EGYPT.
[Sidenote: The annexation of Egypt.]
The two kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, which had so long striven and
vied with each other in every respect, fell nearly about the same time
without resistance into the power of the Romans. If these made no use
of the alleged or real testament of Alexander II. († 673) {81 B.C.}
and did not then annex the land, the last rulers of the Lagid house
were confessedly in the position of clients of Rome; the senate decided
in disputes as to the throne, and after the Roman governor of Syria,
Aulus Gabinius, had with his troops brought back the king Ptolemaeus
Auletes to Egypt (699; comp. iv. 160) {55. iv. 153.}, the Roman legions
did not again leave the land. Like the other client-kings, the rulers
of Egypt took part in the civil wars on the summons of the government
recognised by them or rather imposing itself on them; and, if it must
remain undecided what part Antonius in the fanciful eastern empire of
his dreams had destined for the native land of the wife whom he loved
too well (p. 25), at any rate the government of Antonius in Alexandria,
as well as the last struggle in the last civil war before the gates of
that city, belongs as little to the special history of Egypt as the
battle of Actium to that of Epirus. But doubtless this catastrophe, and
the death connected with it of the last prince of the Lagid house, gave
occasion for Augustus not to fill up again the vacant throne, but to
take the kingdom of Egypt under his own administration. This annexation
of the last portion of the coast of the Mediterranean to the sphere
of direct Roman administration, and the settlement, coincident with
it in point of time and of organic connection, of the new monarchy,
mark--as regards the constitution and administration of the huge empire
respectively--the turning-point, the end of the old and the beginning
of a new epoch.
[Sidenote: Egypt exclusively an imperial possession.]
The incorporation of Egypt into the Roman empire was accomplished
after an abnormal fashion, in so far as the principle--elsewhere
dominating the state--of dyarchy, _i.e._ of the joint rule of the two
supreme imperial powers, the princeps and the senate, found--apart from
some subordinate districts--no application in Egypt alone;[198] but,
on the contrary, in this land the senate as such, as well as every
individual of its members, were cut off from all participation in the
government, and indeed senators and persons of senatorial rank were
even prohibited from setting foot in this province.[199] We must not
conceive of this position as if Egypt were connected with the rest of
the empire only by a personal union; the princeps is, according to
the meaning and spirit of the Augustan organisation, an integral and
permanently acting element of the Roman polity just like the senate,
and his rule over Egypt is quite as much a part of the imperial rule as
is the rule of the proconsul of Africa.[200] We may rather illustrate
the exact constitutional position by saying that the British Empire
would find itself in the same plight if the ministry and Parliament
should be taken into account only for the motherland, whereas the
colonies should have to obey the absolute government of the Empress of
India. What motives determined the new monarch at the very outset of
his sole rule to adopt this deeply influential and at no time assailed
arrangement, and how it affected the general political relations, are
matters belonging to the general history of the empire; here we have to
set forth how the internal relations of Egypt shaped themselves under
the imperial rule.
What held true in general of all Hellenic or Hellenised
territories--that the Romans, when annexing them to the empire,
preserved the once existing institutions, and introduced modifications
only where these seemed absolutely necessary--found application in its
full compass to Egypt.
Like Syria, Egypt, when it became Roman, was a land of twofold
nationality; here too alongside of, and over, the native stood the
Greek--the former the slave, the latter the master. But in law and in
fact the relations of the two nations in Egypt were wholly different
from those of Syria.
[Sidenote: Greek and Egyptian towns.]
Syria, substantially already in the pre-Roman and entirely in the
Roman epoch, came under the government of the land only after an
indirect manner; it was broken up, partly into principalities, partly
into autonomous urban districts, and was administered, in the first
instance, by the rulers of the land or municipal authorities. In
Egypt,[201] on the other hand, there were neither native princes
nor imperial cities after the Greek fashion. The two spheres of
administration into which Egypt was divided--the “land” (ἡ χώρα) of
the Egyptians, with its originally thirty-six districts (νομοί), and
the two Greek cities, Alexandria in lower and Ptolemais in upper
Egypt[202]--were rigidly separated and sharply opposed to each other,
and yet in a strict sense hardly different. The rural, like the urban,
district was not merely marked off territorially, but the former as
well as the latter was a home-district; the belonging to each was
independent of dwelling-place and hereditary. The Egyptian from the
Chemmitic nome belonged to it with his dependents, just as much when
he had his abode in Alexandria as the Alexandrian dwelling in Chemmis
belonged to the burgess-body of Alexandria. The land-district had for
its centre always an urban settlement, the Chemmitic, for example, the
town of Panopolis, which grew up round the temple of Chemmis or of Pan,
or, as this is expressed in the Greek mode of conception, each nome had
its metropolis; so far each land-district may be regarded also as a
town-district. Like the cities, the nomes also became in the Christian
epoch the basis of the episcopal dioceses. The land-districts were
based on the arrangements for worship which dominated everything in
Egypt; the centre for each one is the sanctuary of a definite deity,
and usually it bears the name of this deity or of the animal sacred to
the same; thus the Chemmitic district is called after the god Chemmis,
or, according to Greek equivalent, Pan; other districts after the dog,
the lion, the crocodile. But, on the other hand, the town-districts are
not without their religious centre; the protecting god of Alexandria is
Alexander, the protecting god of Ptolemais the first Ptolemy, and the
priests, who are installed in the one place as in the other for this
worship and that of their successors, are the Eponymi for both cities.
