full extent of his severity. Many thousands of the citizens perished in a promiscuous slaughter, and there were few obnoxious persons in Egypt who escaped a sentence either of death or at least of exile.[1] The fate of Busiris and of Coptos was still more melancholy than that of Alexandria; those proud cities, the former distinguished by its antiquity, the latter enriched by the passage of the Indian trade, were utterly destroyed by the arms and by the severe order of Diocletian.[2] The character of the Egyptian nation, insensible to kindness, but extremely susceptible of fear, could alone justify this excessive rigour. The seditions of Alexandria had often affected the tranquillity and subsistence of Rome itself. Since the usurpation of Firmus, the province of Upper Egypt, incessantly relapsing into rebellion, had embraced the alliance of the savages of Æthiopia. The number of the Blemmyes, scattered between the Island of Meroe and the Red Sea, was very inconsiderable, their disposition was unwarlike, their weapons rude and inoffensive.[3] Yet in the public disorders these barbarians, whom antiquity, shocked with the deformity of their figure, had almost excluded from the human species, presumed to rank themselves among the enemies of Rome.[4] Such had been the unworthy allies of the Egyptians; and, while the attention of the state was engaged in more serious wars, their vexatious inroads might again harass the repose of the province. With a view of opposing to the Blemmyes a suitable adversary, Diocletian persuaded the Nobatæ, or people of Nubia, to remove from their ancient habitations in the deserts of Libya, and resigned to them an extensive but unprofitable territory, above Syene and the cataracts of the Nile, with the stipulation that they should ever respect and guard the frontier of the empire. The treaty long subsisted; and till the establishment of Chris-
- ↑ Eutrop. ix. 24. Orosius, vii. 25. John Malala in Chron. Antioch. p. 409, 410 [p. 309, ed. Bonn]. Yet Eumenius assures us that Egypt was pacified by the clemency of Diocletian. [Achilleus seems to have been preceded by another tyrant, L. Domitius Domitianus, whose reign was so short that he is not mentioned by any writer, and his existence is only known by some coins, which puzzle numismatists. It has been conjectured, but not proved, that he and Achilleus were one and the same person. Compare Eckhel, 8, 41; Cohen, 5, 549 , also Schiller, ii. 138.]
- ↑ Eusebius (in Chron.) places their destruction several years sooner, and at a time when Egypt itself was in a state of rebellion against the Romans. [Diocletian left Nicomedia at end of March, 295; seems to have begun siege of Alexandria in July, for it lasted eight months, and a rescript is dated from it on 31 March, 296. See Mommsen, loc. cit.]
- ↑ Strabo, l. xvii. p. 1, 172 (leg. 819]. Pomponius Mela. l. i. c. 4. His words are curious, "Intra, si credere libet, vix homines magisque semiferi; Ægipanes, et Blemmyes, et Satyri".
- ↑ Ausus sese inserere fortunæ et provocare arma Romana.
