(II, 306–311), and as Glaser proves (Skizze, 56–9), without reaching Marib, and probably without inflicting any lasting injury on the tribes along their route. It was the merchant-shipping of the Romans, and not their soldiery, that undermined the power of the Sabaeans.
As the wealth of the Marib declined, its power was resolved into its elements, and was reorganized by a neighbor of the same blood. The oldest son of Saba the Great, founder of Marib, was Himyar, whose descendants included most of the town-folk of the southwest corner of Arabia. Two sons of Himyar, Malik and Arib, had carried the Joktanite arms back toward the east again, subduing the earlier inhabitants of the frankincense region north of Dhofar. The center of the tribe was at Zafar, southwest of Marib, and some days' journey nearer the sea. Allied with the sheikh at Zafar was he of the Ma'âfir, controlling the port of Muza. This combination was able to overthrow the old order, Zafar supplanting Marib, and Muza stripping Aden of its trade and its privileges along the African coast. Thereafter the Himyarite dynasty—the Homerite kings—assumed the title “ Kings of Saba and Raidan.” This was during the first century B. C.
The subsequent policy of the Kariba-îls of Zafar was to expand both north and east, to regain the old supremacy over the “ Carnaites ” along the caravan-routes, and to control the shipping from the east.
(See Prof. D. H. Müller’s article, Yemen, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Edition; Glaser, Skizze and Die Abessinier, etc.; Weber, Arabien vor dem Islam in Der alte Orient, III, Leipzig, 1901; Prof. Hommel's chapter, Arabia, in Hilprecht, Exporations in Bible Lands, Phila., 1903; Hogarth, The Penetration of Arabia, N. Y., 1904; and the reports of the Austrian South-Arabian Expedition.)
23. Embassies and gifts.—This wooing of Yemen by Rome was soon ended. It was no part of the Arab policy, whether Homerite, Minaean, or Nabataean, to let Rome cultivate direct relations with India, and as the empire expanded stronger measures were necessary. Fifty years later than the Periplus, Trajan had captured Petra, and Abyssinia was being subsidized to attack Yemen.
23. A friend of the Emperors.—Some commentators suppose that this refers to a time when two Roman emperors ruled together, thus dating the Periplus well into the 2d century A. D., but there is nothing in the text to require it. The Homerite king, who began to rule, probably, in the last days of Claudius, was simply, (in the mind of our author, writing earl in the reign of Nero), the friend of both those Roman Emperors, as he was also of several others whose short reigns coincided with his. A list of the Emperors of the 1st and 2d centuries confirms this:
