Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/24

 ascribed to the fashion of extravagance set by Nero's court, during the ascendancy of his favorite Sabina Poppaea, whose influence lasted from 58 until her death in 65 A. D. Pliny's reference to the enormous quantity of spices used at Poppaea's funeral (XII, 41) indicates such an increased trade; which he further confirms (VI, 26) by stating that specie amounting to about $22,000,000 per year was required to balance the trade, and that these Indian imports sold in Rome at one hundred times their cost. Pliny's figures are untrustworthy, as in XII, 41, he estimates a little over $4,000,000 as the balance of specie required for the entire trade with India, Arabia and China; but a sudden increase in commerce in none the less evident.

The absence of any description in the Periplus of trade with the coasts of the Persian Gulf, then subject to Parthia, suggests that it was written at a time when Rome and Parthia were at war. Our author's descriptions, even of the southern coast of Arabia, stop at the Frankincense Country and its dependency, the island of Masira; and he explains that the coast beyond the islands of Kuria Muria was "subject to Persia" and thus closed to him. According to the account given by Rawlinson, (Sixth Monarchy, XVI,) conflicting claims as to the Armenian succession led Rome to make war on Parthia in 55 A. D., the second year of Nero's reign. The Parthians, at the time occupied with civil war in the South (possibly even in their newly-acquired South Arabian possessions), gave hostages and abandoned their Armenian pretensions; which, however, they reasserted in 58, when war broke out anew. Hostilities continued in a desultory way until 62, when the two powers agreed upon a mutual evacuation of Armenia and a settlement of the dispute by a Parthian embassy which was to visit Rome. This truce occurred in the summer of 62. The embassy made its visit in the autumn and returned without a treaty. The truce was broken the same winter by a Roman invasion of Armenia, which was repulsed and the truce renewed. A second Parthian embassy to Rome in the spring of 63 settled the matter by placing a Parthian prince on the Armenian throne and requiring him to receive investiture from the Roman Emperor. This ceremony occurred in 65 A. D.

Hostilities between the two countries certainly ceased in the winter of 62 and probably, as far as commercial interests were concerned, in the summer of that year. Therefore, the date of the Periplus, or at any rate the date of the voyage on which it was based, can probably be fixed not later than the summer of 62 and not earlier than the summer of 58.

The possibilities are rather in favor of the second or third year of