The land-district is quite destitute of autonomy: administration,
taxation, justice, are placed in the hands of the royal officials,[203]
and the collegiate system, the Palladium of the Greek as of the Roman
commonwealth, was here in all stages absolutely excluded. But in the
two Greek cities it was not much otherwise. There was doubtless a body
of burgesses divided into phylae and demes, but no common council;[204]
the officials were doubtless different and differently named from those
of the nomes, but were also throughout officials of royal nomination
and likewise without collegiate arrangement. Hadrian was the first to
give to an Egyptian township, Antinoopolis, laid out by him in memory
of his favourite drowned in the Nile, urban rights according to the
Greek fashion; and subsequently Severus, perhaps as much out of spite
to the Antiochenes as for the benefit of the Egyptians, granted to the
capital of Egypt and to the town of Ptolemais, and to several other
Egyptian communities, not urban magistrates indeed, but at any rate an
urban council. Hitherto, doubtless, in official language the Egyptian
town calls itself Nomos, the Greek Polis, but a Polis without Archontes
and Bouleutae is a meaningless name. So was it also in the coinage. The
Egyptian nomes did not possess the right of coining; but still less did
Alexandria ever strike coins. Egypt is, among all the provinces of the
Greek half of the empire, the only one which knows no other than royal
money. Nor was this otherwise even in the Roman period. The emperors
abolished the abuses that crept in under the last Lagids; Augustus
set aside their unreal copper coinage, and when Tiberius resumed the
coinage of silver he gave to the Egyptian silver money just as real
value as to the other provincial currency of the empire.[205] But the
character of the coinage remained substantially the same.[206] There
is a distinction between Nomos and Polis as between the god Chemmis
and the god Alexander; in an administrative respect there is not any
difference. Egypt consisted of a majority of Egyptian and of a minority
of Greek townships, all of which were destitute of autonomy, and all
were placed under the immediate and absolute administration of the king
and of the officials nominated by him.
[Sidenote: Absence of a land-diet.]
It was a consequence of this, that Egypt alone of all the Roman
provinces had no general representation. The diet is the collective
representation of the self-administering communities of the province.
But in Egypt there was none such; the nomes were simply imperial or
rather royal administrative districts, and Alexandria not merely
stood virtually alone, but was likewise without proper municipal
organisation. The priest standing at the head of the capital of the
country might doubtless call himself “chief priest of Alexandria and
all Egypt” (p. 248, note), and has a certain resemblance to the Asiarch
and the Bithyniarch of Asia Minor, but the deep diversity of the
organisations is thereby simply concealed.
[Sidenote: The government of the Lagids.]
The rule bore accordingly in Egypt a far different character than in
the rest of the domain of Greek and Roman civilisation embraced under
the imperial government. In the latter the community administers
throughout; the ruler of the empire is, strictly taken, only the
common president of the numerous more or less autonomous bodies of
burgesses, and alongside of the advantages of self-administration its
disadvantages and dangers everywhere appear. In Egypt the ruler is
king, the inhabitant of the land is his subject, the administration
that of a domain. This administration, in principle as haughtily and
absolutely conducted as it was directed to the equal welfare of all
subjects without distinction of rank and of estate, was the peculiarity
of the Lagid government, developed probably more from the Hellenising
of the old Pharaonic rule than from the urban organisation of the
universal empire, as the great Macedonian had conceived it, and as it
was most completely carried out in the Syrian New-Macedonia (p. 120).
The system required a king not merely leading the army in his own
person, but engaged in the daily labour of administration, a developed
and strictly disciplined hierarchy of officials, scrupulous justice
towards high and low; and as these rulers, not altogether without
ground, ascribed to themselves the name of benefactor (εὐεργέτης), so
the monarchy of the Lagids may be compared with that of Frederick,
from which it was in its principles not far removed. Certainly Egypt
had also experienced the reverse side, the inevitable collapse of the
system in incapable hands. But the standard remained; and the Augustan
principate alongside of the rule of the senate was nothing but the
intermarriage of the Lagid government with the old urban and federal
development.
[Sidenote: Egypt and the imperial administration.]
A further consequence of this form of government was the undoubted
superiority, more especially from a financial point of view, of the
Egyptian administration over that of the other provinces. We may
designate the pre-Roman epoch as the struggle of the financially
dominant power of Egypt with the Asiatic empire, filling, so far as
space goes, the rest of the East; under the Roman period this was
continued in a certain sense in the fact that the imperial finances
stood forth superior in contrast to those of the senate, especially
through the exclusive possession of Egypt. If it is the aim of the
state to work out the utmost possible amount from its territory, in
the old world the Lagids were absolutely the masters of statecraft.
In particular they were in this sphere the instructors and the models
of the Caesars. How much the Romans drew out of Egypt we are not able
to say with precision. In the Persian period Egypt had paid an annual
tribute of 700 Babylonish talents of silver, about £200,000; the annual
income of the Ptolemies from Egypt, or rather from their possessions
generally, amounted in their most brilliant period to 14,800 Egyptian
silver talents, or £2,850,000, and besides 1,500,000 artabae = 591,000
hectolitres of wheat; at the end of their rule fully 6000 talents,
or £1,250,000. The Romans drew from Egypt annually the third part
of the corn necessary for the consumption of Rome, 20,000,000 Roman
bushels[207] = 1,740,000 hectolitres; a part of it, however, was
certainly derived from the domains proper, another perhaps supplied
in return for compensation, while, on the other hand, the Egyptian
tribute was assessed, at least for a great part, in money, so that we
are not in a position even approximately to determine the Egyptian
income of the Roman exchequer. But not merely by its amount was it of
decisive importance for the Roman state-economy, but because it served
as a pattern in the first instance for the domanial possessions of the
emperors in the other provinces, and generally for the whole imperial
administration, as this falls to be explained when we set it forth.
[Sidenote: Privileged position of the Hellenes.]
But if the communal self-administration had no place in Egypt, and in
this respect a real diversity does not exist between the two nations
of which this state, just like the Syrian, was composed, there was
in another respect a barrier erected between them, to which Syria
offers no parallel. According to the arrangement of the Macedonian
conquerors, the belonging to an Egyptian locality disqualified for
all public offices and for the better military service. Where the
state made gifts to its burgesses these were restricted to those of
the Greek communities;[208] on the other hand, the Egyptians only
paid the poll-tax; and even from the municipal burdens, which fell on
the settlers of the individual Egyptian district, the Alexandrians
settled there were exempted.[209] Although in the case of trespass the
back of the Egyptian as of the Alexandrian had to suffer, the latter
might boast, and did boast, that the cane struck him, and not the
lash, as in the case of the former.[210] Even the acquiring of better
burgess-rights was forbidden to the Egyptians.[211] The burgess-lists
of the two large Greek towns organised by and named after the two
founders of the empire in lower and upper Egypt embraced in them the
ruling population, and the possession of the franchise of one of these
towns was in the Egypt of the Ptolemies the same as the possession of
the Roman franchise was in the Roman empire. What Aristotle recommended
to Alexander--to be a ruler (ἡγεμών) to the Hellenes and a master to
the barbarians, to provide for the former as friends and comrades,
to use the latter like animals and plants--the Ptolemies practically
carried out in all its extent. The king, greater and more free than
his instructor, carried in his mind the higher idea of transforming
the barbarians into Hellenes, or at least of replacing the barbarian
settlements by Hellenic, and to this idea his successors almost
everywhere, and particularly in Syria, allowed ample scope.[212] In
Egypt this was not the case. Doubtless its rulers sought to keep touch
with the natives, particularly in the religious sphere, and wished not
to rule as Greeks over the Egyptians, but rather as earthly gods over
their subjects in common; but with this the inequality of rights on the
part of the subjects was quite compatible, just as the preference _de
iure_ and _de facto_ of the nobility was quite as essential a part of
the government of Frederick as the equality of justice towards gentle
and simple.
