Ptolemy Euergetes directed his thoughts more to conquest than to commerce, though he rendered the former, in some degree, useful and subservient to the latter.  After having passed the Nile, and subdued the nations which lay on the confines of Egypt, he compelled them to open a road of communication between their country and Egypt.  The frankincense country was the next object of his ambition:  this he subdued; and having sent a fleet and army across the Red Sea into Arabia, he compelled the inhabitants of the district to maintain the roads free from robbers, and the sea from pirates—­a proof that these people had made some advances in seafaring matters, and also of the attention paid by Euergetes to the navigation of the Red Sea, as well as to the protection of land commerce.  Indeed the whole of his progress to Aduli, which we have more particularly mentioned in another place, was marked as much by attention to commerce as by the love of conquest; but though by this enterprize he rendered both the coasts of the Red Sea tributary, and thus better adapted to commerce, there is no proof that he passed the Straits of Babelmandeb.  It is true, indeed, that he visited Mosullon, which lies beyond the straits, but not by sea, having marched by land to that place, through the interior of Abyssinia and Adel.  From the whole of this enterprize of Euergetes we may justly infer, that though he facilitated the intercourse by land between Egypt and those parts of Africa which lay immediately beyond the straits, yet his ships did not pass the straits, and that in his reign the discoveries of Timosthenes had not been followed up or improved for the purpose of trading by sea with the coast of Africa.  The navigation of the whole of the Red Sea, at least on the Arabian side, from Leuake Kome to Sabaea, was undoubtedly known and frequently used at this period; but this was its utmost limit.

In the reign of Ptolemy Philometor, when Agatharcides lived, the commercial enterprizes of the Egyptians had begun rather to languish; on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, they did indeed extend to Sabaea, as in the time of Euergetes; but there is evidence that on the opposite coast they did not go so low, as in the reign of the latter sovereign.  Agatharcides makes no mention of Berenice; according to his account, Myos Hormos had again become the emporium, and the only trade from that part seems to have been for elephants to Ptolemais Theron.  It may, indeed, be urged that Berenice was not, properly speaking, a harbour, but only an open bay, to which the ships did not come from Myos Hormos, till their cargoes were completely ready.  But that Myos Hormos was the great point of communication with Coptus is evident from the account which Agatharcides gives of the caravan road between these two places.  Even so late as the time of Strabo, this road was much more frequented than the road between Coptus and Berenice:  of the latter he merely observes, that Philadelphus opened it with