert, 
 and were constantly visiting in particular the great Oasis, 
 agreed to give up their old abodes and to settle in this 
 region, which was formally ceded to them ; at the same 
 time fixed annual payments were made to them as well 
 as to their eastern neighbours the Blemyes, nominally in 
 order to compensate them for guarding the frontier, in 
 reality beyond doubt to buy off their plundering expedi- 
 tions, which nevertheless of course did not cease. It was 
 a retrograde step — the first, since Egypt became Roman. 
 Aethiopian Of the mercantile intercourse on this frontier little is 
 taffiS erCial reported from antiquity. As the cataracts of the upper 
 Nile closed the direct route by water, the traffic between 
 the interior of Africa and the Egyptians, particularly the 
 trade in ivory, was carried on in the Roman period more 
 by way of the Abyssinian ports than along the Nile ; but 
 it was not wanting also in this direction. 1 The Aethi- 
 opians who dwelt in numbers beside the Egyptians on 
 the island of Philae were evidently mostly merchants, and 
 the border-peace that here prevailed must have contributed 
 its part to the prosperity of the frontier-towns of upper 
 Egypt and of Egyptian trade generally. 
 The The east coast of Egypt presented to the development 
 
 SKoast of general traffic a problem difficult of solution. The 
 and general thoroughly desolate and rocky shore was incapable of 
 commerce. culture p r0 p er> an d in ancient as in later times a desert. 2 
 On the other hand the two seas, eminently important for 
 the development of culture in the ancient world, the 
 Mediterranean and the Red or Indian, approach each 
 other most closely at the two most northern extremities 
 of the latter, the Persian and the Arabian gulfs ; the 
 former receives into it the Euphrates, which in the middle 
 of its course comes near to the Mediterranean ; the latter 
 is only a few days' march distant from the Nile, which 
 
 1 Juvenal (xi. 124) mentions the Ptolemy (iv. 5, 14, 15) treats of this 
 elephant's teeth, quos mittit porta coast, it seems, just like the " Twelve- 
 Syenes. mile-land," to have lain outside of the 
 
 2 According to the mode in which division into nomes. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 279 
 
 flows into the same sea. Hence in ancient times the 
 commercial intercourse between the East and the West 
 took preponderantly either the direction along the 
 Euphrates to the Syrian and Arabian coast, or it made 
 its way from the east coast of Egypt to the Nile. The 
 traffic routes from the Euphrates were older than those 
 by way of the Nile ; but the latter had the advantage of 
 the stream being better for navigation and of the shorter 
 land-transport ; the getting rid of the latter by preparing 
 an artificial water-route was in the case of the Euphrates 
 excluded, in that of Egypt found in ancient as in modern 
 times difficult doubtless, but not impossible. Accordingly 
 nature itself prescribed to the land of Egypt to connect 
 the east coast with the course of the Nile and the northern 
 coast by land or water routes ; and the beginnings of such 
 structures go back to the time of those native rulers who 
 first opened up Egypt to foreign countries and to traffic 
 on a great scale. Following in the traces apparently of The sea- 
 older structures of the great rulers of Egypt, Sethi I. and 1°^*° 
 Rhamses II., king Necho, the son of Psammetichus (610- 
 594 B.C.) began the building of a canal, which, branching 
 off from the Nile in the neighbourhood of Cairo, was to 
 furnish a water-communication with the bitter lakes near 
 Ismailia, and through these with the Red Sea, without 
 being able, however, to complete the work. That in this 
 he had in view not merely the control of the Arabian 
 Gulf and the commercial traffic with the Arabians, but 
 already brought within his horizon the Persian and the 
 Indian seas, and the more remote East, is probable, for 
 this reason, that the same ruler suggested the only cir- 
 cumnavigation of Africa executed in antiquity. Beyond 
 doubt this was for king Darius I., the lord of Persia as 
 well as of Egypt ; he completed the canal, but, as his 
 memorial-stones found on the spot mention, he caused it 
 to be filled up again, probably because his engineers feared 
 that the water of the sea, admitted into the canal, would 
 overflow the fields of Egypt. 
 
 The rivalry of the Lagids and the Seleucids, which 
 dominated the policy of the post- Alexandrine period 
 
28o 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 generally, was at the same time a contest between the 
 Euphrates and the Nile. The former was in possession, 
 the latter the pretender ; and in the better time of the 
 Lagids the peaceful offensive was pursued with great 
 energy. Not only was that canal undertaken by Necho 
 and Darius, now named the " river of Ptolemaeus," opened 
 for the first time to navigation by the second Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus (-f* 247 B.C.) ; but comprehensive harbour- 
 structures were carried out at the points of the difficult 
 east coast that were best fitted for the security of the ships 
 The and for the connection with the Nile. Above all, this was 
 
 eastern" 1 done at the moutn °f tne canal leading to the Nile, at the 
 ports. townships of Arsinoe, Cleopatris, Clysma, all three in the 
 region of the present Suez. Further downward, besides 
 several minor structures, arose the two important em- 
 poria, Myos Hormos, somewhat above the present Koser, 
 and Berenice, in the land of the Trogodytes, nearly in 
 the same latitude with Syene on the Nile as well as with 
 the Arabian port Leuce Come, the former distant six or 
 seven, the latter eleven days' march from the town Coptos, 
 near which the Nile bends farthest to the eastward, and 
 connected with this chief emporium on the Nile by roads 
 constructed across the desert and provided with large 
 cisterns. The goods traffic of the time of the Ptolemies 
 probably went less through the canal than by these land 
 routes to Coptos. 
 Abyssinia. Beyond that Berenice, in the land of the Trogodytes, 
 the Egypt proper of the Lagids did not extend. The settle- 
 ments lying farther to the south, Ptolemais " for the chase" 
 below Suakim, and the southmost township of the Lagid 
 kingdom, the subsequent Adulis, at that time perhaps 
 named "Berenice the Golden" or "near Saba," Zula not 
 far from the present Massowah, by far the best harbour 
 on all this coast, were not more than coast-forts and had 
 no communication by land with Egypt. These remote 
 settlements were beyond doubt either lost or voluntarily 
 abandoned under the later Lagids, and at the epoch when 
 the Roman rule began, the Trogodytic Berenice was on the 
 coast, like Syene in the interior, the limit of the empire. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 281 
 
 In this region, never occupied or early evacuated by the The kin s- 
 Egyptians there was formed — whether at the end of the A^mite? 6 
 Lagid epoch or in the first age of the empire — an independ- 
 ent state of some extent and importance, that of the Axo- 
 mites, 1 corresponding to the modern Habesh. It derives 
 its name from the town Axdmis, the modern Axum, situated 
 in the heart of this Alpine country eight days' journey from 
 the sea, in the modern country of Tigre ; the already-men- 
 tioned best emporium on this coast, Adulis in the bay of 
 Massowah, served it as a port. The original population 
 of the kingdom of Axomis, of which tolerably pure rem- 
 nants still maintain themselves at the present day in 
 individual tracts of the interior, belonged from its language, 
 the Agau, to the same Hamitic cycle with the modern 
 Bego, Sali, Dankali, Somali, Galla ; to the Egyptian 
 population this linguistic circle seems related in a similar 
 way as the Greeks to the Celts and Slaves, so that here 
 doubtless for research an affinity may subsist, but for 
 their historical existence rather nothing but contrast. But 
 before our knowledge of this country so much as begins, 
 superior Semitic immigrants belonging to the Himyaritic 
 stocks of southern Arabia must have crossed the narrow 
 gulf of the sea and rendered their language as well as 
 their writing at home there. The old written language of 
 Habesh, extinct in popular use since the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, the Ge'ez, or as it is for the most part erroneously 
 
 1 Our best information as to the Romans, but clearly has in view their 
 
 kingdom of Axomis is obtained from imperial frontiers when he subdues 
 
 a stone erected to one of its kings, the Tangaites fxtxpi- ™v ryjs Alytiirrov 
 
 beyond doubt in the better period of bplwv, and constructs a road 
 
 the empire, at Adulis (C. I. Gr. ttjs i/xy<s PaaiXelas t6ttwv fj^xpt Alytiir- 
 
 5127 b), a sort of writing commemo- tov, and further, names as the north- 
 
 rative of the deeds of this apparent em limit of his Arabian expedition 
 
 empire-founder in the style of that of Leuce Come, the last Roman station 
 
 Darius at "Persepolis, or that of Au- on the Arabian west coast. Hence 
 
 gustus at Ancyra, and fixed on the it follows further, that this inscription 
 
 king's throne, before which down to is more recent than the Periplus of the 
 
 the sixth century criminals were exe- Red Sea written under Vespasian ; 
 
 cuted. The skilful disquisition of for according to this (c. 5) the king of 
 
 Dillmann (Abk. der Berliner Akade- Axomis rules dirb rwv Mocrxocpdywu 
 
 mie, 1877, p. 195 f.), explains as fiAxP<- ™)s &\\-qs Bapfiaptas, and this is 
 
 much of it as is explicable. From the to be understood exclusively, since he 
 
 Roman standpoint it is to be noted names in c. 2 the Tipavvoi of the 
 
 that the king does not name the Moscophages, and likewise remarks 
 
282 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Its extent 
 and devel- 
 opment. 
 
 termed, the Aethiopic, 1 is purely Semitic, 2 and the still 
 living dialects, the Amhara and the Tigrifia, are so also 
 in the main, only disturbed by the influence of the older 
 Agau. 
 
 As to the beginnings of this commonwealth no tradi- 
 tion has been preserved. At the end of Nero's time, and 
 perhaps already long before, the king of the Axomites 
 ruled on the African coast nearly from Suakim to the 
 Straits of Bab el Mandeb. Some time afterwards — the 
 epoch cannot be more precisely defined — we find him as 
 a frontier-neighbour of the Romans on the southern border 
 of Egypt, and on the other coast of the Arabian Gulf in 
 warlike activity in the territory intervening between the 
 Roman possession and that of the Sabaeans, and so 
 coming into immediate contact towards the north with 
 the Roman territory also in Arabia ; commanding, more- 
 over, the African coast outside of the Gulf perhaps as far 
 as Cape Guardafui. How far his territory of Axomis 
 extended inland is not clear ; Aethiopia, that is, Sennaar 
 and Dongola, at least in the earlier imperial period, hardly 
 belonged to it ; perhaps at this time the kingdom of 
 Nabata may have subsisted alongside of the Axomitic. 
 Where the Axomites meet us, we find them at a com- 
 paratively advanced stage of development. Under 
 Augustus the Egyptian commercial traffic increased not 
 less with these African harbours than with India. The 
 king had the command not merely of an army, but, as his 
 very relations to Arabia presuppose, also of a fleet. A 
 Greek merchant, who was present in Adulis, terms king 
 
 in c. 14, that beyond the Straits of associated in the better period with 
 
 the country on the Upper Nile, espe- 
 cially 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 Pro- 
 copius, the designation is referred to 
 the state of Axomis, and hence in 
 more recent times is frequently em- 
 ployed for Abyssinia. 
 
 2 Hence the legend that the Axo- 
 mites were Syrians settled by Alex- 
 ander in Africa, and still spoke Syrian 
 (Philostorgius, Hist. Eccl. iii. 6). 
 
 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 pos- 
 sessions of the king of Axomis on the 
 Arabian coast, although he on several 
 occasions mentions the dynasts there. 
 1 The name of the Aethiopians was 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 283 
 
 Zoskales, who ruled in Vespasian's time in Axomis, an 
 upright man and acquainted with Greek writing ; one of 
 his successors has set up on the spot a memorial-writing 
 composed in current Greek which told his deeds to the 
 foreigners ; he even names himself in it a son of Ares 
 — which title the kings of the Axomites retained down to 
 the fourth century — and dedicates the throne, which bears 
 that memorial inscription, to Zeus, to Ares, and to 
 Poseidon. Already in Zoskales's time that foreigner 
 names Adulis a well organised emporium ; his successors 
 compelled the roving tribes of the Arabian coast to keep 
 peace by land and by sea, and restored a land communi- 
 cation from their capital to the Roman frontier, which, 
 considering the nature of this district primarily left 
 dependent on communication by sea, was not to be 
 esteemed of slight account. Under Vespasian brass 
 pieces, which were divided according to need, served the 
 natives instead of money, and Roman coin circulated only 
 among the strangers settled in Adulis ; in the later 
 imperial period the kings themselves coined. The Axomite 
 ruler withal calls himself king of kings, and no trace 
 points to Roman clientship ; he practises coining in gold, 
 which the Romans did not allow, not merely in their own 
 territory but even within the range of their power. There 
 was hardly another land in the imperial period beyond 
 the Romano-Hellenic bounds which had appropriated to 
 itself Hellenic habits with equal independence and to an 
 equal extent as the state of Habesh. That in the course 
 of time the popular language, indigenous or rather natur- 
 alised from Arabia, gained the upper hand and dispos- 
 sessed the Greek, is probably traceable partly to Arabian 
 influence, partly to that of Christianity and the revival 
 connected with it of the popular dialects, such as we found 
 also in Syria and Egypt ; and it does not exclude the 
 view that the Greek language in Axomis and Adulis in 
 the first and second centuries of our era had a similar 
 position to what it had in Syria and Egypt, so far as it is 
 allowable to compare small and great. 
 
 Of political relations of the Romans to the state of 
 
284 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Rome and 
 the Ax- 
 omites. 
 
 The west 
 coast of 
 Arabia. 
 
 Axomis hardly anything is mentioned from the first three 
 centuries of our era, to which our narrative is confined. 
 With the rest of Egypt they took possession also of the 
 ports of the east coast down to the remote Trogodytic 
 Berenice, which on account of that remoteness was in the 
 Roman period placed under a commandant of its own. 1 
 Of extending their territory into the inhospitable and 
 worthless mountains along the coast there was never any 
 thought ; nor can the sparse population, standing at the 
 lowest stage of development, in the immediately adjoining 
 region have ever given serious trouble to the Romans. 
 As little did the Caesars attempt, as the early Lagids had 
 done, to possess themselves of the emporia of the 
 Axomitic coast. There is express mention only of the 
 fact that envoys of the Axomite kings negotiated with the 
 emperor Aurelian. But this very silence, as well as the 
 formerly indicated independent position of the ruler, 2 leads 
 to the inference that here the recognised frontier was 
 permanently respected on both sides, and that a relation 
 of good neighbourhood subsisted, which proved advan- 
 tageous to the interests of peace and especially of Egyptian 
 commerce. That the latter, especially the important 
 traffic in ivory, in which Adulis was the chief entrepot for 
 the interior of Africa, was carried on predominantly from 
 Egypt and in Egyptian vessels, cannot — considering the 
 superior civilisation of Egypt — be subject to any doubt 
 even as regards the Lagid period ; and in Roman times 
 this traffic probably only increased in amount, without 
 undergoing further change. 
 
 Far more important for Egypt and the Roman empire 
 generally than the traffic with the African south was that 
 
 1 This is the praefectus praesidiorum 
 et montis Berenices ( C. I. L. ix. 3083), 
 praefectus montis Berenicidis (Orelli, 
 3881), praefectus Bemicidis (C. I. L. 
 x. 1 1 29), an officer of equestrian rank, 
 analogous to those adduced above 
 (p. 249), as stationed in Alexandria. 
 
 2 The letter, which the emperor 
 Constantius in the year 356 directs to 
 Aeizanas, the king of the Axomites at 
 that time, is that of one ruler to 
 
 another on an equal footing ; he re- 
 quests his friendly and neighbourly 
 assistance against the spread of the 
 Athanasian heresy, and for the deposi- 
 tion and delivering up of an Axomitic 
 clergyman suspected of it. The fel- 
 lowship of culture comes here into the 
 more definite prominence, as the 
 Christian invokes against the Chris- 
 tian the arm of the heathen. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 285 
 
 which subsisted with Arabia and the coasts situated farther 
 to the east. The Arabian peninsula remained aloof from 
 the sphere of Hellenic culture. It would possibly have 
 been otherwise had king Alexander lived a year longer ; 
 death swept him away amidst the preparations for sailing 
 round and occupying the already-explored south coast of 
 Arabia, setting out from the Persian Gulf. But the voyage 
 which the great king had not been able to enter on was 
 never undertaken by any Greek after him. From the 
 most remote times, on the other hand, a lively intercourse 
 had taken place between the two coasts of the Arabian 
 Gulf over its moderately broad waters. In the Egyptian 
 accounts from the time of the Pharaohs the voyages to 
 the land of Punt, and the spoils thence brought home in 
 frankincense, ebony, emeralds, leopards' skins, play an 
 important part. It has been already (p. 148) mentioned 
 that subsequently the northern portion of the Arabian 
 west coast belonged to the territory of the Nabataeans, 
 and with this came into the power of the Romans. This 
 was a desolate beach ; l only the emporium Leuce Come, 
 the last town of the Nabataeans and so far also of the 
 Roman empire, was not merely in maritime intercourse 
 
 1 Inland lay the primeval Teima, already mentioned the Nabataean 
 
 the son of Ishmael of Genesis, enu- inscriptions just found there (p. 148, 
 
 merated by the Assyrian king Tiglath- note 3). Not far from thence, near 
 
 Pilesar in the eighth century before 'Ola (el-Ally) inscriptions have been 
 
 Christ among his conquests, named found, which correspond in the writ- 
 
 by the prophet Jeremiah together ing and in the names of gods and 
 
 with Sidon, around which gather in a kings to those of the South- Arabian 
 
 remarkable way Assyrian, Egyptian, Minaeans, and show that these had 
 
 Arabian relations, the further unfold- a considerable station here, sixty days' 
 
 ing of which, after bold travellers journey from their home, but on the 
 
 have opened up the place, we may frankincense - route mentioned by 
 
 await from Oriental research. In Eratosthenes, from Minaea to Ae- 
 
 Teima itself Euting recently found lana ; and alongside of these others 
 
 Aramaic inscriptions of the oldest of a cognate but not identical south, 
 
 epoch (Noldeke, Sitzungsberichte der Arabian stock (D. H. Muller in the 
 
 Berliner Akadcmie, 1884, p. 813 f.) Berichte der Wiener Akademie of 17th 
 
 From the not far distant place Medain- December 1884). The Minaean in- 
 
 Salih (Hijr) proceed certain coins scriptions belong beyond doubt to the 
 
 modelled after the Attic, which in pre-Roman period. As on the an- 
 
 part replace the owl of Pallas by that nexation of the Nabataean kingdom 
 
 image of a god which the Egyptians by Trajan these districts were aban- 
 
 designate as Eesa the lord of Punt, doned (p. 152), from that time another 
 
 i.e. of Arabia (Erman, Zeitschrift fiir south-Arabian tribe may have ruled 
 
 Numismatik, ix. 296 f.) We have there. 
 
286 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 with Berenice lying opposite, but was also the starting- 
 point of the caravan-route leading to Petra and thence to 
 the ports of southern Syria, and in so far, one of the 
 centres of the traffic between the East and the West 
 (p. 151). The adjoining regions on the south, northward 
 and southward of the modern Mecca, corresponded in 
 their natural character to the opposite Trogodyte country, 
 and were, like this, neither politically nor commercially 
 of importance, nor yet apparently united under one 
 sceptre, but occupied by roving tribes. But at the south 
 end of this gulf was the home of the only Arabic stock, 
 which attained to greater importance in the pre-Islamic 
 period. The Greeks and the Romans name these Arabs 
 in the earlier period after the people most prominent at 
 that time Sabaeans, in later times after another tribe 
 usually Homerites, as, according to the new Arabic form 
 of the latter name, now for the most part Himjarites. 
 
 The development of this remarkable people had reached 
 a considerable stage long before the beginning of the 
 Roman rule over Egypt. 1 Its native seat, the Arabia 
 Felix of the ancients, the region of Mocha and Aden, is 
 surrounded by a narrow plain along the shore intensely 
 hot and desolate, but the healthy and temperate interior 
 of Yemen and Hadramaut produces on the mountain- 
 slopes and in the valleys a luxuriant vegetation, and the 
 numerous mountain-waters permit in many respects with 
 careful management a garden-like cultivation. We have 
 even at the present day an expressive testimony to the 
 rich and peculiar civilisation of this region in the remains 
 
 1 The accounts connected with the 
 trade in frankincense in Theophrastus 
 (f 287 B.C. ; Hist, plant, ix. 4) and 
 more fully in Eratosthenes (f 194 B. c); 
 in Strabo (xvi. 4, 2, p. 768) of the 
 four great tribes of the Minaeans 
 (Mamali Theophr. ?) with the capital 
 Carna; the Sabaeans (Saba Theophr.) 
 with the capital Mariaba ; the Catta- 
 banes (Kitibaena Theophr.) with the 
 capital Tamna ; the Chatramotitae 
 (Hadramyta Theophr.) with the capi- 
 tal Sabata, describe the very circle out 
 
 of which the Homerite kingdom de- 
 veloped itself, and indicate its begin- 
 nings. The much sought for Minaei 
 are now pointed out with certainty in 
 Ma'in in the interior above Marib and 
 Hadramaut, where hundreds of in- 
 scriptions have been found, and have 
 yielded already no fewer than twenty- 
 six kings' names. Mariaba is even 
 now named Marib. The region 
 Chatramotitis or Chatramitis is Had- 
 ramaut. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 287 
 
 of city-walls and towers, of useful buildings, particularly 
 aqueducts, and temples covered with inscriptions, which 
 completely confirm the description of ancient authors as 
 to the magnificence and luxury of this region ; the 
 Arabian geographers have written books concerning the 
 strongholds and castles of the numerous petty princes of 
 Yemen. Famous are the ruins of the mighty embank- 
 ment which once in the valley of Mariaba dammed up 
 the river Dana and rendered it possible to water the fields 
 upwards, 1 and from the bursting of which, and the migra- 
 tion alleged to have been thereby occasioned of the inha- 
 bitants of Yemen to the north the Arabs for long counted 
 their years. But above all this district was one of the 
 original seats of wholesale traffic by land and by sea, not 
 merely because its productions, frankincense, precious 
 stones, gum, cassia, aloes, senna, myrrh, and numerous 
 other drugs called for export, but also because this Semitic 
 stock was, just like that of the Phoenicians, formed by its 
 whole character for commerce ; Strabo says, just like the 
 more recent travellers, that the Arabs are all traders and 
 merchants. The coining of silver is here old and peculiar ; 
 the coins were at first modelled after Athenian dies, and 
 
 1 The remarkable remains of this 
 structure, executed with the greatest 
 precision and skill, are described by 
 Arnaud {Journal Asiatique, 7 serie, 
 tome 3, for the year 1874, p. 3 f. 
 with plans ; comp. Ritter, Erdkunde, 
 xii. 861). On the two sides of the 
 embankment, which has now almost 
 wholly disappeared, stand respectively 
 two stone structures built of square 
 blocks, of conical almost cylindrical 
 form, between which a narrow open- 
 ing is found for the water flowing out 
 of the basin ; at least on the one 
 side a canal lined with pebbles leads 
 it to this outlet. It was once closed 
 with planks placed one above another, 
 which could be individually removed, 
 to carry the water away as might be 
 needed. The one of those stone 
 cylinders bears the following inscrip- 
 tion (according to the translation, not 
 indeed quite certain in all its details, 
 
 of D. H. Miiller, Wiener Sitzungs- 
 berichte, vol. xcvii. 1880, p. 965) : 
 "Jata'amar the glorious, son of Sa- 
 mah'ali the sublime, prince of Saba, 
 caused the Balap (mountain) to be 
 pierced (and erected) the sluice-struc- 
 ture named Rahab for easier irriga- 
 tion." We have no secure basis for 
 fixing the chronological place of this 
 and numerous other royal names of 
 the Sabaean inscriptions. The As- 
 syrian king Sargon says in the Khor- 
 sabad inscription, after he has narrated 
 the vanquishing of the king of Gaza, 
 Hanno, in the year 716 B.C.: "I 
 received the tribute of Pharaoh the 
 king of Egypt, of Shamsiya the queen 
 of Arabia, and of Ithamara the Sab- 
 aean ; gold, herbs of the eastern land, 
 slaves, horses, and camels" (Miiller, 
 /. c. p. 988 ; Duncker, Gesch. des 
 Alterthums, ii. 6 p. 327). 
 
288 EGYPT. book viii. 
 
 later after Roman coins of Augustus, but on an indepen- 
 dent, probably Babylonian basis. 1 From the land of these 
 Arabians the original frankincense-routes led across the 
 desert to the marts on the Arabian gulf, Aelana and the 
 already-mentioned Leuce Come, and the emporia of Syria, 
 Petra and Gaza ; 2 these routes of the land-traffic, which 
 along with those of the Euphrates and the Nile, furnish 
 the means of intercourse between East and West from the 
 earliest times, may be conjectured to be the proper basis 
 of the prosperity of Yemen. But the sea-traffic likewise 
 soon became associated with them ; the great mart for 
 this was Adane, the modern Aden. From this the goods 
 went by water, certainly in the main in Arabian ships, 
 either to those same marts on the Arabian gulf and so to 
 the Syrian ports, or to Berenice and Myos Hormos, and 
 from thence to Coptos and Alexandria. We have already 
 stated that the same Arabs likewise at a very early time 
 possessed themselves of the opposite coast, and trans- 
 planted their language, their writing and their civilisa- 
 tion to Habesh. If Coptos, the Nile-emporium for the 
 eastern traffic, had just as many Arabs as Egypt had 
 inhabitants, if even the emerald-mines above Berenice 
 (near Jebel Zebara) were worked by the Arabs, this shows 
 that in the Lagid state itself they had the trade up to 
 a certain degree in their hands ; and its passive attitude 
 in respect to the traffic on the Arabian Sea, whither at 
 most an expedition against the pirates was once under- 
 taken, 3 is the more readily intelligible, if a state well 
 
 1 Sallet in the Berliner Zeilschrift servants have their exactions ; to 
 fur Numismatik, viii. 243 ; J. H. which our imperial dues fall to be 
 Mordtmann in the Wiener Numism. added. " In the case of the water-trans- 
 Zeitschrift, xii. 289. port these intervening expenses were 
 
 2 Pliny, H. N. xii. 14, 65, not incurred. 
 
 reckons the cost of a camel's load of 3 The chastising of the pirates is 
 frankincense by the land-route from reported by Agatharchides in Dio- 
 the Arabian coast to Gaza at 688 dorus, iii. 43, and Strabo, xvi. 4, 18, 
 denarii ( = ^30). " Along the whole p. 777. But Ezion-Geber in Pales- 
 tract fodder and water and shelter tine, on the Elanitic gulf, fi vvv Bepe- 
 and various custom-dues have to be vUrj KaXeirai (Josephus, Arch. viii. 6, 
 paid for ; then the priests demand 4), was so called certainly not from 
 certain shares and the scribes of the an Egyptian princess (Droysen, Hel- 
 kings ; moreover the guards and the lenisvms, iii. 2, 349), but from the 
 halberdiers and the body-guards and Jewess of Titus. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 289 
 
 organised amd powerful at sea ruled these waters. We 
 meet the Arabs cf Yemen even beyond their own sea. 
 Adane remained down to the Roman imperial times a 
 mart of traffic on the one hand with India, on the other 
 with Egypt, and, in spite of its own unfavourable position 
 on the treeless store, rose to such prosperity that the 
 name of " Arabia Felix " had primary reference to this 
 town. The dominion, which in our days the Imam of 
 Muscat in tlhe south-east of the peninsula has exercised 
 over the islands of Socotra and Zanzibar and the African 
 east coast from Cape Guardafui southward, pertained in 
 Vespasian's time "from of old " to the princes of Arabia ; 
 the island of Dioscorides, that same Socotra, belonged 
 then to the king of Hadramaut, Azania, that is, the coast 
 of Somal and further southward, to one of the viceroys of 
 his western neighbour, the king of the Homerites. The 
 southernmost station on the east African coast which the 
 Egyptian merchants knew of, Rhapta in the region of 
 Zanzibar, was leased from this sheikh by the merchants of 
 Muza, that is nearly the modern Mocha, " and they send 
 thither their trading-ships, mostly manned by Arabian 
 captains and sailors, who are accustomed to deal and 
 are often connected by marriage with the natives, and are 
 acquainted with the localities and the languages of the 
 country." The cultivation of the soil and industry went 
 hand in hand with commerce ; in the houses of rank in 
 India, Arabian wine was drunk alongside of the Falernian 
 from Italy and the Laodicene from Syria ; and the lances 
 and shoemakers' awls, which the natives of the coast of 
 Malabar purchased from the foreign traders were manu- 
 factured at Muza. Thus this region, which moreover 
 sold much and bought little, became one of the richest in 
 the world. 
 
 How far its political development kept pace with the 
 economic, cannot be determined for the pre-Roman and 
 earlier imperial period ; only this much seems to result 
 both from the accounts of the Occidentals and from 
 the native inscriptions, that this south-west point of 
 Arabia was divided among several independent rulers with: 
 
290 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 territories of moderate size. There subsisted in that 
 quarter, alongside of the more prominent Sabaeans and 
 Homerites, the already-mentioned Chatramotitae in the 
 Hadramaut, and northward in the interior the Minaeans, 
 all under princes of their own. 
 
 With reference to the Arabians of Yemen the Romans 
 pursued the very opposite policy to that adopted towards 
 the Axomites. Augustus, for whom the non-enlargement 
 of the bounds was the starting-point of the imperial 
 government, and who allowed almost all the plans of 
 conquest of his father and master to drop, made an excep- 
 tion of the south-west coast of Arabia, and here took 
 aggressive measures of his own free will. This was done 
 on account of the position which this group of peoples 
 occupied at that time in Indo- Egyptian commercial 
 intercourse. In order to bring the province of his 
 dominions, which was politically and financially the most 
 important, up, in an economic aspect, to the level which 
 his predecessors in rule had neglected to establish 
 or had allowed to decline, he needed above all to 
 obtain inter -communication between Arabia and India 
 on the one hand and Europe on the other. The Nile- 
 route for long competed successfully with the Arabian 
 and the Euphrates routes ; but Egypt played in this 
 respect, as we saw, a subordinate part at least under 
 the later Lagids. A trading rivalry subsisted not 
 with the Axomites, but doubtless with the Arabians; 
 if the Egyptian traffic was to be converted from a 
 passive into an active, from indirect into direct, the Arabs 
 had to be overthrown ; and this it was that Augustus 
 desired and the Roman government in some measure 
 achieved. 
 
