Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/342

 320 THE DECLINE AND FALL of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected his holy standard/^ that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire ; yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the mountains ; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to foi-get his distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of Justinian represent the state of the independent Arabs^ who were divided by interest or affection in the long quarrel of the East : tlie trilie of Gas.san was allowed to encamp on the Syrian territorj'^ ; the princes of Hirci were permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous ; but their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity capricious : it was an easier task to excite tlian to disarm these roving barbarians ; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weak- ness both of Rome and of Persia. From Mecca to the Eu- phrates, the Arabian tribes-'- were confounded by the Greeks and Latins under the general appellation of Saracens,'-' a name which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence. Their The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their dom'and '"*" ii^tional independence ; but the Arab is personally free ; and he character enjoys, in somc degree,'the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives of nature. In evei-y tribe, superstition, or gi'ati- tude, or fortune has exalted a particular family above the heads Yemen between Mareb and the Ocean. The non ante devictis Sabaeae regibus (Od. i. 29), and the intacti Arabuni thesauri (Od. iii. 24), of Horace attest the virgin purity of Arabia. [The mistake of Gallus lay in not sailing directly to Yemen.] •'1 See the imperfect history of Yemen in Pocock, Specimen, p. 55-66, of Hira, p. 66-74, of Gassan, p. 75-78, as far as it could be known or preserved in the time of ignorance. [The best authority is H. C. Kay, Hist, of the Yemen, 1892 (from Arabic sources, and chiefly Omara, al-Khazraji, and al-Jannabi).] ' -^ The '^apaKTiviKa (f)va, ^jLVpidSf<; ravra Kal to 7rA.irtO"Tol' avTOiV ep7jfi.oi'6^tol. Ka'i aSeViroTot, are described by Menander (Excerpt. Legation, p. 149 [fr. 15, p. 220, ed. Miiller]), Procopius de Bell. Persic. 1. i. c. 17, 19, 1. ii. c. 10), anri, in the most lively colours, by Ammianus Marcellinus (1. xiv. c. 4), who had spoken of them as early as the reign of Marcus. ^■" The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by .mniianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Sarak,i (^icto. Na3aratou!. Stephan. de Urbibus), more plausibly from the Arabic words which signify a thievish character, or Oriental s.xaXon (Holtinger, Hist. Oriental. 1. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Speci- men, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient, tom. iv. p. 567). Yet the last and most jjopular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy (.rabia, p. 2, 18, in Hudson, tom. iv.), who expressly remarks the western and southern position of the Sara- cens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt. The appellation cannot therefore allude to any Tia/w/a/ character ; and, since it was imposed by strangers, it must be found, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language. [Sharki = Eastern : commonly used for Levantine.^