Note 263 — Chapter XII · EGYPT. (continued 2)

The account of Strabo (xvi. 4, 22 f., p. 780) as to the Arabian expedition of his “friend” Gallus (φίλος ἡμῖν καὶ ἑταῖρος, Strabo, ii. 5, 12, p. 118), in whose train he travelled in Egypt, is indeed trustworthy and honest, like all his accounts, but evidently accepted from this friend without any criticism. The battle in which 10,000 of the enemy and two Romans fell, and the total number of the fallen in this campaign, which is seven, are self-condemned; but not better is the attempt to devolve the want of success on the Nabataean vizier Syllaeos by means of a “treachery,” such as is familiar with defeated generals. Certainly the latter was so far fitted for a scapegoat, as he some years afterwards was on the instigation of Herod brought to trial before Augustus, condemned and executed (Josephus, Arch. xvi. 10); but although we possess the report of the agent who managed this matter for Herod in Rome, there is not a word to be found in it of this betrayal. That Syllaeos should have had the design of first destroying the Arabians by means of the Romans, and then of destroying the latter themselves, as Strabo “thinks,” is, looking to the position of the client-states of Rome, quite irrational. It might rather be thought that Syllaeos was averse to the expedition, because the commercial traffic through the Nabataean land might be injured by it. But to accuse the Arabian minister of treachery because the Roman transports were not fitted for navigating the Arabian coast, or because the Roman army was compelled to carry water with it on camels, to eat durra and dates instead of bread and flesh, and butter instead of oil; to bring forward the deceitfulness of the guidance as an excuse for the fact that 180 days were employed for the forward march over a distance overtaken on the return march in 60 days; and lastly, to criticise the quite correct remark of Syllaeos that a march by land from Arsinoe to Leuce Come was impracticable, by saying that a caravan route went thence to Petra, only shows what a Roman of rank was able to make a Greek man of letters believe.