 2S . In the sixth year of his reign in Egypt (end of 729) 
 
 S?/" Augustus despatched a fleet, fitted out expressly for this 
 Gaiius. expedition, of 80 warships and 130 transports, and the 
 half of the Egyptian army, a corps of 10,000 men, with- 
 out reckoning the contingents of the two nearest client 
 kings, the Nabataean Obodas and the Jew Herod, against 
 the states of Yemen, in order either to subjugate or at 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 291 
 
 least to ruin them, 1 while at the same time the treasures 
 there accumulated were certainly taken into account. But 
 the enterprise completely miscarried, and that from the 
 incapacity of the leader, the governor of Egypt at the time, 
 Gaius Aelius Gallus. 2 Since the occupation and the 
 possession of the desolate coast from Leuce Come down- 
 wards to the frontier of the enemy's territory was of no 
 consequence at all, it was necessary that the expedition 
 should be directed immediately against the latter, and that 
 the army should be conducted from the most southern 
 Egyptian port at once into Arabia Felix. 3 Instead of this 
 
 1 This (irpwrouceiowreat rotrovs — destroying the latter themselves, as 
 toOs Apo/3« — ?} KaraaTptyeaeat. : Strabo "thinks," is, looking to the 
 Strabo, xvi. 4, 22 p. 780; el ^ 6 position of the client-states of Rome, 
 2iAXc«os avrbv—rbv TaWov—irpoM- quite irrational. It might rather be 
 5ov, k&v KaTecrrptyaro rty Eudalfiova thought that Syllaeos was averse to 
 Trdtrav: ib. xvii. 1, 53, p. 819) was the expedition, because the commercial 
 the proper aim of the expedition, traffic through the Nabataean land 
 although also the hope of spoil, just at might be injured by it. But to accuse 
 that time very welcome for the trea- the Arabian minister of treachery be- 
 sury, is expressly mentioned. cause the Roman transports were not 
 
 2 The account of Strabo (xvi. 4, 22 fitted for navigating the Arabian coast, 
 f., p. 780) as to the Arabian expedition or because the Roman army was com- 
 of his " friend " Gallus (0/Xos rj/uv ko.1 pelled to carry water with it on camels, 
 iraipos, Strabo, ii. 5, 12, p. 118), in to eat durra and dates instead of bread 
 whose train he travelled in Egypt, is and flesh, and butter instead of oil ; 
 indeed trustworthy and honest, like all to bring forward the deceitfulness of 
 his accounts, but evidently accepted the guidance as an excuse for the fact 
 from this friend without any criticism, that 180 days were employed for the 
 The battle in which 10,000 of the forward march over a distance over- 
 enemy and two Romans fell, and the taken on the return march in 60 days ; 
 total number of the fallen in this cam- and lastly, to criticise the quite correct 
 paign, which is seven, are self-con- remark of Syllaeos that a march by 
 demned ; but not better is the attempt land from Arsinoe to Leuce Come was 
 to devolve the want of success on the impracticable, by saying that a caravan 
 Nabataean vizier Syllaeos by means of route went thence to Petra, only 
 a " treachery, " such as is familiar with shows what a Roman of rank was able 
 defeated generals. Certainly the latter to make a Greek man of letters be- 
 was so far fitted for a scapegoat, as he lieve. 
 
 some years afterwards was on the 3 The sharpest criticism of the cam - 
 
 instigation of Herod brought to trial paign is furnished by the detailed 
 
 before Augustus, condemned and account of the Egyptian merchant as 
 
 executed (Josephus, Arch. xvi. 10); to the state of the Arabian coast from 
 
 but although we possess the report of Leuce Come (el-Haura to the north 
 
 the agent who managed this matter of Janbo, the port of Medina) to the 
 
 for Herod in Rome, there is not a Catacecaumene island (Jebel Taik 
 
 word to be found in it of this betrayal, near Lohaia). " Different peoples 
 
 That Syllaeos should have had the inhabit it, who speak languages partly 
 
 design of first destroying the Arabians somewhat different, partly wholly so. 
 
 by means of the Romans, and then of The inhabitants of the coast live in 
 
292 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the fleet was got ready at the most northerly, that of 
 Arsinoe (Suez), and the army was landed at Leuce Come, 
 just as if it were the object to prolong as much as possible the 
 voyage of the fleet and the march of the troops. Besides, 
 the war -vessels were superfluous, since the Arabians 
 possessed no war-fleet, the Roman sailors were unacquainted 
 with the navigation on the Arabian coast, and the trans- 
 ports, although specially built for this expedition, were 
 unsuited for their purpose. The pilots had difficulty in 
 finding their way between the shallows and the rocks, and 
 even the voyage in Roman waters from Arsinoe to Leuce 
 Come cost many vessels and men. Here the winter was 
 passed ; in the spring of 730 the campaign in the enemy's 
 country began. The Arabians offered no hindrance, but 
 Arabia undoubtedly did so. Wherever the double axes and 
 the slings and bows came into collision with the pilum and 
 the sword, the natives dispersed like chaff before the wind ; 
 but the diseases, which are endemic in the country, scurvy, 
 leprosy, palsy, decimated the soldiers worse than the most 
 bloody battle, and all the more as the general did not know 
 how to move rapidly forward the unwieldy mass of his 
 army. Nevertheless the Roman army arrived in front of 
 the walls of Mariaba, the capital of the Sabaeans first 
 affected by the attack. But, as the inhabitants closed the 
 gates of their powerful walls still standing, 1 and offered 
 
 Catacecaumene ; from thence onward 
 the inhabitants are hospitable, and we 
 meet with numerous flocks of sheep 
 and camels." The same region be- 
 tween the Roman and the Homeritic 
 frontiers, and the same state of things 
 are in the view of the Axomite king, 
 when he writes : irkpav U ttjs ipvOpas 
 6a\6.(x<xr)s olKovvras 'Appapiras Kal 
 KivaidoKoXirlTas (comp. Ptolemaeus vi. 
 7, 20), crrpdrevfia vavracbv Kal ire&Kbv 
 biaireixxpaixevos Kal virord^as avrCiv rovs 
 (3a<ri\£as, (p6povs ttjs yr)s reXew e/c^Xeucra 
 Kal bdefeaOat /met elprjvrjs Kal TrXieadai, 
 aw6 re AevKTjs Ktifi-qs £ws twv 2a/3a£wf 
 X&pas iwoKifiricra. 
 
 1 These walls, built of rubble, form 
 a circle of a mile in diameter. They 
 are described by Arnaud (I.e., comp. 
 p. 287, note 1). 
 
 hurdles like the ' fish -eaters ' on the 
 opposite coast " (these hurdles he de- 
 scribes, c. 2, as isolated and built into 
 the clefts of the rocks), " those of the 
 interior in villages and pastoral com- 
 panies ; 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 
 n avigation on all this coast is dangerous, 
 the shore is without harbours and in- 
 accessible, with a troublesome surf, 
 rocky and in general very bad. There- 
 fore, when we sail into these waters, we 
 keep to the middle and hasten to get 
 to the Arabian territory at the island 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 293 
 
 energetic resistance, the Roman general despaired of solving 
 the problem proposed to him ; and, after he had lain six 
 days in front of the town, he entered on his retreat, which 
 the Arabians hardly disturbed in earnest, and which was 
 accomplished with comparative rapidity under the pressure 
 of need, although with a severe loss in men. 
 
 It was a bad miscarriage ; but Augustus did not abandon Further en- 
 the conquest of Arabia. It has already been related ag£nst S the 
 (p. 39) that the journey to the East, which the crown- Arabs, 
 prince Gaius entered upon in the year 753, was to 1. 
 terminate at Arabia ; it was this time contemplated after 
 the subjugation of Armenia to reach, in concert with the 
 Parthian government or in case of need after the over- 
 throw of their armies, the mouth of the Euphrates, and 
 from thence to take the sea -route which the admiral 
 Nearchus had once explored for Alexander, towards 
 Arabia Felix. 1 These hopes ended in another but not 
 less unfortunate way, through the Parthian arrow which 
 struck the crown-prince before the walls of Artageira. 
 With him was buried the plan of Arabian conquest for 
 all the future. The great peninsula remained through the 
 whole imperial period — apart from the stripes of coast on 
 the north and north-west — in possession of that freedom 
 from which Islam, the executioner of Hellenism, was in 
 its own time to issue. 
 
 But the Arabian commerce was at all events broken injury to 
 down partly by the measures, to be explained further on, ^j^ce. 
 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 
 
 1 That the Oriental expedition of the fact that the expedition to Armenia 
 
 Gaius had Arabia as its goal, is stated and the negotiations with the Parthians 
 
 expressly by Pliny (particularly H. N. preceded it. For that reason the 
 
 xii. 14, 55, 56 ; comp. ii. 67, 168; Collectanea of Juba as to the impend- 
 
 vi. 27, 141, c. 28, 160; xxxii. I, ing expedition were based upon the 
 
 10). That it was to set out from the reports of the generals of Alexander 
 
 mouth of the Euphrates, follows from as to their exploring of Arabia. 
 
294 
 
 EG YPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Later for- 
 tunes of the 
 Homerites. 
 
 was a village, and its prosperity was gone. We know only 
 the naked fact,]; 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. 
 
 The prosperity, however, of the blessed land of Yemen 
 was too firmly founded to succumb to this blow ; politi- 
 cally it was even perhaps in this epoch only that it more 
 
 1 Our only information as to this 
 remarkable expedition has been pre- 
 served 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 (kw/j.ti irapadaX- 
 daacos), which belongs to the realm of 
 Charibael, king of the Homerites, but 
 was earlier a flourishing town, and 
 was so termed (evdaipLuv S' iireKXrjdT] 
 irpdrepov o$<ra tt6\ls) because before 
 the institution of the direct Indo- 
 Egyptian traffic this place served 
 as a mart : vvv d£ oi) irpb iroWov 
 twv rjixeripuv xp^ vu}v IZcuoap avrrjv 
 KaTearpexpaTo. 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 
 Kaicrap Schwanbeck (Rhein. Mus. neue 
 Folge, vii. 353) has proposed Xapi^arjX, 
 C. Miiller 'TKaudp (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 Chari- 
 bael 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 expedi- 
 tion, which beyond doubt was exe- 
 
 cuted by an Egyptian fleet and simply 
 consisted in the destruction of a pre- 
 sumably 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 Kalaap, in which from the 
 nature of the case the ruler then reign- 
 ing 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) par- 
 tem et orientis victoriae magni Alex- 
 andri lustravere usque in Arabicum 
 sinum, in quo res gerente C. Caesare 
 Atig. f. signa navium ex Hispanien- 
 sibus 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 else- 
 where 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. 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 295 
 
 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 north- 
 wards from Mariaba as far as the Roman frontier did not 
 at that time belong to it, and was under no regular 
 authority at all j 1 the principalities of the Minaei and 
 of the Chatramotitae continued also to be under sovereigns 
 of their own. The eastern half of Arabia formed con- 
 stantly a part of the Persian empire (p. 1 3), 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 develop- 
 ment of affairs. 2 In the middle of the fourth century the 
 kingdom of the Homerites was united with that of the 
 Axomites, and was governed from Axomis 3 — a subjection, 
 however, which was subsequently broken off again. The 
 
 1 The Egyptian merchant dis- these statements could be depended 
 tinguishes the ZvOecrfios (BaaiXefc of on. 
 
 the Homerites (c. 23) sharply from 3 The king names himself, about 
 the rbpavvoi, the tribal chiefs some- the year 356 (p. 284, note 2), in a 
 times subordinate to him, sometimes document (C. I. Gr. 5128) f3a<ri\ei>s 
 independent (c. 14), and as sharply 'AfrfurQv KaVOfiripLTuv /cat toO 'PaeiSay 
 distinguishes these organised condi- (castle in Sapphar, the capital of the 
 tions from the lawlessness of the Homerites ; Dillmann, Abh. der Berl. 
 inhabitants of the desert (c. 2). If Akad. 1878, p. 207) . . . koX 2a/3a 
 Strabo and Tacitus had had eyes as eirwv koI tov SiXe?? (castle in Mariaba, 
 open for these things as that practical the capital of the Sabaeans ; Dill- 
 man had, we should have known some- mann, I.e.). With this agrees the 
 what more of antiquity. contemporary mission of envoys ad 
 
 2 The war of Macrinus against the gentem Axumitarum et Homerita\rum~\ 
 Arabes eudaemones (vita, 12) and their (C. Th. xii. 12, 2). As to the later 
 envoys sent to Aurelian (vita, 33), state of things comp. especially Non- 
 who are named along with those of nosus (fr. hist. Gr. iv. p. I79> Mull.) 
 the Axomites, would prove their con- and Procopius, Hist. Pers. i. 20. 
 tinued independence at that time, if 
 
296 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 destruc- 
 tion 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 shipowners and sailors, and full of stirring 
 mercantile life ; the Muzaites with their own ships navi- 
 gate 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 em- 
 broideries 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 neigh- 
 bouring 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 writ- 
 ing and language and the exercise of art, so far as we 
 are able to judge, developed themselves here just as inde- 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 297 
 
 pendently 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). 
 
 In the same spirit as for the relations to southern Land- 
 Africa and to the Arabian states, and in a' more pleasing ^°^ e 0 s u ^ s nd 
 way, provision was made in Egypt itself for the routes of in Egypt, 
 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. 1 
 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. 2 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 pro- 
 bably also enlarged it — perhaps it was he who placed 
 it in communication with the still undivided Nile near 
 
 1 Aristides {Or. xlviii. p. 485, 
 Dind.) names Coptos the Indian and 
 Arabian entrepot. 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." 
 
 2 Hadrian later constructed "the 
 new Hadrian's road " which led from 
 
 his town Antinoopolis near Hermo- 
 polis, probably through the desert to 
 Myos Hormos, and from Myos Hormos 
 along the sea to Berenice, and provided 
 it with cisterns, stations {aradfioi), and 
 forts (inscription in Revue Archeol. 
 N. S. xxi. year 1870, p. 314). How- 
 ever there is no mention of this road 
 subsequently, and it is a question 
 whether it continued to subsist. 
 
298 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Piracy. 
 
 Growth 
 of the 
 Egyptian 
 active 
 traffic to 
 the East. 
 
 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 (Atigustamnica). 
 
 Augustus exerted himself also in earnest for the sup- 
 pression 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 mer- 
 chantmen 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 geo- 
 graphical 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 in- 
 dispensable neighbours. 
 
 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 pre- 
 ceded 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 
 
CHAP. XII. 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 299 
 
 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 j 1 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 frankin- 
 cense, 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. Thence- 
 forth 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 
 
 1 This is nowhere expressly said, with Persia (c. 36) and Arabia (c. 32). 
 
 but it is clearly evident from the But there is not a word indicating 
 
 Periplus of the Egyptian. He that these foreign merchants came to 
 
 speaks at numerous places of the in- Berenice, Myos Hormos, or Leuce 
 
 tercourse of the non-Roman Africa Come ; indeed, when he remarks with 
 
 with Arabia (c. 7, 8), and conversely reference to the most important mart 
 
 of the Arabians with the non-Roman of all this circle of traffic, Muza, that 
 
 Africa (c. 17, 21, 31 ; and after him these merchants sail with their own 
 
 Ptolemaeus, i. 17, 6), and with Persia ships to the African coast outside of 
 
 (c 27, 33), and India (c. 21, 27, the Straits of Bab El Mandeb (for 
 
 49) ; as also of that of the Persians that is for him to icipav), and to India, 
 
 with India (c. 36), as well as of the Egypt -cannot possibly be absent by 
 
 Indian merchantmen with the non- accident. 
 Roman Africa (c. 14, 31, 32), and 
 
3oo 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 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- We can only determine approximately how far the 
 
 Indian direct Roman maritime traffic went towards the East. 
 
 commercial 
 
 intercourse. In the first instance it took the direction of Barygaza 
 (Barotch on the Gulf of Cambay above Bombay), which 
 
chap. xii. EGYPT. 301 
 
 great mart must have remained through the whole im- 
 perial 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 
 Nileswara); 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 Sa- 
 lice, 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, 1 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. 
 
 1 In Bamanghati (district Singh- ological Survey of India, vol. xiii. p. 
 
 bhum) westward from Calcutta, a 72); but such an isolated find does 
 
 great treasure of gold coins of Roman not prove that regular intercourse 
 
 emperors (Gordian and Constantine extended so far. In Further India 
 
 are named), is said to have come to and China Roman coins have never, 
 
 light (Beglar, in Cunningham's A rchae- so far as we know, been found. 
 
3°2 
 
 EGYPT. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 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 the emperor Antoninus. This event, how- 
 ever, 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 cap- 
 tains may have passed with the Chinese court as mes- 
 sengers 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. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 NORTH AFRICA, in a physical and ethnographic point of North 
 view, stands by itself like an island. Nature has isolated ^ ri g a and 
 it on all sides, partly by the Atlantic and the Mediter- stock, 
 ranean Sea, partly by the widely-extended shore, incapable 
 of cultivation, of the Great Syrtis below the modern 
 Fezzan, and, in connection therewith, by the desert, like- 
 wise closed against cultivation, which shuts off the steppe- 
 land and the oases of the Sahara to the south. Ethno- 
 graphically the population of this wide region forms a 
 great family of peoples, distinguished most sharply from 
 the Blacks of the south, but likewise strictly separated 
 from the Egyptians, although perhaps with these there 
 may once have subsisted a primeval fellowship. They 
 call themselves in the Riff near Tangier Amazigh, in the 
 Sahara Imdshagh, and the same name meets us, referred 
 to particular tribes, on several occasions among the Greeks 
 and Romans, thus as Maxyes at the founding of Carthage 
 (ii. 8), as Mazices in the Roman period at different a. 7 . 
 places of the Mauretanian north coast ; the similar desig- 
 nation that has remained with the scattered remnants 
 proves that this great people has once had a consciousness, 
 and has permanently retained the impression, of the rela- 
 tionship of its members. To the peoples who came into 
 contact with them this relationship was far from clear ; 
 the diversities which prevail among their several parts are 
 not merely at the present day glaring, after in the past 
 thousands of years the mixture with the neighbouring 
 peoples, particularly the Negroes in the south and the 
 
304 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 Arabs in the north, has had its effect upon them, but 
 certainly were as considerable even before these foreign 
 influences as their extension in space demands. A uni- 
 versally valid expression for the nation as such is wanting 
 in all other idioms ; even where the name goes beyond 
 the designation of stock, 1 it yet does not describe the 
 circle as a whole. That of Libyans, which the Egyptians, 
 and after their precedent the Greeks use, belongs origin- 
 ally to the most easterly tribes coming into contact with 
 Egypt, and has always remained specially pertaining to 
 those of the eastern half. That of Nomades, of Greek 
 origin, expresses in the first instance only the absence 
 of settlement, and then in its Roman transformation as 
 Numidians, has become associated with that territory 
 which king Massinissa united under his sway. That of 
 Mauri, of native origin, and current among the later Greeks 
 as well as the Romans, is restricted to the western parts 
 of the land, and continues in use for the kingdoms here 
 formed and the Roman provinces that have proceeded 
 from them. The tribes of the south are comprehended 
 under the name of the Gaetulians, which, however, the 
 stricter use of language limits to the region on the 
 Atlantic Ocean to the south of Mauretania. We are 
 accustomed to designate the nation by the name of 
 Berbers, which the Arabs apply to the northern tribes. 
 
 As to their type they stand far nearer to the Indo- 
 Germanic than to the Semitic, and form even at the 
 present day, when since the invasion of Islam North Africa 
 has fallen to the Semitic race, the sharpest contrast to the 
 Arabs. It is not without warrant that various geographers 
 of antiquity have refused to let Africa pass at all as a 
 third continent, but have attached Egypt to Asia and the 
 
 1 The designation Afer does not this can only have been that, with 
 
 belong to this series. So far as we can which the Romans here first and 
 
 follow it back in linguistic usage, it chiefly came into contact (comp. 
 
 is never given to the Berber in con- Suetonius, vita Terent.). Reasons 
 
 trast to other African stocks, but philological and real oppose them- 
 
 to every inhabitant of the Continent selves to our attempt in i. 162 to trace i. 154. 
 
 lying over against Sicily, and particu- back the word to the name of the 
 
 larly also to the Phoenician ; if it has Hebrews ; a satisfactory etymology 
 
 designated a definite people at all, has not yet been found for it. 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 Berber territory to Europe. As the plants and animals 
 of northern Africa correspond in the main to those of the 
 opposite south- European coast, so the type of man, where 
 it has been preserved unmixed, points altogether to the 
 north : — the fair hair and the blue eyes of a considerable 
 portion, the tall stature, the slender but powerfully knit 
 form, the prevailing monogamy and respect for the position 
 of woman, the lively and emotional temperament, the 
 inclination to settled life, the community founded on the 
 full equality in rights among the grown-up men, which in 
 the usual confederation of several communities affords 
 also the basis for the formation of a state. 1 To strictly 
 political development and to full civilisation this nation, 
 hemmed round by Negroes, Egyptians, Phoenicians, 
 Romans, Arabs, at no time attained ; it must have 
 approximated to it under the government of Massinissa. 
 The alphabet, derived independently from the Phoenician, 
 of which the Berbers made use under Roman rule, and which 
 those of the Sahara still use at the present day, as well as 
 the feeling which, as we have observed, they once had of 
 common national relationship, may probably be referred to 
 the great Numidian king and his descendants, whom the 
 later generations worshipped as gods. 2 In spite of all 
 
 1 A good observer, Charles Tissot, show to us the Libu not red, like the 
 
 (Geogr. de la province romainede FAfri- Egyptians, but white, and with fair or 
 
 que, i. p. 403) testifies that upwards brown hair. 
 
 of a third of the inhabitants of Morocco 2 Cyprian, Quod idola dii non sint, 
 
 have fair or brown hair, and in the c. 2 : Mauri manifeste reges suo's 
 
 colony of the inhabitants of the Riff in colunt nec ullo velamento hoc nomen 
 
 Tangier two- thirds. The women obtexunt. Tertullian, Apolog. 24 : 
 
 made the impression on him of those Mauretaniae (dei sunt) regu'li mi. 
 
 of Berry and of Auvergne. Sur les C. I. L. viii. , 8834: Iemsali L. Per- 
 
 hauts sommets de la chaine atlantique, cenius L. f. Stel. Rogatus v. {s. I. a.), 
 
 d'apres les renseignements qui m'ont found at Thubusuptu in the region of" 
 
 ite fournis, la population tout entiere Sitifis, which place may well have 
 
 serait remarquablement blonde. Elle belonged to the Numidian kingdom 
 
 aurait les yeux bleus, gris ou " verts, of Hiempsal. Thus the inscription 
 
 cotnme ceux des chats," pour reproduire also of Thubursicum (C. I. L. viii. n. 
 
 F expression mtme dont s'esl servi le J* (comp. Eph. epigr. v. p. 651, n. 
 
 cheikh qui me renseignait. The same 1478) must have rather been badly 
 
 phenomenon meets us in the moun- copied than falsified. Still, in the 
 
 tain masses of Grand Kabylia and of year 70, it was alleged that in Maure- 
 
 the Aures, as well as on the Tunisian tania a pretender to the throne had 
 
 island Jerba and the Canary Islands, ascribed to himself the name of Juba 
 
 The Egyptian representations also (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 58). 
 
 VOL. II. 20 
 
3 o6 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 invasions they have maintained their original territory to 
 a considerable extent ; in Morocco now about two-thirds, 
 in Algiers about half of the inhabitants are reckoned of 
 Berber descent. 
 
 Phoenician The immigration, to which all the coasts of the 
 immigra- Mediterranean were subjected in the earliest times, made 
 North Africa Phoenician. To the Phoenicians the natives 
 had to give up the largest and best part of the north 
 coast ; the Phoenicians withdrew all North Africa from 
 Greek civilisation. The Great Syrtis again forms the 
 linguistic as well as the political line of separation ; as 
 on the east the Pentapolis of Cyrene belongs to the 
 Greek circle, so on the west the Tripolis (Tripoli) of 
 Great -Leptis became and remained Phoenician. We 
 have formerly narrated how the Phoenicians after several 
 hundred years of struggle succumbed to the Romans. 
 Here we have to give account of the fortunes of Africa, 
 after the Romans had occupied the Carthaginian territory 
 and had made the neighbouring regions dependent on 
 them. 
 
 The gov- The short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness — we 
 
 emment of ma here say perversity and brutality — of the foreign 
 
 the Roman J J ' r J * . c u 
 
 republic. government of the Roman republic had nowhere so lull 
 sway as in Africa. In southern Gaul, and still more in 
 Spain, the Roman government pursued at least a con- 
 solidated extension of territory, and, half involuntarily, the 
 rudiments of Latinising ; in the Greek East the foreign 
 rule was mitigated and often almost compensated by 
 the power of Hellenism forcing the hand even of hard 
 policy. But as to this third continent the old national 
 hatred towards the Poeni seemed still to reach beyond 
 the grave of Hannibal's native city. The Romans held 
 fast the territory which Carthage had possessed at its 
 fall, but less in order to develop it for their own benefit 
 than to prevent its benefiting others, not to awaken new 
 life there, but to watch the dead body ; it was fear and 
 envy, rather than ambition and covetousness, that created 
 the province of Africa. Under the republic it had not 
 a history ; the war with Jugurtha was for Africa nothing 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 307 
 
 but a lion-hunt, and its historical significance lay in its 
 connection with the republican party struggles. The 
 land was, as a matter of course, turned to full account 
 by Roman speculation ; but neither might the destroyed 
 great city rise up afresh, nor might a neighbouring town 
 develop into a similar prosperity ; there were here no 
 standing camps as in Spain and Gaul ; the Roman 
 province, with its narrow bounds, was on all sides sur- 
 rounded by relatively civilised territory of the dependent 
 king of Numidia, who had helped in the work of the 
 destruction of Carthage, 'and now, as a reward for it, 
 received not so much the spoil as the task of protecting 
 it from the inroads of the wild hordes of the interior. 
 That thereby a political and military importance was 
 given to this state, such as no other client -state of 
 Rome ever possessed, and that even on this side the 
 Roman policy, in order merely to banish the phantom 
 of Carthage, conjured up serious dangers, was shown by 
 the share of Numidia in the civil wars of Rome ; never 
 during all the internal crises of the empire before or 
 after did a client -prince play such a part as the last 
 king of Numidia in the war of the republicans against 
 Caesar. 
 
 All the more necessarily the state of things in Africa Caesar's 
 became transformed by this decision of arms. In the ^ly™ 
 other provinces, as a consequence of the civil wars, there 
 was a change of rule ; in Africa there was a change of 
 system. The African possession of the Phoenicians itself 
 was not a proper dominion over Africa ; it may be in some 
 measure compared with the dominion in Asia Minor of 
 the Hellenes before Alexander. Of this dominion the 
 Romans had then taken over but a small part, and of 
 that part they had nipped the bud. Now Carthage arose 
 afresh, and, as if the soil had only been waiting for the 
 seed, soon flourished anew. The whole country lying 
 behind — the great kingdom of Numidia — became a 
 Roman province, and the protection of the frontier 
 against the barbarians was undertaken by the Roman 
 legionaries. The kingdom of Mauretania became, in the 
 
3 o8 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 first instance, a Roman dependency, and soon also a part 
 of the Roman empire. With the dictator Caesar the 
 civilising and Latinising of Africa took their place among 
 the tasks of the Roman government. Here we have to 
 set forth how the task was carried out, first as to the 
 outward organisation, and then as to the arrangements 
 made and results achieved for the several districts. 
 Extent of Territorial sovereignty over the whole of North Africa 
 the Roman had doubtless already been claimed on the part of the 
 Roman republic, perhaps as a portion of the Carthaginian 
 inheritance, perhaps because " our sea " early became one 
 of the fundamental ideas of the Roman commonwealth ; 
 and, in so far, all its coasts were regarded by the Romans 
 even of the developed republic as their true property. 
 Nor had this claim of Rome ever been properly contested 
 by the larger states of North Africa after the destruction 
 of Carthage ; if in many places the neighbours did not 
 submit to the dominion, they were just as little obedient 
 to their local rulers. That the silver moneys of king 
 Juba I. of Numidia and of king Bogud of Mauretania 
 were coined after the Roman standard, and the Latin 
 legend — little as it was suited to the relations of language 
 and of intercourse then subsisting in North Africa — was 
 never absent from them, was the direct recognition of the 
 Roman supremacy, a consequence, it may be presumed, 
 of the new organisation of North Africa that in the 
 8o year 674 U.C was accomplished by Pompeius. The 
 generally insignificant resistance which the Africans, apart 
 from Carthage, opposed to the Romans, came from the 
 descendants of Massinissa ; after king Jugurtha, and later 
 king Juba, were vanquished, the princes of the western 
 country submitted without more ado to the dependence 
 required of them. The arrangements which the emperors 
 made were carried out quite after the same way in the 
 territory of the dependent princes as in the immediate 
 territory of Rome ; it was the Roman government that 
 regulated the boundaries in all North Africa, and con- 
 stituted Roman communities at its discretion in the 
 kingdom of Mauretania no less than in the province of 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 309 
 
 Numidia. We cannot therefore speak, in the strict sense, 
 of a Roman subjugation of North Africa. The Romans 
 did not conquer it like the Phoenicians or the French ; 
 but they ruled over Numidia as over Mauretania, first as 
 suzerains, then as successors of the native governments. 
 It is so much the more a question, whether the notion of 
 frontier admits of application to Africa in the usual sense. 
 The states of Massinissa, of Bocchus, of Bogud, as also 
 the Carthaginian, proceeded from the northern verge, and 
 all the civilisation of North Africa is based pre-eminently 
 on this coast ; but, so far as we can discern, they all 
 regarded the tribes settled or roving in the south as 
 subjects, and, if they withdrew themselves from subjection, 
 as insurgents, so far as the distance and the desert did 
 not by doing away with contact do away with control. 
 Neighbouring states, with which relations of right or of 
 treaty might have subsisted, can hardly be pointed out 
 in the south of northern Africa, or where such a one 
 appears, such as, in particular, the kingdom of the Gara- 
 mantes, its position is not to be strictly distinguished from 
 that of the hereditary principalities within the civilised 
 territory. This was the case also as regards Roman 
 Africa ; as for the previous rulers, so also doubtless for 
 Roman civilisation there was to be found a limit to the 
 south, but hardly so for the Roman territorial supremacy. 
 There is never mention of any formal extension or taking 
 back of the frontier in Africa; the insurrections in the 
 Roman territory, and the inroads of the neighbouring 
 peoples, look here all the more similar to each other, as 
 even in the regions undoubtedly in Roman possession, 
 still more than in Syria or Spain, many a remote and 
 impassable district knew nothing of Roman taxation and 
 of Roman recruiting. For that reason it seems appropriate 
 to connect with the view of the several provinces at the 
 same time the slight information which has been left 
 to us in historical tradition, or by means of preserved 
 monuments, respecting the friendly or hostile relations 
 of the Romans with their southern neighbours. 
 
 The former territory of Carthage and the larger part 
 
310 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book viii- 
 
 Province of G f the earlier kingdom of Numidia, united with it by the 
 Numidia. dictator Caesar, or, as they also called it, the old and the 
 new Africa, formed until the end of the reign of Tiberius 
 the province of that name, which extended from the 
 boundary of Cyrene to the river Ampsaga, embracing the 
 modern state of Tripoli as well as Tunis and the French 
 iv, 447. province of Constantine (iv. 470 f.). The government, 
 however, for this territory, which was considerable, and 
 required an extended frontier -defence, reverted under 
 the emperor Gaius in the main to the twofold division of 
 the republican times, and committed the portion of the 
 province that did not stand in need of special border- 
 defence to the civil government, and the rest of the 
 territory furnished with garrisons to a military commandant 
 not further amenable to its authority. The cause of 
 this was, that Africa in the partition of the provinces 
 between emperor and senate was given to the latter, and, 
 as from the state of things there a command on a larger 
 scale could not be dispensed with, the co-ordination of the 
 governor delegated by the senate and of the military 
 commandant nominated by the emperor — which latter 
 according to the subsisting hierarchy was placed under 
 the orders of the former — could not but provoke and 
 did provoke collisions between these officials and even 
 between emperor and senate. To this an end was put in 
 the year 37 by an arrangement that the coast-land from 
 Hippo (Bonah), as far as the borders of Cyrene, should 
 retain the old name of Africa and should remain with the 
 proconsul, whereas the western part of the province with 
 the capital Cirta (Constantine), as well as the interior with 
 the great military camps to the north of the Aures, and 
 generally all territory furnished with garrisons, should be 
 placed under the commandant of the African legion. This 
 commandant had senatorial rank, but belonged not to the 
 consular, but to the praetorial class. 
 The two The western half of North Africa was divided at 
 
 M ^ v ret 4 3 n 8 " the time of the dictator Caesar (iv. 461) into the two 
 ianking- kingdoms of Tingi (Tangier), at that time under king 
 Bogud, and of Iol, the later Caesarea (Zershell), at 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 3" 
 
 that time under king Bocchus. As both kings had as 
 decidedly taken the side of Caesar in the struggle against 
 the republicans as king Juba of Numidia had taken the 
 side of the opposite party, and as they had rendered 
 most essential services to him during the African and 
 the Spanish wars, not merely were both left in possession 
 of their rule, but the domain of Bocchus, and probably 
 also that of Bogud, was enlarged by the victor. 1 Then, 
 when the rivalries between Antonius and Caesar the 
 younger began, king Bogud alone in the west placed 
 himself on the side of Antonius, and on the instigation 
 of his brother and of his wife invaded Spain during the 
 Perusine war (714); but his neighbour Bocchus and his 40. 
 own capital Tingis took part for Caesar and against him. 
 At the conclusion of peace Antonius allowed Bogud to 
 fall, and Caesar gave the rest of his territory to king 
 Bocchus, but gave Roman municipal rights to the town 
 of Tingis. When, some years later, a rupture took place 
 between the two rulers, the ex-king took part energetically 
 in the struggle in the hope of regaining his kingdom on 
 this occasion, but at the capture of the Messenian town 
 Methone he was taken prisoner by Agrippa and executed. 
 