[Sidenote: Personal privileges in the Roman period.]
As the Romans in the East generally continued the work of the Greeks,
so the exclusion of the native Egyptians from the acquiring of Greek
citizenship not merely continued to subsist, but was extended to the
Roman citizenship. The Egyptian Greek, on the other hand, might acquire
the latter just like any other non-burgess. Entrance to the senate,
it is true, was as little allowed to him as to the Roman burgess from
Gaul (p. 89), and this restriction remained much longer in force for
Egypt than for Gaul;[213] it was not till the beginning of the third
century that it was disregarded in isolated cases, and it held good,
as a rule, even in the fifth. In Egypt itself the positions of the
upper officials, that is, of those acting for the whole province, and
likewise the officers’ posts, were reserved for Roman citizens in the
form of the knight’s horse being required as a qualification for them;
this was given by the general organisation of the empire, and similar
privileges had in fact been possessed in Egypt by the Macedonians in
contrast to the other Greeks. The offices of the second rank remained
under the Roman rule, as previously, closed to the Egyptian Egyptians,
and were filled with Greeks, primarily with the burgesses of Alexandria
and Ptolemais. If in the imperial war-service for the first class Roman
citizenship was required, they, at any rate in the case of the legions
stationed in Egypt itself, not seldom admitted the Egyptian Greek on
the footing that Roman citizenship was conferred on him upon occasion
of the levy. For the category of auxiliary troops the admission of the
Greeks was subject to no limitation; but the Egyptians were little
or not at all employed for this purpose, while they were employed
afterwards in considerable number for the lowest class, the naval force
still in the first imperial times formed of slaves. In the course of
time the slighting of the native Egyptians doubtless had its rigour
relaxed, and they more than once attained to Greek, and by means of it
also to Roman, citizenship; but on the whole the Roman government was
simply the continuation, as of the Greek rule, so also of the Greek
exclusiveness. As the Macedonian government had contented itself with
Alexandria and Ptolemais, so in this province alone the Romans did not
found a single colony.[214]
[Sidenote: Native language.]
The linguistic arrangement in Egypt remained essentially under the
Romans as the Ptolemies had settled it. Apart from the military,
among whom the Latin alone prevailed, the business-language for the
intercourse of the upper posts was the Greek. Of the native language,
which, radically different from the Semitic as from the Arian
languages, is most nearly akin perhaps to that of the Berbers in North
Africa, and of the native writing, the Roman rulers and their governors
never made use; and, if already under the Ptolemies a Greek translation
had to be appended to official documents written in Egyptian, at least
the same held good for these their successors. Certainly the Egyptians
were not prohibited from making use, so far as it seemed requisite
according to ritual or otherwise appropriate, of the native language
and of its time-hallowed written signs; in this old home, moreover, of
the use of writing in ordinary intercourse the native language, alone
familiar to the great public, and the usual writing must necessarily
have been allowed not merely in the case of private contracts, but
even as regards tax-receipts and similar documents. But this was a
concession, and the ruling Hellenism strove to enlarge its domain.
The effort to create for the views and traditions prevailing in the
land an universally valid expression also in Greek gave an extension
to the system of double names in Egypt such as we see nowhere else.
All Egyptian gods whose names were not themselves current among the
Greeks, like that of Isis, were equalised with corresponding or else
not corresponding Greek ones; perhaps the half of the townships and a
great number of persons bore as well a native as a Greek appellation.
Gradually Hellenism in this case prevailed. The old sacred writing
meets us on the preserved monuments last under the emperor Decius about
the middle of the third, and its more current degenerated form last
about the middle of the fifth century; both disappeared from common use
considerably earlier. The neglect and the decay of the native elements
of civilisation are expressed in these facts. The language of the
land itself maintained its ground still for long afterwards in remote
places and in the lower ranks, and only became quite extinct in the
seventeenth century, after it--the language of the Copts--had, just
like the Syriac, experienced in the later imperial period a limited
regeneration in consequence of the introduction of Christianity and
of the efforts directed to the production of a national-Christian
literature.
[Sidenote: Abolition of a resident court.]
In the government the first thing that strikes us is the suppression
of the court and of its residency, the necessary consequence of the
annexation of the land by Augustus. There was left doubtless as
much as could be left. On the inscriptions written in the native
language, and so merely for Egyptians, the emperors are termed, like
the Ptolemies, kings of upper and lower Egypt, and the elect of the
Egyptian native gods, and indeed withal--which was not the case with
the Ptolemies--great-kings.[215] Dates were reckoned in Egypt, as
previously, according to the current calendar of the country and its
royal year passing over to the Roman rulers; the golden cup which
every year the king threw into the swelling Nile was now thrown in
by the Roman viceroy. But these things did not reach far. The Roman
ruler could not carry out the part of the Egyptian king, which was
incompatible with his imperial position. The new lord of the land
had unpleasant experiences in his representation by a subordinate
on the very first occasion of his sending a governor to Egypt; the
able officer and talented poet, who had not been able to refrain from
inscribing his name also on the Pyramids, was deposed on that account
and thereby ruined. It was inevitable that limits should here be
set. The affairs, the transaction of which according to the system
of Alexander devolved on the prince personally[216] not less than
according to the arrangement of the Roman principate, might be managed
by the Roman governor as by the native king; king he might neither be
nor seem.[217] That was to a certainty deeply and severely felt in
the second city of the world. The mere change of dynasty would not
have told so very heavily. But a court like that of the Ptolemies,
regulated according to the ceremonial of the Pharaohs, king and queen
in their dress as gods, the pomp of festal processions, the reception
of the priesthoods and of ambassadors, the court-banquets, the great
ceremonies of the coronation, of the taking the oath, of marriage, of
burial, the court-offices of the body-guards and the chief of that guard
(ἀρχισωματοφύλαξ), of the introducing chamberlain (εἰσαγγελεύς), of
the chief master of the table (ἀρχεδέατρος), of the chief master of
the huntsmen (ἀρχικυνηγός), the cousins and friends of the king, the
wearers of decorations--all this was lost for the Alexandrians once
for all with the transfer of the seat of the ruler from the Nile to
the Tiber. Only the two famous Alexandrian libraries remained there,
with all their belongings and staff, as a remnant of the old regal
magnificence. Beyond question Egypt lost by being dispossessed of its
rulers very much more than Syria; both nations indeed were in the
powerless position of having to acquiesce in what was contrived for
them, and not more here than there was a rising for the lost position
of a great power so much as thought of.
