and dedicated to Nemesis, but the Jewish rebels had destroyed it in the time of Trajan. The tomb itself was buried in the sand, and the statues dedicated to Pompey lay overthrown on the ground. Hadrian restored the Mausoleum, and wrote verses in honour of the illustrious dead.2

From the Pelusian mouths of the Nile, which was at that time still completely navigable, the emperor went to Alexandria.

Appian Bell. civ. ii. 90.

2 Dion Cassius, lxix. 11. The verses which Hadrian is said to have dedicated to Pompey (λéyeraɩ), and which are found in the Anthol. Gr. are cited by Appian, ii. 86, without naming Hadrian as their author.

CHAPTER XVII

Hadrian in Egypt. Condition of the Country. Alexandria. Letter of Hadrian to Servianus. Influence of Egypt and Alexandria on the West

EGYPT, whose civilization was the most ancient in the world, at this time merely indicated the province, fertilized by the Nile, which supplied Rome with corn. From the time of Augustus it had been an appanage of the emperor, so jealously watched that no senator or knight was allowed to go thither without his permission. A Roman pasha, a prefect of the equestrian order, governed or misgoverned the unhappy land as viceroy, from Alexandria.1

The province was divided into the districts of Upper Egypt or the Thebais, Middle Egypt or Heptanomis, and the Delta, and these again were divided into forty-six Nomes. The Roman roads ran through Egypt as far as Hierasycaminus, in the Ethiopian country of Dodecaschoenus, beyond the first cataract.

After a history of several thousand years under native dynasties, the people of the Pharaohs lost their independence for ever, first to the Persians, then to the Greeks, and finally to the Romans. This fate of foreign dominion

1 Rhammius Martialis is mentioned as the first prefect (Eparchos) under Hadrian, in the year 118 A.D., C.I.G. 4713, and Letronne, Inscr. de l'Egypte, i. 513, n. 16. His predecessor as prefect, in the last years of Trajan, was M. Turbo. On the 19th February 122 A.D., Haterius Nepos is mentioned. Memnon's inscription, ibid. ii. 430. The population is said to have been about eight millions; to-day, over six millions. Marquardt, Röm. Staatsv. i. 439.

has continued until the present time, for Egypt, on account of its situation, is doomed to belong not to a single nation, but to the world. From the time of Alexander the Great it was a land belonging to everybody, the prey of foreign adventurers, as it still is to-day. Years of slavery had deprived the inhabitants of all public spirit, so that the ancient cities, even the Greek cities, with the exception perhaps of Ptolemais and Naucratis, had lost their liberty as communities, and were governed by Roman officials without the concurrence of a Senate. Even Alexandria no longer possessed any municipal constitution, and her only distinction as the capital of Egypt was that an imperial judge administered justice there.

The emperors established their government of Egypt on the foundation laid by the Ptolemies. They were their successors, the divinely honoured kings of the country, and, like them, they allowed the old religious customs and the priesthood to remain. But the inhabitants, who were ground down by taxation, had no longer any political rights, they lived like the pariahs or helots enslaved by the Greeks and Romans. Their condition was like that of the fellah of the present day. The Romans despised the Egyptians, each and all, not only the natives, but the Hellenes and Jews, who, since the time of Alexander the Great, had settled in the country in great numbers. Their gloomy superstition, their licentiousness, and their disunion made the Romans consider them unfit for the rights of citizens. In their opinion, coercive measures were the only means of holding this turbulent population in check.1 And yet two legions, the XXIInd Dejotariana and the IInd Trajana, sufficed to maintain the peace of the province.2

With the exception of tumults, such as the discovery of

'See the remarkable opinion of Tacitus, Hist. i. 11: Aegyptum copiasque, quibus coercetur, iam inde a divo Augusto Equites Romani obtinent, loco regum. Ita visum expedire provinciam aditu difficilem, annonae fecundam, superstitione ac lascivia discordem et mobilem, insciam legum, ignaram magistratuum domi retinere.

In the time of Antoninus Pius, only the IInd Trajana was in Egypt, as the XXIInd Dejotariana had perished in the Jewish war of Hadrian. Pfitzner, p. 226.

Apis had caused shortly before Hadrian's arrival, the country remained quiet for a long time; and only in Trajan's last years did a fanatical rebellion take place on the part of the Jewish inhabitants, in conjunction with the rising in Asia.