 Already some years before (721) king Bocchus had 33- 
 died ; his kingdom, the whole of western Africa, was soon 
 
 49. 1 This is attested for the year 705 
 as regards both by Dio, xli. 42 
 (comp. Suetonius, Caes. 54). In the 
 
 47. year 707 Bogud lends assistance to 
 the Caesarian governor of Spain 
 {Bell. Alex. 59, 60), and repels an 
 incursion of the younger Gnaeus 
 Pompeius (Bell. Afric. 23). Bocchus, 
 in combination with P. Sittius, in 
 the African war makes a successful 
 diversion against Juba and conquers 
 even the important Cirta (Bell. Afr. 
 23; Appian, ii. 96; Dio, xliii. 3). 
 The two obtained in return from 
 Caesar the territory of the prince 
 Massinissa (Appian, iv. 54). In the 
 second Spanish war Bogud appears 
 in the army of Caesar (Dio, xliii. 36, 
 38) ; the statement that the son of 
 Bocchus had served in the Pompeian 
 
 army (Dio, I.e.) must be a confusion, 
 probably with Arabio the son of 
 Massinissa, who certainly went to 
 the sons of Pompeius (Appian, I.e.). 
 After Caesar's death Arabio possessed 
 himself afresh of his dominion (Ap- 
 pian, I.e.), but after his death in 
 the year 714 (Dio, xlviii. 22) the 40. 
 Caesarian arrangement must have 
 again taken effect in its full extent. 
 The bestowal on Bocchus and Sittius 
 is probably to be understood to the 
 effect that, in the western part of the 
 former Numidian kingdom otherwise 
 left to Bocchus, the colony of Cirta 
 to be founded by Sittius was to be 
 regarded as an independent Roman 
 town, like Tingi subsequently in the 
 kingdom of Mauretania. 
 
312 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 2 S- afterwards (729) obtained by the son of the last Numidian 
 king, Juba II., the husband of Cleopatra, the daughter 
 jubaii. of Antonius by the Egyptian queen. 1 Both had been 
 exhibited to the Roman public in early youth as captive 
 kings' children, Juba in the triumphal procession of 
 Caesar the father, Cleopatra in that of the son ; it was a 
 wonderful juncture that they now were sent away from 
 Rome as king and queen of the most esteemed vassal- 
 state of the empire, but it was in keeping with the 
 circumstances. Both were brought up in the imperial 
 family ; Cleopatra was treated by the legitimate wife of 
 her father with motherly kindness like her own children ; 
 Juba had served in Caesar's army. The youth of the 
 dependent princely houses, which was numerously repre- 
 sented at the imperial court and played a considerable 
 part in the circle around the imperial princes, was generally 
 employed in the early imperial period for the filling up of 
 the vassal principalities, after a similar manner, according 
 to free selection, as the first class in rank of the senate 
 was employed for the filling up of the governorships 
 of Syria and Germany. For almost fifty years (729 — 
 775U.C, B.C. 2 5 — A.D.23) he, and after him his son 
 Ptolemaeus, bore rule over western Africa ; it is true that, 
 like the town Tingis from his predecessor, a considerable 
 number of the most important townships, particularly on 
 the coast, was withdrawn from him by the bestowal of 
 
 1 If, according to Dio, xl. 43, 
 33. Caesar in the year 721, after the 
 death of Bocchus, nominates no 
 successor, but makes Mauretania a 
 province, and then (li. 15) in the 
 g 0 year 724, on occasion of the end of 
 the queen of Egypt, there is mention 
 of the marriage of her daughter with 
 Juba and his investiture with his 
 father's kingdom, and, lastly (liii. 
 25. 26), under the year 729 there is 
 reported Juba's investiture with a 
 portion of Gaetulia instead of his 
 hereditary kingdom, as well as with 
 the kingdoms of Bocchus and Bogud ; 
 only the last account confirmed by 
 Strabo, xvii. 3, 7, p. 828, is correct. 
 The first is at least incorrect in its 
 
 way of apprehending the matter, as 
 Mauretania evidently was not made a 
 province in 721, but only the investi- 33. 
 ture was held in abeyance for the 
 time being ; and the second partly 
 anticipates, since Cleopatra, born be- 
 fore the triumph about 719 (Eph. 
 epigr. i., p. 276), could not possibly 
 be married in 724, and is partly mis- 
 taken, because Juba certainly never 
 got back his paternal kingdom as 
 such. If he had been king of Nu- 
 midia before 729, and if it had been 
 merely the extent of his kingdom that 
 then underwent a change, he would 
 have counted his years from the first 
 installation and not merely from 729. 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 3i3 
 
 Roman municipal rights, and, apart from the capital, 
 these kings of Mauretania were almost nothing but princes 
 of the Berber tribes. 
 
 This government lasted up to the year 40, when it Erection of 
 appeared fitting to the emperor Gaius, chiefly on account ^^j 0 ^ 
 of the rich treasure, to call his cousin to Rome, to deliver Caesarea 
 him there to the executioner, and to take the territory into and Tmgi " 
 imperial administration. Both rulers were unwarlike, the 
 father a Greek man of letters after the fashion of this 
 period, compiling so-called memorabilia of a historical or 
 geographical kind, or relative to the history of art, in end- 
 less books, noteworthy by his — we might say — interna- 
 tional literary activity, well read in Phoenician and Syrian 
 literature, but exerting himself above all to diffuse the 
 knowledge of Roman habits and of so-called Roman his- 
 tory among the Hellenes, moreover, a zealous friend of art 
 and frequenter of the theatre ; the son a prince of the 
 common type, passing his time in court-life and princely 
 luxury. Among their subjects they were held of little 
 account, whether as regards their personality or as vassals 
 of the Romans ; against the Gaetulians in the south king 
 Juba had on several occasions to invoke the help of the 
 Roman governor, and, when in Roman Africa the prince 
 of the Numidians, Tacfarinas, revolted against the Romans, 
 the Moors flocked in troops to his banner. Nevertheless 
 the end of the dynasty and the introduction of Roman 
 provincial government into the land made a deep impression. 
 The Moors were faithfully devoted to their royal house ; 
 altars were still erected under the Roman rule in Africa to 
 the kings of the race of Massinissa (p. 305). Ptolemaeus, 
 whatever he might be otherwise, was Massinissa's genuine 
 descendant in the sixth generation, and the last of the old 
 royal house. A faithful servant of his, Aedemon, after the 
 catastrophe called the mountain-tribes of the Atlas to 
 arms, and it was only after a hard struggle that the 
 governor Suetonius Paullinus — the same who afterwards 
 fought with the Britons (I. 179) — was able to master the 
 revolt (in the year 42). In the organisation of the new 
 territory the Romans reverted to the earlier division into 
 
314 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book viii. 
 
 an eastern and a western half, or, as they were thenceforth 
 called from the capitals, into the provinces of Caesarea and 
 of Tingi ; or rather they retained that division, for it was, as 
 will be afterwards shown, necessarily suggested by the 
 physical and political relations of the territory, and must 
 have continued to subsist even under the same sceptre in 
 one or the other form. Each of these provinces was 
 furnished with imperial troops of the second class, and 
 placed under an imperial governor not belonging to the 
 senate. 
 
 The state and the destinies of this great and peculiar 
 new seat of Latin civilisation were conditioned by the 
 physical constitution of North Africa. It is formed by 
 two great mountain-masses, of which the northern falls 
 steeply towards the Mediterranean, while the southern, the 
 Atlas, slopes off slowly in the Sahara-steppe dotted with 
 numerous oases towards the desert proper. A smaller 
 steppe, similar on the whole to the Sahara and dotted with 
 numerous salt-lakes, serves in the middle portion, the modern 
 Algeria, to separate the mountains on the north coast and 
 those on the southern frontier. There are in North Africa 
 no extensive plains capable of culture ; the coast of the 
 Mediterranean Sea has a level foreland only in a few districts ; 
 the land capable of cultivation, according to the modern 
 expression the Tell, consists essentially of the numerous 
 valleys and slopes within those two broad mountain-masses, 
 and so extends to its greatest width where, as in the 
 modern Morocco and in Tunis, no steppe intervenes between 
 the northern and the southern border. 
 
 The region of Tripolis, politically a part of the province 
 of Africa, stands as respects its natural relations outside of 
 the territory described, and is annexed to it in peninsular 
 fashion. The frontier -range sloping down towards the 
 Mediterranean Sea touches at the bay of Tacapae (Gabes), 
 with its foreland of steppe and salt-lake, immediately on 
 the shore. To the south of Tacapae as far as the Great 
 Syrtis there extends along the coast the narrow Tripolitan 
 island of cultivation, bounded inland towards the steppe 
 by a chain of moderate height. Beyond it begins the 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PR 0 VINCES. 3 1 5 
 
 steppe-country with numerous oases. The protection of 
 the coast against the inhabitants of the desert is here of 
 special difficulty, because the high margin of mountains is 
 wanting ; and traces of this are apparent in the accounts 
 that have come to us of the military expeditions and the 
 military positions in this region. 
 
 It was the arena of the wars with the Garamantes. The wars 
 Lucius Cornelius Balbus, who in his younger years had Q a l ^ a the 
 fought and administered under Caesar with the most mantes, 
 adventurous boldness as well as with the most cruel reck- 
 lessness, was selected by Augustus to reduce these incon- 
 venient neighbours to quiet, and in his proconsulate (735) 
 he subdued the interior as far as Cidamus (Ghadames), 
 twelve days' journey inland from Tripolis, and Garama 
 (Germa) in Fezzan; 1 at his triumph — he was the last com- 
 moner who celebrated such an one — a long series of towns 
 and tribes, hitherto unknown even by name, were displayed 
 as vanquished. This expedition is named a conquest ; 
 and so doubtless the foreland must have been thereby 
 brought in some measure under the Roman power. There 
 was fighting subsequently on many occasions in this region. 
 Soon afterwards, still under Augustus, Publius Sulpicius 
 Quirinius made an expedition against the tribes of Mar- 
 marica, that is, of the Libyan desert above Cyrene, and 
 at the same time against the Garamantes. That the war 
 against Tacfarinas under Tiberius extended also over this 
 region will be mentioned further on. After its termination 
 the king of the Garamantes sent envoys to Rome, to pro- 
 cure pardon for his having taken part in it. In the year 70 
 an irruption of the Garamantes into the pacified territory 
 was brought about by the circumstance that the town 
 
 1 That Balbus carried on this not have taken place according to the 
 
 campaign as proconsul of Africa, is usual arrangement by lot. To all 
 
 shown in particular by the triumphal appearance he fell into disgrace with 
 
 Fasti ; but the consul L. Cornelius of Augustus for good reasons on account 
 
 the year 732 must have been another of his Spanish quaestorship (Drumann 
 
 person, since Balbus, according to ii. 609), and was then, after the lapse 
 
 Velleius ii. 51, obtained that consular of more than twenty years, sent, as an 
 
 governorship, ex private constilaris, extraordinary measure, to Africa, on 
 
 i.e. without having filled a curule account of his undoubted aptitude for 
 
 office. The nomination, therefore, can- this specially difficult task. 
 
316 
 
 THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. book viii. 
 
 The 
 
 Africano- 
 Numidian 
 territory 
 and army. 
 
 Oea (Tripoli) called the barbarians to help the Tripolis in 
 a quarrel, which had grown into war, with the neighbouring 
 town Great-Leptis (Lebda), whereupon they were beaten 
 back by the governor of Africa and pursued to their own 
 settlements. Under Domitian on the coast of the Great 
 Syrtis, which had been from of old held by the Nasamones, 
 a revolt of the natives provoked by the exorbitant taxes 
 had to be repressed with arms by the governor of Numidia ; 
 the territory already poor in men was utterly depopulated 
 by this cruelly conducted war. The emperor Severus took 
 conspicuous care of this his native province — he was from 
 Great-Leptis — and gave to it stronger military protection 
 against the neighbouring barbarians. With this we may 
 bring into connection the fact, that in the time from 
 Severus toAlexanderthenearestoases,Cidamus(Ghadames), 
 Gharia el Gharbia, Bonjem, were provided with detach- 
 ments of the African legion, which, it is true, owing to the 
 distance from the headquarters, could not be much more 
 than a nucleus for the probably considerable contingents 
 of the subject tribes here rendering services to the Romans. 
 In fact the possession of these oases was of importance not 
 merely for the protection of the coast, but also for the 
 traffic, which at all times passed by way of these oases 
 from the interior of Africa to the harbours of Tripolis. It 
 was not till the time of decay that the possession of these 
 advanced posts was abandoned ; in the description of the 
 African wars under Valentinian and Justinian we find the 
 towns of the coast directly harassed by the natives. 
 
 The basis and core of Roman Africa was the province 
 of that name, including the Numidian, which was a branch 
 from it. Roman civilisation entered upon the heritage 
 partly of the city of Carthage, partly of the kings of 
 Numidia, and if it here attained considerable results, it 
 may never be forgotten that it, properly speaking, merely 
 wrote its name and inscribed its language on what was 
 already there. Besides the towns, which were demonstrably 
 founded by the former or by the latter, and to which we 
 shall still return, the former as well as the latter led the 
 Berber tribes, inclined at any rate to agriculture, towards 
 
chap. xin. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 3i7 
 
 fixed settlements. Even in the time of Herodotus the 
 Libyans westward of the bay of Gabes were no longer 
 nomads, but peacefully cultivated the soil ; and the Numidian 
 rulers carried civilisation and agriculture still farther into 
 the interior. Nature, too, was here more favourable for 
 husbandry than in the western part of North Africa ; the 
 middle depression between the northern and the southern 
 range is indeed here not quite absent, but the salt lakes 
 and the steppe proper are less extensive than in the two 
 Mauretanias. The military arrangements were chiefly 
 designed to plant the troops in front of the mighty Aura- 
 sian mountain-block, the Saint Gotthard of the southern 
 frontier-range, and to check the irruption of the non- 
 subject tribes from the latter into the pacified territory of 
 Africa and Numidia. For that reason Augustus placed 
 the stationary quarters of the legion at Theveste (Tebessa), 
 on the high plateau between the Aures and the old 
 province ; even to the north of it, between Ammaedara and 
 Althiburus, Roman forts existed in the first imperial period. 
 Of the details of the warfare we learn little ; it must have 
 been permanent, and must have consisted in the constant 
 repelling of the border-tribes, as well as in not less constant 
 pillaging raids into their territory. 
 
 Only as to a single occurrence of this sort has infor- War 
 mation in some measure accurate come to us ; namely, as Tacfarinas. 
 to the conflicts which derive their name from the chief 
 leader of the Berbers, Tacfarinas. They assumed unusual 
 proportions; they lasted eight years (17-24), and the 
 garrison of the province otherwise consisting of a legion 
 was on that account reinforced during the years 20-22 by 
 a second despatched thither from Pannonia. The war had 
 its origin from the great tribe of the Musulamii on the south 
 slope of the Aures, against whom already under Augustus 
 Lentulus had conducted an expedition, and who now under 
 his successor chose that Tacfarinas as their leader. He 
 was an African Arminius, a native Numidian, who had 
 served in the Roman army, but had then deserted and 
 made himself a name at the head of a band of robbers. 
 The insurrection extended eastwards as far as the Cinithii 
 
3 1 8 THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. book viii. 
 
 on the Little Syrtis and the Garamantes in Fezzan, westwards 
 over a great part of Mauretania, and became dangerous 
 through the fact that Tacfarinas equipped a portion of his 
 men after the Roman fashion on foot and on horseback, and 
 gave them Roman training ; these gave steadiness to the 
 light bands of the insurgents, and rendered possible regular 
 combats and sieges. After long exertions, and after the 
 senate had been on several occasions induced to disregard 
 the legally prescribed ballot in filling up this important 
 post of command, and to select fitting men instead of the 
 usual generals of the type of Cicero, Quintus Iunius Blaesus 
 in the first instance made an end of the insurrection by 
 a combined operation, inasmuch as he sent the left flank 
 column against the Garamantes, and with the right covered 
 the outlets from the Aures towards Cirta, while he advanced 
 in person with the main army into the territory of the 
 Musulamii and permanently occupied it (year 22). But 
 the bold partisan soon afterwards renewed the struggle, and 
 it was only some years later that the proconsul Publius 
 Cornelius Dolabella, after he had nipped in the bud the 
 threatened revolt of the just chastised Musulamii by the 
 execution of all the leaders, was able with the aid of the 
 troops of the king of Mauretania to force a battle in his 
 territory near Auzia (Aumale), in which Tacfarinas lost his 
 life. With the fall of the leader, as is usual in national 
 wars of insurrection, this movement had an end. 1 
 Later con- From later times detailed accounts of a like kind are 
 lacking ; we can only follow out in some measure the 
 general course of the Roman work of pacification. The 
 tribes to the south of Aures were, if not extirpated, at 
 any rate ejected and transplanted into the northern districts ; 
 so in particular the Musulamii themselves, 2 against whom 
 
 1 The tribes whom Tacitus names but is probably the Thala of the 
 
 in his account of the war, far from Jugurthan war in the vicinity of Capsa. 
 
 clear, as always, in a geographical The last section of the war has its 
 
 point of view, may be in some measure arena in western Mauretania about 
 
 determined ; and the position between Auzia (iv. 25), and accordingly in 
 
 the Leptitanian and the Cirtensian Thubuscum (iv. 24) there lurks possibly 
 
 columns {Ann. iii. 74) points for the Thubusuptu or Thubusuctu. The 
 
 middle column to Theveste. The river Pagyda {Attn. iii. 20) is quite 
 
 town of Thala {Ann. iii. 20) cannot indefinable. 
 
 possibly be sought above Ammaedara, 2 Ptolemaeus, iv. 3, 23, puts the 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 319 
 
 an expedition was once more conducted under Claudius. 
 The demand made by Tacfarinas to have settlements 
 assigned to him and his people within the civilised territory, 
 to which Tiberius, as was reasonable, only replied by 
 redoubling his exertions to annihilate the daring claimant, 
 was supplementarily after a certain measure fulfilled in this 
 way, and probably contributed materially to the consoli- 
 dation of the Roman government. The camps more and 
 more enclosed the Aurasian mountain-block. The garrisons 
 were pushed farther forward into the interior ; the head- 
 quarters themselves moved under Trajan away from 
 Theveste farther to the west ; the three considerable 
 Roman settlements on the northern slope of the Aures, 
 Mascula (Khenschela), at the egress of the valley of the 
 Arab and thereby the key to the Aures mountains, a colony 
 at least already under Marcus and Verus ; Thamugadi, 
 a foundation of Trajan's ; and Lambaesis, after Hadrian's 
 day the headquarters of the African army, formed together 
 a settlement comparable to the great military camps on 
 the Rhine and on the Danube, which, laid out on the lines 
 of communication from the Aures to the great towns of 
 the north and the coast Cirta (Constantine), Calama 
 (Gelma), and Hippo regius (Bonah), secured the peace of 
 the latter. The intervening steppe-land was, so far as it 
 could not be gained for cultivation, at least intersected by 
 secure routes of communication. On the west side of the 
 Aures a strongly occupied chain of posts which followed 
 the slope of the mountains from Lambaesis over the oases 
 Calceus Herculis (el Kantara) and Bescera (Beskra), cut 
 off the connection with Mauretania. Even the interior 
 of the mountains subsequently became Roman ; the war, 
 
 Musulamii southward from the Aures, them to the south of Calama (C. I. L. 
 
 and it is only in accord therewith that viii. 484). In like manner the 
 
 they are called in Tacitus ii. 52, Chellenses Numidae, between Lares 
 
 dwellers beside the steppe and neigh- and Althiburus {Eph. epigr.N. n. 639), 
 
 bours of the Mauri ; later they are and the conventus (civium Romanomm 
 
 settled to the north and west of et) Numidarum qui Mascululae habit- 
 
 Theveste (C. I. L. viii. 270, 10667). ant {ib. n. 597), are probably Berber 
 
 The Nattabutes dwelt according to tribes transplanted from Numidia to 
 
 Ptolemaeus I.e. southward of the the proconsular province. 
 Musulamii ; subsequently we find 
 
320 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 which was waged under the emperor Pius in Africa, and 
 concerning which we have not accurate information, must 
 have brought the Aurasian mountains into the power of 
 the Romans. At that time a military road was carried 
 through these mountains by a legion doing garrison duty 
 in Syria and sent beyond doubt on account of this war to 
 Africa, and in later times we meet at that very spot traces 
 of Roman garrisons and even of Roman towns, which 
 reach down to Christian times ; the Aurasian range had 
 thus at that time been occupied, and continued to be per- 
 manently occupied. The oasis Negrin, situated on its 
 southern slope, was even already under or before Trajan 
 furnished by the Romans with troops, and still somewhat 
 farther southward on the extreme verge of the steppe at 
 Bir Mohammed ben Jftnis are found the ruins of a Roman 
 fort ; a Roman road also ran along the southern base of 
 this range. Of the mighty slope which falls from the 
 tableland of Theveste, the watershed between the Medi- 
 terranean and the desert, in successive stages of two to 
 three hundred metres down to the latter, this oasis is the 
 last terrace ; at its base begins, in sharp contrast towards 
 the jagged mountains piled up behind, the sand desert of 
 Suf, with its yellow rows of dunes similar to waves, 
 and the sandy soil moved about by the wind, a huge 
 wilderness, without elevation of the ground, without trees, 
 fading away without limit into the horizon. Negrin was 
 certainly of old, as it still is in our time, the standing 
 rendezvous and the last place of refuge of the robber chiefs 
 as well as of the natives defying foreign rule — a position 
 commanding far and wide the desert and its trading 
 routes. Even to this extreme limit reached Roman 
 occupation and even Roman settlement in Numidia. 
 Roman Mauretania was not a heritage like Africa and Numidia. 
 
 mlSe* 0f its earlier condition we learn nothing; there cannot have 
 tania. been considerable towns even on the coast here in earlier 
 times, and neither Phoenician stimulus nor sovereigns after 
 the type of Massinissa effectively promoted civilisation in 
 this quarter. When his last descendants exchanged the 
 Numidian crown for the Mauretanian, the capital, which 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 321 
 
 changed its name Iol into Caesarea, became the residence 
 of a cultivated and luxurious court, and a seat of seafaring 
 and of traffic. But how much less this possession was 
 esteemed by the government than that of the neighbouring 
 province, is shown by the difference of the provincial 
 organisation ; the two Mauretanian armies were together 
 not inferior in number to the Africano-Numidian, 1 but here 
 governors of equestrian rank and imperial soldiers of the 
 class of pevegrini sufficed. Caesarea remained a con- 
 siderable commercial town ; but in the province the fixed 
 settlement was restricted to the northern mountain-range, 
 and it was only in the eastern portion that larger inland 
 towns were to be found. Even the fertile valley of the 
 most considerable river of this province, the Shelif, shows 
 weak urban development ; further to the west in the 
 valleys of the Tafna and the Malua it almost wholly dis- 
 appears, and the names of the divisions of cavalry here 
 stationed serve partly in place of local designations. The 
 province of Tingi (Tangier) even now embraced nothing 
 but this town with its immediate territory and the stripe 
 of the coast along the Atlantic Ocean as far as Sala, the 
 modern Rebat, while in the interior Roman settlement did 
 not even reach to Fez. No land-route connects this 
 province with that of Caesarea ; the 220 miles from Tingi 
 to Rusaddir (Melilla) they traversed by water, along the 
 desolate and insubordinate coast of the Riff. Conse- 
 quently for this province the communication with Baetica 
 was nearer than that with Mauretania ; and if subsequently, 
 when the empire was divided into larger administrative 
 districts, the province of Tingi fell to Spain, that measure 
 was only the outward carrying out of what in reality had 
 long subsisted. It was for Baetica what Germany was 
 for Gaul ; and, far from lucrative as it must have been, 
 it was perhaps instituted and retained for the reason that 
 its abandonment would even then have brought about an 
 
 1 In the year 70 the troops of the reckon on the average every fourth as 
 
 two Mauretanias amounted together, a double troop, to about 15,000 men. 
 
 in addition to militia levied in large The regular army of Numidia was 
 
 numbers, to 5 alae and 19 cohortes weaker rather than stronger. 
 (Tacitus, Hist. ii. 58), and so, if we 
 
 VOL. II. 21 
 
322 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 invasion of Spain similar to that which Islam accomplished 
 after the collapse of the Roman rule. 
 The Gae- Beyond the limit of fixed settlement herewith indicated, 
 
 tuiian wars. — j^e line of frontier tolls and of frontier posts — and in vari- 
 ous non-civilised districts enclosed by it, the land in the two 
 Mauretanias during the Roman times remained doubtless 
 with the natives, but they came under Roman supremacy ; 
 there would be claimed from them, as far as possible, 
 taxes and war-services, but the regular forms of taxation 
 and of levy would not be applied in their case. For 
 example, the tribe of Zimizes, which was settled on the 
 rocky coast to the west of Igilgili (Jijeli) in eastern 
 Mauretania, and so in the heart of the domain of the 
 Roman power, had assigned to it a fortress designed to 
 cover the town of Igilgili, to be occupied on such a footing 
 that the troops were not allowed to pass beyond the radius 
 of 500 paces round the fort. 1 They thus employed these 
 subject Berbers in the Roman interest, but did not organise 
 them in the Roman fashion, and hence did not treat them 
 as soldiers of the imperial army. Even beyond their own 
 province the irregulars from Mauretania were employed in 
 great numbers, particularly as horsemen in the later period, 2 
 while the same did not hold of the Numidians. 
 
 How far the field of the Roman power went beyond the 
 Roman towns and garrisons and the end of the imperial 
 roads, we are not able to say. The broad steppe-land round 
 the salt-lakes to the west of Lambaesis, the mountain-region 
 
 1 Inscription C. I. L. viii. 8369 lars in the neighbouring province, 
 of the year 129 : Termini positi inter Irregular Mauretanian horsemen fre- 
 Igilgilitanos, in quorum finibus kastel- quently occur, especially in the later 
 htm Victoriae positum est, et Zimiz{es), imperial period. Lusius Quietus under 
 ut sciant Zimizes non plus in usum se Trajan, a Moor and leader of a Moorish 
 habere ex auctoritate M. Vetti Latronis troop (Dio lxviii. 32), no Af/3t/s iic 
 pro{curatoris) Atig{usti) qua(m) in ttjs virrjKbov Ai/3&js, dXX' e£ &56£ou Kal 
 circuitu a muro kast[elli) p{edes) D. diryicurntvys i<Jx aT <-™ (Themistius, Or. 
 The Zimises are placed by the Peu- xvi. p. 250 Dind.), was without doubt 
 tingerian map alongside of Igilgili to a Gaetulian sheikh, who served with 
 the westward. his followers in the Roman army. 
 
 2 If the praefect of a cohort doing That his home was formally independ- 
 garrison duty in Numidia held the ent of the empire, is not affirmed in 
 command at the same time over six the words of Themistius; the "subject- 
 Gaetulian tribes {nationes, C. I. L. v. territory " is that with Roman organis- 
 5267), men that were natives of ation, the ivx*™ its border inhabited 
 Mauretania were employed as irregu- by dependent tribes. 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. 
 
 323 
 
 from Tlemsen till towards Fez, including the coast of the 
 Riff, the fine corn-country on the Atlantic Ocean south- 
 ward from Sala as far as the high Atlas, the civilisation of 
 which in the flourishing time of the Arabs vied with the 
 Andalusian, lastly, the Atlas range in the south of Algeria 
 and Morocco and its southern slopes, which afforded for 
 pastoral people abundant provision in the alternation ot 
 mountain and steppe pastures, and developed the most 
 luxuriant fertility in the numerous oases — all these regions 
 remained essentially untouched by the Roman civilisation ; 
 but from this it does not follow that they were in the 
 Roman time independent, and still less that they were not 
 at least reckoned as belonging to the imperial domain. 
 Tradition gives us but slight information in this respect. 
 We have already mentioned (p. 3 1 3) that the proconsuls of 
 Africa helped to make the Gaetulians — that is, the tribes in 
 southern Algeria — subject to king Juba; and the latter con- 
 structed purple dyeworks at Madeira (p. 338, note). After 
 the end of the Mauretanian dynasty and the introduction 
 of the immediate Roman administration, Suetonius Paul- 
 linus crossed, as the first Roman general, the Atlas (p. 3 1 3), 
 and carried his arms as far as the desert-river Ger, which 
 still bears the same name, in the south-east of Morocco. 
 His successor, Gnaeus Hosidius Geta, continued this enter- 
 prise, and emphatically defeated the leader of the Mauri 
 Salabus. 1 Subsequently several enterprising governors of 
 the Mauretanian provinces traversed these remote regions, 
 and the same holds true of the Numidian, under whose 
 command, not under the Mauretanian, was placed the 
 frontier-range stretching southward behind the province of 
 Caesarea ; 1 yet nothing is mentioned from later times of 
 war-expeditions proper in the south of Mauretania or 
 Numidia. The Romans can scarcely have taken over the 
 empire of the Mauretanian kings in quite the same extent 
 as these had possessed it ; but yet the expeditions that 
 were undertaken after the annexation of the country were 
 
 1 To the inscriptions, which prove tionary column from the year 174, 
 
 this (C. I .Z. viii. p. xviii. 747), falls found in the neighbourhood of Gery- 
 
 now to be added the remarkable dedi- ville (Eph. epigr. v. n. 1043). 
 cation of the leader of an expedi- 
 
324 
 
 THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. book viii. 
 
 Incursions 
 of the 
 Moors into 
 Spain. 
 
 probably not without lasting consequences. At least a 
 portion of the Gaetulians submitted, as the auxiliary troops 
 levied there prove, even to the regular conscription during 
 the imperial period ; and, if the native tribes in the south 
 of the Roman provinces had given serious trouble to the 
 Romans, the traces of it would not have been wholly 
 wanting. 1 Probably the whole south as far as the great 
 desert passed as imperial land, 2 and even the effective 
 dependence extended far beyond the domain of Roman 
 civilisation, which, it is true, does not exclude frequent 
 levying of contributions and pillaging raids on the one 
 side or the other. 
 
 The pacified territory experienced attack, properly 
 so called, chiefly from the inhabitants of the shore settled 
 around and along the Riff, the Mazices, and the Baquates ; 
 and this indeed took place, as a rule, by sea, and was 
 directed chiefly against the Spanish coast (I. 67). 
 Accounts of inroads of the Moors into Baetica run 
 through the whole imperial period, 3 and show that the 
 Romans, in consequence of the absence of energetic 
 
 1 The tumultus Gaetulicus (C. I. L. 
 viii. 6958) was rather an insurrection 
 than an invasion. 
 
 2 Ptolemy certainly takes as bound- 
 ary of the province of Caesarea the 
 line above the Shott, and does not 
 reckon Gaetulia as belonging to it ; 
 on the other hand he extends that of 
 Tingis as far as the Great Atlas. 
 Pliny v. 4, 30, numbers among the 
 subject peoples of Africa "all Gaetulia 
 as far as the Niger and the Ethiopian 
 frontier," which points nearly to Tim- 
 buctoo. The latter statement will 
 accord with the official conception of 
 the matter. 
 
 3 Already in Nero's time Cal- 
 purnius (Egl. iv. 4o)jterms the shore 
 of Baetica trucibus obnoxia Mauris. 
 — If under Pius the Moors were beaten 
 off and driven back as far as and over 
 the Atlas (vita Pii, 5 ; Pausanias 
 viii. 43), the sending of troops at that 
 time from Spain to the Tingitana 
 (C.,I. L. iii. 5212-5215) makes it 
 probable that this attack of the Moors 
 
 affected Baetica, and the troops of the 
 Tarraconensis marching against these 
 followed them over the straits. The 
 probably contemporary activity of the 
 Syrian legion at the Aures (p. 320) 
 suggests moreover that this war ex- 
 tended also to Numidia. — The war 
 with the Moors under Marous (vita 
 Marci, 21, 22 ; vita Severi, 2), had its 
 scene essentially in Baetica and Lusi- 
 tania. — A governor of Hither Spain 
 under Severus had to fight with the 
 " rebels" by water and by land (C. I. 
 L. ii. 41 14). — Under Alexander (vita, 
 58) there was fighting in the province 
 of Tingi, but without mention of Spain 
 in the case. — From the time of Aurel- 
 ian (vita Saturnini, 9) there is mention 
 of Mauro-Spanish conflicts. We can- 
 not exactly determine the time of a 
 sending of troops from Numidia to 
 Spain and against the Mazices (C. I. 
 L. viii. 2786), where presumably not 
 the Mazices of the Caesariensis but 
 those of the Tingitana on the Riff 
 (Ptolem. iv. 1, 10), are meant; per- 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 325 
 
 offensive, found themselves here permanently on a de- 
 fensive, which indeed did not involve a vital danger for 
 the empire, but yet brought constant insecurity and often 
 sore harm over rich and peaceful regions. The civilised 
 territories of Africa appear to have suffered less under 
 the Moorish attacks, probably because the headquarters 
 of Numidia, immediately on the Mauretanian frontier, 
 and the strong garrisons on the west side of the Aures, 
 did their duty. But on the collapse of the imperial 
 power in the third century the invasion here also began ; Quinque- 
 the feud of Five Peoples, as it was called, which broke s entiani - 
 out about the time of Gallienus, and on account of which 
 twenty years later the emperor Maximianus went per- 
 sonally to Africa, arose from the tribes beyond the Shott 
 on the Numido-Mauretanian frontier, and affected par- 
 ticularly the towns of Eastern Mauretania and of Western 
 Numidia, such as Auzia and Mileu. 1 
 
 We come to the internal organisation of the country. 
 In respect of language, that which belonged properly to Continu- 
 the people was treated like the Celtic in Gaul and the Berber 6 
 Iberian in Spain ; here in Africa all the more, as the language, 
 earlier foreign rule had already set the example in that 
 respect, and certainly no Roman understood this popular 
 
 haps with this is connected the fact tropius is supplied as to this war by 
 
 that Gaius Vallius Maximianus, as the inscribed stones, C. I. L. viii. 
 
 governor of Tingitana, achieved in the 2615,8836,9045,9047. According to 
 
 province Baetica (according to Hirsch- these the Quinquegentiani may be fol* 
 
 feld, Wiener Stud. vi. 123, under lowed out from Gallienus to Diocletian. 
 