[Sidenote: The officials.]
The administration of the land lay, as has been already said, in the
hands of the “deputy,” that is, the viceroy; for, although the new
lord of the land, out of respect for his position in the empire,
refrained as well for himself as for his delegates of higher station
from the royal appellations in Egypt, he yet in substance conducted
his rule throughout as successor of the Ptolemies, and the whole civil
and military supreme power was combined in his hand and that of his
representative. We have already observed that neither non-burgesses
nor senators might fill this position; it was sometimes committed to
Alexandrians, if they had attained to burgess-rights, and by way of
exception to equestrian rank.[218] We may add that this office stood at
first before all the rest of the non-senatorial in rank and influence,
and subsequently was inferior only to the commandership of the imperial
guard. Besides the officers proper, in reference to whom the only
departure from the general arrangement was the exclusion of the senator
and the lower title, thence resulting, of the commandant of the legion
(_praefectus_ instead of _legatus_), there acted alongside of and
under the governor, and likewise for all Egypt, a supreme official
for justice and a supreme finance-administrator, both likewise Roman
citizens of equestrian rank, and apparently not borrowed from the
administrative scheme of the Ptolemies, but attached and subordinated
to the governor after a fashion applied also in other imperial
provinces.[219]
All other officials acted only for individual districts, and were
in the main taken over from the Ptolemaic arrangement. That the
presidents of the three provinces of lower, middle, and upper Egypt,
provided--apart from the command--with the same sphere of business as
the governor, were taken in the time of Augustus from the Egyptian
Greeks, and subsequently, like the superior officials proper, from the
Roman knighthood, deserves to be noted as a symptom of the increasing
tendency in the course of the imperial period to repress the native
element in the magistracy.
Under these superior and intermediate authorities stood the local
officials, the presidents of the Egyptian as of the Greek towns, along
with the very numerous subalterns employed in the collecting of the
revenue and the manifold imposts laid on business-dealings, and again
in the individual district the presidents of the sub-districts and of
the villages--positions, which were looked upon more as burdens than
as honours, and were imposed by the higher officials upon persons
belonging to, or settled in, the locality, to the exclusion, however,
of the Alexandrians; the most important among them, the presidency of
the nome, was filled up every three years by the governor. The local
authorities of the Greek towns were different as to number and title;
in Alexandria in particular four chief officials acted, the priest of
Alexander,[220] the town-clerk (ὑπομνηματογράφος),[221] the supreme
judge (ἀρχιδικαστής), and the master of the night-watch (νυκτερινὸς
στρατηγός). That they were of more consequence than the _strategoi_ of
the nomes, is obvious of itself, and is shown clearly by the purple
dress belonging to the first Alexandrian official. We may add that they
originate likewise from the Ptolemaic period, and are nominated for a
time by the Roman government, like the presidents of the nomes, from
the persons settled therein. Roman officials of imperial nomination
are not found among these urban presidents. But the priest of the
Mouseion, who is at the same time president of the Alexandrian Academy
of Sciences and also disposes of the considerable pecuniary means
of this institute, is nominated by the emperor; in like manner the
superintendency of the tomb of Alexander and the buildings connected
with it, and some other important positions in the capital of Egypt,
were filled up by the government in Rome with officials of equestrian
rank.[222]
[Sidenote: Insurrections.]
[Sidenote: In the Palmyrene period.]
As a matter of course, Alexandrians and Egyptians were drawn into
those movements of pretenders which had their origin in the East,
and regularly participated in them; in this way Vespasian, Cassius,
Niger, Macrianus (p. 103), Vaballathus the son of Zenobia, Probus,
were here proclaimed as rulers. But the initiative in all those cases
was taken neither by the burgesses of Alexandria nor by the little
esteemed Egyptian troops; and most of those revolutions, even the
unsuccessful, had for Egypt no consequences specially felt. But the
movement connected with the name of Zenobia (p. 107) became almost
as fateful for Alexandria and for all Egypt as for Palmyra. In town
and country the Palmyrene and the Roman partisans confronted each
other with arms and blazing torches in their hands. On the south
frontier the barbarian Blemyes advanced, apparently in agreement with
the portion of the inhabitants of Egypt favourable to Palmyra, and
possessed themselves of a great part of upper Egypt.[223] In Alexandria
the intercourse between the two hostile quarters was cut off; it was
difficult and dangerous even to forward letters.[224] The streets were
filled with blood and with dead bodies unburied. The diseases thereby
engendered made even more havoc than the sword; and, in order that
none of the four steeds of destruction might be wanting, the Nile also
failed, and famine associated itself with the other scourges. The
population melted away to such an extent that, as a contemporary says,
there were formerly more gray-haired men in Alexandria than there were
afterwards citizens.
When Probus, the general sent by Claudius, at length gained the upper
hand, the Palmyrene partisans, including the majority of the members
of council, threw themselves into the strong castle of Prucheion in
the immediate neighbourhood of the city; and, although, when Probus
promised to spare the lives of those that should come out, the great
majority submitted, yet a considerable portion of the citizens
persevered to the uttermost in the struggle of despair. The fortress,
at length reduced by hunger (270), was razed and lay thenceforth
desolate; but the city lost its walls. The Blemyes still maintained
themselves for years in the land; the emperor Probus first wrested
from them again Ptolemais and Coptos, and drove them out of the country.
[Sidenote: Revolt under Diocletian.]
