Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/73

 In the 3d century B.C. the Habashat or "gatherers" were supreme in their "incense-lands," and their allies and, perhaps, relatives, the Sabaeans, worked with them in the spice and incense trade to Egypt, then at the height of its power under the Ptolemies. The prosperity of the trade is attested by Agatharchides. The Habashat held Socotra and Cape Guardafui, and much of the East African coast. But the succeeding centuries were turbulent. In order along the south Arabian coast, from west to east, were the Homerites (Himyar), the Sabaeans, Hadramaut, Kataban, and the Habashat. Beyond were tribes under Persian influence. With the establishment of the Parthian, or Arsacid, empire, came a wave of conquest by the Parthians throughout eastern Arabia. Almost simultaneously came the African campaigns of Ptolemy Euergetes, said to have reached Mosyllum on the Somali coast (Periplus, §10). The two incense-lands were hard hit. Then came the conquest of Kataban by Hadramaut and a threatening policy by Himyar against the Sabaeans. Glaser has edited an inscription telling of an alliance of Djadarot, King of the Habashat, with three successive kings of Saba, for mutual protection against Hadramaut and Himyar. This dates from about 75 B.C. Isidorus of Charax Spasini, writing in the time of Augustus, mentions a chief of the Omanites in the Incense-Country, named Goaisos (cf. the language of the Habashat, Geez) who was apparently of the same race. But very soon afterwards the Parthians renewed their attack from the East; Himyar overthrew Saba and demolished its port, and Hadramaut moved on Habash. Egypt was in a bad way, and the Romans who were taking over its government were encouraging a direct sea-trade from India, receiving Indian embassies, and breaking up the system which had so long closed the Arabian gulf to Indian shipping. Despoiled of their incense-terraces in Arabia and of their commercial activities at Guardafui, the Habashat sought a new home; and in the Tigre highlands built their stronghold, the Oppidium Sacae, which soon became the city of Axum. It lay across the natural trade-route from India to Egypt; from Adulis, the sea-port, to the Atbara River, was no great journey, and through a fertile country instead of the desert to the north. Here, then, so long as the "Berbers" of the lowlands could be dominated, a state could flourish; and hence the picture of its King Zoscales in §5, "miserly in his ways and always striving for more." For six centuries the new kingdom of Abyssinia kept up its alliance with Rome and Constantinople against its ancient enemies the Homerites, and their allies the Parthians and Persians. The kingdom grew apace, and twice it overran southern Arabia; and not until the later Mohammedan conquests