 Marcus and Commodus) a victory The beginning is made by the 
 
 over the Moors and relieved towns Baquates who, designated as Tran- 
 
 besieged by them (C. I. L. ii. 1120, stagnenses, must have dwelt beyond 
 
 2015) ; these events prove at least that the Shott. Four "kings" com- 
 
 the Conflicts with the Moors on the bine for an expedition. The most 
 
 Riff and the associates that flocked to dreaded opponent is Faraxen with his 
 
 them from the country lying behind gentiles Fraxinenses. Towns like 
 
 did not cease. When the Baquates Mileu in Numidia not far from Cirta 
 
 on the same coast besieged the pretty and Auzia in the Caesariensis are 
 
 remote Cartenna (Tenes) in the attacked, and the citizens must in 
 
 Caesariensis {C. I. L. viii. 9663), good part defend themselves against 
 
 they perhaps came by sea. Where the enemy. After the end of the 
 
 the wars with the Moors under war Maximian constructs great maga- 
 
 Hadrian {vita, 5, 12) and Commodus zines in Thubusuctu not far from 
 
 {vita, 13) took place is not known. Saldae. These fragmentary accounts 
 
 1 More information than in the give in some measure an insight into 
 
 scanty accounts of Victor and Eu- the relations of the time. 
 
326 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 idiom. The Berber tribes had not merely a national 
 language, but also a national writing (p. 305) ; but never, 
 so far as we see, was use made of it in official inter- 
 course, at least it was never put upon the coins. Even 
 the native Berber dynasties formed no exception to this, 
 whether because in their kingdoms the more considerable 
 towns were more Phoenician than Libyan, or because the 
 Phoenician civilisation prevailed so far generally. The 
 language was written indeed also under Roman rule, 
 in fact most of the Berber votive or sepulchral inscrip- 
 tions proceed certainly from the imperial period ; but 
 their rarity proves that it attained only to limited written 
 use in the sphere of the Roman rule. It maintained 
 itself as a popular language above all naturally in the 
 districts, to which the Romans came little or not at all, 
 as in the Sahara, in the mountains of the Riff of Morocco, 
 in the two Kabylias ; but even the fertile and early 
 cultivated island of the Tripolis, Girba (Jerba), the seat 
 of the Carthaginian purple manufacture, still at the present 
 day speaks Libyan. Taken on the whole, the old popular 
 idiom in Africa defended itself better than among the 
 Celts and the Iberians. 
 Continu- The language which prevailed in North Africa, when 
 
 ance of the ft became Roman, was that of the foreign rule which 
 
 Phoenician . ° 
 
 language, preceded the Roman. Leptis, probably not the Tnpohtan, 
 but that near Hadrumetum, was the only African town 
 which marked its coins with a Greek legend, and thus 
 conceded to this language an at least secondary position 
 in public intercourse. The Phoenician language pre- 
 vailed at that time so far as there was a civilisation in 
 North Africa, from Great Leptis to Tingi, most thoroughly 
 in and around Carthage, but not less in Numidia and 
 Mauretania. 1 To this language of a highly developed 
 
 1 Apart from the coins this is to Hadrumetum (9), Thugga (the 
 
 proved also by the inscriptions. Ac- famous Phoenico-Berber one), Cirta 
 
 cording to the comparison, for which (5), Iol-Caesarea (1). The new Punic 
 
 I am indebted to Herr Euting, the great occur most numerously in and around 
 
 mass of the old Punic inscriptions, Carthage (30), and generally they are 
 
 that is, those written probably before found not unfrequently in the pro- 
 
 the destruction of Carthage, falls to consular province, also in Great 
 
 Carthage itself (about 2500), the rest Leptis (5) and on the islands of Girba 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 327 
 
 although foreign culture certain concessions were made 
 on the change in the system of administration. Perhaps 
 already under Caesar, certainly under Augustus and 
 Tiberius, as well the towns of the Roman province, 
 such as Great Leptis and Oea, as those of the Mauretanian 
 kingdom, like Tingi and Lix, employed in official use the 
 Phoenician language, even those which like Tingi had 
 become Roman burgess-communities. Nevertheless they 
 did not go so far in Africa as in the Greek half of the 
 empire. In the Greek provinces of the empire the Greek 
 language prevailed, as in business intercourse generally, 
 so particularly in direct intercourse with the imperial 
 government and its officials ; the coin of the city organ- 
 ised after the Greek fashion names also the emperor in 
 Greek. But in the African the coin, even if it speaks in 
 another language, names the emperor or the imperial 
 official always in Latin. Even on the coins of the kings 
 of Mauretania the name of the Greek queen stands 
 possibly in Greek, but that of the king — also an imperial 
 official — uniformly in Latin, even where the queen is 
 named beside him. That is to say, even the government 
 did not admit the Phoenician in its intercourse with the 
 communities and individuals in Africa, but it allowed 
 it for internal intercourse ; it was not a third imperial 
 language, but a language of culture recognised in its own 
 sphere. 
 
 But this limited recognition of the Phoenician language 
 did not long subsist. There is no document for the public 
 use of Phoenician from the time after Tiberius, and it 
 hardly survived the time of the first dynasty. 1 How and 
 when the change set in we do not know ; probably the 
 
 (1) and Cossura (i) ; in Numidia, in Tingitana, going from Claudius down 
 and near Calama (23), and in Cirta to Galba, have exclusively Latin 
 (15) ; in Mauretania hitherto only in legends ; but the town was a colony. 
 Portus Magnus (2). The Latin-Punic inscriptions of Great 
 1 The coining in Africa ceases in Leptis, C. I. L. viii. 7, and of Na- 
 the main after Tiberius, and there- raggara, C. I. L. viii. 4636, may 
 after, since African inscriptions from doubtless belong to the time after Ti- 
 the first century after Christ are be- berius, but as bi-lingual tell rather for 
 fore us only in very small numbers, the view that, when they were set up, 
 for a considerable period documents the Phoenician language was already 
 fail us. The coins of Babba in the degraded. 
 
328 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book viii. 
 
 government, perhaps Tiberius or Claudius, spoke the deci- 
 sive word and accomplished the linguistic and national 
 annexation of the African Phoenicians as far as it could 
 be done by state authority. In private intercourse the 
 Phoenician held its ground still for a long time in Africa, 
 longer apparently than in the motherland ; at the begin- 
 ning of the third century ladies of genteel houses in Great 
 Leptis spoke so little Latin or Greek, that there was no 
 place for them in Roman society ; even at the end of the 
 fourth there was a reluctance to appoint clergymen in the 
 environs of Hippo Regius (Bona), who could not make 
 themselves intelligible in Punic to their countrymen ; these 
 termed themselves at that time still Canaanites, and Punic 
 names and Punic phrases were still current. But the 
 language was banished from the school 1 and even from 
 written use, and had become a popular dialect ; and even 
 this probably only in the region of the old Phoenician 
 civilisation, particularly the old Phoenician places on 
 the coast that stood aloof from intercourse on a large 
 scale. 2 When the Arabs came to Africa they found 
 as language of the country doubtless that of the Berbers, 
 but no longer that of the Poeni ; 3 with the Carthagino- 
 Roman civilisation the two foreign languages disappeared, 
 while the old native one still lives in the present day. 
 The civilised foreign dominions changed ; the Berbers re- 
 mained like the palm of the oasis and the sand of the desert. 
 The heritage of the Phoenician language fell not to 
 
 1 From the expression in the epi- Punico a parte Garamantum, Latino 
 tome of Victor, that the emperor a parte boreae, barbarico a parte tneri- 
 Severus was Latinis litteris suf- diani, Aethiopum et Aegyptiorum ac 
 
 jicienter instructus, Graecis sermoni- barbaris interioribus vario sermone 
 
 bus eruditus, Punica eloquentia promp- numero viginti duabus Unguis in 
 
 tior, quippe genitus apud Leptim, we patriis trecentis nonaginta et quattuor), 
 
 may not infer a Punic course of rhe- no reliance is to be placed, still less 
 
 toric in the Tripolis of that time ; the upon the nonsense of Procopius, de 
 
 late and inferior author has possibly bello Vand. ii. 10, as to the Phoenician 
 
 given a scholastic version of the well- inscription and language in Tigisis. 
 
 known notice. Authorities of this sort were hardly 
 
 2 On the statement of the younger able to distinguish Berber and Punic. 
 Arnobius, writing about 460 (ad ' 3 In a single place on the Little 
 Psalm. 104, p. 481 Migne : Cham Syrtis the Phoenician may still have 
 vero sectmdus filius Noe a Rhinocoruris been spoken in the eleventh century 
 usque Gadira habens linguas sermone (Movers, Phon. ii. 2, 478). 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 329 
 
 Greek, but to Latin. This was not involved in the The Latin 
 natural development. In Caesar's time the Latin and language - 
 the Greek were alike in North Africa foreign languages, but 
 as the coins of Leptis already show, the latter by far more 
 diffused than the former ; Latin was spoken then only by 
 the officials, the soldiers, and the Italian merchants. It 
 would have at that time been probably easier to introduce 
 the Hellenising of Africa than the Latinising of it. But 
 it was the converse that took place. Here the same will 
 prevailed, which did not allow the Hellenic germs to 
 spring up in Gaul, and which incorporated Greek Sicily 
 into the domain of Latin speech ; the same will, which 
 drew the boundaries between the Latin West and the 
 Greek East, assigned Africa to the former. 
 
 In a similar sense the internal organisation of the 
 country was regulated. It was based, as in Italy on the The Phoe- 
 Latin and in the East on the Hellenic urban community, ^"an 
 so here on the Phoenician. When the Roman rule in organisa- 
 Africa began, the Carthaginian territory at that time con- 
 sisted predominantly of urban communities, for the most 
 part small, of which there were counted three hundred, each 
 administered by its sufetes j 1 and the republic had made 
 no change in this respect Even in the kingdoms the towns 
 formerly Phoenician had retained their organisation under 
 the native rulers, and at least Calama — an inland town of 
 Numidia hardly of Phoenician foundation — had demon- 
 strably the same Phoenician municipal constitution ; the 
 civilisation which Massinissa gave to his kingdom must 
 have consisted essentially in his transforming the villages 
 
 1 More clearly than by the Latin war the Carthaginian territory num- 
 inscriptions found in Africa, which bered 300 towns, appears not at all 
 begin too late to illustrate the state of incredible. In each of those four 
 things before the second century A. D. , smaller places there were sufetes ; 
 this is shown by the four contracts of even where the old and new Punic 
 patronatus from the time of Tiberius, inscriptions name magistrates, there 
 quoted in next note, concluded by two are regularly two sufetes. That 
 small places of the proconsular pro- these are comparatively frequent in 
 vince Apisa maius and Siagu, and two the proconsular province, and else- 
 others nowhere else mentioned, where can only be pointed out in 
 probably adjacent, Themetra and Calama, serves to show how much 
 Thimiligi ; according to which the more strongly the Phoenician urban 
 statement of Strabo (xvii. 3, 15, p. organisation was developed in the 
 833) that at the beginning of the last former. 
 
33o THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 of the agricultural Berbers into towns after the Phoenician 
 model. The same will hold good of the few older urban 
 communities which existed in Mauretania before Augustus. 
 So far as we see, the two annually changing sufetes of the 
 African communities coincide in the main with the analo- 
 gous presidents of the community in the Italian municipal 
 constitution ; and that in other respects, e.g. in the com- 
 mon councils among the Carthaginians formed after a 
 fashion altogether divergent from the Italian (ii. 1 6), the 
 Phoenician urban constitution of Roman Africa has pre- 
 served national peculiarities, does not at least admit of 
 proof. 1 But the fact itself that the contrast, if even but 
 formal, of the Phoenician town to the Italian was retained 
 was, like the permission of the language, a recognition of 
 the Phoenician nationality and a certain security for its con- 
 tinuance even under Roman rule. That it was recognised 
 in the first instance as the regular form of administration of 
 the African territory, is proved by the establishment of 
 Carthage by Caesar primarily as a Phoenician city as well 
 under the old sufetes 2 as in a certain measure with the 
 old inhabitants, seeing that a great, perhaps the greatest 
 part of the new burgesses was taken from the surround- 
 ing townships, again also under the protection of the great 
 goddess of the Punic Carthage, the queen of heaven 
 
 1 The contracts of patronatus from 
 the time of Caesar (C. I. L. viii. 
 10525), of Augustus {ib. 68 comp. 69), 
 and Tiberius (C. I. L. v. 4919- 
 4922), concluded by the senatus 
 pofiulusque of African communities 
 {civitates) of peregrine rights with 
 Romans of rank, appear to have been 
 entered into quite after the Roman 
 fashion by the common council, which 
 represents and binds the community. 
 
 2 On the coin undoubtedly struck 
 under Caesar (Midler Num. de FAfr. 
 ii. 149) with Kar{thago) Veneris and 
 Aristo Mutumbal Eicoce suf{etes), the 
 first two names are probably to be 
 taken together as a Graeco- Phoenician 
 double name, such as elsewhere is 
 not rare (comp. C. I. L. v. 4922 : 
 agente Celere Imilchonis Gulalsae filio 
 
 sufete). Since on the one hand 
 sufetes cannot be assigned to a 
 Roman colony, and on the other 
 hand the conducting of such a colony 
 to Carthage itself is well attested, 
 Caesar himself must either have sub- 
 sequently changed the form of found- 
 ing the city, or the founding of the 
 colony must have been carried into 
 effect by the triumvirate as a post- 
 humous ordinance of the dictator 
 (as is hinted by Appian, Pun. 136). 
 We may compare the fact that 
 Curubis stands in the earlier time of 
 Caesar under sufetes {C. 1. L. viii. 
 10525), in the year 709 u.c. as a 
 Caesarian colony under duoviri {ib. 
 977) > y e t the case is different, since 
 this town did not, like Carthage, owe 
 its existence to Caesar. 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 33* 
 
 Astarte, who at that time marched in with her votaries 
 anew into her old abode. It is true that in Carthage 
 itself this organisation soon gave place to the Italian colo- 
 nial constitution, and the protecting patroness Astarte 
 became the — at least in name — Latin Caelestis. But 
 in the rest of Africa and in Numidia the Phoenician 
 urban organisation probably remained throughout the first 
 century the predominant one, in so far as it pertained 
 to all communities of recognised municipal rights 
 and lacking Roman or Latin organisation. Abolished 
 in the proper sense it doubtless was not, as in fact 
 sufetes still occur under Pius ; but by degrees they 
 everywhere make way for the duoviri, and the changed 
 principle of government entails in this sphere also its 
 ultimate consequences. 
 
 The transformation of Phoenician urban rights into Transfor- 
 Italian began under Caesar. The old Phoenician town JJfS^j 
 of Utica, predecessor and heiress of Carthage — as some cian towns 
 compensation for the severe injury to its interests by the mtoItalian 
 restoration of the old capital of the country — obtained, as 
 the first Italian organisation in Africa, perhaps from the 
 dictator Caesar, Latin rights, certainly from his successor 
 Augustus the position of a Roman micnicipium. The 
 town of Tingi received the same rights, in gratitude for 
 the fidelity which it had maintained during the Perusine 
 war (p. 311). Several others soon followed; yet the 
 number of communities with Roman rights in Africa down 
 to Trajan and Hadrian remained limited. 1 Thenceforth 
 there were assigned on a great scale — although, so far as 
 we see, throughout by individual bestowal — to communities 
 hitherto Phoenician municipal or else colonial rights ; 
 
 1 For Africa and Numidia Pliny sed pleraeque etiam nationes iure diet 
 (H. IV., v. 4, 29 f.) numbers in all possunf). Whether these figures are 
 516 communities, among which are to be referred to Vespasian's time or 
 6 colonies, 1 5 communities of Roman to an earlier, is not ascertained ; in 
 burgesses, 2 Latin towns (for the op- any case they are not free from errors, 
 pidum stipendiarium must, according for, besides the six colonies specially 
 to the position which is given to it, adduced, six are wanting (Assuras, 
 have been also of Italian rights), the Carpi, Clupea, Curubi, Hippo Diar- 
 rest either Phoenician towns {oppida), rhytos, Neapolis), which are referable, 
 among which were 30 free, or else partly with certainty partly with pro- 
 Libyan tribes (non civitates tantum, bability, to Caesar or Augustus. 
 
THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. book viii. 
 
 for the latter too were subsequently as a rule conferred 
 merely in a titular way without settlement, of colonists. 
 If the dedications and memorials of all sorts, that formerly 
 appeared but sparingly in Africa, present themselves in 
 abundance from the beginning of the second century, this 
 was doubtless chiefly the consequence of the adoption of 
 numerous townships into the imperial union of the towns 
 with best rights. 
 
 Settlement Besides the conversion of Phoenician towns into Italian 
 of Italian mU nicipia or colonies, not a few towns of Italian rights 
 
 colonists m ■* ° 
 
 Africa. arose in Africa by means of the settlement of Italian 
 colonists. For this too the dictator Caesar laid the 
 foundation — as indeed for no province perhaps so much 
 as for Africa were the paths prescribed by him — and the 
 emperors of the first dynasty followed his example. We 
 have already spoken of the founding of Carthage ; the 
 town obtained not at once, but very soon, Italian settlers 
 and therewith Italian organisation and full rights of 
 Roman citizenship. Beyond doubt from the outset des- 
 tined once more to be the capital of the province and 
 laid out as a great city, it rapidly in point of fact became 
 so. Carthage and Lugudunum were the only cities of 
 the West which, besides the capital of the empire, had 
 a standing garrison of imperial troops. Moreover in 
 Africa — in part certainly already by the dictator, in part 
 only by the first emperor — a series of small country- 
 towns in the districts nearest to Sicily, Hippo Diarrhytus, 
 Clupea, Curubi, Neapolis, Carpi, Maxula, Uthina, Great- 
 Thuburbo, Assuras, were furnished with colonies, probably 
 not merely to provide for veterans, but to promote the 
 Latinising of this region. The two colonies which arose 
 at that time in the former kingdom of Numidia, Cirta 
 with its dependencies, and New-Cirta or Sicca, were the 
 result of special obligations of Caesar towards the leader 
 of free bands Publius Sittius from Nuceria and his Italiano- 
 iv. 447, African bands (iv. 470, 574). The former, inasmuch as 
 544 ' the territory on which it was laid out belonged at that 
 time to a client-state (p. 311, note), obtained a peculiar 
 and very independent organisation, and retained it in 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 333 
 
 Maure- 
 tania. 
 
 part even later, although it soon became an imperial city. 
 Both rose rapidly and became considerable centres of 
 Roman civilisation in Africa. 
 
 The colonisation, which Augustus undertook in the And in 
 kingdom of Juba and Claudius carried forward, bore 
 another character. In Mauretania, still at that time very 
 primitive, there was a want both of towns and of the 
 eleme'nts for creating them ; the settlement of soldiers of 
 the Roman army, who had served out their time, brought 
 civilisation here into a barbarous land. Thus in the later 
 province of Caesarea along the coast Igilgili, Saldae, 
 Rusazu, Rusguniae, Gunugi, Cartenna (Tenes), and farther 
 away from the sea Thubusuptu and Zuccabar, were settled 
 with Augustan, and Oppidum Novum with Claudian, veter- 
 ans ; as also in the province of Tingi under Augustus 
 Zilis, Babba, Banasa, under Claudius Lix. These com- 
 munities with Roman burgess -rights were not, as was 
 already observed, under the kings of Mauretania, so long 
 as there were such, but were attached administratively to 
 the adjoining Roman province ; consequently there was 
 involved in these settlements, as it were, a beginning 
 towards the annexation of Mauretania. 1 The pushing 
 forward of civilisation, such as Augustus and Claudius 
 aimed at, was not subsequently continued, or at any rate 
 continued only to a very limited extent, although there 
 was room enough for it in the western half of the pro- 
 vince of Caesarea and in that of Tingi ; that the later 
 colonies regularly proceeded from titular bestowal without 
 settlement, has already been remarked (p. 332). 
 
 Alongside of this urban organisation we have specially Large 
 to mention that of the large landed estates in this province. la ^ ded 
 
 CStdtCS. 
 
 According to Roman arrangement it fitted itself regularly 
 into the communal constitution ; even the extension of 
 
 1 Pliny, v. 1, 2, says indeed only Pliny gives this notice in the case of 
 
 of Zulil or rather Zili regum dicioni Zili alone, just because this is the 
 
 exempta et iura in Baeticam petere first colony laid out beyond the im- 
 
 iussa, and this might be connected perial frontier which he names. The 
 
 with the transfer of this community burgess of a Roman colony cannot 
 
 to Baetica as Iulia Tradticta (Strabo, possibly have had his forum of justice 
 
 iii. 1, 8, p. 140). But probably before the king of Mauretania. 
 
334 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 the latifimdia affected this relationship less injuriously 
 than we should think, since these, as a rule, were not 
 locally compact and were often distributed among several 
 urban territories. But in Africa the large estates were 
 not merely more numerous and more extensive than 
 elsewhere, but these assumed also the compactness of 
 urban territories ; around the landlord's house there was 
 formed a settlement, which was not inferior to the small 
 agricultural towns of the province, and, if its president 
 and common councillors often did not venture and still 
 oftener were not able to subject such a fellow -burgess 
 to the full payment of the communal burdens falling upon 
 him, the de facto release of these estates from the com- 
 munal bond of union became still further marked, when 
 such a possession passed over into the hands of the 
 emperor. 1 But this early occurred in Africa to a great 
 extent ; Nero in particular, lighted with his confiscations 
 on the landowners, as is said, of half Africa, and what 
 was once imperial was wont to remain so. The small 
 lessees, to whom the domanial estate was farmed out, 
 appear for the most part to have been brought from 
 abroad, and these imperial coloni may be reckoned in a 
 certain measure as belonging to the Italian immigration. 
 Organisa- We have formerly remarked (p. 306) that the Berbers 
 
 don^ of the formed a considerable portion of the population of Numidia 
 munities. an <3 Mauretania through the whole time of the Roman 
 rule. But as to their internal organisation hardly more 
 can be ascertained than the emergence of the clan {gens) 2 
 
 1 Frontinus in the well-known pas- within the bounds of the community 
 
 sage, p. 53 Lachm., respecting pro- requiring the service, 
 cesses between the urban communities 2 The technical designation gens 
 
 and private persons, or, as it may be, comes into prominence particularly in 
 
 the emperor, appears not to presup- the fixed title of the praefectus gentis 
 
 pose state-districts de iure independent Musulamiorum, etc.; but, as this is 
 
 and of a similar nature with urban the lowest category of the independent 
 
 territories — such as are incompatible commonwealth, the word is usually 
 
 with Roman law — but a de facto re- avoided in dedications (comp. C. I. L. 
 
 fractory attitude of the great land- viii. p. noo) and civitas put instead, 
 
 owner towards the community which a designation, which, like the oppi- 
 
 makes him liable, e.g. for the furnishing dum of Pliny foreign to the technical 
 
 of recruits or compulsory services, language (p. 331, note), includes in it 
 
 basing itself on the allegation that all communities of non-Italian or Greek 
 
 the piece of land made liable is not organisation. The nature of the gens 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 335 
 
 instead of the urban organisation under duoviri or sufetes. 
 The societies of the natives were not, like those of North 
 Italy, assigned as subjects to individual urban communities, 
 but were placed like the towns immediately under the 
 governors, doubtless also, where it seemed necessary, under 
 a Roman officer specially placed over them (praefectus 
 gentis), and further under authorities of their own 1 — the 
 " headman " {princeps), who in later times bore possibly 
 the title of king, and the " eleven first." Presumably 
 this arrangement was monarchical in contrast to the col- 
 legiate one of the Phoenician as of the Latin community, 
 and there stood alongside of the tribal chief a limited 
 number of elders instead of the numerous senate of de- 
 
 is described by the paraphrase (C. I. 
 Z. viii. 68) alternating with civitas 
 Gurzensis (ib. 69) : senatus populusque 
 civitatium stipendiariorum pago Gur- 
 zenses, that is, the "elders and com- 
 munity of the clans of tributary people 
 in the village of Gurza." 
 
 1 When the designation princeps 
 (C. I. L. viii. p. 1 102) is not merely 
 enunciative but an official title, it 
 appears throughout in communities 
 which are neither themselves urban 
 communities nor parts of such, and 
 with special frequency in the case of 
 the gentes. We may compare the 
 "eleven first" (comp,fi?^. epigr. v. 
 n. 302, 521, 533) with the seniores 
 to be met with here and there. An 
 evidence in support of both positions 
 is given in the inscription C. I. L. 
 viii. 7°4 I : Floras Labaeonis f, prin- 
 ceps et undecimprimus gentis Saboidum. 
 Recently at Bu Jelida, a little west- 
 ward of the great road between Car- 
 thage and Theveste, in a valley of 
 the Jebel Rihan, and so in a quite 
 civilised region, there have been found 
 the remains of a Berber village, which 
 calls itself on a monument of the time 
 of Pius (still unprinted) gens Bacchu- 
 iana, and is under "eleven elders" ; 
 the names of gods {Saturno Achaiaei 
 [?] Aug\usld\, like the names of men 
 (Candidus Braisamonis fil.), are half 
 local, half Latin. In Calama the dat- 
 ing after the two sufetes and the prin- 
 
 ceps (C. I. L. viii. 5306, comp. 5369) 
 is remarkable ; it appears that this 
 probably Libyan community was first 
 under a chief, and then obtained suf- 
 etes without the chief being dropped. 
 It may readily be understood that our 
 monuments do not give much infor- 
 mation upon the gentes and their 
 organisation ; in this field doubtless 
 little was written on stone. Even 
 the Libyan inscriptions belong, at 
 least as regards the majority, to towns 
 in part or wholly inhabited by Ber- 
 bers ; the bilingual inscriptions found 
 at Tenelium (C. I. L. viii. p. 514), 
 in Numidia westward from Bona in 
 the Sheffia plain, the same place 
 that has furnished till now most of 
 the Berber stone inscriptions, show 
 indeed in their Latin part Libyan 
 names, e.g. Chinidial Misicir f. and 
 Naddhsen Cotuzanis f., both from the 
 clan (tribu) of the Misiciri or Misictri ; 
 but one of these people, who has 
 served in the Roman army and has 
 acquired the Roman franchise, names 
 himself in the Latin text in civitate 
 sua Tenelio flamen perpetuus, accord- 
 ing to which this place seems to have 
 been organised like a town. If, there- 
 fore, success should ever attend the 
 attempt to read and decipher the 
 Berber inscriptions with certainty, 
 they would hardly give us sufficient 
 information as to the internal organis- 
 ation of the Berber tribes. 
 
336 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book vm. 
 
 curiones of the towns. The communities of natives in 
 Roman Africa seem to have attained afterwards to Italian 
 organisation only by way of exception ; the African towns 
 with Italian rights, which did not originate from immi- 
 gration, had doubtless for the most part Phoenician civic 
 rights previously. Exceptions occur chiefly in the case 
 of transplanted tribes, as indeed the considerable town 
 Thubursicum originated from such a forced settlement of 
 Numidians. The Berber communities possessed especially 
 the mountains and the steppes ; they obeyed the foreign- 
 ers, without either the masters or the subjects feeling any 
 desire to come to terms with one another ; and, when 
 other foreigners invaded the land, their position in pre- 
 sence of the Vandals, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the 
 French, remained almost on the old footing. 
 Hus . In the economy of the soil the eastern half of Africa 
 
 bandry. v j es w ^h Egypt. Certainly the soil is unequal, and rocks 
 and steppes occupy not only the greater portion of the 
 western half, but also considerable tracts in the eastern ; 
 here too there were various inaccessible mountain-regions, 
 which yielded but slowly or not at all to civilisation ; 
 particularly on the rocky ridges along the coast the 
 Roman rule left few or no traces. Even the Byzacene, 
 the south-eastmost part of the proconsular province, is 
 only designated as a specially productive region by an 
 erroneous generalisation of what holds good as to indi- 
 vidual coast districts and oases ; from Sufetula (Sbitla) 
 westward the land is waterless and rocky ; in the fifth 
 century A.D. Byzacene was reckoned to have about a 
 half less per cent of land capable of culture than the 
 other African provinces. But the northern and north- 
 western portion of the proconsular province, above all the 
 valley of the largest river in north Africa, the Bagradas 
 (Mejerda), and not less a considerable part of Numidia, 
 yield abundant grain crops, almost like the valley of the 
 Nile. In the favoured districts the country towns, very 
 frequent, as their ruins show, lay so near to each other 
 that the population here cannot have been much less 
 dense than in the land of the Nile, and according to all 
 
CHAP. XIII. 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 337 
 
 traces it prosecuted especially husbandry. The mighty 
 armed masses, with which after the defeat at Pharsalus 
 the republicans in Africa took up the struggle against 
 Caesar, were formed of these peasants, so that in the 
 year of war the fields lay untilled. Since Italy used 
 more corn than it produced, it was primarily dependent, 
 in addition to the Italian islands, on the almost equally 
 near Africa ; and after it became subject to the Romans, 
 its corn went thither not merely by way of commerce, 
 but above all as tribute. Already in Cicero's time the 
 capital of the empire doubtless subsisted for the most 
 part on African corn ; through the admission of Numidia 
 under Caesar's dictatorship the corn thenceforth coming 
 in as tribute increased according to the estimate about 
 1,200,000 Roman bushels (525,000 hectolitres) annually. 
 After the Egyptian corn supplies were instituted under 
 Augustus, for the third part of the corn used in Rome 
 North Africa was reckoned upon, and Egypt for a like 
 amount ; while the desolated Sicily, Sardinia, and Baetica, 
 along with Italy's own production, covered the rest of 
 the need. In what measure the Italy of the imperial 
 period was dependent for its subsistence on Africa is 
 shown by the measures taken during the wars between 
 Vitellius and Vespasian and between Severus and Pes- 
 cennius ; Vespasian thought that he had conquered Italy 
 when he occupied Egypt and Africa j Severus sent a 
 strong army to Africa to hinder Pescennius from occupy- 
 ing it. 
 
 Oil, too, and wine had already held a prominent place Oil and 
 in the old Carthaginian husbandry, and on Little-Leptis wine> 
 (near Susa), for example, an annual payment of 3,000,000 
 pounds of oil (nearly 10,000 hectolitres) could be im- 
 posed by Caesar for the Roman baths, as indeed Susa 
 still at the present day exports 40,000 hectolitres of oil. 
 Accordingly the historian of the Jugurthan war terms 
 Africa rich in corn, poor in oil and wine, and even in 
 Vespasian's time the province gave in this respect only 
 a moderate yield. It was only when the peace with the 
 empire became permanent — a peace which the fruit-tree 
 VOL. II. 22 
 
338 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. book viii. 
 