The state of distress, which these troubles prolonged through a series
of years, must have produced, may probably thereupon have brought to
an outbreak, the only revolution that can be shown to have arisen in
Egypt.[225] Under the government of Diocletian, we do not know why or
wherefore, as well the native Egyptians as the burgesses of Alexandria
rose in revolt against the existing government. Lucius Domitius
Domitianus and Achilleus were set up as opposition-emperors, unless
possibly the two names denote the same person; the revolt lasted from
three to four years, the towns Busiris in the Delta and Coptos not
far from Thebes were destroyed by the troops of the government, and
ultimately under the leading of Diocletian in person in the spring
of 297 the capital was reduced after an eight months’ siege. Nothing
testifies so clearly to the decline of the land, rich, but thoroughly
dependent on inward and outward peace, as the edict issued in the
year 302 by the same Diocletian, that a portion of the Egyptian grain
hitherto sent to Rome should for the future go to the benefit of the
Alexandrian burgesses.[226] This was certainly among the measures which
aimed at the decapitalising of Rome; but the supply would not have been
directed towards the Alexandrians, whom this emperor had truly no cause
to favour, unless they had urgently needed it.
[Sidenote: Agriculture.]
Economically Egypt, as is well-known, is above all the land of
agriculture. It is true that the “black earth”--that is the meaning
of the native name for the country, Chemi--is only a narrow stripe
on either side of the mighty Nile flowing from the last rapids near
Syene, the southern limit of Egypt proper, for 550 miles in a copious
stream, through the yellow desert extending right and left, to the
Mediterranean Sea; only at its lower end the “gift of the river,” the
Nile-delta, spreads itself out on both sides between the manifold arms
of its mouth. The produce of these tracts depends year by year on the
Nile and on the sixteen cubits of its flood-mark--the sixteen children
playing round their father, as the art of the Greeks represented the
river-god; with good reason the Arabs designate the low cubits by the
name of the angels of death, for, if the river does not reach its full
height, famine and destruction come upon the whole land of Egypt. But
in general Egypt--where the expenses of cultivation are singularly
low, wheat bears an hundred fold, and the culture of vegetables, of
the vine, of trees, particularly the date-palm, as well as the rearing
of cattle, yield good produce--is able not merely to feed a dense
population, but also to send corn in large quantity abroad. This led
to the result that, after the installation of the foreign rule, not
much of its riches was left to the land itself. The Nile rose at that
time nearly as in the Persian period and as it does to-day, and the
Egyptian toiled chiefly for other lands; and thereby in the first
instance Egypt played an important part in the history of imperial
Rome. After the grain-cultivation in Italy itself had decayed and Rome
had become the greatest city of the world, it needed constant supplies
of moderately-priced transmarine grain; and the principate strengthened
itself above all by the solution of the far from easy economic problem
how to make the supply of the capital financially possible and to
render it secure. This solution depended on the possession of Egypt,
and, in as much as here the emperor bore exclusive sway, he kept Italy
with its dependencies in check through Egypt. When Vespasian seized the
dominion he sent his troops to Italy, but he went in person to Egypt
and possessed himself of Rome through the corn-fleet. Wherever a Roman
ruler had, or is alleged to have had, the idea of transferring the seat
of government to the East, as is told us of Caesar, Antonius, Nero,
Geta, there the thoughts were directed, as if spontaneously, not to
Antioch, although this was at that time the regular court-residence
of the East, but towards the birthplace and the stronghold of the
principate--to Alexandria.
For that reason, accordingly, the Roman government applied itself
more zealously to the elevation of agriculture in Egypt than anywhere
else. As it is dependent on the inundation of the Nile, it was
possible to extend considerably the surface fitted for cultivation
by systematically executed water-works, artificial canals, dykes,
and reservoirs. In the good times of Egypt, the native land of the
measuring-chain and of artificial building, much was done for it,
but these beneficent structures fell, under the last wretched and
financially oppressed governments, into sad decay. Thus the Roman
occupation introduced itself worthily by Augustus subjecting the canals
of the Nile to a thorough purifying and renewal by means of the troops
stationed in Egypt. If at the time of the Romans taking possession a
full harvest required a state of the river of fourteen cubits, and
at eight cubits failure of the harvest occurred, at a later period,
after the canals were put into order, twelve cubits were enough for
a full harvest, and even eight cubits yielded a sufficient produce.
Centuries later the emperor Probus not merely liberated Egypt from the
Ethiopians but also restored the water-works on the Nile. It may be
assumed, generally, that the better successors of Augustus administered
in a similar sense, and that especially with the internal peace and
security hardly interrupted for centuries, Egyptian agriculture stood
in a permanently flourishing state under the Roman principate. What
reflex effect this state of things had on the Egyptians themselves we
are not able to follow out more exactly. To a great extent the revenues
from Egypt rested on the possession of the imperial domains, which
in Roman as in earlier times formed a considerable part of the whole
area;[227] here, especially considering the small cost of cultivation,
only a moderate proportion of the produce must have been left to the
small tenants who provided it, or a high money-rent must have been
imposed. But even the numerous, and as a rule smaller, owners must have
paid a high land-tax in corn or in money. The agricultural population,
contented as it was, remained probably numerous in the imperial period;
but certainly the pressure of taxation, as well in itself as on account
of the expenditure of the produce abroad, lay as a heavier burden on
Egypt under the Roman foreign rule than under the by no means indulgent
government of the Ptolemies.
[Sidenote: Trades.]
Of the economy of Egypt agriculture formed but a part; as it in
this respect stood far before Syria, so it had the advantage of a
high prosperity of manufactures and commerce as compared with the
essentially agricultural Africa. The linen manufacture in Egypt
was at least equal in age, extent, and renown to the Syrian, and
maintained its ground through the whole imperial period, although the
finer sorts at this epoch were especially manufactured in Syria and
Phoenicia;[228] when Aurelian extended the contributions made from
Egypt to the capital of the empire to other articles than corn, linen
cloth and tow were not wanting among them. In fine glass wares, both
as regards colouring and moulding, the Alexandrians held decidedly the
first place, in fact, as they thought, the monopoly, in as much as
certain best sorts were only to be prepared with Egyptian material.
