of things resulted in the great Jewish war of Vespasian, to which we shall come hereafter.
Some other small vassal states were allowed to survive for a considerable time. The kingdom of Commagene in the north was not incorporated in the provincial system until 72 A.D.. The principality of Chalcis, north-west of Damascus, survived still longer, (until 92 A.D.). Abila, (between Chalcis and Damascus) was annexed about 49 A.D.. Iamblicus of Emesa had been executed by Antonius shortly before the battle of Actium; and his territory was at first annexed by Augustus to the province of Syria, but in 20 B.C. restored to a member of the native dynasty of Sampsigeramus. It finally became provincial before 81 A.D.. At what time the Syrian state of Palmyra, called in the Syrian tongue Tadmor, came to be a Roman dependency, we cannot say for certain, but probably in the reign of Augustus. This nourishing city, situated in an oasis of the desert, lay on the trade route from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea, and was governed, under Roman supremacy, by its own municipal officers, until its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian in the third century.
SECT. IV. — EGYPT
The death of Cleopatra, the last queen of the royal house of the Lagidae, was followed by the conversion of Egypt from the condition of a vassal kingdom into a directly subject land. But although it is often counted with the imperial provinces, it never stood in line with the other provinces. It was subject to the Emperor in his own right, not merely as representative of the populus Romanus. Augustus ruled over Egypt, not as proconsul, but as a successor of the Ptolemies, a king all but in name; and the country always remained a sort of imperial preserve. The Emperor was worshipped as a god by the Egyptian priests, according to the same forms which had been used in the cult of the royal Ptolemies. It was a logical consequence of this legal status of Egypt, as the Emperor’s private domain, that it should stand apart from the imperial provinces in its administration. Thus senators were disqualified to fill the post of governor. Hence the governor of Egypt did not hold the rank of a legatus, but only of a praefectus. He was in command, however, of three legions, and this was the only case in which legions were commanded by men of the equestrian order. But not only were senators excluded from the governorship, they wore even forbidden to set foot in the land without permission of the lord of the land. This regulation (which extended also to equites illustres) was made by Augustus in self-protection. For if a prominent senator wished to excite a rebellion, Egypt, through its immense resources and its geographical position, could have been a most favorable field for such an enterprise. The military importance had been abundantly proved in the Civil Wars. Whoever controlled the Egyptian ports could stop the corn-supply on which Rome and Italy depended, and thus force them to capitulate without leaving Alexandria. And besides Egypt was a country difficult to attack and easy to defend; it had the advantage of an insular position without being an island. The jealousy with which the Emperors watched Egypt, is illustrated by the fate of the first prefect, Cornelius Gallus, the poet. He allowed his name and deeds to be inscribed on the pyramids, and these indiscretions were interpreted as treasonable. Tried by the senate, he was removed from his command, and his disgrace drove him to commit suicide. Augustus is reported on this occasion to have complained that he was the only citizen who could not show anger against a friend without making him an enemy. Besides the prefect there was a iuridicus to administer justice, and an officer called idiologus to manage the finances.
In organization also Egypt differed from the other provinces. The system of the Ptolemies was continued. No municipal self-government was granted; city life was not encouraged, as in the rest of the empire. The country was divided into districts (nomes) which were placed under officers appointed by the government. No diet was instituted to represent the political views of the people. Under the Ptolemies, the native Egyptians had formed an inferior class, possessing no political privileges, and under the Romans their condition remained the same.
Upper Egypt extended to Elephantine on the Nile, and to Troglodytic Berenice on the coast (in the same line of latitude). This Berenice must be distinguished from Golden Berenice, far away to the south, opposite Aden, which, like Zula and Ptolemais Theron, were not included in the Roman empire.
The fertility of the land of the Nile was proverbial, and it brought in an enormous revenue to the imperial purse. Augustus did not reduce the heavy taxes which had been levied by his Greek predecessors, but by judicious improvements, among which must be especially mentioned the re-opening and clearing of the Nile canals, he enabled the country to bear them, and Egypt soon recovered from the financial distress in which the rule of Cleopatra had plunged it. The chief product was grain, with which it supplied Rome. In the production of linen Egypt rivaled Syria; in glass manufactures it stood first; and it supplied the world with papyrus. Excellently situated for traffic, Alexandria might claim to be the second city in the Empire; as a centre of commerce, she then stood at the head of all cities in the world. The traffic of the East and the West met in her streets and on her quays; Greek philosophies and oriental religions mingled in her schools. The buildings were magnificent, above all, the Temple of Serapis, the Museum, and the Royal Palace. There were attractions for the scholar, as well as for the merchant, and the sight-seer; the Greek library was the richest, and the Greek professors of the Museums the most learned, in the Empire. Everything, a Greek writer says, was to be had in Egypt, wealth, quiet, sights, philosophers, gold, a Museum, wine, all one may desire! There was a very large Jewish population in Alexandria, composing a distinct community, with its own chief (entitled the ethnarch); and the city was too often the scene of riots and tumults, as was wont to be the case where there were large colonies of Jews.
The capture of Alexandria by Caesar was commemorated by the building of a suburb called Nicopolis, which served as a sort of fortress to command the city, as a legion was stationed there. The temple of Antonius, incomplete when the city was taken, was finished and dedicated to Caesar. At a later period Augustus set up an obelisk in Alexandria, which survives to the present day, although no longer in its old station, under the name of Cleopatra’s needle.
Egypt had been accustomed to reckon time by the regnal year of the Ptolemies, and the same system was continued under its new sovran. The era of the first Roman ruler was counted, not from the day of his victory, August 1 (30B.C.), but from August 29, corresponding to the first day of the month Thoth, which the Egyptians reckoned as the first day of the new year. Cleopatra lived during the greater part of August, and this circumstance may have determined the choice of the beginning of the new era.
LIST OF PROVINCES AT THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS.
1. Senatorial
a. Governed by consular proconsuls.
Asia
Africa
b. Governed by praetorian proconsuls
Sicily.
Baetica.
Narbonensis.
Macedonia.
Achaia.
Bithynia and Pontus.
Cyprus.
Crete and Cyrene.
2. Imperial
a. Governed by legati Augusti propraetore.
(1) Governed by consular legati.
Tarraconensis.
Pannonia.
Dalmatia.
Moesia.
Syria.
(2) Governed by praetorian legati.
Lusitania.
Aquitania.
Lugudunensis
Belgica.
Galatia.
b. Governed by prefects or procurators.
Egypt (pref.).
Sardinia and Corsica.
Raetia (pref.)
Noricum.
Alpes Maritima; (pref.
Alpes