 Manufac- 
 tures and 
 commerce. 
 
 needed even far more than the fruits of the field — that 
 the culture of olives extended ; in the fourth century no 
 province supplied such quantities of oil as Africa, and the 
 African oil was predominantly employed for the baths in 
 Rome. In quality, doubtless, it was always inferior to 
 that of Italy and Spain, not because nature there was 
 less favourable, but because the preparation lacked skill 
 and care. The cultivation of the vine acquired no pro- 
 minent importance in Africa for export. On the other 
 hand the breeding of horses and of cattle flourished, 
 especially in Numidia and Mauretania. 
 
 Manufactures and trade never had the same import- 
 ance in the African provinces as in the East and in Egypt 
 The Phoenicians had transplanted the preparation of 
 purple from their native country to these coasts, where 
 the island of Gerba (Jerba) became the African Tyre, 
 and was inferior only to the latter itself in quality. This 
 manufacture flourished through the whole imperial period. 
 Among the few deeds which king Juba II. has to show, 
 is the arrangement for obtaining purple on the coast of 
 the Atlantic Ocean and on the adjacent islands. 1 Woollen 
 stuffs of inferior quality and leather goods were manu- 
 factured in Mauretania, apparently by the natives, also 
 for export. 2 The trade in slaves was very considerable. 
 The products of the interior of the country naturally 
 passed by way of North Africa into general commerce, 
 but not to such an extent as by way of Egypt. The elephant, 
 
 1 That the Gaetulian purple is to 
 be referred to Juba is stated by Pliny, 
 H. JV. v\. 31, 201 : paucas (Maure- 
 taniae insulas) constat esse ex adverso 
 Autololum a Iuba repertas, in quibus 
 Gaetulicam purpuram tinguere insti- 
 Uierat ; by these insulae purpurariae 
 (id. 203) can only be meant Madeira. 
 In fact the oldest mention of this 
 purple is that in Horace, Ep. ii. 2, 
 181. Proofs are wanting as to the 
 later duration of this manufacture, 
 and, as the Roman rule did not 
 extend to these islands, it is not pro- 
 bable, although from the sagum pur- 
 purium of the tariff of Zarai (C. /. L. 
 
 viii. 4508) we may infer Mauretanian 
 manufactures of purple. 
 
 2 The tariff of Zarai set up at the 
 Numidian customs - frontier towards 
 Mauretania (C. I. L. viii. 4508) 
 from the year 202 gives a clear pic- 
 ture of the Mauretanian exports. 
 Wine, figs, dates, sponges, are not 
 wanting ; but slaves, cattle of all 
 sorts, woollen stuffs (vestis Afro), 
 and leather wares play the chief part. 
 The Description of the earth also 
 from the time of Constantius says, c. 
 60, that Mauretania vestem et mancipia 
 negotiatur. 
 
chap. xm. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 339 
 
 it is true, was the device of Mauretania in particular, and 
 there, where it has now for long disappeared, it was still 
 hunted down to the imperial period ; but probably only 
 small quantities came thence into commerce. 
 
 The prosperity which subsisted in the part of Africa Prosperity, 
 at all cultivated is clearly attested by the ruins of its 
 numerous towns, which, in spite of the narrow bounds 
 of their domains, everywhere exhibit baths, theatres, 
 triumphal arches, gorgeous tombs, and generally buildings 
 of luxury of all kinds, mostly mediocre in art, often 
 excessive in magnificence. Not quite in the villas of 
 the superior nobility, as in the Gallic land, but in the 
 middle class of the farming burgesses must the economic 
 strength of these regions have lain. 1 
 
 The frequency of intercourse, so far as we may judge Roads, 
 of it from our knowledge of the network of roads, must 
 within the civilised territory have corresponded to the 
 density of the population. During the first century the 
 imperial roads originated, which connected the head- 
 quarters of that time, Theveste, partly with the coast of 
 the Lesser Syrtis — a step, having close relation to the 
 formerly narrated pacification of the district between the 
 Aures and the sea — partly with the great cities of the 
 north coast, Hippo regius (Bona) and Carthage. From 
 the second century onward we find all the larger towns 
 and several smaller active in providing the necessary 
 communications within their territory ; this, however, 
 doubtless holds true of most of the imperial lands, and 
 only comes into clearer prominence in Africa, because 
 this opportunity was made use of more diligently here 
 than elsewhere to do homage to the reigning emperor. 
 
 1 According to an epitaph found in became in his turn a member of 
 
 Mactaris in the Byzacene {Eph. epigr. council and burgomaster. His poetical 
 
 v. n. 279), a man of free birth there, epitaph shows, if not culture, at least 
 
 after having been actively engaged in pretensions to it. A development of 
 
 bringing in the harvests far around in life of this sort was in the Roman 
 
 Africa, first throughout twelve years imperial period doubtless not so rare 
 
 as an ordinary reaper and then for as it at first may seem, but probably 
 
 other eleven as a foreman, purchased occurred in Africa more frequently 
 
 for himself with the savings of his than elsewhere, 
 pay a town and a country house, and 
 
34o 
 
 THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Introduc 
 tion of 
 camels. 
 
 As to the road -system of the districts, which though 
 Roman were yet not Romanised, and as to the routes 
 which were the medium of the important traffic through 
 the desert, we have no general information. 
 
 But probably a momentous revolution occurred in the 
 desert -traffic during that time by the introduction of the 
 camel. In older times it meets us, as is well known, only 
 in Asia as far as Arabia, while Egypt and all Africa 
 knew simply the horse. During the first three centuries 
 of our era the countries effected an exchange, and, like 
 the Arabian horse, the Libyan camel, we may say, made 
 its appearance in history. Mention of the latter first 
 occurs in the history of the war waged by the dictator 
 Caesar in Africa ; when here among the booty by the 
 side of captive officers twenty-two camels of king Juba 
 are adduced, such a possession must at that time have 
 been of an extraordinary nature in Africa. In the fourth 
 century the Roman generals demand from the towns of 
 Tripolis thousands of camels for the transport of water 
 and of provisions before they enter upon the march into 
 the desert. This gives a glimpse of the revolution that 
 had taken place during the interval in the circumstances 
 of the intercourse between the north and the south of 
 Africa ; whether it originated from Egypt or from Cyrene 
 and Tripolis we cannot tell, but it redounded to the 
 advantage of the whole north of this continent. 
 
 Thus North Africa was a valuable possession for the 
 of the UltUre fi nances °f tne empire. Whether the Roman nation 
 people. generally gained or lost more by the assimilation of 
 North Africa, is less ascertained. The dislike which the 
 Italian felt from of old towards the African did not 
 change after Carthage had become a Roman great city, 
 and all Africa spoke Latin ; if Severus Antoninus com- 
 bined in himself the vices of three nations, his savage 
 cruelty was traced to his African father, and the ship 
 captain of the fourth century, who thought that "Africa 
 was a fine country but the Africans were not worthy of 
 it, for they were cunning and faithless, and there might 
 be some good people among them, but not many," was at 
 
 Character 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 34i 
 
 least not thinking of the bad Hannibal, but was speaking 
 out the feeling of the great public at the time. So far 
 as the influence of African elements may be recognised 
 in the Roman literature of the imperial period, we meet 
 with specially unpleasant leaves in a book generally far 
 from pleasant. The new life, which bloomed for the 
 Romans out of the ruins of the nations extirpated by 
 them, was nowhere full and fresh and beautiful ; even the 
 two creations of Caesar, the Celtic land and North Africa 
 — for Latin Africa was not much less his work than 
 Latin Gaul — remained structures of ruins. But the 
 toga suited, at any rate, the new -Roman of the Rhone 
 and the Garonne better than the " Seminumidians and 
 Semigaetulians." Doubtless Carthage remained in the 
 numbers of its population and in wealth not far behind 
 Alexandria, and was indisputably the second city of the 
 Latin half of the empire, next to Rome the most lively, 
 perhaps also the most corrupt, city of the West, and the 
 most important centre of Latin culture and literature. 
 Augustine depicts with lively colours how many an 
 honest youth from the province went to wreck there 
 amid the dissolute doings of the circus, and how powerful 
 was the impression produced on him — when, a student of 
 seventeen years of age, he came from Madaura to Carthage 
 — by the theatre with its love-pieces and with its tragedy. 
 There was no lack in the African of diligence and talent ; 
 on the contrary, perhaps more value was set upon the 
 Latin and along with it the Greek instruction, and on its 
 aim of general culture, in Africa than anywhere else in the 
 empire, and the school-system was highly developed. The 
 philosopher Appuleius under Pius, the celebrated Christian 
 author Augustine, both descended from good burgess- 
 families — the former from Madaura, the latter from the 
 neighbouring smaller place Thagaste — received their first 
 training in the schools of their native towns ; then 
 Appuleius studied in Carthage, and finished his training 
 in Athens and Rome ; Augustine went from Thagaste 
 first to Madaura, then likewise to Carthage ; in this way 
 the training of youth was completed in the better houses 
 
342 
 
 THE AFRICAN PRO VINCES. book viii. 
 
 throughout. Juvenal advises the professor of rhetoric 
 who would earn money to go to Gaul or, still better, 
 to Africa, "the nurse of advocates." At a nobleman's 
 seat in the territory of Cirta there has recently been 
 brought to light a private bath of the later imperial 
 period equipped with princely magnificence, the mosaic 
 pavement of which depicts how matters went on once at 
 the castle ; the palaces, the extensive hunting-park with 
 the hounds and stags, the stables with the noble race- 
 horses, occupy no doubt most of the space, but there is 
 not wanting also the " scholar's corner " (filosoft locus), and 
 beside it the noble lady sitting under the palms. 
 Schoias- But the black spot of the African literary character is 
 ticism. j ust . ts scholasticism. It does not begin till late ; before 
 the time of Hadrian and of Pius the Latin literary world 
 exhibits no African name of repute, and subsequently the 
 Africans of note were throughout, in the first instance, 
 schoolmasters, and came as such to be authors. Under 
 those emperors the most celebrated teachers and scholars 
 of the capital were native Africans, the rhetor Marcus 
 Cornelius Fronto from Cirta, instructor of the princes 
 at the court of Pius, and the philologue Gaius Sulpicius 
 Apollinaris from Carthage. For that reason there prevailed 
 in these circles sometimes the foolish purism that forced 
 back the Latin into the old-fashioned paths of Ennius 
 and of Cato, whereby Fronto and Apollinaris made their 
 repute, sometimes an utter oblivion of the earnest austerity 
 innate in Latin, and a frivolity producing a worse imitation 
 of bad Greek models, such as reaches its culmination in 
 the — in its time much admired — " Ass-romance " of that 
 philosopher of Madaura. The language swarmed partly 
 with scholastic reminiscences, partly with unclassical or 
 newly coined words and phrases. Just as in the emperor 
 Severus, an African of good family and himself a scholar 
 and author, his tone of speech always betrayed the 
 African, so the style of these Africans, even those who 
 were clever and from the first trained in Latin, like the 
 Carthaginian Tertullian, has regularly something strange 
 and incongruous, with its diffuseness of petty detail, its 
 
THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 343 
 
 minced sentences, its witty and fantastic conceits. There 
 is a lack of both the graceful charm of the Greek and of 
 the dignity of the Roman. Significantly we do not meet 
 in the whole field of Africano-Latin authorship a single 
 poet who deserves to be so much as named. 
 
 It was not till the Christian period that it became christian 
 otherwise. In the development of Christianity Africa |f ^fS. 
 plays the very first part ; if it arose in Syria, it was in 
 and through Africa that it became the religion for the 
 world. As the translation of the sacred books from the 
 Hebrew language into the Greek, and that into the popular 
 language of the most considerable Jewish community out 
 of Judaea, gave to Judaism its position in the world, so 
 in a similar way for the transference of Christianity from 
 the serving East to the ruling West the translation of its 
 confessional writings into the language of the West 
 became of decisive importance ; and this all the more, 
 inasmuch as these books were translated, not into the 
 language of the cultivated circles of the West, which early 
 disappeared from common life and in the imperial age 
 was everywhere a matter of scholastic attainment, but 
 into the decomposed Latin already preparing the way 
 for the structure of the Romance languages — the Latin 
 of common intercourse at that time familiar to the great 
 masses. If Christianity was by the destruction of the 
 Jewish church-state released from its Jewish basis (p. 229), 
 it became the religion of the world by the fact, that in 
 the great world-empire it began to speak the universally 
 current imperial language ; and those nameless men, who 
 since the second century Latinised the Christian writings, 
 performed for this epoch just such a service, as at the 
 present day, in the heightened measure required by the 
 enlarged horizon of the nations, is carried out in the 
 footsteps of Luther by the Bible Societies. And these 
 men were in part Italians, but above all Africans. 1 In 
 
 1 How far our Latin texts of the from one and the same translation as 
 
 Bible are to be referred to several a basis by means of manifold revision 
 
 translations originally different, or with the aid of the originals, are 
 
 whether, as Lachmann assumed, the questions which can scarcely be 
 
 different recensions have proceeded definitely decided— for the present at 
 
344 
 
 THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 Africa to all appearance the knowledge of Greek, which 
 is able to dispense with translations, was far more seldom 
 to be met with than at least in Rome ; and, on the other 
 hand, the Oriental element, that preponderated particularly 
 in the early stages of Christianity, here found a readier 
 reception than in the other Latin-speaking lands of the 
 West. Even as regards the polemic literature called 
 especially into existence by the new faith, since the 
 
 least — in favour of either one or the 
 other view. But that both Italians 
 and Africans took part in this work 
 — whether of translation or of correc- 
 tion — is proved by the famous words 
 of Augustine, de doctr. Christ, ii. 15, 
 22, in ipsis autem interpretationibus 
 Itala ceteris praeferatur, nam est 
 verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate 
 sententiae, over which great authorities 
 have been perplexed, but certainly 
 without reason. Bentley's proposal, 
 approved afresh of late (by Corssen, 
 Jahrb. fur protestant. Theol. vii. 
 p. 507 f.), to change Itala into ilia 
 and nam into quae, is inadmissible 
 alike philologically and in substance. 
 For the twofold change is destitute 
 of all external probability, and besides 
 nam is protected by the copyist 
 Isidorus, Etym. vi. 4, 2. The further 
 objection that linguistic usage would 
 require Italica, is not borne out {e.g. 
 Sidonius and Iordanes as well as the 
 inscriptions of later times, C. I. L. 
 x. p. 1 146, write Italus by turns 
 with Italicus), and the designation of 
 a single translation as the most trust- 
 worthy on the whole is quite con- 
 sistent with the advice to consult as 
 many as possible ; whereas by the 
 change proposed an intelligent remark 
 is converted into a meaningless com- 
 monplace. It is true that the Christian 
 Church in Rome in the first three 
 centuries made use throughout of the 
 Greek language, and that we may not 
 seek there for the Itali who took part 
 in the Latin Bible. But that in Italy 
 outside of Rome, especially in Upper 
 Italy, the knowledge of Greek was 
 not much more diffused than in 
 Africa, is most clearly shown by the 
 names of freedmen ; and it is just to 
 
 the non-Roman Italy that the designa- 
 tion used by Augustine points ; while 
 we may perhaps also call to mind the 
 fact that Augustine was gained for 
 Christianity by Ambrosius in Milan. 
 The attempt to identify the traces of 
 the recension called by Augustine 
 Itala in such remains as have survived 
 of Bible translations before Jerome's, 
 will at all events hardly ever be 
 successful ; but still less will it admit 
 of being proved that Africans only 
 worked at the pre-Hieronymian Latin 
 Bible texts. That they originated 
 largely, perhaps for the most part, in 
 Africa has certainly great probability. 
 The contrast to the one Itala can 
 only in reason have been several 
 Afrae; and the vulgar Latin, in 
 which these texts are all of them 
 written, is in full agreement with the 
 vulgar Latin, as it was demonstrably 
 spoken in Africa. At the same time 
 we must doubtless not overlook the 
 fact that we know the vulgar Latin 
 in general principally from African 
 sources, and that the proof of the 
 restriction of any individual linguistic 
 phenomenon to Africa is as necessary 
 as it is for the most part unadduced. 
 There existed side by side as well 
 vulgarisms in general use as African 
 provincialisms (comp. Eph. epigr. 
 iv. p. 520, as to the cognomina in 
 -osus) ; but that forms like glorijicare, 
 nudificare, justificare, belong to the 
 second category, is by no means 
 proved from the fact that we first 
 meet with them in Africa, since 
 analogous documents to those which 
 we possess, e.g. for Carthage in the 
 case of Tertullian, are wanting to us 
 as regards Capua and Milan. 
 
chap. xiii. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. 
 
 345 
 
 Roman church at this epoch belonged to the Greek circle 
 (p. 22 f.), Africa took the lead in the Latin tongue. The 
 whole Christian authorship down to the end of this period 
 is, so far as it is Latin, African ; Tertullian and Cyprian 
 were from Carthage, Arnobius from Sicca, Lactantius, 
 and probably in like manner Minucius Felix, were, in 
 spite of their classic Latin, Africans, and not less the 
 already mentioned somewhat later Augustine. In Africa 
 the growing church found its most zealous confessors and 
 its most gifted defenders. For the literary conflict of the 
 faith Africa furnished by far the most and the ablest 
 combatants, whose special characteristics, now in eloquent 
 discussion, now in witty ridicule of fables, now in vehement 
 indignation, found a true and mighty field for their display 
 in the onslaught on the old gods. A mind — intoxicated 
 first by the whirl of a dissolute life, and then by the 
 fiery enthusiasm of faith — such as utters itself in the 
 Confessions of Augustine, has no parallel elsewhere in 
 antiquity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABDAGAESES, ii. 44. 
 
 Abgarus, of Edessa, ii. 46 (under 
 
 Claudius), 68 (under Trajan), 78 
 
 (under Severus). 
 Abrinca, rivulet, i. 119 n. 
 Achaeans, diet, i. 264. 
 Achaemenids, dynasty, ii. 2, 3, 10 ; 
 
 ' ' seven houses," 6. 
 Achaia, province, i. 255 f. n. ; under 
 
 the emperors, 260. 
 Acraephia, inscription, i. 265 n. , 273 n. 
 Actiads, i. 296 n. 
 Actian games, i. 296 n. 
 Adane, ii. 288 f. ; destroyed, 293 f. n. 
 Adiabene, ii. 68, 78 n. , 88. 
 Adiabenicus, ii. 78 n. 
 Adminius, i. 174. 
 Adrianopolis, i. 307. 
 Adulis, ii. 280, 281, 282, 296. 
 Aedemon, ii. 313. 
 Aegium, diet of, ii. 264 n. 
 Aeizanas, ii. 284 n. 
 Aelana, ii. 288. 
 
 Aemilianus, Marcus Aemilius, i. 241. 
 Aemilianus, Egyptian tyrant, ii. 251. 
 Aethiopia and Aethiopians, ii. 275-278 ; 
 
 traffic, 278. 
 Afer, ii. 304 n. 
 
 Africa, North, ii. 303 ; Berber stock, 
 303-305 ; Phoenician immigration, 
 306 ; government of republic, 306 f. ; 
 Caesar's policy, 307 f. ; extent of 
 Roman rule, 308 f. ; no strict frontier, 
 309 ; province of, 310 ; two Maure- 
 tanian kingdoms, 310 f. ; physical 
 conformation, 314 ; Africano-Numid- 
 ian territory, 316 f. ; war against 
 Tacfarinas and later conflicts, 317- 
 320 ; Roman civilisation in Maure- 
 tania, 320 f. ; continuance of Berber 
 language, 325 f. ; of Phoenician, 326 
 f. ; coinage, 327 n. ; Latin language, 
 329 ; Phoenician urban organisation, 
 329 ; transformed into Italian, 331 ; 
 
 number of towns, 331 n. ; Italian 
 colonists, 332 ; large landed estates, 
 333 f. ; husbandry, 336 ; corn sup- 
 plied to Rome, 337 ; oil and wine, 
 
 337 f. ; manufactures and commerce, 
 
 338 f. ; prosperity, 339 ; roads, 339 
 f. ; introduction of camels, 340 ; 
 character and culture of people, 340 
 f. ; scholasticism, 342 ; Christian 
 literature, 343-345 ; Latin Scriptures, 
 
 343 f- »• 
 Agonistic institutes, i. 289 n. 
 Agonothesia, i. 347 n., 348 n. 
 Agricola, Gnaeus Julius, i. 182-184, 
 
 194. 
 
 Agrippa ; see Herod Agrippa. 
 
 Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, in command on 
 the Danube, i. 22 ; transference of 
 Ubii, 25 ; combats in Gaul, 80. 
 
 Agrippa, Marcus Fonteius, i. 218. 
 
 Agrippina (Cologne), i. 119. 
 
 Ahenobarbus, Lucius Domitius, expedi- 
 tion to Elbe, i. 31 ; dyke between 
 Ems and Lower Rhine, 34. 
 
 Ahuramazda, ii. 10 f., 84. 
 
 Alamanni, war with, i. 161 f. , 163; 
 raids, 166 f. 
 
 Alani, ii. 62 n., 64, 73, 74 n. 
 
 Albani, ii. 72 f. 
 
 Alexander the Great, basing his empire 
 on towns,' not on tribes, ii. 120. 
 
 Alexander II. of Egypt, testament, ii. 
 232. 
 
 Alexander, son of Cleopatra, ii. 24, 25, 
 26 ; installed king of Armenia, 33. 
 
 Alexander Severus, purchases peace in 
 Germany, i. 162 ; murder, 162 ; 
 ii. 91 ; character, 89 f. ; war with 
 Ardashir, 90 n. ; nicknamed "chief 
 Rabbi," 263. 
 
 Alexander of Abonoteichos, i. 350. 
 
 Alexander, Tiberius Julius, ii. 168, 204, 
 242 n. , 246 n. 
 
 Alexandria, in Egypt, under the Pal- 
 
348 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 myrenes, ii. 107, 108 250; num- 
 ber and position of Jews, 165 n., 200 
 n. , 267; Jew-hunt, 192, 193 n. ; de- 
 putations to Gaius, 193 f. ; "Greek 
 city," 235, f. ; chief priest of, 238; 
 exemptions and privileges, 240 n. ; 
 libraries, 246, 271 ; chief officials, 
 248 n. ; distribution of corn, 251 n. ; 
 Italian settlement in, 257 ; mariners' 
 guilds, 257 n. ; comparison with 
 Antioch, 262 ; Alexandrian Fronde, 
 263 ; nicknames, 263 ; tumults fre- 
 quent and serious, 264 265 ; wor- 
 ship, 265 f., 266 n. ; old cultus 
 retaining its hold, 267 ; learned world, 
 267 f. ; physicians and quacks, 268 ; 
 scholar-life, 269 f . ; Museum, 271 f., 
 272 ; labours of erudition, 271 f. ; 
 "jointure" of Greek science, 273; 
 camp in suburb of Nicopolis, 274. 
 
 Alexandria, in Troas, i. 326 f. 
 
 Alexandropolis, ii. 15. 
 
 Aliso, fortress, i. 34 f. , 36 ; defence by 
 Caedicius, 48. 
 
 Allegorical interpretation, Jewish, ii. 
 168 f. 
 
 Allobroges, i. 87, 88 n., 91. 
 Alps, subjugation, i. 15 ; military dis- 
 tricts, 17 f. ; roads and colonies, 19. 
 Amasia, i. 331. 
 Amazigh, ii, 303. 
 Ambubaia, ii. 133. 
 Amida, ii. 115. 
 Amisus, i. 331 f. 
 
 Amphictiony remodelled by Augustus, 
 i. 254 n., 255 n. 
 
 Amsivarii, i. 124. 
 
 Amyntas, i. 335 n. ; ii. 24, 37. 
 
 Ananias, ii. 102 f. 
 
 Ancyra, i. 341 n. ; 342 n. 
 
 Anthedon, ii. 210. 
 
 Antigonea, ii. 127 n. 
 
 Antigonus, son of Hyrcanus, ii. 175-178. 
 
 Antinoopolis, ii. 236, 237 n. , 297 n. 
 
 Antioch, earthquake at, ii. 68 ; capture 
 by the Persians (260), 101, 132, and 
 by Aurelian, 109 ; creation of mon- 
 archic policy, 127 ; capital of Syria, 
 127 ; Daphne, 128 ; water supply, 
 and lighted streets, 129 n. ; poverty 
 of intellectual interests, 130 ; paucity 
 of inscriptions, 132 ; exhibitions and 
 games, 132 ; races, 132 n. ; immor- 
 ality, 133 ; dissolute cultus, 134 ; 
 fondness for ridicule, 134 f. ; sup- 
 port of pretenders, 134 ; reception 
 of, and capture by Nushirvan, 135 ; 
 Jew-hunt at, 219. 
 
 Antioch in Pisidia, i. 336 f. 
 
 Antiochus of Commagene, ii. 49, 53 ; 
 
 tomb of, 125 ; his buildings at Athens, 
 i. 278. 
 
 Antiochus Epiphanes, ii. 196. 
 
 Antoninus Pius : wall from Forth to 
 Clyde, i. 187 n. ; conflicts in Britain 
 under, 188 n. 
 
 Antonius, Marcus, ii. 22 f. ; position in 
 38 b. c. , 23 f. ; his army, 24 ; his 
 aims, 24 f. ; children by Cleopatra, 
 26 n. ; preparations for Parthian war, 
 26 f. ; temperament, 27 ; Parthian 
 war, 27 f. ; resistance in Atropatene, 
 29 ; retreat, 30, 31 ; last years in 
 the East, 32 ; dismisses Octavia seek- 
 ing reconciliation, 33 ; punishes those 
 blamed for his miscarriage, 33 ; at- 
 tempt on Palmyra, 93 ; government 
 in Alexandria, 232. 
 
 Antipater the Idumaean, ii. 174-177. 
 
 Apamea in Phrygia, i. 327. 
 
 Apamea in Syria, ii. 136, 141. 
 
 Aper, Marcus, i. 113. 
 
 Apharban, ii. 114. 
 
 Apion, ii. 193, 194 n. 
 
 Apocalypse of John : conception of 
 Roman and Parthian empires as 
 standing side by side, ii. 1 n. ; pseudo- 
 Nero of, 64 f. ; directed against the 
 worship of the emperors, 196, 197- 
 199 n. 
 
 Apollinaris, Gaius Sulpicius, ii. 342. 
 Apollo, Actian, i. 295 f. 
 Apollonia, i. 201 f. ; 299. 
 Apollonius of Tyana, i. 350. 
 Appian, historian, ii. 221 f., 223. 
 Appuleius of Madaura, ii. 341, 342. 
 Appuleius, Pseudo-, Dialogue of the gods 
 
 quoted, ii. 266 n. 
 Apri, i. 306. 
 
 Apronius, Lucius, i. 125. 
 Apulum, i. 228. 
 Aquae Sextiae, i. 78, 81. 
 Aquileia, i. 197 f., 231, 233. 
 Aquincum, i. 228 ; contra - Aquincum, 
 249. 
 
 Aquitania, wars, i. , 64, 80 ; coins, 79 
 n. ; province, 88 ; cantons of, 96. 
 
 Arabia, ii. 13 ; Roman, what it in- 
 cluded, 143 f. ; institution of province 
 by Trajan, 152 ; west coast of, 284 
 f. ; Homerites, 286 f. ; Felix, 285, 
 289 ; policy of Augustus, 290 ; expi- 
 dition of Gallus, 290 f. ; state of the 
 coast, 291 n.\ expedition of Gaius, 
 2 93 n - 1 injury to its commerce, 293. 
 
 Arachosia, ii. 13, 15. 
 
 Aradus, ii. 138 n. 
 
 Aramaic language, ii. 164. 
 
 Arbela, ii. 4, 88. 
 
 Archaism, Greek, i. 282 n. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 349 
 
 Archelaus of Cappadocia, ii. 41. 
 Archelaus, son of Herod the Great, ii. 
 183 f. 
 
 Architecture, Syrian, ii. 156 f. 
 
 Ardashir (Artaxares), ii. 81 83 n., 
 84, 85, 89 n., 91. 
 
 Arelate, i. 86, 89 ; amphitheatre, 106. 
 
 Aretas, ii. 148 n., 149 f. n. , 150 f. 
 
 Argentoratum, i. 119, 147, 159. 
 
 Ariarathes of Cappadocia, ii. 33. 
 
 Ariobarzanes, ii. 38, 39. 
 
 Aristobulus, of Chalcis, ii. 49. 
 
 Aristobulus, prince of Judaea, ii. 175 f. 
 
 Aristotle's recommendation to Alex- 
 ander, ii. 241. 
 
 Armenia, ii. 6, 19, 20, 33, 34, 35, 36, 
 40 f. ; Parthian appanage for second 
 son, 51, 60 ; Roman policy as to, 50- 
 52 ; subdued by Corbulo, 53 f. ; under 
 Parthian prince vassal to Rome, 60 f. ; 
 Roman province under Trajan, 67 f. , 
 70 f. ; becomes again vassal-state, 72 ; 
 Parthian invasion, 74 f. ; 80 n„ 89 f., 
 92, 102, 104, ii2K., 113, ii4;z., 1157?. 
 
 Arminius, i. 43 ; defeat of Varus, 46 f. ; 
 combats with Germanicus, 54 ; attack 
 on Maroboduus, 60 f. ; desertion of 
 Inguiomerus, 61 ; civil war and end, 
 62. 
 
 Arnobius, ii. 345. 
 
 Arrianus, Flavius, ii. , 20 n. , 73 n. 
 Arsaces, founder of Parthian dynasty, ii. , 
 3. 4. 6. 
 
 Arsaces, son of Artabanus, ii. 42. 
 
 Arsacids and their rule, ii. 3-12 el. 
 
 Arsamosata, ii. 56, 59. 
 
 Arsinoe, ii. 280, 291 f. 
 
 Art, constructive, in Gaul, i. 115 ; in 
 
 Syria, ii. 156 f. 
 Artabanus (III.), king of the Parthians, 
 
 ii. 40-45. 
 Artabanus (IV.), ii. 87 f. 
 Artageira, ii. 40. 
 Artavazdes of Armenia, ii. 28-33. 
 Artavazdes of Atropatene, ii. 28, 29, 32. 
 Artaxares ; see Ardashir. 
 Artaxata, ii. 48, 53 f., 75. 
 Artaxes, ii. 33-38. 
 Artaxias of Armenia, ii. 42 f. 
 Asander, i. 312, 313 n. 
 Ascalon, ii. 212. 
 
 Asia Minor : natives and colonists,^ i. 
 320; Hellenism, 321 f. ; formation of 
 new centres, 322 ; provinces of, 323 ; 
 territories added to empire, 323 f. ; 
 senatorial and imperial government, 
 323 f. ; changes in boundaries of 
 provinces and vassal-states, 324 n. ; 
 municipal vanity, 328 »."; honorary 
 Hellenism, 344; leagues of Hellenism, 
 
 343, 344 n. ; representatives, 344 n. ; 
 land-diets and land festivals, 344 f. ; 
 provincial priests and Asiarchs, 345 
 f. ; superintendence of emperor-wor- 
 ship, 348 ; system of religion, 350 ; 
 public safety, 350 ; occupying force, 
 350 f. ; justice in, 352 n. ; constitu- 
 tion of towns, 352 f. clubs, 353 ; 
 free autonomous communities, 354 ; 
 urban life, 354 f. ; prosperity, 354 f. ; 
 defects of municipal administration, 
 357; roads, 358 n.\ trade, 359 f. ; 
 commerce, 360 ; supplies teachers 
 and physicians to Italy, 361, 365 ; 
 literary activity, 362 ; instruction, 
 362 ; sophistic system, 362-366. 
 
 Asia, Roman : extent of province, i. 
 325 ; coast-towns, 325 f. ; inland 
 townships, 326 f. ; position under 
 Romans, 327 ; urban rivalries, 329 
 f. ; legions in, ii. 63. 
 
 Asiarchs, i. 345-347 n. 
 
 Asklepios, i. 350. 
 
 Asoka, ii. 13, 14 n. 
 
 Astarte, ii. 331. 
 
 Astingi, i. 237. 
 
 Astures, i. 65, 71. 
 
 Asturica Augusta, i. 66. 
 
 Athens : privileged position, i. 254, 
 258 ; administration, 276 f. ; pos- 
 sessions, 277 ; Hadrian's grants, 277 
 f. ; street-riots, 279 ; state of the 
 language, 281, 282 n. 
 
 Atropatene, ii. 6, 19, 28 f., 33 f., 38. 
 
 Attalia, i. 334. 
 
 Augusta Emerita, i. 64 n. 
 
 Augusta Praetoria (Aosta), i. 19 f. 
 