Indisputably they had such a material in the papyrus. This plant,
which in antiquity was cultivated in masses on the rivers and lakes
of lower Egypt, and flourished nowhere else, furnished the natives
as well with nourishment as with materials for ropes, baskets, and
boats, and furnished writing materials at that time for the whole
writing world. What produce it must have yielded, we may gather from
the measures which the Roman senate took, when once in the Roman
market the papyrus became scarce and threatened to fail; and, as its
laborious preparation could only take place on the spot, numberless
men must have subsisted by it in Egypt. The deliveries of Alexandrian
wares introduced by Aurelian in favour of the capital of the empire
extended, along with linen, to glass and papyrus.[229] The intercourse
with the East must have had a varied influence on Egyptian manufactures
as regards supply and demand. Textiles were manufactured there for
export to the East, and that in the fashion required by the usage of
the country; the ordinary clothes of the inhabitants of Habesh were of
Egyptian manufacture; the gorgeous stuffs especially of the weaving in
colours and in gold skilfully practised at Alexandria went to Arabia
and India. In like manner the glass beads prepared in Egypt played
the same part in the commerce of the African coast as at the present
day. India procured partly glass cups, partly unwrought glass for its
own manufacture; even at the Chinese court the glass vessels, with
which the Roman strangers did homage to the emperor, are said to have
excited great admiration. Egyptian merchants brought to the king of
the Axomites (Habesh) as standing presents gold and silver vessels
prepared after the fashion of that country, to the civilised rulers
of the South-Arabian and Indian coast among other gifts also statues,
probably of bronze, and musical instruments. On the other hand the
materials for the manufacture of luxuries which came from the East,
especially ivory and tortoise-shell, were worked up hardly perhaps
in Egypt, chiefly, in all probability, at Rome. Lastly, at an epoch,
which never had its match in the West for magnificent public buildings,
the costly building materials supplied by the Egyptian quarries came
to be employed in enormous masses outside of Egypt; the beautiful red
granite of Syene, the green breccia from the region of Kosêr, the
basalt, the alabaster, after the time of Claudius the gray granite,
and especially the porphyry of the mountains above Myos Hormos. The
working of them was certainly effected for the most part on imperial
account by penal colonists; but the transport at least must have gone
to benefit the whole country and particularly the city of Alexandria.
The extent to which Egyptian traffic and Egyptian manufactures were
developed is shown by an accidentally-preserved notice as to the cargo
of a transport ship (ἄκατος), distinguished by its size, which under
Augustus brought to Rome the obelisk now standing at the Porta del
Popolo with its base; it carried, besides 200 sailors, 1200 passengers,
400,000 Roman bushels (34,000 hectolitres) of wheat, and a cargo of
linen cloth, glass, paper, and pepper. “Alexandria,” says a Roman
author of the third century,[230] “is a town of plenty, of wealth, and
of luxury, in which nobody goes idle; this one is a glass-worker, that
one a paper-maker, the third a linen-weaver; the only god is money.”
This held true proportionally of the whole land.
[Sidenote: Egyptian navigation of the Mediterranean.]
Of the commercial intercourse of Egypt with the regions adjoining it on
the south, as well as with Arabia and India, we shall speak more fully
in the sequel. The traffic with the countries of the Mediterranean
comes less into prominence in the traditional account, partly,
doubtless, because it belonged to the ordinary course of things,
and there was not often occasion to make special mention of it. The
Egyptian corn was conveyed to Italy by Alexandrian shipmasters, and
in consequence of this there arose in Portus near Ostia a sanctuary
modelled on the Alexandrian temple of Sarapis with a mariner’s
guild;[231] but these transport-ships would hardly be concerned to any
considerable extent in the sale of the wares going from Egypt to the
West. This sale lay probably just as much, and perhaps more, in the
hands of the Italian ship-owners and captains than of the Egyptian;
at least there was already under the Lagids a considerable Italian
settlement in Alexandria,[232] and the Egyptian merchants had not
the same diffusion in the West as the Syrian.[233] The ordinances of
Augustus, to be mentioned afterwards, which remodelled the commercial
traffic on the Arabian and Indian Seas, found no application to the
navigation of the Mediterranean; the government had no interest in
favouring the Egyptian merchants more than the rest in its case. The
traffic there remained, presumably, as it was.
[Sidenote: Population.]
Egypt was thus not merely occupied, in its portions capable of culture,
with a dense agricultural population, but also as the numerous and
in part very considerable hamlets and towns enable us to recognise,
a manufacturing land, and hence accordingly by far the most populous
province of the Roman empire. The old Egypt is alleged to have had a
population of seven millions; under Vespasian there were counted in
the official lists seven and a half millions of inhabitants liable to
poll tax, to which fall to be added the Alexandrians and other Greeks
exempted from poll tax, so that the population, apart from the slaves,
is to be estimated at least at eight millions of persons. As the area
capable of cultivation may be estimated at present at 10,500 English
square miles, and for the Roman period at the most at 14,700, there
dwelt at that time in Egypt on the average about 520 persons to the
square mile.
When we direct our glance upon the inhabitants of Egypt, the two
nations inhabiting the country--the great mass of the Egyptians
and the small minority of the Alexandrians--are circles thoroughly
different,[234] although the contagious power of vice and the
similarity of character belonging to all vice have instituted a bad
fellowship of evil between the two.
[Sidenote: Egyptian manners.]
[Sidenote: Revolt of the “Herdsmen.”]
