The Roman Takeover

When Mark Antony was defeated at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Queen Cleopatra prepared an escape to India with the treasure of the Ptolemais. Accompanied by Caesarion, her son by Julius Caesar, she had enough troops to guarantee the continuance of her royal court in some faraway eastern city. She made preparations to launch her galleys into the Red Sea by dragging them across the Suez Isthmus, but the Nabataeans had old scores to settle with the Ptolemais. Her soldiers were ambushed by forces sent by the Nabataean King Malichus who had allied himself with Octavian, and Cleopatra’s ships were burned before they could be launched, thereby ending her prospects of escape to the Orient.31

With the fleet burnt, there was still one final hope for the Ptolemaic dynasty. Cleopatra’s son Caesarion was almost an adult and he was both the prime successor to the Ptolemaic throne and the blood-line heir to Julius Caesar.32 This made him a serious threat to Octavian who was the grand-nephew of Caesar and only his ‘son’ by posthumous adoption. Cleopatra planned to send Caesarion to safety overseas in lands that were far from Roman authority and beyond the political reach of Octavian. She arranged for him to sail to India accompanied by a staff of royal advisors carrying a large consignment from the Ptolemaic treasury.33 Perhaps the Queen hoped that the prince could reach adulthood in India and one day return to avenge her by leading a military rebellion against Octavian.

When Antony committed suicide, Cleopatra and her maidservants chose to die from the bite of a venomous snake rather than endure the humiliation planned by Octavian. Meanwhile, her son Caesarion waited at the port of Berenice for the seasonal trade winds. But before the youth could embark on his voyage, an advisor convinced him to return to Alexandria. Octavian had him seized and executed on the grounds that ‘too many Caesars are not a good thing’.34

With the defeat of Cleopatra, Octavian had overthrown the last of the Hellenic dynasties that gained power after the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC). With all opposition removed, the entire Mediterranean was brought under a single Roman regime ending centuries of conflict and decades of repeated civil war. As supreme commander of the Roman Empire Octavian had assumed power over an estimated 45 million people.35

With the Mediterranean domains pacified, the new Emperor was in a position to seek peace terms with the formidable Parthian Empire which ruled in ancient Iran. But first he had to secure Egypt and maximise its revenue contributions to the imperial State. During the final years of the Ptolemaic era, the Egyptian economy had been exhausted by extortionate taxes and its infrastructure damaged by State neglect.36 By using the Roman army as a workforce, Augustus began programmes to repair the transport and irrigation canals and re-secure the caravan routes through the Eastern Desert. The next military target was to be the conquest of Arabia, so Aelius Gallus the Roman governor of Egypt was ordered to restore shipyards at the northern Red Sea port of Arsine. Gallus set about building 80 triremes and 130 troop-transports, a fleet capable of conquering the Arabian Peninsula.37 The existence of these shipyards at the Red Sea ports provided opportunities for business investors by allowing Roman merchants to build dozens of new ships and undertake further voyages to India.

As part of a preliminary attack on southern Arabia, Roman ships were sent to destroy the Sabaean city-port of Eudaimon Arabia (Aden).38 This raid had immediate consequences for international trade as Greek and Indian ships arriving at the port discovered the city ransacked and its merchandise removed.

They had no choice but to sail onward and meet their trade contacts at more distant ports.

The Greek geographer Strabo, an associate of Aelius Gallus, accompanied the governor on an official tour along the Nile River. The group travelled past the Nile city of Coptos, which was the main commercial centre for Greek and Roman traders crossing the Eastern Desert. At Coptos, Strabo heard a report that over a hundred Roman ships were sailing direct from Egypt to India every year. He reports: ‘when Gallus was the prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him along the Nile River as far as Syene and the frontiers of Aethiopia. On this trip I learned that as many as 120 vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India.’39 This was more than six times the number that had made the journey during the Ptolemaic era.