and the Alexandrians made use of such checks upon their rulers as the law allowed them.  They lived under an absolute monarchy tempered only by ridicule.  Though their city was four hundred years old, they were still colonists and without a mother-country.  They had very little faith in anything great or good, whether human or divine.  They had few cherished prejudices, no honoured traditions, sadly little love of fame, and they wrote no histories.  But in luxury and delicacy they set the fashion to their conquerors.  The wealthy Alexandrian walked about Rome in a scarlet robe, in summer fanning himself with gold, and displaying on his fingers rings carefully suited to the season; as his hands were too delicate to carry his heavier jewels in the warm weather.  At the supper tables of the rich, the Alexandrian singing boys were much valued; the smart young Roman walked along the Via Sacra humming an Alexandrian tune; the favourite comic actor, the delight of the city, whose jokes set the theatre in a roar, was an Alexandrian; the Retiarius, who, with no weapon but a net, fought against an armed gladiator in the Roman forum, and came off conqueror in twenty-six such battles, was an Alexandrian; and no breed of fighting-cocks was thought equal to those reared in the suburbs of Alexandria.

In the reign of Augustus the Roman generals had been defeated in their attacks on Arabia; but under Trajan, when the Romans were masters of all the countries which surround Arabia Nabataea, and when Egypt was so far quiet that the legions could be withdrawn without danger to the provinces, the Arabs could hold out no longer, and the rocky fastness of Petra was forced to receive a Roman garrison.  The event was as usual commemorated on the coins of Rome; and for the next four hundred years that remarkable Arab city formed part of the Roman empire; and Europeans now travelling through the desert from Mount Sinai to Jerusalem are agreeably surprised at coming upon temples, carved out of the solid rock, ornamented with Corinthian columns of the age of the Antonines.

In the twelfth year of this reign, when Lucius Sulpicius Simius was prefect, some additions which had been made to the temple at Panopolis in the Thebaid were dedicated in the name of the emperor; and in the nineteenth year, when Marcus Rutilius Lupus was prefect, a new portico in the oasis of Thebes was in the same manner dedicated to Serapis and Isis.  A small temple, which had been before built at Denderah, near the great temple of Venus, was in the first year of this reign dedicated to the Empress Plotina, under the name of the great goddess, the Younger Venus.