The native Egyptians cannot have been far different either in position
or in character from their modern descendants. They were contented,
sober, capable of labour, and active, skilful artisans and mariners,
and adroit merchants, adhering to old customs and to old faith. If the
Romans assure us that the Egyptians were proud of the scourge-marks
received for perpetrating frauds in taxation,[235] these are views
derived from the standpoint of the tax officials. There was no want
of good germs in the national culture; with all the superiority of
the Greeks in the intellectual competition of the two so utterly
different races, the Egyptians in turn had the advantage of the
Hellenes in various and essential things, and they felt this too. It
is, after all, only the plain reflection of their own feeling, when
the Egyptian priests of the Greek conversational literature ridicule
the so-called historical research of the Hellenes and its treatment of
poetical fables as real tradition from primitive past times, saying
that in Egypt they made no verses, but their whole ancient history was
described in the temples and monuments; although now, indeed, there
were but few who knew it, since many monuments were destroyed, and
tradition was made to perish through the ignorance and the indifference
of later generations. But this well-warranted complaint carried in
itself hopelessness; the venerable tree of Egyptian civilisation had
long been marked for cutting down. Hellenism penetrated with its
decomposing influence even to the priesthood itself. An Egyptian
temple-scribe Chaeremon, who was called to the court of Claudius as
teacher of Greek philosophy for the crown-prince, attributed in his
_Egyptian History_ the elements of Stoical physics to the old gods of
the country, and expounded in this sense the documents written in the
native character. In the practical life of the imperial period the
old Egyptian habits come into consideration almost only as regards
the religious sphere. Religion was for this people all in all. The
foreign rule in itself was willingly borne, we might say hardly felt,
so long as it did not touch the sacred customs of the land and what was
therewith connected. It is true that in the internal government of the
country nearly everything had such a connection--writing and language,
priestly privileges and priestly arrogance, the manners of the court
and the customs of the country; the care of the government for the
sacred ox living at the moment, the provisions made for its burial
at its decease, and for the finding out of the fitting successor,
were accounted by these priests and this people as the test of the
capacity of the ruler of the land for the time, and as the measure of
the respect and homage due to him. The first Persian king introduced
himself in Egypt by giving back the sanctuary of Neith in Sais to its
destination--that is, to the priests; the first Ptolemy, when still
a Macedonian governor, brought back the images of the Egyptian gods,
that had been carried off to Asia, to their old abode, and restored
to the gods of Pe and Tep the land-gifts estranged from them; for the
sacred temple-images brought home from Persia in the great victorious
expedition of Euergetes the native priests convey their thanks to
the king in the famous decree of Canopus in the year 238 B.C.; the
customary insertion of the living rulers male or female in the circle
of the native gods these foreigners acquiesced in for themselves
just as did the Egyptian Pharaohs. The Roman rulers followed their
example only to a limited extent. As respects title they doubtless
entered, as we saw (p. 244, note), in some measure into the native
cultus, but avoided withal, even in the Egyptian setting, the customary
predicates that stood in too glaring a contrast to Occidental views.
Since these ‘favourites of Ptah and of Isis’ took much the same steps
in Italy against the Egyptian worship as against the Jewish, they
betrayed nothing, as may readily be understood, of such love except
in hieroglyphic inscriptions, and even in Egypt took no part in the
service of the native gods. However obstinately the religion of the
land was still retained under the foreign rule among the Egyptians
proper, the Pariah position in which these found themselves alongside
of the ruling Greeks and Romans, necessarily told heavily on the
cultus and the priests; and of the leading position, the influence,
the culture of the old Egyptian priestly order but scanty remains
were discernible under the Roman government. On the other hand, the
indigenous religion, from the outset disinclined to beauty of form
and spiritual transfiguration, served, in and out of Egypt, as a
starting-point and centre for all conceivable pious sorcery and sacred
fraud--it is enough to recall the thrice-greatest Hermes at home in
Egypt, with the literature attaching to his name of tractates and
marvel-books, as well as the corresponding widely diffused practice.
But in the circles of the natives the worst abuses were connected at
this epoch with their cultus--not merely drinking-bouts continued
through many days in honour of the individual local deities, with the
unchastity thereto appertaining, but also permanent religious feuds
between the several districts for the precedence of the ibis over
the cat, or of the crocodile over the baboon. In the year A.D. 127,
on such an occasion, the Ombites in southern Egypt were suddenly
assailed by a neighbouring community[236] at a drinking-festival, and
the victors are said to have eaten one of the slain. Soon afterwards
the community of the Hound, in defiance of the community of the Pike,
consumed a pike, and the latter in defiance of the other consumed a
hound, and thereupon a war broke out between these two nomes, till
the Romans interfered and chastised both parties. Such incidents were
of ordinary occurrence in Egypt. Nor was there a want otherwise of
troubles in the land. The very first viceroy of Egypt appointed by
Augustus had, on account of an increase of the taxes, to send troops
to upper Egypt, and not less, perhaps likewise in consequence of the
pressure of taxation, to Heroonpolis at the upper end of the Arabian
Gulf. Once, under the emperor Marcus, a rising of the native Egyptians
assumed even a threatening character. When in the marshes, difficult
of access, on the coast to the east of Alexandria--the so-called
“cattle-pastures” (_bucolia_), which served as a place of refuge for
criminals and robbers, and formed a sort of colony of them--some
people were seized by a division of Roman troops, the whole banditti
rose to liberate them, and the population of the country joined the
movement. The Roman legion from Alexandria went to oppose them, but it
was defeated, and Alexandria itself had almost fallen into the hands
of the insurgents. The governor of the East, Avidius Cassius, arrived
doubtless with his troops, but did not venture on a conflict against
the superiority of numbers, and preferred to provoke dissension in the
league of the rebels; after the one band ranged itself against the
other the government easily mastered them all. This so-called revolt of
the herdsmen probably bore, like such peasant wars for the most part,
a religious character; the leader Isidorus, the bravest man of Egypt,
was by station a priest; and the circumstance that for the consecration
of the league, after taking the oath, a captive Roman officer was
sacrificed and eaten by those who swore, was as well in keeping with it
as with the cannibalism of the Ombite war. An echo of these events is
preserved in the stories of Egyptian robbers in the late-Greek minor
literature. Much, moreover, as they may have given trouble to the Roman
administration, they had not a political object, and interrupted but
partially and temporarily the general tranquillity of the land.
[Sidenote: Alexandria.]
By the side of the Egyptians stood the Alexandrians, somewhat as
the English in India stand alongside of the natives of the country.
Generally, Alexandria was regarded in the imperial period before
Constantine’s time as the second city of the Roman empire and the first
commercial city of the world. It numbered at the end of the Lagid rule
upwards of 300,000 free inhabitants, in the imperial period beyond
doubt still more. The comparison of the two great capitals that grew
up in rivalry on the Nile and on the Orontes yields as many points
of similarity as of contrast. Both were comparatively new cities,
monarchical creations out of nothing, of symmetrical plan and regular
urban arrangements. Water ran into every house in Alexandria as at
Antioch. In beauty of site and magnificence of buildings the city in
the valley of the Orontes was as superior to its rival as the latter
excelled it in the favourableness of the locality for commerce on
a large scale and in the number of the population. The great public
buildings of the Egyptian capital, the royal palace, the Mouseion
dedicated to the Academy, above all the temple of Sarapis, were
marvellous works of an earlier epoch, whose architecture was highly
developed; but the Egyptian capital, in which few of the Caesars set
foot, has nothing corresponding to set off against the great number of
imperial structures in the Syrian residency.
[Sidenote: Alexandrian Fronde.]
