Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/882

 8G2 SABA. accounts of them from the liistorical books of the Aetryptian kings, which he consuhed in tlie Alex- andreian Library. (Diod. iii. 38, 4fj.) There can be little question that Herodotus, although he does not name the Sabaeans, describes them in various passages, when speaking of the Arabians, the south- ernmost people of the earth. (Herod, ii. 86, iii. 107 — 113.) The commerce of Yerrien with Plioenicia and Aegypt under the Pharaohs would render the name of the Sabaeans familiar in all the havens of the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. The Aegyptians imported spices largely, since they em- ployed them in embalming the dead; and the Phoe- nicians required them for the Syrian markets, since perfumes have in all ages been both favourite luxuries and among the most popular medicines of the East. At the time when Ptolemy wrote (in the second century a.d.) their trade with Syria and Aegypt, as the carriers of the silks and spices so much in request at Rome, brought the Sabaeans witliin ken of the scientific geographer and of the learned generally. 3. Accordingly, we meet in the Roman poets with numerous, although vague, allusions to the wealth and luxury of the Sabaeans. " Moiles," " di- vites," " beati,'' are the epithets constantly applied to them. (See Catull. xi. 5; Propert. ii. iO. 16, ib. 29. 17, iii. 13. 8; Virgil, Geoi-g. i. 57, ii. 150, Aeneid.l 416; Horace, Carm. i. 29. 2, ii. 12. 24; Id. Epist. i. 6. G, ib. 7. 36 ; Statiits, Silv. iv. 8. 1 ; Senec. Hercules, Oet. v. 376.) The expedition of Aelius Gallus, indeed (b. C. 24), may have tended to bring Southern Arabia more immediately under the notice of the Romans. But their knowledge was at best very limited, and rested less on facts than on rumours of Sabaean opulence and luxury. Pliny and the geographers are rather better in- formed, but even they had very erroneous conceptions of the physical or commercial character of this nation. Not until the passage to India by the Cape had been discovered was Sabaea or Yemen really explored by Europeans. Assuming, then, that the Sabeans were a widely- spread race, extending from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, and running up to the borders of the desert in the Arabian peninsula, we proceed to exa- mine the grounds of their reputation for excessive opulence and luxury. A portion of their wealth was undoubtedly native; they supplied Aegypt and Syria from the remotest periods with frankincense and aromatics; and since the soil of Yemen is highly productive, they took in exchange, not the corn or wine of their neighbours, but the precious metals. But aromatics were by no means the capital source of their wealth. The Sabaeans possessed for many centuries the keys of Indian commerce, and were the intermediate factors between Aegypt and Syria, as these countries were in turn the Indi.an agents for Europe. During the Pharaonic eras of Aegypt, no attempt was made to disturb the monopoly of the Sabaeans in this trathc. Ptolemy Philadelphus (b. c. 274) was the first Aegyptian sovereign who dis- cerned the value of the Red Sea and its harbours to his kingdom. He established his Indian emporium at Myos-Hormus or Arsinoe, and under his succes- sors Berenice, which was connected with Coptos on the Nile by a canal, shared the profits of this re- munei-ative trade. But even then the Sabaeans lost a small portion only of their former exclusive ad- vantages. They were no longer the carriers of Indian exports to Aegypt, but they were still the SABA. importers of them from India itself. The Aegyptian fleets proceeded no further than the haven of Sab- batha or Mariaba; while the Sabaeans, hmg prior even to the voyage of Nearchus (b. c. 330), ventured across the ocean with the monsoon to Ceylon and the Malabar coast. Their vessels were of larger build than the ordinary merchant-ships of the Greeks, and their mariners were more skilful and intrepid than the Greeks, who, it is recorded, shrunk back with terror from the Indian Ocean. The track of the Sabaean navigators lay along the coast of Ge- drosia, since Nearchus found along its shores many Arabic names of places, and at Possem engaged a pilot acquainted with those seas. In proportion as luxury increased in the Syro-Macedonian cities (and their extravagance in the article of perfmnes alone is recorded by Athenaeus, xii.), and subsequently in Rome, the Indian trade became more valuable to the Sabaeans. It was computed in the third centuiy of the Empire, that, for every pound of silk brought to Italy, a pound of silver or even gold was sent to Arabia; and the computation might fairly be ex- tended to the aromatics employed so lavishly by the Romans at their banquets and funerals. (Comp. Petronius, c. 64, with Plutarch, Sulla, c. 38.) There were two avenues of this tratfic, one overland by Petra and the Elanitic gulf, the other up the Red Sea to Arsinoe, the Ptolemaic canal, and Alex- andreia. We may therefore fairly ascribe the extra- ordinary wealth of the Sabaeans to their long monopoly of the Indian trade. Their country, how- ever, was itself highly productive, and doubtless, from the general character of the Arabian peninsula, its southern extremity was densely populated. The Sabaeans are described by the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Arabian writers as a numerous people, of lofty stature, implying abundance of the means of life; and the recurrence of the name of S.aba though- out the entire region between the Red Sea and Car- mania shows that they were populous and powerful enough to send out colonies. The general barrenness of the northern and central districts of Arabia drove the population down to the south. The highlands that border on the Indian Ocean are di^^tinguished by the plenty of wood and water; the air is tem- perate, the animals are numerous (the horses of' Yemen are strong and serviceable), and the fruits delicious. With such abundance at home the Sa- baeans were enabled to devote themselves to trade with undivided energy and success. Nothing more strikingly displays the ignorance of the ancient geographers as regards Sabaea than their descriplions of the opulence of the country. Their narratives are equally pompous and extrava- gant. Accoriling to Agatharchides and Diodorus, the odour of the spice-woods was so potent that the inhabitants were liable to apoplexies, and counter- acted the noxious perfumes by the ill odours of burnt goats'-hair and asphaltite. The decorations of their houses, their furniture, and even their domestic uten- sils were of gtld and silver : they drank from vases blazing with gems; they used cinnamon chips for firewood; and no king could compete in luxury with the merchant-princes of the Sabaeans. We have only to remember the real or imputed sumptuousness of a few of the Dutch and English East India Companieti' merchants in the 18th century, while the trade of the East was in a few hands, in order to appreciate the worth of these descriptions by Agatharchides and Diodorus. The delusions of the ancients were first dis«