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248 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap. XL were sewed together with the strong thread of the cocoa-nut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was divided between two hostile princes ; one of whom possessed the mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle ; and the other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, foreign trade, and the capacious harbour of Trinquemale, which received and dismissed the fleets of the East and West. In this hospitable isle, at an equal distance (as it was computed) from their respective countries, the silk merchants of China, who had collected in their voyages aloes, cloves, nutmegs, and sandal-wood, maintained a free and beneficial commerce with the inhabitants of the Persian gulf. The subjects of the great Iking exalted, without a rival, his power and magnificence ; and the Koman, who confounded their vanity by comparing his paltry coin with a gold medal of the emperor Anastasius, had sailed to Ceylon in an ^Ethiopian ship, as a simple passenger. 73 introduc- As silk became of indispensable use, the emperor Justinian worms into saw, with concern, that the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly of this important supply, and that the wealth of his subjects was continually drained by a nation of enemies and idolaters. An active government would have restored the trade of Egypt and the navigation of the Bed Sea, which had decayed with the prosperity of the empire; and the Koman vessels might have sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the ports of Ceylon, of Malacca, or even of China. Justinian embraced a more humble expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies, the ^Ethiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis, 74 still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror. Along the African coast, they penetrated to the equator in search of gold, emeralds, and aromatics ; but they wisely de- 73 The Taprobane of Pliny (vi. 24), Solinus (c. 53), and Salmas (Plinian© Exer- oitat. p. 781, 782), and most of the ancients, who often confound the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra, is more clearly described by Cosmas Indicopleustes ; yet even the Christian topographer has exaggerated its dimensions. His information on the Indian and Chinese trade is rare and curious (1. ii. p. 138 ; 1. xi. p. 337, 338, edit. Montfaucon). [See Diehl, Justinien, 534 sqq.] 74 See Procopius, Persic. (1. ii. c. 20). Cosmas affords some interesting know- ledge of the port and inscription [two inscriptions, (1) of Ptolemy Euergetes (iii.) ; (2) of a king of Axum, of a much later date] of Adulis (Topograph. Christ. 1. ii. p. 138, 140-143), and of the trade of the Axumites along the African coast of Barbaria or Zingi (p. 138, 139), and as far as Taprobane (1. xi. p. 339). [On the Axumites, see Dillmann's article in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1878.]