Note 267 — Chapter XII · EGYPT. (continued 2)

Our only information as to this remarkable expedition has been preserved to us by the Egyptian captain, who about the year 75 has described his voyage on the coasts of the Red Sea. He knows (c. 26) the Adane of later writers, the modern Aden, as a village on the coast (κώμη παραθαλάσσιος), which belongs to the realm of Charibael, king of the Homerites, but was earlier a flourishing town, and was so termed (εὐδαίμων δ' ἐπεκλήθη πρότερον οὖσα πόλις) because before the institution of the direct Indo-Egyptian traffic this place served as a mart: νῦν δὲ οὐ πρὸ πολλοῦ τῶν ἡμετέρων χρόνων Καῖσαρ αὐτὴν κατεστρέψατο. The last word can here only mean “destroy,” not, as more frequently, “subdue,” because the conversion of the town into a village is to be accounted for. For Καῖσαρ Schwanbeck (Rhein. Mus. neue Folge, vii. 353) has proposed Χαριβαήλ, C. Müller Ἰλασάρ (on account of Strabo, xvi. 4, 21, p. 782): neither is possible—not the latter, because this Arabian dynast ruled in a far remote district and could not possibly be presumed as well known; not the former, because Charibael was a contemporary of the writer, and there is here reported an incident which occurred before his time. We shall not take offence at the tradition, if we reflect what interest the Romans must have had in setting aside the Arabian mart between India and Egypt, and in bringing about direct intercourse. That the Roman accounts are silent as to this occurrence is in keeping with their habit; the expedition, which beyond doubt was executed by an Egyptian fleet and simply consisted in the destruction of a presumably defenceless place on the coast, would not be from a military point of view of any importance; about great commercial dealings the annalists gave themselves no concern, and generally the incidents in Egypt came still less than those in the other imperial provinces to the knowledge of the senate and therewith of the annalists. The naked designation Καῖσαρ, in which from the nature of the case the ruler then reigning is excluded, is probably to be explained from the circumstance that the reporting captain, while knowing doubtless the fact of the destruction by the Romans, knew not its date or author.—It is possible that to this the notice in Pliny (H. N. ii. 67, 168) is to be referred: maiorem (oceani) partem et orientis victoriae magni Alexandri lustravere usque in Arabicum sinum, in quo res gerente C. Caesare Aug. f. signa navium ex Hispaniensibus naufragiis feruntur agnita. Gaius did not reach Arabia (Plin. H. N. vi. 28, 160); but during the Armenian expedition a Roman squadron may very well have been conducted by one of his sub-commanders to this coast, in order to pave the way for the main expedition. That silence reigns elsewhere respecting it cannot surprise us. The Arabian expedition of Gaius had been so solemnly announced and then abandoned in so wretched a way, that loyal reporters had every reason to obliterate a fact which could not well be mentioned without also reporting the failure of the greater plan.