The whole strength of Egypt was concentrated entirely in Alexandria. In the year 130 A.D., this city was still the same harbour of the world which Strabo had described in the time of Augustus.1 In size it was second only to Rome. Dion Chrysostom, who had accompanied Vespasian there, said it was the most remarkable of all the remarkable sights in the world. Her situation made her mistress of the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean, and market for a hundred nations of the earth. Her commercial and industrial prosperity was not surpassed by any other city, and she was at once the treasure-house of Egyptian mystery and of Greek knowledge. Trading vessels from every coast filled the large harbour, and in the warehouses, products from the tropics were stored, which caravans brought from Arsinoe, Myus Hormus and Berenice.

The splendour of her buildings was not unworthy of the importance of Alexandria. The Serapeum in the quarter of the city called Rhacotis, the ancient royal fortress in Bruchium, the Museum with its colonnades and its large library, the Caesareum, the famous street Canobus, the gymnasia, theatres, hippodrome, temples and innumerable works of art of ancient and modern times, formed a whole of such dazzling beauty that in the age of the Antonines, Aristides could say that the large and fine city of Alexandria was the jewel of the Roman empire, which it

'The arrival of Hadrian in Alexandria falls into the Alexandrian 15th year of the emperor (from 29th of Aug. 130 A.D. to 29th of Aug. 131 A.D.) Eckhel, iv. 64; vi. 489 sq.: Alexandria, with its African helmet, kisses the emperor's hands-Alexandria salutes the emperor, who enters on a quadriga-Hadrian is seated on board a ship. Cohen, ii. n. 58. Hadrian and Sabina hold the hands of Isis and Serapis. The numerous Alexandrian coins in Zoega, Num. Aeg., n. 296 sq.

2 Aristides, Orat. xiv. 363.

3 Dion Chrys. (Dind.) Orat. xxxii. 412 sq. Other references in Lumbroso, L'Egitto, c. xii.

adorned as a necklace or bracelet adorns a woman of fashion. The divine worship of Alexander still existed, and Hadrian, who had visited the tomb of Pompey, would not omit to pay honour to the Sema, where the immortal founder of the city lay buried in a great sarcophagus under a glass canopy, the canopy of gold belonging to Ptolemy Lagus having been carried off by the covetous Auletes.1

Alexandria was laid waste in the last insurrection of the Jews, and Hadrian caused this damage to be repaired in the early years of his reign, when he also seems to have sent colonies into the ravaged provinces of Cyrene.2 As the oldest cities of the Pharaohs lay for the most part in ruins, Alexandria had no longer a rival in Egypt. The deafening crowd in the city, composed of the mixture of religions and races from three parts of the world, the feverish struggle for existence, the intoxicating life of Africa and Asia, the remarkable spirit of cosmopolitan Hellenism, which had here taken up its abode, the frivolity, love of pleasure, and vice of the people, astonished even the Romans and the Greeks. Dion Chrysostom, in his speech to the Alexandrians, has drawn in strong characters the dark side to his praise of the splendour of their city. have praised," so he said to them, "your sea and land, your harbours and monuments, but not yourselves"; and he goes on to paint the people as devoid of all seriousness, steeped in every vice, delighting in nothing but the theatre and the circus. The corruption of morals, the quarrelsome

'Strabo, 794. The tomb was visited before him by Caesar and Augustus; after him by Septimius Severus and Caracalla, who there deposited his imperial insignia. According to Dion Cassius, lxxv. 13, Severus placed the sacred books of the Egyptian priests, which had been collected by him, into the tomb, and then locked it to the people, in order that nobody might further see the corpse of Alexander nor read these books. In Clarke (The Tomb of Alexander, 1805, p. 58 sq.), the further fate of the Sema, where the Ptolemies also were buried.

On this account perhaps the coin in Eckhel, vi. 497, RESTITUTORI. AUG. LYRIAE. Hieron. in Euseb. Chron., ed. Schoene, p. 165: Hadr. Alexandriam a Romanis subversam publicis instauravit expensis. The Armenian translation has a Judaeis. In any case this subversio is an exaggeration, yet Zoega (Num. Aeg., p. 101) wrongly substituted in the passage in Eusebius, Hierosolyma for Alexandria.