 Augusta Vindelicorum, i. 19, 20, 154, 
 196 f. 
 
 Augustamnica, ii., 298. 
 
 Augustan History, falsification as to 
 
 Postumus, i. 164 n. 
 Augustodunum, seat of Gallic studies, 
 
 i. 112 f. 
 
 Augustinus, Aurelius, picture of Carth- 
 age, ii. 341 ; Itala, 343 n. ; Confes- 
 sions, 345. 
 
 Augustus, the Emperor : expedition 
 against Alpine tribes, i. 16 ; monu- 
 ment to, above Monaco, 17 ; roads 
 or colonies in Alps, 19 f. ; visit to 
 Germany, 26 ; German policy and 
 motives for changing it, 56-59 ; visits 
 Spain, 64 ; organisation of towns 
 there, 68 f. ; organisation of the 
 three Gauls, 84 f. ; restricted fran- 
 chise of Gauls, 98 ; altar at Lugudu- 
 num, 94 ; altar for Germanic cantons, 
 35, 97, 118 ; discharge of Batavian 
 guards, 121 ; project of connecting 
 
35° 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Rhine and Danube, 148 ; projects as 
 to Britain not carried out, 172 ; 
 reasons for and against its occupation, 
 172 ; conviction of its necessity, 
 173 f. ; arrangements on the Dan- 
 ubian frontier, 195 f. ; Illyricum sub- 
 dued, 201 ; settlement of veterans in 
 Dalmatia, 202 ; his Amphictiony, 
 254 f. ; dealings with Greece, 261 ; 
 treatment of Athens, 277 ; insurrec- 
 tion at, 279 ; foundation and privi- 
 leges of Nicopolis, 294 f. ; colonies 
 in Macedonia, 301 ; pacification of 
 Cilicia and Pisidia, 335 f. ;.| diets 
 and festivals for, in Asia Minor, 345 ; 
 cancels debtors' claims there, 357 ; 
 decorum of, ii. 26 n. ; first arrange- 
 ments in East, 34 f. ; policy open to 
 him, 36 ; inadequate measures, 36 f. ; 
 in Syria (20 B.C.), 37 f • ; mission of 
 Gaius to East, 39 ; Nicolaus Damas- 
 cenus on his youth, 168 ; treatment 
 of the Jews, 171 f. ; dealing with 
 Herod's testament, 182, 184 ; atti- 
 tude towards Jewish worship, 187 ; 
 annexation of Egypt, 232 f., 239 ; 
 Egyptian titles, 244 ; policy as to 
 south-western Arabia, 290 ; expedi- 
 tion of Gallus, 290 f. ; of Gaius, 293 ; 
 repression of piracy in Red Sea, 298 ; 
 colonisation in Mauretania, 333 ; 
 death, i. 50. 
 Aurelianus, defeats the Juthungi, i. 166; 
 combats with the Goths on Danube, 
 248 f. ; against the Palmyrenes, ii. 
 108 f. ; battle of Hemesa, 109 11., 
 no n. ; destruction of Palmyra, 
 in n. 
 
 Aurelius Antoninus, Marcus, Germany 
 under, i. 160 ; Chattan war, 161 ; 
 Roman wall in Britain attacked, 188; 
 Marcomanian war, 229 f. ; his quali- 
 ties, 232 ; progress of war, 232 f. ; 
 takes name of Germanicus, 234 ; 
 terms laid down for the vanquished, 
 234 ; second war, 235 ; death, 235 ; 
 Parthian war under Marcus and Verus, 
 ii. 74 f. ; embassy to China, 302. 
 
 Aures, ii. 317, 318, 320. 
 
 Ausonius, i. 109, 113, 114 11. 
 
 Autonomy, idea of, ii. 120. 
 
 Autricum, i. 91. 
 
 Auzia, ii 319, 325. 
 
 Aventicum, i. 129. 
 
 Avesta, ii. 10. 
 
 Axidares, ii. 66 n. 
 
 Axomis, kingdom of, ii. 281 n. ; extent 
 and development, 282 f. ; Rome and 
 the Axomites, 284 ; envoys toArvidian, 
 284 ; relation to piracy, 298. 
 
 Azania, ii. 289. 
 
 Bactra, ii. 14, 15 18. 
 
 Bactro-Indian empire, ii. 14, 16 n, 
 
 Baetica, i. 67 ; towns with burgess- 
 rights, 68 ; exemption from levy, 73 ; 
 Moors in, ii. 324. 
 
 Bagradas, ii. 336. 
 
 Balbus, Lucius Cornelius, ii. 315 n. 
 
 Ballomarius, i. 230 n. 
 
 Bamanghati, coins found at, ii. 301 n. 
 
 Baquates, ii. 324, 325 n. 
 
 Bar-Kokheba, Simon, ii. 224 n. 
 
 Barley- wine, i. 108 n. 
 
 Barsemias of Hatra, ii. 78. 
 
 Barygaza, ii. 16 n., 300. 
 
 Basil of Caesarea, i. 333. 
 
 Bassus, Caecilius, ii. 21 f. 
 
 Bassus, Publius Ventidius, ii. 23, 27. 
 
 Bastarnae, i. 12, 217, 238. 
 
 Batanaea, ii. 144 ; see Hauran. 
 
 Batavi, i. 26, 43, 97 n. ; settlements 
 and privileges, 120 ; rising of Bata- 
 vian auxiliaries, 129 f. ; Civilis, 130; 
 progress of the movement, 130 f. ; its 
 consequences, 143 f. ; later attitude, 
 i4S- 
 
 Bato, the Dalmatian, i. 39, 41. 
 Bato, the Pannonian, i. 39-42. 
 Beads, glass, ii. 255. 
 Beer, i. 108. 
 
 Belatucadrus (Mars), i. 193. 
 
 Belgica, i. 85 ; division of command, 
 
 118 n. 
 Belus, ii. 266. 
 
 Berbers, ii. 302 f. ; type, 304, 305 n. ; 
 
 language, 325 f. ; organisation of 
 
 gentes, 334 f. 
 Berenice, sister of Agrippa II., ii. 219. 
 Berenice, Trogodytic, ii. 280, 284 n., 
 
 286, 288, 297. 
 Beroe, i. 240. 
 
 Berytus, ii. 121 ; Latin island in the 
 East, 130 ; factories in Italy, 139 n. 
 Bescera, ii. 319. 
 Bessi, i. 12, 209 n. 
 Bether, ii. 225. 
 Betriacum, i. 130, 143. 
 Biriparach, ii. 80. 
 
 Bithynia, i. 323, 324, 330 ; Greek set- 
 tlements in, 330 f. ; Hellenism of, 
 330 f. ; place in literature, 331 ; Go- 
 thic raids, 245. 
 
 Bithyniarch, i. 346. 
 
 Blaesus, Quintus Junius, ii. 318. 
 
 Blemyes, ii. 250 n., 277 278. 
 
 Bocchus, ii. 309, 310, 311 n. 
 
 Boeotian league, i. 259, 265. 
 
 Bogud, ii. 308 f., 310, 311 n. 
 
 Borani, i. 243, 245. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 35i 
 
 Bosporan kingdom, i. 242 ; Greek towns 
 of, 244, 312; kings, 314 n.; extent 
 of, 314 f. ; coins, 317 n., 318; titles, 
 316 n. ; military position, 316 f. ; 
 court, 318 ; trade and commerce, 319. 
 
 Bostra, ii. 95 ; plain around, 144 f. ; 
 legionary camp at, 153 ; importance 
 of, 155 ; Hellenic basis, 155. 
 
 Boudicca, i. 179, 181. 
 
 Boule, the, in Egyptian cities, ii. 236 n. 
 
 Bracara, i. 16. 
 
 Breuci, i. 23. 
 
 Brigantes, i. 178, 181, 182, 188. 
 Brigetio, i. 228. 
 
 Britain, Caesar's expedition, i. 170 ; 
 designs of Augustus, 171 ; reasons 
 for and against occupation, 172 f. ; 
 conviction of its necessity, 173 f . ; 
 occasion for the war, 174 ; arrange- 
 ments for occupation, 174 n. ; its 
 course, 175 f. ; Roman towns, 176 f. ; 
 resistance in West Britain, 177 f. ; 
 national insurrection, 179 f. ; subju- 
 gation of the West, 180 f. ; of the 
 North, 182 ; Caledonia abandoned, 
 184 ; grounds for this policy, 184 f. ; 
 diversities of race, 185 ; fortifying of 
 northern frontier, 186 f . ; wars in 
 second and third centuries, 188 f. ; 
 Roman fleet, 189 ; garrison and ad- 
 ministration, 190 ; taxation and levy, 
 190 f. ; communal organisation, 191 ; 
 prosperity, 192 ; roads, 192 ; Roman 
 manners and culture, 193 ; country 
 houses, 194 ; scholastic training, 194. 
 
 Brhria, i. 191. 
 
 Bructeri, i. 36, 51, 133, 145. 
 
 Burdigala, i. 113. 
 
 Burebista, i. 10, 216, 220, 309 f. 
 
 Burgundiones, i. 167. 
 
 Buri, i. 221, 224. 
 
 Burnum, i. 203. 
 
 Burrus, ii. 206. 
 
 Busiris, ii. 251. 
 
 Buthrotum, i. 295. 
 
 Byzacene, ii. 336. 
 
 Byzantium, i. 246, 292, 305, 306 n., 
 308. 
 
 Cabinet-secretary, imperial, ii. 272 f. 
 Cadusians, ii. 88 n. 
 
 Caecina, Aulus, governor of Moesia, i. 
 40 f. ; march to the Ems, and retreat, 
 52 f. 
 
 Caedicius, Lucius, defence of Aliso, i. 48. 
 
 Caesar, Gaius Julius, measures for Dal- 
 matian war, i. 7 f. ; Romanising of 
 southern Gaul, 86 ; policy as to can- 
 tons of Gaul, 92 f. ; Britannic expe- 
 dition and aims, 170 ; project of 
 
 crossing Euphrates, ii. 22 ; arrange- 
 ments as to Judaea, 175 f. ; African 
 policy, 307 f. ; Italian colonists in 
 Africa, 332. 
 
 Caesar, Gaius, mission to East, ii. 38 f. ; 
 meeting with Phraataces, 39 ; early 
 death, 40. 
 
 Caesaraugusta, i. 68. 
 
 Caesarea in Cappadocia, i. 332 ; ii. 
 101 f. 
 
 Caesarea (Iol), province of, ii. 313, 314, 
 321. 
 
 Caesarea Paneas, ii. 65, 147, 151. 
 
 Caesarea Stratonis, ii. 182, 186 f. ; in- 
 surrection, 205 f., 209 f. ; obtains 
 Roman organisation, 218. 
 
 Caesarion, ii. 25 n., 26 n. 
 
 Caesian Forest, i. 124. 
 
 Calama, ii. 319 n., 329 n., 335 n. 
 
 Calceus Herculis, ii. 319. 
 
 Caledonia abandoned, i. 184 ; probable 
 grounds for this policy, 184 f. ; under 
 Severus, 189. 
 
 Caligula, Gaius Caesar, incapable of 
 serious plans, i. 172 ; declines "great 
 number" of statues, 291 ; the East 
 under, ii. 45 ; pardons Aretas, 151 ; 
 treatment of Jews, 191 f. ; Jewish 
 deputations to, 193 f. ; orders his 
 effigy to be set up in the Temple, 195 ; 
 death, 195. 
 
 Callaecia, Roman, i. 63 f. ; separated 
 from Lusitania, 65. 
 
 Callistus, ii. 102 n., 103. 
 
 Calybe, i. 303, 305 n. 
 
 Camalodunum, i. 170, 171, 175, 176, 
 180, 192 f. 
 
 Camels in Africa, ii. 340. 
 
 Camunni, i. 15 f. 
 
 Canabae, i. 168. 
 
 Canal, Egyptian, ii. 279, 280, 297 f. 
 
 Canatha, ii. 147 ; temple of Baalsamin, 
 156 ; " Odeon," 157. 
 
 Candace, ii. 275 n., 276, 277. 
 
 Cane, ii. 296. 
 
 Canius Rufus, i. 76. 
 
 Cannenefates, i. 36, 97 n., 121, 126 f., 
 131, 139, 141. 
 
 Canopus, ii. 258 n. ; decree of, 260. 
 
 Cantabri, i. 65, 66, 67. 
 
 Cantonal system of Spain, i. 71, 72 n. ; 
 of Gaul, 90 f. ; influence of, 94 ; can- 
 tons represented in diet, 95 n. , 96 n. ; 
 in Britain, 191. 
 
 Cappadocia, i. 323, 324 ; inland, 332 ; 
 division into praefectures, 332 ; Greek 
 accent of, 333 ; ii. 19, 41, 63. 
 
 Caracalla, Severus Antoninus, campaign 
 against Alamanni, i. 162 ; named 
 Geticus, 139 ; Parthian war, ii. 87 ; 
 
352 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 assassinated, 88 ; treatment of Alex- 
 andria, 263 ; uniting the vices of three 
 races, 126, 340. 
 
 Caratacus, i. 175 f., 178. 
 
 Caravans, Palmyrene, ii. 98 n. 
 
 CarSn, ii. 6, 46, 84. 
 
 Carnuntum, i. 23, 198, 206. 
 
 Carnutes, i. 91. 
 
 Carpi, i. 238 f. 
 
 Carrhae, ii. 21, 22, 23, 77, 114. 
 Carteia, i. 68. 
 
 Carthage, ii. 307, 330, 331, 341. 
 
 Carthage, New, i. 68. 
 
 Cartimandus, i. 182 f. 
 
 Carus, Marcus Aurelius, Persian war, ii. 
 
 112 f. ; death, 113. 
 Caspian gates, ii. 62 n. 
 Cassius, Avidius, ii. 75 262. 
 Cassivellannus, i. 170. 
 Castra Regina, i. 197. 
 Cattigara, ii. 302. 
 Catualda, i. 61, 215. 
 Caucasian tribes, ii. 35, 36, 61, 68, 72 
 
 73. 9 1 »• 
 
 Cavalry recruited mainly from Gaul, i. 
 107. 
 
 Celtic inscriptions, i. 100 n. ; divinities, 
 104 f. ; language ; see Gaul. 
 
 Cenomani, i. 91. 
 
 Census of Gaul, i. 84. 
 
 Cerialis, Quintus Petillius, i. 140 f., 142, 
 180, 183. 
 
 Cernunnos, i. 104. 
 
 Chaeremon, ii. 259, 273 n. 
 
 Chaeronea in the civil wars, i. 267. 
 
 Chalcedon, i. 245. 
 
 Chalcidian peninsula, i. 300. 
 
 Chandragupta, ii. 13. 
 
 Charax Spasinu, ii. 68, 98 n. 
 
 Charibael, ii. 294 n. 
 
 Chariomerus, i. 146. 
 
 Chastisement, corporal, in Egypt, ii. 
 240 n. 
 
 Chatramotitis, ii. 286, 290, 295. 
 Chatti, i. 27, 28, 29, 51, 133 ; take the 
 
 lead, 149; Chattan wars, 150 n. ; 
 
 under Domitian, 151 n., 158 ; under 
 
 Marcus, 161, 197, 230 f. 
 Chauci, i. 28, 29 ; renewed rising, 36, 
 
 43 ; settlements and attitude, 121 ; 
 
 revolt, 125. 
 Chemi, ii. 251. 
 Chemmis, ii. 235. 
 
 Cherusci, i. 27, 28, 29 ; rising, 36 ; 
 
 under Arminius, 43, 52, 60 ; later 
 
 position, 146. 
 China, embassy to, ii. 302. 
 Chosroes, ii. 66. 
 Chosroes Nushirvan, ii. 135. 
 Chrestus, ii. 199 n. 
 
 Christianity in Syria, ii. 126 ; Syriac 
 Christian literature, 124 ; Christian 
 symbols, 141 ; effect on Christians of 
 destruction of Jerusalem, 220 f. ; 
 Christians not, like Jews, a nation, 
 226 n. ; Christianity and Judaism, 
 229 f. ; Christians and the imperial 
 cultus, i. 348 ; conception of the per- 
 secutions of the Christians, ii. 198 n. 
 
 Chrysogonus, i. 245. 
 
 Cidamus, ii. 316. 
 
 Cilicia, i. 323, 324 ; piracy in, 334 ; 
 
 becomes province, 334. 
 Cimbri, i. 37. 
 Cinithii, ii. 317. 
 Circesium, ii. 91, 95 n. 
 Circumcision, ii. 224 ; prohibited, 228 
 
 n., 229. 
 
 Cirta, ii. 310, 311 n., 319, 332, 342. 
 
 Civilis, i. 130 f. ; siege of Vetera, 133 
 f. ; capitulation of Romans, 138; last 
 struggles, 141 f. 
 
 Classieus, Julius, i. 137 f., 139. 
 
 Claudius I., emperor, a true Gaul, i. 
 98 ; cancels restriction of Gallic fran- 
 chise, 99 ; rising of Chauci, 125 ; 
 directs withdrawal from right-bank of 
 Rhine, 125 ; occupation of Britain, 
 172, 175 f. ; Jazyges under, 216; 
 re-establishes old arrangement in 
 Greece, 276 ; policy of Claudius in 
 the East, ii. 45 ; death, 49 ; policy 
 towards the Jews, 199 f. ; directs his 
 works to be read publicly, 271. 
 
 Claudius Gothicus, Gothic victories of, 
 i. 247 f. ; renewed fortifying of Dan- 
 ubian frontier, 248. 
 
 Cleopatra, ii. 25 n., 27, 178 f. 
 
 Clitae, i. 336. 
 
 Clubs, i. 353, 3S4 n., 356. 
 
 Cnidus, appeal to the Emperor from, 
 352 n. 
 
 Cogidumnus, i. 176. 
 
 Colonate, i. 237. 
 
 Columella, i. 76. 
 
 Column of Trajan, i. 124 f. 
 
 Commagene, ii. 19 ; annexed, 41 ; king- 
 dom revived by Gaius, 45 ; province, 
 63 n., 118. 
 
 Commodus, conflicts in Britain under, i. 
 188; frontier - regulation in Dacia, 
 228 ; character, 236 ; peace with 
 Marcomani, 236. 
 
 Concordia, coemeterium of, ii. 140. 
 
 Coptic, ii. 244. 
 
 Coptos, ii. 251, 280, 288, 297 n. 
 
 Corbulo, Gnaeus Domitius, reduces 
 Frisians, i. 125 ; directed to withdraw 
 from right bank of Rhine, 125 ; sent 
 to Cappadocia, ii. 49 ; character of 
 
INDEX. 
 
 353 
 
 troops, 50 ; offensive against Tiri- 
 dates, 52 ; in Armenia, 53 n, ; capi- 
 tulation of Paetus, 57 n., 58 n.\ con- 
 clusion of peace, 58-60 ; partiality of 
 Tacitus's account, 57 n. ; 58 n, ; 60 n. 
 
 Corduba in Latin literature, i. 75. 
 
 Corinth, treatment of, i. 257 ; Caesar's 
 atonement, 260 f. 
 
 Corn drawn from Egypt, ii. 239 f. 
 
 Correctores, i. 279 f. 
 
 Corycus, epitaphs of Christians at, i. 
 
 359 3 61 «• 
 Costoboci, i. 242. 
 Cottius of Segusio, i. 16, 18. 
 Cotys, i. 210 n. 
 Cragus-Sidyma, i. 355 f. 
 Cremna, i. 335, 337, 338. 
 Crete, i. 323, 324, 343. 
 Ctesiphon, ii. 3, 8, 28, 77, 79, 83, 
 
 "3- 
 
 Cugerni, i. 33, 124 n. 
 Cunobelinus, i. 171 n. , 174, 175. 
 Cyprian, ii. 345. 
 
 Cyprus, i. 323, 324, 343 ; Jews in, ii. 
 221 f., 223, 226. 
 
 Cyrene, i. 323 f. ; Pentapolis, 343 ; 
 " peasants," 343 ; categories of popu- 
 lation, ii. 165 n. ; Jewish rising in, 
 221, 223, 234 n. 
 
 Cyzicus, i. 330, 348. 
 
 Dabel, ii. 149 n., 151. 
 
 Daci and Dacia : preparations for 
 Dacian war, i. 10 ; internal troubles, 
 ir ; raid to Apollonia, 13 ; war of 
 Lentulus, 42 ; Dacian language, 208 ; 
 Daci under Tiberius, 217 ; war under 
 Domitian, 219 ; chronology of it, 
 220 n. ; war under Trajan, 221 f. ; 
 second war, 222 f. ; Dacia an ad- 
 vanced position, 228 f. ; loss of Dacia, 
 241. 
 
 Daesitiatae, i. 38 f., 41. 
 
 Dalmatia, war, i. 8 f. ; towns with 
 Roman franchise, 10 ; Dalmato-Pan- 
 nonian rising, 38 f. ; Italian civilisa- 
 tion, 201 ; ports, 202 ; state of 
 interior, 203 ; prosperity under Dio- 
 cletian, 203 f. 
 
 Damascus, environs of, ii. 144 ; Greek, 
 146 ; under Nabataean protection, 
 148 n. ; relation to Aretas, 149 n. ; 
 Jews in, 167 ; Jews put to death, 
 209. 
 
 Danava, ii. 95, 153. 
 
 Danube, region of i. 21 f. ; boundary 
 
 of empire, 23, 195 f. ; fleet, 205 ; 
 
 army, 218 f. ; military position after 
 
 Trajan, 225 ; primacy of Danubian 
 
 armies, 250. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 Daphne, ii. 109 ; pleasure - garden, 
 
 128, 129 n. 
 Dardani, i. 9, 12, 299. 
 Decapolis, ii. 146 n, 
 Decebalus, i. 220 f., 223. 
 Decianus, i. 76. 
 Decianus Catus, i. 180. 
 Decius Traianus proclaimed emperor, 
 
 i. 240 ; conflicts with Goths and re- 
 lief of Nicopolis, 240 ; death, 241. 
 
 Declamations in Gaul, i. 114. 
 Decumates (agri), i. 152 n., 196 f. 
 Deiotarus, i. 339 f. 
 Dellius, ii. 32 n. 
 Delminium, i. 203. 
 
 Delos, i. 258, 269 ; Delian inscriptions, 
 
 ii. 257 f. 
 Dentheletae, i. 12. 
 Deultus, i. 307. 
 
 Deva, camp of, i. 178, 193. 
 
 Dexippus, i. 239 n., 241 n., 243 ?i. , 
 
 246 n., 247 n., 281. 
 Diegis, i. 221. 
 
 Dio of Prusa, i. 268 f. , 274, 293, 
 n., 366 f. ; address to Rhodians, i. 
 270 f. 
 
 Diocletianus : favour for Dalmatia and 
 Salonae, i. 203 f. ; Sarmatian victories, 
 250; Persian war under, ii. no f. ; 
 terms of peace, 115 ; revolt in Egypt, 
 251; edict, as to grain, 251 f., as to 
 linen, 254 n. ; resolves to cede the 
 Dodecaschoinos to Nubians, 277 f. 
 
 Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, ii. 
 250 n. 
 
 Dionysius, cabinet secretary, ii. 273 n. 
 Dionysos, Thracian shrine of, i. 14, 24 ; 
 
 Thracian god, 209. 
 Dioscorides, island of, ii. 289, 296. 
 Dioscurias, i. 242. 
 Dmer, ii. 149, 153. 
 
 Dodecaschoinos, ii. 274 n., 277 n., 
 
 278 n. 
 Dodona, i. 297 n. 
 
 Dolabella, Publius Cornelius, ii. 318. 
 
 Domitianus : careful administration, i. 
 108 ; restricts number of vines, 108 
 f. ; wars with the Chatti, 150 f. ; con- 
 struction of the "Flavian altars," 
 153; Dacian war, 219 f. ; defeated 
 by Marcomani, 221 ; gives urban 
 rights to Philippopolis, 307. 
 
 Domitius Afer, Gnaeus, i. in. 
 
 Double names in Egypt, ii. 244. 
 
 Drobetae, bridge at, i. 222. 
 
 Druids and Druidism in Gaul, i. 104 f. ; 
 prohibited by Tiberius and Claudius, 
 105 ; schools of priests, 112 ; in 
 Anglesey, 185. 
 
 Druidesses, i. 106. 
 
 23 
 
354 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Drusus, Nero Claudius : victory over 
 Raeti, i. 16, 17 ; sent to the Rhine, 
 22 ; German war, 26 f. ; expedition 
 to North Sea, 28 ; death of, 29 f. ; 
 character, 26, 30 ; German tribes 
 subdued, 123 f. 
 
 Dubnovellaunus, i. 171 n. 
 
 Durocortorum, i. 89, 90. 
 
 Durostorum, i. 227, 309. 
 
 Dusaris, ii. 153 ; Dusaria, 153 n. 
 
 Dyarchy not applied in Egypt, ii. 233. 
 
 Dyme, letter of governor to, i. 237 
 260 n. 
 
 Dynamis, i. 313. • 
 Dyrrachium, i. 201, 299, 301. 
 
 Earthquakes in Asia Minor, i. 358. 
 Eburacum, i. 183, 186, 193, 194. 
 Ecbatana, ii. 4, 28. 
 
 Edessa, ii. 68 f., 76, 77, 79, ioo, 102, 
 125 n. 
 
 Education in Gaul, i. 112 f. ; in Asia 
 fc Minor, 362 f. ; in Africa, ii. 341 f. 
 Egypt: annexation, ii. 232 f. ; exclu- 
 sively an imperial possession, 233 f. ; 
 twofold nationality, 234 ; land - dis- 
 ricts and Greek cities, 235 f. ; coinage, 
 237 n. ; absence of land -diet, 238 ; 
 government of Lagids, 238 f. ; imperial 
 administration financially, 239 f. ; re- 
 venues, 239 f. ; privileged position of 
 Hellenes, 240 f. ; personal privileges 
 in Roman period, 242 ; native lan- 
 guage, 243 ; titles of Augustus in, 
 244 n. ; abolition of resident court, 
 244 f. ; officials, general and local, 
 246-248 ; insurrections, 249 ; in the 
 Palmyrene period (ii. 107 f. ), 249 f. ; 
 revolt under Diocletian, 251 ; oppo 
 sition emperors, 251 ; agriculture 
 251 ; granary of Rome, 252 f. ; re 
 , venue from imperial domains, 253 n., 
 254 ; trades, 254 ; linen, 254 ; papy 
 rus, 255 ; building materials, 256 
 navigation of Mediterranean, 257 f. ; 
 population, 258 ; manners, 258 f. ; 
 religious customs, 259 f. ; sorcery, 
 261 ; other abuses connected with 
 the cultus, 261 ; revolt of the "Herds- 
 men," 261 f. ; Alexandria, 262-273; 
 strength of occupying army, 273 f.; 
 - recruited from camp - children, 274 ; 
 task of the troops, 274 ; east coast 
 and general commerce, 278 f. ; canal, 
 279 f. ; sea-route to India, 279 ; 
 eastern ports, 280 ; relations with 
 west coast of Arabia, 284 f. ; land- 
 routes and harbours, 297 ; piracy re- 
 pressed, 298 ; active ^traffic to the 
 •east, 298 f. 
 
 Eirenarchs, i. 351 353- 
 Elagabalus, origin of name, ii. 123. 
 Elateia, i. 242. 
 
 Eleazar, ii. 207, 208, 214, 215. 
 Eleazar of Modein, ii. 224 n. 
 Elegeia, battle of, ii. 74. 
 Elentherolacones, i. 260. 
 Elis, i. 261 ; flax of, 292. 
 Elymais, ii. 7. 
 Emmaus, ii. 212 f., 218. 
 Emona, i. 10, 20, 198, 206. 
 Ephesus, i. 329, 360, 361. 
 Epictetus, i. 273. 
 
 Epidaphne, a blunder of Tacitus, ii. 
 128 n. 
 
 Epirus, i. 294 f. ; northern, i. 297. 
 Equestrian offices in Egypt, ii. 233 n. , 
 
 242 n. , 246, 247, 249. 
 Eratosthenes, ii. 241 n. 
 Esus, i. 104. 
 
 Ethnarch of the Jews in Alexandria, ii. 
 193 n. 
 
 Euergetes, title of, ii. 238. 
 Eumolpidae, i, 281. 
 Eupatorids, i. 314. 
 
 Euphorion, librarian 'to Antiochus the 
 
 Great, ii. 130. 
 Euphrates, frontier of the, ii. 1 ; Romano- 
 Parthian frontier-regions, 19 ; recog- 
 nised as boundary, 21 ; customs-dis- 
 trict, 70 f. , 97 n. ; Romans on left 
 bank, 77 ; need of watch, 118 f. ; as 
 route for commerce, 278 f. 
 Europus, battle at, ii. 76. 
 Eurycles, i. 283. 
 
 Exegetes in Alexandria, ii. 248 n. 
 Eziongeber, ii. 288 n. \ 
 Ezra, ii. 161. 
 
 Fadus, Cuspius.'ii. 204. 
 Faustinopolis, i. 333. 
 Favorinus, polymath, i. no f. 
 Felix, Antonius, ii. 202, 204. 
 Filosqfi locus, ii. 342. 
 Firmus in Egypt, ii. ill n. 
 Flaccus, Avillius, ii. 192 n., 193. 
 " Flavian altars," i. 153 n. 
 Floras, Gessius, ii. 206. 
 Forath, ii. 98 n. 
 Forum Julii, i. 86. 
 
 Frankincense routes, ii. 286 288 n., 
 299. 
 
 Franks, i. 163, 165, 167; settled on 
 
 Black Sea, 250. 
 Frontinus, Sextus Julius, i. i8r. 
 Fronto, Marcus Claudius, i. 234. 
 Fronto, Marcus Cornelius, ii. 342. 
 Frisians, i. 27, 28, 43, 97 n., 121, 124, 
 
 126 n., 129, 131, 145. 
 Furtius, i. 233 f. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 355 
 
 Fuscus, Arellius, i. 365. 
 Fuscus, Cornelius, i. 220. 
 
 Gabinius, Aulus, ii. 174 f., 232. 
 Gades, i. 68, 74 f. ; Gaditanian songs, 
 75- 
 
 Gaetulians, ii. 304, 322 n., 323 f. 
 
 Galatia, i. 323 f., 336, 338 f. ; Galatian 
 kingdom, 339 f. ; province, 340 ; 
 inhabitants, 340 ; former cantons, 
 341 ; language under the Romans, 
 341 f. ; Galatians as soldiers, 342 ; 
 garrison of, 350. 
 
 Galatarchs, i. 344 n. ; Julian's letter to, 
 349 n. 
 
 Galba, i. 130 ; ii. 198 n., 213. 
 
 Galenus of Pergamus, i. 366. 
 
 Gallicus, Gaius Rutilius, ii. 64 n. 
 
 Gallienus, energetic action in Germany, 
 i. 163; victory over pirates at Thrace, 
 246 ; character, 247 ; murder, 247 ; 
 recognition of Odaenathus, ii. 103 f. 
 
 Gallus, Gaius Aelius, expedition of, ii. 
 290 f. ; Strabo's account of it, 291 n. 
 
 Gallus, Gaius Cestius, ii. 209 f. 
 
 Gallus, Trebonianus, i. 240 f. 
 
 Ganna, i. 146. 
 
 Gannascus, i. 125. 
 
 Garamantes, ii. 309, 315, 318. 
 
 Gaul, administrative partition of, i. 33 
 n. ; acquisition of Southern, 78 ; later 
 J conflicts in three Gauls, 79 f. ; Celtic 
 rising under Tiberius, 80 ; gradual 
 pacification, 81 ; rising after Nero's 
 death, 82, 136 f. ; Romanising policy, 
 82 f. ; organisation of the three 
 Gauls, 84 f. ; law and justice, 85 ; 
 Romanising of Southern province, 88 
 f. ; cantonal organisation, 90 f. ; in- 
 fluence of cantonal constitution, 92 ; 
 smaller client-unions, 92 n. ; diet, 94 ; 
 altar and priest, 94 ; composition of 
 the diets, 95 f. ; officials, 94 n., 95 
 n. ; restricted Roman franchise, 98 f. ; 
 Latin rights conferred on individual 
 communities, 99 ; Celtic language, 99 
 f. ; evidences of its continued use, 
 101 ; Romanising stronger in Eastern 
 Gaul, 102 ; land measurement, 102 ; 
 religion, 103 ; economic condition, 
 106 ; culture of vine, 108 ; network of 
 roads, 109 ; Hellenism in South Gaul, 
 no ; Latin literature in Southern pro- 
 vince, in ; literature in imperial Gaul, 
 112; constructive and plastic art, 114; 
 extent of the three Gauls, 117; attempt 
 to establish a Gallic empire, 137-141. 
 Gaza, ii. 210. 
 
 Gedrosia, ii. 13. 
 
 Gelduba, camp at, i. 144 f. 
 
 Geneva, i. 91. 
 Gens and civitas, ii. 334 n. 
 Georgius, murder of, ii. 265. 
 Gerba, ii. 338. 
 
 Germanicus, associated with Tiberius, 
 i. 41 ; in sole command on the 
 Rhine, 49 ; course after death of 
 Augustus, 50 ; renewed offensive, 51 
 f. ; expedition to the Ems, 50 f. ; 
 campaign of the year 16, 53 f. ; dis- 
 aster to his fleet, 54 ; recall, 55 ; aims 
 and results of campaigns, 55-59 ; 
 triumph, 62 ; mission to the East, ii. 
 40 ; its results, 41 f. 
 
 Germany and Germans : Rhine-boundary, 
 i. 25 f. ; war of Drusus, 26 f. ; Roman 
 camps and base, 31 f. ; organisation 
 of province, 35 ; altar for Germanic 
 cantons, 35, 118 ; rising under Ar- 
 minius, 42 f . ; character of Romano- 
 German conflict, 49 ; abolition of 
 command-in-chief on the Rhine, 55 ; 
 Elbe frontier and its abandonment, 
 56-59 ; Germans against Germans, 
 60; original province, 117; Upper 
 and Lower, 118 f. ; strength of the 
 armies, 119 n. ; right bank of Rhine 
 abandoned, 125 f. ; position after 
 fall of Nero, 127 ; consequences of 
 Batavian war, 143 f.'; later attitude 
 of Romano-Germans on left bank, 144 
 f. ; free Germans there, 145 ; Upper 
 Germany, 147 f. ; Limes, 154-160 ; 
 distribution of troops, 156 n. , 159 n. ; 
 under Marcus, 160 ; later wars, 161- 
 167 ; Romanising of, 167 ; towns 
 arising out of encampments, 168 ; 
 Germanising of the Roman state, its 
 beginnings and progress, 168 f. ; pic- 
 ture of, by Tacitus, 169. 
 
 Gerusia, i. 353, 354 n. 
 
 Geta, Gnaeus Hosidius, ii. 323. 
 
 Getae, language of, i. 208. 
 
 Gibbon, i. 6. 
 
 Gindarus, battle of, ii. 23. 
 Gladiatorial games, latest in Greece, i. 
 272. 
 
 Glass of Sidon, ii. 137 ; glass-wares, 
 255. 
 
 Gods, Iberian, i. 75 ; Celtic, in Spain, 
 
 75 n. ; British, 193 ; Syrian, ii. 123 ; 
 
 Egyptian, 235, 260 f. 
 Gondopharus, ii. 15, 16 n. 
 Gordianus, ' ' conqueror of Goths, " i. 
 
 239 ; Persian wars of, ii. 91. 
 Gordiou Kome, i. 330. 
 Gorneae, ii. 48 n. 
 Gotarzes, ii. 7 n., 12 n., 46, 47. 
 Goths : migrations, i. 238 ; Gothic wars, 
 
 239 ; under Decius, 240 f. ; invasions 
 
356 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of Macedonia and Thrace, 240 ; 
 
 maritime expeditions, 243 f. ; victories 
 
 of Claudius, 247 f. ; character of 
 
 these wars, 248. 
 Graupian Mount, battle of, 183 f., 190, 
 Great-king, ii. 7. 
 
 Greece : Hellas and Rome, i. 253 ; 
 towns under republic, 256 ; city- 
 leagues broken up, 256 f. ; revived, 
 259 ; freed communities and colonies, 
 258-261; decay of, 261; decrease 
 of population, 268 ; statements of 
 Plutarch, Dio, and Strabo, 268 f. ; 
 tone of feeling, 270 f. ; good old 
 manners, 271 f. ; parallel between 
 Roman and Athenian life, 273 ; mis- 
 rule of provincial administration, 275 ; 
 misrule in towns, 276 ; clinging to 
 memories of past, 280 ; religion, 280 ; 
 worship of pedigrees, 280 f. ; lan- 
 guage — archaism and barbarism, 281 
 f. ; great families, 283 f. ; career of 
 state-offices, 284 f. ; personal service 
 of the emperor, 285 ; municipal ad- 
 ministration, 285 ; Plutarch on its 
 duties, 286 ; games, universal in- 
 terest in, 287-290 ; municipal ambi- 
 tion, its honours and toils, 290 f. ; 
 trade and commerce, 292 f. ; roads, 
 294 ; piratic invasions, i. 245 f. ; de- 
 scription of Greece from the time of 
 Constantius, i. 293 n. 
 Greek islands, places of punishment, 
 i- 343- 
 
 Gregorius Nazianzenus, i. 333. 
 Hadrianoi, i. 328. 
 
 Hadrianus : Hadrian's wall, i. 186 ; 
 disaster at Eburacum, 188 n. ; Pan- 
 hellenism at Athens, 266 ; grants to 
 Athens, 277 f. ; his Novae Athenae, 
 278 ; Olympieion, 278 ; evacuates 
 Assyria and Mesopotamia, and re- 
 stores Armenia as vassal-state, ii. 71, 
 72 ; Jewish rising under, 223 f. ; lays 
 out Antinoopolis, 236 ; gives excep- 
 tional right of coining, 237 ; alleged 
 letter to Servianus, 256 n. ' ' Had- 
 rian's road" in Egypt, 297 n. 
 
 Haedui, i. 8o, 99. 
 
 Hairanes, Septimius, ii. 97 n. 
 
 Harmozika, ii. 64. 
 
 Hasmonaeans, ii. 161. 
 
 Hatra, ii. 69, 78, 79, 89. 
 
 Hauran, red soil, ii. 144 ; mountain- 
 pastures, 145 ; cave - towns, 147 ; 
 robbers, 147 n. ; bilingual inscrip- 
 tions, 148 n. ; forts, 153 ; agricul- 
 ture, 154 ; Ledja, 154 ; aqueducts, 
 155 ; buildings, 156. 
 
 Hebron, ii. 213. 
 
 Hecatompylos, ii. 4. 
 
 Heliopolis, ii. 121, 123. 
 
 Helladarch i. 255, 265 n., 344 11. 
 
 Hellenism and Panhellenism, i. 252 f. 
 
 Helvetii, i. 27, 92, 93, 99, 117. XI 9< 
 128 ; " Helvetian desert," 152. 
 
 Hemesa, ii. 103, 106, 109 f. ; oil- 
 presses near, 136 n. 
 
 Heraclea (Chersonesus), i. 305, 312 ; 
 coins of, 315 n. 
 
 Hercules in Gaul, i. 106. 
 
 Hermogenes of Smyrna, i. 366 n. 
 
 Hermunduri. i. 31, 38, 150 f,. 158, 2i4f. 
 
 Herod the Great, ii. 176 f., confirmed 
 by Antonius as tetrarch, 177 ; king of 
 Judaea, 178 ; under Augustus, 179 ; 
 government in relation to the Romans, 
 179 f. ; in relation to the Jews, 180 ; 
 character and aims, 180 f. ; energy 
 of his rule, 182 ; extent of his do- 
 minions, 182 ; partition of his king- 
 dom, 183 ; revenues of, 187 n. ; 
 territory beyond the Jordan, ii. 146 
 f. ; represses brigandage, 147. 
 
 Herod Agrippa I. , ii. 49, 191, 194 f -> 
 200. 
 
 Herod Agrippa II., ii. 152, 171, 173 n., 
 181, 183, 207, 208, 209, 219. 
 
 Herod Antipas, ii. 150. 
 
 Herod of Chalcis, ii. 201. 
 
 Herodes Atticus, i. 281, 282, 283 n., 
 284. 
 
 Herodians, ii. 218. 
 
 Heroonpolis, ii. 261. 
 
 Heruli, i. 246 f. 
 
 Hiera Sycaminos, ii. 276 n. 
 
 Hieronymus, i. 101. 
 
 Hilary of Poitiers, opinion of his country- 
 men, i. 83. 
 
 Hippalus, ii. 299. 
 
 Hippo, ii. 310, 319, 328, 339. 
 
 Homerites, ii. 286 f. ; coinage, 287 f., 
 290 ; later fortunes, 294 ; united with 
 kingdom of Axomites, 295 n. ; com- 
 mercial intercourse of, 296. 
 
 Homonadenses, i. 335 f. 
 
 Hordeonius Flaccus, i. 132. 
 
 Hyginus, i. 75. 
 
 Hypatia, murder of, ii. 265. 
 
 Hyrcanus, ii. 174, 175 n., 177, 179. 
 
 IAPYDES, i. 9. 
 
 Iazyges, i. 216, 220, 230, 234. 
 Iberians, range and language, i. 69 ; 
 
 Romanising, 69 f. ; north of Pyrenees, 
 
 79 ; coinage, 79 11. 
 Iceni, i. 179. 
 Iconium, i. 336 f. 
 Jdiologus, ii. 247 n. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 357 
 
 Idumaea, ii. 213, 214. 
 Igel column, i. 115 f. 
 Igilgili, ii. 324. 
 
 Illyrian stock, i. 199 f. ; range and 
 character, 199 f. ; admixture of Celtic 
 elements, 200 f. 
 
 Illyricum, relation to Moesia, i. 14 n. ; 
 erection and extent of province, 20 f. ; 
 rising in, 39 ; administrative sub- 
 division, 195, 201 ; excellence of 
 Illyrian soldiers, 250 f. ; Illyrian 
 emperors, 251. 
 
 India, commercial intercourse with, ii. 
 300 f. 
 
 Indus, region of, ii. 13 f. 
 
 Inguiomerus, i. 52, 60, 61. 
 
 Insubres, i. 91. 
 
 Iol (Caesarea), ii. 311, 321. 
 
 Iran, empire of : Iranian stocks and 
 rule, ii. 1 f. ; religion, 9 f. ; Bactria 
 bulwark of Iran, 18. See Persia. 
 
 Irenaeus, i. 10 1. 
 
 Isauria, i. 334 f., 337. 
 
 Isca, camp of, i. 178, 193. 
 
 Isidorus (leader of "herdsmen"), ii. 
 262. 
 
 Isidorus, geographer, ii. 39. 
 
 Isis, i. 280 ; ii. 266. 
 
 Istachr ; see Persepolis. 
 
 Isthmus of Corinth, piercing of, i. 294. 
 
 Istria, i. 200. 
 
 Istros, i. 239. 
 
 Istropolis, i. 13. 
 
 Itala version of Bible, by whom pre- 
 pared, ii. 343 n. 
 Italica, i. 67. 
 Italicus, i. 146. 
 
 Italy, northern frontier of, i. 7 f. ; ceases 
 
 to be military, 251. 
 Ivemia, i. 178, 182, 184. 
 Izates of Adiabene, ii. 46, 167. 
 
 Jahve, ii. 160, 161, 169. 
 
 Jamblichus, ii. 76 n., 123 n., 131. 
 
 Jannaeus Alexander, ii. 162. 
 
 Jerusalem, standing garrison, ii. 186 ; 
 destruction of, 215, 218 ; colony of 
 Hadrian, 224 n. See Judaea. 
 
 Jews : Jewish traffic, ii. 141 f. ; Pariah 
 position in Rome, 142 f. ; Diaspora, 
 142, 162 f. ; at Alexandria, 162 n., 
 163 ; at Antioch, 163 ; in Asia 
 Minor, 163 n. ; Greek language com- 
 pulsory, 163 f. ; retention of nation- 
 ality, 164 f. ; self-governing commu- 
 nity in Alexandria, 165 ; extent of the 
 Diaspora, 166 f. ; proselytism, 166 f. ; 
 Hellenising tendencies, 167 ; Jewish- 
 Alexandrian philosophy, 168 ; Neo- 
 Judaism, 168 f. ; fellowship of, as a 
 
 body, 169 f. ; Philo, 170 ; Roman 
 government and Judaism, 171 f. ; 
 policy of Augustus, 171 f . ; of Tiber- 
 ius, 172 ; treatment in the West, 172 ; 
 and in the East, 173 f. ; treatment by 
 Gaius, 191 f. ; Jew-hunt at Alex- 
 andria, 192T. ; statue of emperor in 
 the Temple, 194 f. ; impression pro- 
 duced by the attempt, 195 ; hatred 
 of emperor - worship depicted in the 
 Apocalypse, 196-198 n. ; treatment by 
 Claudius, 199 f. ; preparations for the 
 insurrection, 201 f. ; high-priestly rule, 
 202 ; Zealots, 203 f. ; outbreak in 
 Caesarea, 205 f. ; and in Jerusalem, 
 206 f. ; struggle of parties, 208 f. ; 
 extension of the war, 209 ; war of 
 Vespasian, 210 f. ; forces, 211 n. ; 
 first and second campaigns, 213 ; 
 Titus against Jerusalem, 213; task 
 of assailants, 214 f. ; destruction of 
 Jerusalem, 215 ; breaking up of 
 Jewish central power, 216 ; central 
 worship set aside, 216 f. ; tribute 
 transferred to Capitoline Jupiter, 217 
 f. ; territory becomes domain - land, 
 218 n. ; further treatment,' 219 f. ; 
 consequences of catastrophe, .220 ; 
 Palestinian Jews, 220 f. ; rising under 
 Trajan, 221; under Hadrian, 223, 225 
 n. ; position in second and third cen- 
 turies, 225^. ; toleration of worship, 
 226 ; corporative unions, 226 f. ; 
 patriarchs, 227 n. ; exemptions from, 
 and obligations to, public services, 
 227, 228 n. ; circumcision prohibited, 
 228 n. ; altered position of Jews and 
 altered character of Judaism in the 
 imperial period, 229, 230. 
 
 John of Gischala, ii. 214. 
 
 Joppa, ii. 175 n. , 176. 
 
 Josephus, on cave-towns of Hauran, ii. 
 147 ; account [of Titus's council of 
 war, 217 n. ; value of statements in 
 the preface to his History of the 
 Jewish War, ii. 205 n. 
 
 Jotapata, ii. 212. 
 
 Juba I. , ii. 308. 
 
 Juba II., ii. 312, 313, 338 n. ; his Col- 
 lectanea, ii. 39, 293 n. 
 
 Judaea : distinction between Jewish land 
 and Jewish people, ii. 160 ; priestly 
 rule under Seleucids, 160 f. ; king- 
 dom of Hasmonaeans, 161 ; Phari- 
 sees and Sadducees, 161 ; under the 
 republic, 174 ; Caesar's arrangements, 
 175 f . ; freedom from dues, 175 n. ; 
 Parthians in Judaea, 177 f . ; under 
 Herod, 180-182; under Archelaus, 
 183 f. ; Roman province, 184, 185 n.; 
 
358 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 provincial organisation, 186 ; military 
 force in, 186 ; tribute, i86f. ; native 
 authorities, 187 ; deference to Jewish 
 scruples, 189 f. ; the Jewish opposi- 
 tion, 190 f. See also Jews. 
 
 Judaism ; see Jews and Judaea. 
 
 Judas, the Galilean, ii. 195, 198. 
 
 Jugurtha, war with, ii. 307. 
 
 Julianus defeats Dacians at Tapae, i. 
 220. 
 
 Julianus, Emperor, epigram on barley- 
 wine, i. 108 ; reply to " beard - 
 mockers" of Antioch, ii. 135. 
 
 Julii, tomb of, at S. Remy, i. 115. 
 
 Juridicus, ii. 247 n. 
 
 Jurisprudence, studied at Berytus, ii. 130. 
 
 Juthungi, i. 161, 166. 
 
 Kainepolis, ii. 75 n. 
 Kanata and Canatha, ii. 146 n. 
 Kanerku, ii. 16, 17 n. 
 Kerykes, i. 246, 281. 
 King of kings, ii. 11. 
 
 Labeo, Claudius, i. 136. 
 Labienus, Quintus, ii. 22, 23. 
 Lachares, i. 283. 
 Lactantius, ii. 345. 
 Lactora, i. 97 n. 
 Laetus, ii. 79. 
 
 Lagids, government of, ii. 238 ; finance 
 
 of, 239 f., 241. 
 Lambaesis, ii. 319. 
 Lancia, i. 66. 
 
 Langobardi, i. 35, 37, 146, 230. 
 Laodicea, i. 327, 360 ; ii. 130. 
 Larisa, i. 298. 
 Latifundia, ii. 334. 
 Latin version of Bible, ii. 343 n. 
 Latobici in Carniola, i. 200. 
 Latro, Marcus Porcius, i. 76. 
 Lauriacum, i. 198. 
 
 Leagues of Greek cities, i. 259, 264 n. 
 
 diets, 264 f. 
 Lentulus, Gnaeus, Dacian war, i. 42. 
 Leptis, Great, ii. 316, 326, 327, 328. 
 Leuce Come, ii. 148, 280, 285, 288, 
 
 291. 
 Leuga, i. 103. 
 Lex Julia II., i. 10. 
 Libanius, description of Antioch, ii. 
 
 129 n. 
 
 Library of Alexandria, ii. 271 f. 
 
 Libyans, ii. 304, 317. 
 
 Licinianus, Valerius, i. 76. 
 
 Limes, meaning of, i. 122 n. ; Limes 
 Ger?naniae, 122, f. ; Upper Germanic, 
 154 f. ; Raetiae, 155 f. ; construction 
 of, 156, 197 ; object and effect of 
 these structures, i. 157-160. 
 
 Lindum, i. 182. 
 
 Linen, Syrian, ii. 137, 138 ; Egyptian, 
 254 n - 
 
 Lingones, i. 102, 139, 140 ; testamen 
 
 of man of rank among, i. 107. 
 Logistae, i. 353. 
 
 Lollius, Marcus, defeat of, i. 26. 
 Londinium, i. 177, 180, 192. 
 Longinus (Pseudo-), on the Sublime, ii. 
 
 168, 231. 
 Lucanus, i. 76. 
 
 Lucian of Commagene, ii. 131 ; on the 
 Syrian goddess, 134 n. ; (Pseudo-), 
 parallel between Roman and Athenian 
 life, 273 f. 
 Lugii, i. 37, 215, 220. 
 Lugudunum, i. 87-90. 
 Lusitania, i. 63, 64 ; towns with bur- 
 gess-rights in, 68. 
 Lutetia described by Julian, i. 109. 
 Lycia, i. 323 f., 333 ; Lycian cities- 
 league, 333. 
 Lydius, robber-chief, i. 337. 
 Lysimachia, i. 303, 322 n. 
 
 Macedonia, frontier of, i. nf. ; extent 
 under the empire, 298 f. ; nationalities, 
 299 f. ; Greek polity, 300 f. ; diet, 
 300 ; economy, roads and levy, 301 f. ; 
 Macedonians at Alexandria, ii. 164, 
 165 n. 
 Machaerus, ii. 215. 
 Macrianus, Fulvius, ii. 102 n., 103. 
 Macrinus, ii. 88. 
 Mactaris, ii. 339 n. 
 Madaura, ii. 341. 
 
 Madeira, dyeworks at, ii. 323, 338 n. 
 Maeates, i. 189. 
 Magians, ii. 10, 84. 
 Magnesia on Maeander, i. 325, 329. 
 Malchus, ii. 151. 
 Mamaea, ii. 90. 
 ; Marble quarries, i. 292. 
 Marcianopolis, i. 308, 310. 
 Marcomani, i. 27 ; retire to Bohemia, 
 29 ; isolated, 31 ; under Maroboduus, 
 37, 60 f. ; under Roman clientship, 
 214 f. ; war under Marcus Aurelius, 
 229 f. ; invasion of Italy, 231 ; pesti- 
 lence, 231 ; progress of war, 232 ; 
 submission of Quadi, 233 ; terms of, 
 234 ; second war, 235 ; results, 235 
 f. ; conclusion of peace by Commodus, 
 236. 
 
 Mareades, ii. 101 n. 
 Margiane (Merv), ii. 18. 
 Mariaba, ii. 287 n. , 292, 295. 
 Mariamne, ii. 177, 181. 
 Mariccus, i. 129. 
 Marmarica, ii. 315. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 359 
 
 Marnus, temple of, ii. 133. 
 Maroboduus, i. 37, 43, 48, 60 f. 
 Marsi, i. 51. 
 
 Martialis, Valerius, i. 76. 
 
 Mascula, ii. 319. 
 
 Massada, ii. 215. 
 
 Massilia, i. 78, 79, 86, no. 
 
 Massinissa, ii. 305, 309. 
 
 Mattiaci, i. 33, 133, 149 n. 
 
 Mauretania, Roman dependency, ii. 
 308 ; two Mauretanian kingdoms, 
 310 f. ; Roman civilisation in, 320 f.; 
 Gaetulian wars, 322 ; incursions ot 
 Moors into Spain, 324 n. ; colonisa- 
 tion of Augustus, 333 ; large landed 
 estates, 333 f. 
 
 Mauri, ii. 304. 
 
 Maximianus, Galerius, ii. 114. 
 Maximinus, expedition into heart ot 
 
 Germany, i. 162 ; Mesopotamia falls 
 
 to Ardashir, ii. 91. 
 Maximus, Terentius, ii. 65. 
 Mazices, ii. 303, 324. 
 Media, ii. 4, 6, 10. 
 Mediolanum, i. 91. 
 Mediomatrici, i. 141. 
 Megasthenes sent to India, ii. 130. 
 Megistanes, ii. 5 f. 
 Meherdates, ii. 46. 
 Mela, Pomponius, i. 76. 
 Menahim, ii. 208. 
 Menecrates, physician, i. 366 n. 
 Menippus of Gadara, ii. 131. 
 Meroe, ii. 275, 277. 
 Mesembria, i. 305. 
 Mesene, ii. 68. 
 
 Mesopotamia ceded to Parthians, ii. 
 21 ; Vologasus in, 55 ; occupied by 
 Trajan, 68 ; revolt of Seleucia and 
 siege, 68 f. ; Roman province, 68, 
 70 f. ; evacuated by Hadrian, 72 ; 
 again Roman province under Severus, 
 79 ; battle of Nisibis, 88 ; falls to 
 Ardashir, 91 ; reconquered by Gor- 
 dian, 91 ; but ceded by Philippus, 
 92 ; struggle under Valerian, 100 ; 
 action of Odaenathus, 104 ; once 
 more Roman under Cams, 113 n. ; 
 invaded by Narseh, but recovered by 
 Diocletian, 113-115. 
 
 Messalla, Marcus Valerius, vanquishes 
 the Aquitanians, i. 80. 
 
 Minaeans, ii. 285 n., 286 n., 290, 295. 
 
 Minnagara, ii. 15, 16 n, 
 
 Minucius, Felix, ii. 345. 
 
 Mithra, worship of, ii. 126. 
 
 Mithradates I., ii. 4, 5. 
 
 Mithradates, brother of Pharasmanes, ii. 
 43. 45- 4 6 n., 47. 
 
 Mithradates of Pergamus, i. 313, 340. 
 
 Moesia, i. 12 ; subjugation by Crassus, 
 13, 212 ; relation to Illyricum, 14 n. ; 
 province, 22 ; Latin civilisation of, 
 213 ; legionary camps, 213 n., 218, 
 227 ; Greek towns in lower, 308 f. ; 
 mints in, 308 n. 
 
 Mogontiacum, i. 32, 49, 118, 149, 
 168. 
 
 Mona, i. 178, 179, 180, 182. 
 Monachism cradled in Egypt, ii. 267. 
 Monaeses, ii. 24, 26, 28, 29, 31. 
 Monobazus of Adiabene, ii. 54. 
 Montanus, Votienus, i. in. 
 Months, Persian names of, ii. 85 n. ; 
 
 Palmyrene, 96 n. 
 Morini, i. 80. 
 
 Mosaic pavements in Britain, i. 194. 
 
 Moselle valley, i. 115 f. 
 
 Museum of Alexandria, president of the, 
 
 ii. 248 n. ; savants of the, 268 f. , 
 
 271 n. , 272. 
 Musulamii, ii. 317, 318, 319 n. 
 Muza, ii. 289, 296, 299 n. 
 Muziris, ii. 301. 
 
 Myos Hormos, ii. 280, 288, 297, 298. 
 
 Nabata, ii. 275, 281, 282 n. 
 
 Nabataea: language and writing, ii. 146 ; 
 kingdom of Nabat, 148 ; its extent 
 and power, 148 f. ; Nabataean in- 
 scriptions, 148, 149 n. ; king subject 
 to the Romans, 150 ; coins of, 150 
 n. ; Greek designations of magistrates, 
 181 f. ; merged partly in Roman pro- 
 vince of Arabia by Trajan, 152 ; wor- 
 ship, 153 ; Phylarchs, 154. 
 
 Naissus, i. 248. 
 
 Namara, stronghold of, ii. 153, 157. 
 
 Napoca, i. 228. 
 
 Narbo, i. 78 f. , 86. 
 
 Narcissus, i. 175. 
 
 Naristae, i. 237. 
 
 Narona, i. 202. 
 
 Narseh, ii. 114 n. 
 
 Nasamones, ii. 316. 
 
 Nattabutes, ii. 319 n. 
 
 Naucratis, ii. 235 n., 236 «. 
 
 Nauplia, i. 293. 
 
 Nauportus, i. 8, 198. 
 
 Neapolis, Flavia, ii. 218. 
 
 Necho, ii. 278. 
 
 Neckar, region of the, i. 152 f. 
 Negrin, oasis of, ii. 320. 
 Neith, sanctuary of, ii. 260. 
 Nelcynda, ii. 301. 
 
 Nemausus, i. 87 ; temples, 106 ; coins, 
 no. 
 
 Neocorate, i. 346 f. 
 Neoi, i. 353. 
 Neo-Judaism, ii. 269. 
 
360 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Neo-Platonism, ii. 126, 209. 
 
 Neo-Pythagoreanism, ii. 269. 
 
 Nero, report of Aelianus as to Moesia, 
 i. 217 ; attempt to pierce the Isthmus 
 of Corinth, 294 ; under Burrus and 
 Seneca, ii. 49 ; aims of the government 
 in the East, 50, 51 ; Parthian war 
 under, 55 f. ; intended Oriental expe- 
 dition, 61 f. ; Vologasus on Nero's 
 memory, 62 ; confiscations in Africa, 
 334 ; Pseudo-Nero, ii. 62, 64. 
 
 Nicaea, i. 245, 329. 
 
 Nicanor, Julius, buys back Salamis, i. 
 278. 
 
 Nicephorium, ii. 76, 94, 114. 
 
 Nicetes of Smyrna, i. 365. 
 
 Nicolaus of Damascus, ii. 167 f. 
 
 Nicomedia, i. 245, 329, 345 ; Dio's 
 address to, 330 n. 
 
 Nicopolis, Epirot, i. 254, 295 f. 
 
 Nicopolis on Haemus, i. 240, 307. 
 
 Nicopolis, suburb of Alexandria, ii. 274. 
 
 Niger, Pescennius, ii. 77, 78 n. , 118. 
 
 Nile: Nile-flood, ii. 252, 253; Nile- 
 route for commerce, 278. 
 
 Nisibis, ii. 68 f., 76, 78 n., 79, 115; 
 battle at, 88, 91. 
 
 Nomes, constitution and distinctive 
 features of, ii. 235 f. ; agoranomy in, 
 2 35 f-> 2 39 »■ ; presidents of the 
 nomes, 248 f. 
 
 Nonnus, epic of, ii. 268. 
 
 Noreia, i. 198. 
 
 Noricum, province of, i. 18, 196; Italis- 
 ing of, 197 f. ; military arrangements, 
 198 ; townships, 199. 
 
 Novae, i. 227. 
 
 Novaesium, i. 132-136, 141, 142. 
 Novempopulana, i. 197. 
 Noviodunum, i. 87 11. 
 Noviomagus, i. 119, 120. 
 Nubians, ii. 275, 278. 
 Numidians, ii. 304 ; Numidia in civil 
 wars, 307 ; a province, 307, 310. 
 
 Obodas, ii. 150, 290. 
 Octavia, ii. 27, 32. 
 Odaenathus, Septimius, ii. 97 n. 
 Odaenathus, king of Palmyra, ii. 103 
 
 n. ; campaign against Persians, 104 
 
 f. ; assassination, 106 n. 
 Odessus, i. 13, 315. 
 Odrysae, i. 11, 209 f. , 304, 306 n. 
 Oea, ii. 316, 327. 
 Oescus, i. 214, 309. 
 Ogmius, i. 104. 
 
 Olbia, i. 239, 242, 305, 310 n„ 311. 
 Olympic games, i. 288 f. 
 Ombites, ii. 261, 262. 
 Onias, temple of, closed, ii. 217. 
 
 Ordovici, i. 178, 182. 
 Orodes, ii. 21, 22, 23 f. , 43. 
 Orontes valley, ii. 134, 141. 
 Osicerda, coin of, i. 70. 
 Osiris worship, ii. 266 n. 
 Osrhoene, ii. 88. 
 Otho, defeat of, i. 128. 
 Oxus, ii. 83. 
 
 Pacorus I., son of Orodes, ii. 21, 22, 
 23- 
 
 Pacorus, Parthian king in time of Tra- 
 jan, ii. 65 n. 
 
 Paetus, Lucius Caesennius, ii. 56 f. ; 
 capitulation at Rhandeia, 57 f. ; re- 
 called, 59. 
 
 Pahlavi language, ii. 11, 12 n., 85. 
 
 Palikars, i. 207. 
 
 Palma, Aulus Cornelius, ii. 152. 
 
 Palmyra, ii. 92 f. ; predatory expedition 
 of Antonius, 93 ; military independ- 
 ence, 93, 94 n. ; distinctive position, 
 93 f. ; administrative independence, 
 95 f. ; language, 95 f. ; votive inscrip- 
 tions, 96 n. ; magistrates, 96 f. ; 
 "Headman," 97; official titles, 97 
 n. ; customs -district, 97 n. ; com- 
 mercal position, 98 ; under Odaena- 
 thus, 103 f. ; under Zenobia, 106- 
 110; destruction, in f. ; chronology, 
 in n. 
 
 Pamphylia, i. 324 ; coast towns, 333 f. ; 
 earlier rulers, 334 ; assigned to 
 governor of its own, 336. 
 
 Panhellenism, i. 252 f. ; Panhellenes, 
 265 ; Panhellenion of Hadrian, 266 
 n. ; letters of recommendation, 267 
 n. ; Olympia, 288 f. 
 
 Pannonia, province, i. 22 ; first Pan- 
 nonian war, 22 f. ; Dalmatio - Pan- 
 nonian rising, 38 f. ; military arrange- 
 ments, 204 f. ; urban development, 
 206 f. ; camps advanced, 219 ; pros- 
 perity, 229. 
 
 Panopeus, i. 290. 
 
 Panopolis, ii. 235. 
 
 Panticapaeum, i. 305, 312, 313, 315 
 
 n., 316 f., 318, 319. 
 Papak, ii. 87 n. 
 Papyrus, ii. 255 n. 
 Paraetonium, ii. 235 n. 
 Paropanisus, ii. 14. 
 Parthamaspates, ii. 69. 
 Parthia and Parthians, rule of, ii. 2 f. ; 
 
 Parthians Scythian, 3 ; regal office, 
 
 S ; Megistanes, 5, 6 n. ; satraps, 6 ; 
 
 as vassals, 7 ; Greek towns, 8 ; 
 
 counterpart to Roman empire, 9 ; 
 
 language, n f. ; coinage, 12 ; extent 
 
 of empire, 12 f. ; wars between Par- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 36r 
 
 thians and Scythians, 18 ; Romano- 
 Parthian frontier-region, 19 ; during 
 the civil wars, 21 ; at Philippi, 22 ; 
 in Syria and Asia Minor, 22 ; [Judaea, 
 177 f.] ; seizure of Armenia, 45 n. ; 
 occupation of Armenia, 47 f. ; war 
 under Nero, 55 f. ; the East under the 
 Flavians, 61 f. ; coinage of pretenders, 
 65 n. ; war under Trajan, 65 f. ; his 
 oriental policy, 70 f. ; reaction under 
 Hadrian and Pius, 71 f. ; war under 
 Marcus and Verus, 74 f. ; wars under 
 Severus, 77 f. ; wars of Severus Anto- 
 ninus, 87 ; beginning of Sassanid 
 dynasty, 80 f., 89; Partho-Indian em- 
 pire, ii. 15 f., 17 n. 
 Parthini, i. 9. 
 