The Antiochenes and Alexandrians stood on an equal footing in
insubordination and eagerness to oppose the government; we may add
also in this, that the two cities, and Alexandria more particularly,
flourished precisely under and through the Roman government, and had
much more reason to thank it than to play the Fronde. The attitude
of the Alexandrians to their Hellenic rulers is attested by the long
series of nicknames, in part still used at the present day, for which
the royal Ptolemies without exception were indebted to the public of
their capital. The Emperor Vespasian received from the Alexandrians for
the introducing of a tax on salt fish the title of the “sardine-dealer”
(Κυβιοσάκτης); the Syrian Severus Alexander that of the “chief Rabbin;”
but the emperors came rarely to Egypt, and the distant and foreign
rulers offered no genuine butt for this ridicule. In their absence
the public bestowed at least on the viceroys the same attention with
persevering zeal; even the prospect of inevitable chastisement was not
able to put to silence the often witty and always saucy tongue of these
townsmen.[237] Vespasian contented himself in return for that attention
shown to him with raising the poll-tax about six farthings, and got for
doing so the further name of the “sixfarthing-man;” but their sayings
about Severus Antoninus, the petty ape of Alexander the Great and
the favourite of Mother Jocasta, were to cost them more dearly. The
spiteful ruler appeared in all friendliness, and allowed the people
to keep holiday for him, but then ordered his soldiers to charge into
the festal multitude, so that for days the squares and streets of the
great city ran with blood; in fact, he enjoined the dissolution of the
Academy and the transfer of the legion into the city itself--neither of
which, it is true, was carried into effect.
[Sidenote: Alexandrian tumults.]
But while in Antioch, as a rule, the matter did not go beyond sarcasm,
the Alexandrian rabble took on the slightest pretext to stones and to
cudgels. In street uproar, says an authority, himself Alexandrian,
the Egyptians are before all others; the smallest spark suffices here
to kindle a tumult. On account of neglected visits, on account of the
confiscation of spoiled provisions, on account of exclusion from a
bathing establishment, on account of a dispute between the slave of
an Alexandrian of rank and a Roman foot-soldier as to the value or
non-value of their respective slippers, the legions were under the
necessity of charging among the citizens of Alexandria. It here became
apparent that the lower stratum of the Alexandrian population consisted
in greater part of natives; in these riots the Greeks no doubt acted as
instigators, as indeed the rhetors, that is, in this case the inciting
orators, are expressly mentioned;[238] but in the further course of the
matter the spite and the savageness of the Egyptian proper came into
the conflict. The Syrians were cowardly, and as soldiers the Egyptians
were so too; but in a street tumult they were able to develop a courage
worthy of a better cause.[239] The Antiochenes delighted in race-horses
like the Alexandrians; but among the latter no chariot race ended
without stone-throwing and stabbing. Both cities were affected by the
persecution of the Jews under the emperor Gaius; but in Antioch an
earnest word of the authorities sufficed to put an end to it, while
thousands of human lives fell a sacrifice to the Alexandrian outbreak
instigated by some clowns with a puppet-show. The Alexandrians, it was
said, when a riot arose, gave themselves no peace till they had seen
blood. The Roman officers and soldiers had a difficult position there.
“Alexandria,” says a reporter of the fourth century, “is entered by
the governors with trembling and despair, for they fear the justice
of the people; where a governor perpetrates a wrong, there follows
at once the setting of the palace on fire and stoning.” The naive
trust in the rectitude of this procedure marks the standpoint of
the writer, who belonged to this “people.” The continuation of this
Lynch-system, dishonouring alike to the government and to the nation,
is furnished by what is called Church-history, in the murder of the
bishop Georgius, alike obnoxious to the heathen and to the orthodox,
and of his associates under Julian, and that of the fair freethinker
Hypatia by the pious community of Bishop Cyril under Theodosius II.
These Alexandrian tumults were more malicious, more incalculable, more
violent than the Antiochene, but just like these, not dangerous either
for the stability of the empire or even for the individual government.
Mischievous and ill-disposed lads are very inconvenient, but not more
than inconvenient, in the household as in the commonwealth.
[Sidenote: Alexandrian worship.]
In religious matters also the two cities had an analogous position.
To the worship of the land, as the native population retained it in
Syria as in Egypt, the Alexandrians as well as the Antiochenes were
disinclined in its original shape. But the Lagids, as well as the
Seleucids, were careful of disturbing the foundations of the old
religion of the country; and, merely amalgamating the older national
views and sacred rites with the pliant forms of the Greek Olympus, they
Hellenised these outwardly in some measure; they introduced, _e.g._
the Greek god of the lower world Pluto into the native worship, under
the hitherto little mentioned name of the Egyptian god Sarapis, and
then gradually transferred to this the old Osiris worship.[240] Thus
the genuinely Egyptian Isis and the pseudo-Egyptian Sarapis played in
Alexandria nearly the same part as Belus and Elagabalus in Syria, and
made their way in a similar manner with these, although less strongly
and with more vehement opposition, by degrees into the Occidental
worship of the imperial period. As regards the immorality developed on
occasion of these religious usages and festivals, and the unchastity
approved and stimulated by priestly blessing, neither city was in a
position to upbraid the other.
Down to a late time the old cultus retained its firmest stronghold in
the pious land of Egypt.[241] The restoration of the old faith, as
well scientifically in the philosophy annexed to it as practically
in the repelling of the attacks directed by the Christians against
Polytheism, and in the revival of the heathen temple-worship and the
heathen divination, had its true centre in Alexandria. Then, when
the new faith conquered this stronghold also, the character of the
country remained nevertheless true to itself; Syria was the cradle of
Christianity, Egypt was the cradle of monachism. Of the significance
and the position of the Jewish body, in which the two cities likewise
resembled each other, we have already spoken in another connection
(p. 163). Immigrants called by the government into the land like the
Hellenes, the Jews were doubtless inferior to these and were liable
to poll-tax like the Egyptians, but accounted themselves, and were
accounted, more than these. Their number amounted under Vespasian to a
million, about the eighth part of the whole population of Egypt, and,
like the Hellenes, they dwelt chiefly in the capital, of the five wards
of which two were Jewish. In acknowledged independence, in repute,
culture, and wealth, the body of Alexandrian Jews was even before the
destruction of Jerusalem the first in the world; and in consequence of
this a good part of the last act of the Jewish tragedy, as has been
already set forth, was played out on Egyptian soil.