 Parthomasiris, ii. 66 n. , 67. 
 Patrae, i. 260 f. , 292 f. , 297. 
 Patriarchs of Jews, ii. 227 n, 
 Patrocles, Admiral, exploring Caspian, 
 ii. 130. 
 
 Patronatus, contracts of, ii. 329 n., 
 330 n. 
 
 Paul at Damascus, chronology of, ii. 
 149 n. 
 
 Paullinus, Gaius Suetonius, i. 179 f., 
 
 181, 182 ; ii. 313, 323. 
 Pedigrees, i. 287 f. 
 
 Pentapolis, Pontic, i. 308 f. ; coinage 
 of, 309. 
 
 Pergamus, i. 326, 329, 345, 350. 
 Persepolis (Istachr), ii. 83. 
 Persian empire, extent of, ii. 1 f. ; see 
 Sassanids. 
 
 Persis, viceroys of, how named, ii. 5 n. ; 
 king of, 7 ; royal dynasty, Sassanids, 
 81. 
 
 Pertinax, Helvius, i. 233. 
 
 Petra, client-state of Nabat, ii. 65 ; 
 residence of king, 148 ; traffic-route, 
 151, n. 288 ; constitution under 
 Hadrian, 155 ; structures of, 156 ; 
 rock-tombs, 157. 
 
 Petronius, Gaius, governor of Egypt, ii. 
 276. 
 
 Petronius, Publius, governor of Syria, 
 
 ii. 194. 
 Pessinus, i. 341, 342 n. 
 Phanagoria, i. 315, 319. 
 Pharasmanes (I.), ii. 43, 47, 53, 
 Pharasmanes (II.), ii. 73. 
 Pharisees, ii. 161, 183, 188, 208. 
 Pharnaces, i. 312, 339. 
 Pharnapates, ii. 23. 
 Pharsalus, i. 298 n, 
 Phasael, ii. 177 f. 
 Philadelphia (in Lydia), i. 360. 
 Ph adelphia (in Syria), ii. 146. 
 Philae, ii. 276, 278. 
 
 Philhellenism of the Romans, i. 276 f. 
 Philippi, i. 301, 303. 
 Philippopolis, i. an, 232, 260, 304, 
 3°7- 
 
 Philippus, Marcus Julius, proclaimed 
 emperor, ii. 91 f. ; cession of Euphrates 
 frontier, 92. 
 Philo, Neo-Judaism, ii. 170 ; deputa- 
 tions to Gaius, 193 ; silence ac- 
 counted for, 196 n. 
 Phoenician language in Africa, ii. 326 
 
 f. , 328 n. 
 Phraataces, ii. 39. 
 Phraates, ii. 24, 28 f., 34, 37, 38. 
 Phrygia, Great, i. 325 ; language, i. 328 ; 
 
 coins and inscriptions, 328. 
 Phylarchs, ii. 154, 158 n. 
 Picti, i. 189. 
 
 Piracy in Black Sea, i. 242 f. ; expedi- 
 tions to Asia Minor and Greece, 245 
 f. ; in Pisidia, 334 f. ; in Red Sea, ii. 
 298. 
 
 Piraeus, i. 278, 293. 
 Pirustae, i. 41. 
 
 Pisidia, independence, i. 334 ; subdued 
 by Augustus, 335 ; Pisidian colonies, 
 336 ; brigandage in, 351. 
 Piso, Lucius, Thracian war, i. 24 f. 
 Pityus, i. 242, 243 f. 
 Pius, Cestius, i. 365. 
 Plataeae, i. 266 n. , 267 n. 
 Plautius, Aulus, i. 175, 177. 
 Plotinus, ii. 126. 
 
 Plutarch, knowledge of Latin, i. 272 ; 
 account of his countrymen, 272 ; on 
 population of Greece, 268; character 
 of, 274 f. ; view of municipal duties, 
 286, 290. 
 Poetovio, i. 18, 23, 205, 206. 
 Polemon, i. 313 ; ii. 24, 35. 
 Polis and Nomos, ii. 237. 
 Politarchs, i. 300 n. 
 Pollio, Coelius, ii. 48. 
 Pompeianus, Tiberius Claudius, i. 233. 
 Pompeiopolis, ii. 102. 
 Pontus, province organised by Pom- 
 peius, i. 331 f. ; annexation of king- 
 dom of, ii. 61. 
 Poppaea Sabina, ii. 167. 
 Porphyrius, ii. 126. 
 Portus, mariners' guild at, ii. 257 n. 
 Posidonius of Apamea, quoted, ii. 133. 
 Postumus, Marcus Cassianius Latinius, 
 proclaimed emperor in Gaul, i. 164 ; 
 takes Cologne, 165 ; falsifications of 
 the Imperial Biographies in his case, 
 164 n. 
 Potaissa, i. 228. 
 Praaspa, ii. 29. 
 
 Praefectus, ii. 233 n., 246, 247 n. 
 
362 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Prasutagus, i. 176. 
 
 Premis, ii. 276. 
 
 Priests in Asia Minor, i. 348. 
 
 Princeps : position as to Egypt, ii. 233 f. ; 
 
 princeps et undecim primus, 335 n. 
 Priscus, Statius, ii. 75. 
 Priscus, governor of Macedonia, i. 240. 
 Proaeresios, ii. 268 n. 
 Probus, opens vine-culture to provincials, 
 i. 109 ; resumes aggressive against 
 the Germans, 166 f. ; transfers Bas- 
 tarnae to Roman bank, 249 ; subdues 
 Lydus in Isauria, 337; delivers Egypt 
 from Palmyrenes, ii. 108, 250, 277 ; 
 restores water-works on Nile, 253. 
 Provincia, alleged use of term, ii. 233 n. 
 Prucheion, ii. 250, 251. 
 Pselchis, ii. 276. 
 Pseudo-Nero, ii. 62, 64 f. 
 Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, son of An- 
 
 tonius, ii. 25. 
 Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, ii. 280. 
 Ptolemaeus, king of Mauretania, ii. 
 312 f. 
 
 Ptolemais, "Greek" city in Egypt, ii. 
 235, 236. 
 
 Ptolemais "for the Chase," on Red 
 
 Sea, ii. 280. 
 Ptolemies, court of the, ii. 245 f. 
 Punic inscriptions, ii. 326 n. 
 Punt, ii. 285 n. 
 
 Purple dyeworks, Syrian, ii. 137. 
 Puteoli, called Little Delos, ii. 139 n. 
 
 Quadi, i. 214, 229, 230, 233, 234, 
 237- 
 
 Quadratus, Ummidius, u. 48 f., 202. 
 Quarries, Egyptian, ii. 256. 
 Quietus, Fulvius, ii. 103. 
 Quietus, Lusius, i. 222 ; ii. 69, 223, 
 322 n. 
 
 Quinquegentiani, ii. 325 n. 
 Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius, i. 77. 
 Quirinius, Publius Sulpicius, i. 336 ; 
 ii. 136, 188, 315. 
 
 Raetia, affinity of Raeti, i. 196 ; sub- 
 jugation, 16, 17 ; organisation, 17 
 f. ; war in Raetia, 161 ; late civili- 
 sation, 196 ; military arrangements, 
 197 ; Raetian limes, 197. 
 
 Ratiaria, i. 214. 
 
 Religion in Spain, i. 75 ; in Gaul, 103 
 f. ; in Britain, 193 ; in Greece, 280 ; 
 in Asia Minor, 350 ; in Iran, ii. 9 f. ; 
 in Syria, 123 ; in Egypt, 265, 266 n. 
 
 Resaina, battle at, ii. 91 ; 95. 
 
 Rhadamistus, ii. 47 f. 
 
 Rhagae, ii. 4, 28. 
 
 Rhandeia, capitulation of, ii. 56, 57 f. 
 
 Rhapta, ii. 289. 
 
 Rhetoric, professors of, at Treves, i. 
 
 89 n. ; professorship of Greek, at 
 
 Rome, ii. 272. 
 Rhetors in Alexandria, ii. 264 n. 
 Rhine, boundary, i. 25 ; camps on left 
 
 bank, 31 f. ; positions on right bank, 
 
 33 f. ; canal to Zuider-Zee, 28, 34; 
 dyke between Ems and Lower Rhine, 
 
 34 ; Rhine-army as bearing on Gaul, 
 81 ; Rhine fleet, 119 ; army of Lower 
 Rhine, 147 n. 
 
 Rhodians, Dio's address to, i. 270 f., 
 285. 
 
 Rhoemetalces, i. 40, 209 f. 
 
 Riff in Morocco, ii. 321, 324. 
 
 Roads in Spain, i. 74 ; in Gaul, 109 f. ; 
 road-measurement in Gaul and Ger- 
 many, 102 f. ; in Britain, 192 ; in 
 Greece, 294 ; in Asia Minor, 358 ; 
 in Egypt, ii. 297 ; in Africa, 339. 
 
 Roman empire, character of its history 
 as compared with that of the republic, 
 i. 3 f. ; value of authorities for it, 4 ; 
 nature of task assigned to it, 4 f. ; 
 object and limits of the present work, 
 4-6 ; its divisions, 6 ; northern fron- 
 tier of, 7 f. 
 
 Roxolani, i. 217, 238. 
 
 Sabaeans, ii. 158, 286, 290. 
 Sabinus, Julius, i. 137, 139. 
 Sabinus, Oppius, i. 220. 
 Sacae, ii. 14 ; Sacastane, 15 ; empire 
 
 on Indus, 16, 17, n. 
 Sacrovir, Julius, rising of, i. 80 f. 
 Sadducees, ii. 161. 
 Sagalassus, i. 337. 
 Salabus, ii. 323. 
 
 Salassi, i. 15; extirpated by Augustus, 19. 
 
 Salice (Ceylon), ii. 301. 
 
 Salonae, i. 202, 204, 232. 
 
 Samaria, ii. 187. 
 
 Samaritans, ii. 160. 
 
 Sanabarus, ii. 16 n. 
 
 Sapor, ii. 91 ; title and policy of con- 
 quest, 99 f. 
 Sapphar, ii, 295. 
 Saracens, ii. 158 f. 
 
 Sarapis, ii. 265, 266 «., 268; festival of, 
 ii. 258 n . 
 
 Sardes, i. 327, 330. 
 
 Sarmatae, ii. 43. 
 
 Sarmizegetusa, i. 221, 228. 
 
 Sassanids, ii. 3 f. ; official historiography, 
 3 n. ; legend of, 81, 85 f. ; dynasty of 
 Persis, 81 ; extent of Sassanid king- 
 dom, 82 ; distinction between Sassa- 
 nid and Arsacid kingdoms, 82 n. ; 
 official titles of ruler, 83 n.; church 
 
INDEX. 
 
 363 
 
 and priesthood, 84 f. ; languages of 
 the country under, 85 f. ; new Persians 
 and Romans, 86 ; strike gold pieces, 
 86 f. ; chronology, 89 n. ; East for- 
 feited to Persians, 101. 
 Satraps, ii. 6. 
 
 Saturninus, Gaius Sentius, i. 38. 
 Saturninus, Lucius Antonius, i. 150. 
 Sauromates, i. 311, 314 n,, 317 n. 
 Savaria, i. 205, 206. 
 Saxa, Decidius, ii. 22. 
 Saxons, i. 60 f. , 167. 
 Scapula, Publius Ostorius, i. 178. 
 Scarbantia, i. 206. 
 
 Scaurus, Marcus, expedition against 
 
 Nabataeans, ii. 149 f. 
 Scironian cliffs, i. 294. 
 Scodra, i. 200. 
 Scordisci, i. 200 f. , 300. 
 Scoti, i. 189. 
 
 Scythians, i. 239, 242, 243 n., 311 ; 
 
 (Asiatic) ii. 14, 15, 17. 
 Segestes, i. 43, 46, 51, 62. 
 Segusiavi, i. 88 n., 92 n. 
 Sejanus, ii. 172 n., 173. 
 Seleucia (in western Cilicia), i. 334. 
 Seleucia Siderus (in Pisidia), i. 336, 337. 
 Seleucia (in Syria), ii. 127 n., 128. 
 Seleucia (on the Tigris), ii. 8, 11, 43, 
 
 44, 45, 68, 77, 79, 85, 113, 127. 
 Seleucids, ii. 3 al. 
 Seleucus, saying of, ii. 245. 
 Selga, i. 337, 359. 
 
 " Seminumidians and Semigaetulians," 
 
 ii. 341. 
 Semnones, i. 146, 161. 
 Senate and senators excluded from 
 
 Egypt, ii. 233 n. 
 Seneca, M. Annaeus and L. Annaeus, i. 
 
 76. 
 
 Septuagint, ii. 164. 
 Sequani, i. 80, 99, 139. 
 Seres, i. 302. 
 
 Servianus, letter (of Hadrian?) to, ii. 
 
 256 n. 
 Severianus, ii. 74. 
 
 Severus, Alexander ; see Alexander 
 Severus. 
 
 Severus Antoninus ; see Caracalla. 
 
 Severus, Septimius, Wall of Severus, i. 
 187 n. ; conflicts in Britain, 189 ; 
 death at Eburacum, 189, 269 ; Par- 
 thian wars under, ii. 77 f. ; title of 
 Parthicus, 78 n. ; partition of Syria, 
 118. 
 
 Severus, Sextus Julius, ii. 224 f. 
 Sicca, ii. 332. 
 Sido, i. 216, 229. 
 
 Silk, Chinese, ii. 302 ; silk of Berytus, 
 ii- 137 f- 
 
 Silures, i. 177 f., 179, 181. 
 Silvanus Aelianus, Tiberius Plautius, i. 
 217. 
 
 Simon, son of Gioras, ii. 214. 
 
 Singidunum, i. 213, 228. 
 
 Sinnaces, ii. 44. 
 
 Sinope, i. 331 f. 
 
 Siraci, i. 316 n. , 317, 319. 
 
 Siscia, i. 9, 205. 
 
 Sittius, Publius, ii. 311 n., 332. 
 
 Skipetars, i. 199. 
 
 Slaves, treatment of, in Greece, i. 273 ; 
 
 traffic in, through Galatia, ii. 360. 
 Smyrna, i. 325 f. , 329, 346, 354 ; Jews 
 
 at, ii. 163 n. 
 Sohaemus of Hemesa, ii. 49. 
 Sohaemus, king of Armenia, ii. 75 n. , 
 
 126. 
 
 Sophene, ii. 115. 
 
 Sophists, addresses of, i. 363 f. ; Asia 
 Minor takes the lead in, 365. 
 
 Sostra, dam at, ii. 102. 
 
 Spain, conclusion of its conquest, i. 6 
 f. ; visit of Augustus to organise, 64 ; 
 triumphs over, 63 n. , 64 ; warfare in 
 north of Spain, 64 f. ; military organ- 
 isation and distribution of legions, 65 
 ?i. , 66 ; incursions of Moors, 67 ; 
 introduction of Italian municipal law, 
 67 ; diffusion of Roman language, 70 ; 
 cantons, 71 ; broken up, 72 ; levy, 
 73 ; traffic and roads, 73 f. ; religious 
 rites, 75 ; Spaniards in Latin litera- 
 ture, 75-77. 
 
 Sparta, treatment of, i. 259 f. 
 
 Statianus, Oppius, ii. 29. 
 
 Statues, honorary, i. 291 n. 
 
 Stobi, i. 301. 
 
 Successianus, i. 244. 
 
 Suebi, i. 60 f., 206, 214, 216, 220. 
 
 Sufetes, ii. 329, 330 n. 
 
 Sugambri, i. 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 124 ; 
 probably = Cugerni, 124 n. 
 
 Sufis, i. 177, 194. 
 
 Suren, ii. 6, 84. 
 
 Syene, ii. 256, 280. 
 
 Syllaeos, ii. 291 n. 
 
 Symmachus, i. 113. 
 
 Synhedrion of Jerusalem, constitution 
 and jurisdiction, ii. 187 f. ; disappears, 
 217. 
 
 Synnada, i. 326. 
 
 Synoekismos, i. 295 f. 
 
 Syria, conquest of, ii. 116 ; boundaries 
 of territory, 117 ; provincial govern- 
 ment, and its changes, 117 f. ; parti- 
 tion into Coele-Syria and Syro-Phoe- 
 nicia, 118 ; troops and quarters of 
 legions, 63 n., 118 n. ; inferiority in 
 discipline, 66 n., 119 f. ; Hellenising 
 
364 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of, 120 f . ; Syria = New Macedonia, 
 121 ; continuance of native language, 
 121 f. ; Macedonian native and Greek 
 names, 121 f . ; worship, 123; later 
 Syriac literature, 124;?. ; Syro-Hellenic 
 mixed culture, 125 ; minor Syrian 
 authorship, 130 ' f. ; epigram and 
 feuilleton, 130 f. ; culture of soil, 133 
 f. ; wines of, 137 ; manufactures, 137; 
 commerce, 137 f. ; ship-captains, 138 
 n. ; Syrian factories abroad, 138 f. ; 
 Syrian merchants in the West, 139 n. ; 
 Syro - Christian Diaspora, 140 n. ; 
 wealth of Syrian traders, 140 ; country 
 houses in valley of Orontes, 141 ; mili- 
 tary arrangements after 63 A. D. , 2io«. 
 
 Syria, Eastern, conditions of culture in, 
 ii. 144 f. ; Greek influence in, 145 f. ; 
 inhabitants of Arabian stock, 145 ; 
 Pompeius strengthens Greek urban 
 system, 146 ; civilisation under Roman 
 rule, 153 f. ; agriculture and com- 
 merce, 154 ; buildings, 156 ; south 
 Arabian immigration, 158. 
 
 Syrtis, Great, ii. 306, 316. 
 
 Tacapae, ii. 314. 
 
 Tacfarinas, ii. 313, 314, 317, 318. 
 
 Tacitus, dialogue on oratory, i. 113 ; 
 picture of the Germans, 169 ; narra- 
 tive of war in Britain criticised, 
 181 n. 
 
 Tadmor, ii. 92 ?i. 
 
 Talmud, beginnings of, ii. 219, 231. 
 Tanais, i. 315 n., 319. 
 Tarraco, i. 64. 
 
 Tarraconensis, towns in the, i. 68. 
 Tarsus, ii. 101 122. 
 Taunus, i. 33, 148. 
 Tava (Tay), i. 183, 186. 
 Tavium, i. 341, 342 n. 
 Taxila, ii. 14 n. 
 
 Teachers and salaries at Teos, i. 362. 
 Teima, description of, ii. 285 n. 
 Temple - tribute, Jewish, ii. 169, 173 ; 
 
 temple-screen, tablets of warning on, 
 
 189 n. 
 
 Tencteri, i. 26, 27, 124, 133, 139 f. 
 Tenelium, ii. 335. 
 
 Teos, decree as to instruction, i. 362. 
 Tertullian, ii. 342, 345. 
 Tetrarch, title of, ii. 177 n. 
 Tetricus submits to Aurelian, i. 166. 
 Teutoburg forest, i. 53, 55. 
 Thaema, fa. 148 n. 
 Thagaste, ii. 341. 
 Thamugadi, ii. 319. 
 Themistius, i. 342. 
 Theocracy, Mosaic, ii. 160. 
 Thessalonica, i. 300 f. , 302. 
 
 Thessaly, i. 297 f. ; diet in Larisa, 298. 
 
 Theudas, ii. 204. 
 
 Theudosia, i. 315. 
 
 Theveste, ii. 317, 320, 339. 
 
 Thrace : dynasts and tribes, i. 13 f . ; 
 vassal-princes, 14 ; war of Piso, 24 
 f. , 210; Thracian stock, 207 f . ; 
 language, 208 ; worship, 209 ; prin- 
 cipate, 209 f. ; province, 210 f.; rising 
 under Tiberius, 211 ; garrison and 
 roads, 212 f. ; Hellenism and Roman- 
 ism in, 212 f . ; Hellenism imported, 
 302, 304 ; Philip and Alexander, 
 
 303 ; Lysimachus, 303 ; empire of 
 Tylis, 303 ; later Macedonian rulers, 
 
 304 ; Roman province, 304 f. ; Greek 
 towns in, 305 ; strategies of, 306 n. ; 
 townships receiving civic rights from 
 Trajan, '307 ; "Thracian shore," i. 
 212. 
 
 Thubursicum, ii. 336. 
 Thubusuctu, ii. 325 n. 
 Tiberias, ii. 183. 
 
 Tiberius, assists Drusus in Raetia, i. 
 16, 17; first Pannonian war, 22 f. , 
 205 ; German war, 30 f. ; resigns 
 command on Rhine, 35 ; reconcilia- 
 tion with Augustus, 36 ; resumes 
 command, 36 ; further campaigns in 
 Germany, 36 f. ; expedition to North 
 Sea, 37 ; campaign against Marobod- 
 uus, 37 f. ; return to Illyricum, 40 f. ; 
 again on Rhine after defeat of Varus, 
 48 f. ; recall of Germanicus, 55 ; 
 German policy, 55 ; motives for 
 changing it, 56-59; Gallic rising 
 under, 80 ; Frisian rising, 124 ; road- 
 making in Dalmatia, 203 ; procures 
 recognition for Van nius, 215 ; Dacians 
 under, 217 ; takes Greece into his 
 own power, 276 ; small number of 
 statues, 291 f. ; leads force into Ar- 
 menia, ii. 37 f. ; again commissioned 
 to the East, but declines, 39 ; mission 
 of Germanicus to the East, 40 f. ; 
 Artabanus and Tiberius, 42 f. ; mission 
 of Vitellius, 42 f. ; movement against 
 Aretas, 151 ; treatment of the Jews, 
 172 ; attitude towards Jewish customs, 
 189, 190 ; war against Tacfarinas, 
 .317 f- 
 
 Tigranes, brother of Artaxias, invested 
 with Armenia by Tiberius, ii. 37, 
 38. 
 
 Tigranes, installed in Armenia by 
 
 Corbulo, ii. 54 f. 
 Tigranocerta, ii. 45, 54. 
 Tigris, boundary of, ii. 71, 115 n. 
 Timagenes, ii. 106. 
 Timarchides, Claudius, i. 283 n. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 365 
 
 Timesitheus, Furius, ii. 91. 
 Tingi, i. 67 ; ii. 360 f., 312 f., 314, 321, 
 33i- 
 
 Tiridates, proclaimed king of Parthia 
 under Augustus, ii. 34, 35, 37. 
 
 Tiridates set up as king of Parthia in 
 opposition to Artabanus, under Ti- 
 berius, and superseded, ii. 44. 
 
 Tiridates Li, king of Armenia, brother 
 of Vologasus I., ii. 52, 53, 54, 55, 
 58, 59, 60 [and ii. 11]. 
 
 Tiridates II., king of Armenia under 
 Caracalla, ii. 87. 
 
 Tiridates, king of Armenia under Sapor, 
 ii. 99. 
 
 Titus, against Jerusalem, ii. 213 f. ; 
 
 Arch of, 216 ; refuses to eject Jews at 
 
 Antioch, 219. 
 Togodumnus, i. 175 f. 
 Tombstones, Gallic, i. 116. 
 Tomis, i. 13, 227 n., 305, 308; Ovid's 
 
 description of, 309; Mariners' guild, 
 
 310 n. 
 
 Town -districts in Egypt, ii. 235 f. 
 Trachonitis, ii. 144 ; see Hauran. 
 Trajanus, M. Ulpius : military road from 
 
 Mentz towards Offenburg, i. 153 ; 
 
 settlements in Upper Germany, 160 ; 
 
 mission thither, 160 n. ; Dacian war, 
 
 221 f . ; second Dacian war, 222 f . ; 
 
 column in Rome, 224 f. ; confers civic 
 
 rights on Thracian townships, 309 ; 
 
 Parthian war, ii. 65 f. ; death, 69 f. ; 
 
 triumph accorded after death, 70 ; 
 
 Oriental policy, 70 f. ; erects province 
 
 of Arabia, 143 ; Jewish rising under, 
 
 221, f. ; enlargement of Egyptian 
 
 canal, 297 f. 
 Transport-ship, Egyptian, ii. 256, 257 n. 
 Trapezus, i. 245, 332 ; ii. 35, 53. 
 Trebellianus Rufus, Titus, i. 211. 
 Treveri, i. 80, 93, 94, 102, 136, 137, 
 
 139, 140. 
 
 Treves, primacy in Belgica, i. 89 ; sub- 
 sequently capital of Gaul, 89; receives 
 Italian rights, 99. 
 
 Triballi.i. 12. 
 
 Triboci, i. 117, 140, 147. 
 
 Trinovantes, i. 170, 171 n. , 180. 
 
 Tripolis, ii. 314 f. 
 
 Trismegistus, Hermes, ii. 261, 266 n., 
 268. 
 
 Troesmis, i. 227. 
 
 Trogodytes, ii. 280, 286. 
 
 Trogus Pompeius, historian of Hellenic 
 
 type, i. no. 
 Trumpilini, i. 15. 
 Tungri, i. 133, 136. 
 Turan, ii. 12, 17, 45. 
 Turbo, Quintus Marcius, ii. 223. 
 
 Tyana, i. 333; ii. 109. 
 
 Tylis, empire of, i. 303. 
 
 Tyra, i. 226, 239, 242, 244, 305, 310. 
 
 Tyrian factories in Italy, ii. 138 n. 
 
 Ubii, i. 25, 35, 97, 98 f., 102, 117, 
 118, 119, 134, 136; Roman town of, 
 168. 
 
 Ulpia Noviomagus, i. 168. 
 Ulpia Traiana, i. 168. 
 Universe, anonymous treatise on, ii. 
 168. 
 
 Usipes, i. 26, 27, 51, 124, 133, 150. 
 Utica, ii. 331. 
 
 Vaballathus, ii. 106 n. , 108. 
 
 Valerianus, Publius Licinius, conquers 
 Aemilianus, i. 241 ; piratical expedi- 
 tion of Goths, 243 f. ; character, 247 ; 
 ii. 100 ; capture by the Persians, 
 100 n., 101 n. 
 
 Vangio, i. 215, 229. 
 
 Vannius, i. 215, 216. 
 
 Vardanes, ii. 45, 46. 
 
 Varus, Publius Quintilius, character, i. 
 44 ; defeat and death, 45-47; locality 
 of the disaster, 47 n. ; governor of 
 Syria, ii. 184. 
 
 Vascones, i. 66. 
 
 Vatinius, Publius, i. 89. 
 
 Veleda, i. 140, 142, 145. 
 
 Veneti, i. 200. 
 
 Verulamium, i. 179, 180, 193. 
 
 Verus, Lucius, character of, i. 232 f. ; 
 in the East, ii. 75. 
 
 Verus, Martius, ii. 75. 
 
 Vespasianus : municipal organisation in 
 Spain, i. 69, 73 ; proclaimed as 
 emperor, 128 ; instigation of Civilis, 
 130 f. ; consequences of Batavian war, 
 143 f. ; takes possession of ' ' Hel- 
 vetian desert," 152 ; pushes forward 
 camps on the Danube, 219 ; Eastern 
 arrangements, ii. 62 f. ; Jewish war, 
 210 f. ; possessing himself of Rome 
 through corn-fleet, 252 ; nicknamed 
 the "sardine-dealer" and "six-far- 
 thing-man," 263. 
 
 Vestinus, L. Julius, ii. 273 n. 
 
 Vetera (Castra), i. 32, 49, 118, 133, 
 138. 
 
 Via Augusta in Spain, i. 74 ; in Gaul, 
 
 109 f. 
 Via Claudian, i. 20. 
 Via Egnatia, i. 302. 
 Victorinus, Gaius Aufidius, i. 230. 
 Vienna, i. 87, 88 n. , 91. 
 Viminacium, i. 212, 213, 228, 241. 
 Vindelici, i. 16, 17, 196. 
 
366 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Vindex, rising of, i. 82, 127, 128 f. 
 Vindex, Marcus Macrinius, i. 234. 
 Vindobona, i. 206. 
 Vindonissa, i. 18, 119, 140, 159. 
 Vine-culture in Gaul, i. 108 f. ; restricted 
 
 by Domitian, 108 ; on Moselle, 109. 
 Viroconium, camp of, i. 178, 182. 
 Vitellius, Lucius, i. 128, 129, 130 ; ii. 
 
 42, 43, 44, 213. 
 Vocula, Villius, i. 132, 134-136, 137, 
 
 138. 
 
 Volcae, i. 86 f., 93. 
 Vologasias, ii. 47, 65, 98 n. 
 Vologasus I., ii. 47, 49, 52, 54 f., 57. 
 
 62, 63, 64, 65 n. 
 Vologasus IV., ii. 74. 
 Vologasus V., ii. 77 f. 
 Vonones, ii. 40, 41. 
 Vorodes, Septimius, ii. 104 n. 
 
 Weaving in Asia Minor, i. 360. 
 Wines, Gallic, i. 109. 
 
 Xenophon, of Cos, physician, i. 361 n. 
 
 Zabdas, ii, 105 n., 107, 109. 
 
 Zaitha, ii. 92. 
 
 Zarai, tariff of, ii. 338 n. 
 
 Zealots, ii. 191, 203 f., 207, 208. 
 
 Zenobia, government of, ii. 106 f. ; claim 
 to joint-rule, 106 n. ; occupation of 
 Egypt, 107, 249 f. ; Aurelian against, 
 108 ; battle of Hemesa, 109 f. ; cap- 
 ture, no. 
 
 Zenodorus, of Abila, ii. 147. 
 
 Zimises, ii. 322 n. 
 
 Zoelae, i. 72 n. 
 
 Zoskales, ii. 283. 
 
 Zula, ii. 280. 
 
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 remarks an able critic. ' His work will be perused with eager avidity, and the unlearned as well 
 as the learned .will read his book with enjoyment and delight.' , 
 
 ' My narrative embraces those independent civilisations of the ancient East which came to 
 exercise a mutual influence on each other. First we follow the kingdom on the_ Nile and the 
 kingdoms of Hither Asia as far as the point where the nations of Iran began to influence their 
 destinies. Then I attempt to set forth the peculiar development of the Aryan tribes in the valleys 
 of the Indus and the Ganges, down to the times of Ishandragupta and Azoka. Then follows the 
 history of the Bactrians, the Medes, and the Persians, until the period when the nations of the 
 table-land of Irana were united by Darius with the countries of Western Asia, when Aryan life and 
 Aryan civilisation have gained the supremacy over the whole region from Ceylon to the Nile and 
 the Hellespont. The forms of life among the great kingdoms of Asia are finally brought face to 
 face with the more youthful civilisation attained by the Hellenes in their mountain cantons. This 
 new development we follow down to the first great shock when East and West met m conflict, and 
 the Achaimenids sought to crush the Hellenes under the weight of Asia. With the failure of this 
 attempt my history of the ancient world concludes.' — Author's Preface. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF ROMAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 By R. W. Browne, M.A., Ph.D., late Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Professor 
 of Classical Literature in King's College, London. A new Ed., in demy 8vo, 9s. 
 
 'Professor Browne is not only a classical scholar, but one of the most graceful of English 
 modern writers. In clearness, purity, and elegance of style, his compositions are unsurpassed ; 
 and his sketches of the lives and works of the great authors of antiquity are models of rennea 
 taste and sound criticism. We esteem very highly the value of a work like this. It is the result 
 of great research and profound study ; but it is also popular and entertaining. —Morning i'osT. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF GREECE. 
 
 From the Earliest Time down to 337 B.C. From the German of Dr. Ernst 
 Curtius, Rector of the University of Berlin. By A. W. Ward, M.A. In 5 
 vols, demy 8vo, with Index, 90s. ; or each Volume separately, price 18s. 
 
 ' A history known to scholars as one of the profoundest, most original, and most instructive of 
 modern times.' — Globe. '.. , . . 
 
 ' We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtuis s book better than by saying that it may be ntly 
 ranked with Theodor Mommsen's great work.'— Spectator. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF GREECE. 
 
 ' From the Earliest Times to the overthrow of the Persians at Salamis and 
 Plataea. From the German of Professor Max Duncker. In demy 8vo (Uniform 
 in size with 'The History of Antiquity.') Vol. I., translated by S. F. Alleyne, 
 15s. Vol. II., translated by S. F. Alleyne and Dr. Evelyn Abbott, 15s. 
 
 LONDON 
 
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