To this survey we must add the valuable geographical knowledge given by Arrian in his voyage round the shores of the Red Sea, which has come down to us in an interesting document, wherein he mentions the several seaports and their distances, with the tribes and cities near the coast.  The trade of Egypt to India, Ethiopia, and Arabia was then most valuable, and carried on with great activity; but, as the merchandise was in each case carried only for short distances from city to city, the traveller could gain but little knowledge of where it came from, or even sometimes of where it was going.

[Illustration:  115.jpg STATUE OF THE NILE]

The Egyptians sent coarse linen, glass bottles, brazen vessels, brass for money, and iron for weapons of war and hunting; and they received back ivory, rhinoceros’ teeth, Indian steel, Indian ink, silks, slaves, tortoise-shell, myrrh, and other scents, with many other Eastern articles of high price and little weight.  The presents which the merchants made to the petty kings of Arabia were chiefly horses, mules, and gold and silver vases.  Beside this, the ports on the Red Sea carried on a brisk trade among themselves in grain, expressed oil, wicker boats, and sugar.  Of sugar, or honey from the cane, this is perhaps the earliest mention found in history; but Arrian does not speak of the sugar-cane as then new, nor does he tell us where it was grown.  Had sugar been then seen for the first time he would certainly have said so; it must have been an article well known in the Indian trade.  While passing through Egypt on his travels, or while living there and holding some post under the prefect, the historian Arrian has left us his name and a few lines of poetry carved on the foot of the great sphinx near the pyramids.

At this time also the travellers continued to carve their names and their feelings of wonder on the foot of the musical statue at Thebes and in the deep empty tombs of the Theban kings.  These inscriptions are full of curious information.  For example, it has been doubted whether the Roman army was provided with medical officers.  Their writers have not mentioned them.  But part of the Second Legion was at this time stationed at Thebes; and one Asclepiades, while cutting his name in a tomb which once held some old Theban, has cleared up the doubt for us, by saying that he was physician to the Second Legion.

Antoninus made a hippodrome, or race-course, for the amusement of the citizens of Alexandria, and built two gates to the city, called the gate of the sun and the gate of the moon, the former fronting the harbour and the latter fronting the lake Mareotis, and joined by the great street which ran across the whole width of the city.  But this reign was not wholly without trouble; there was a rebellion in which the prefect Dinarchus lost his life, and for which the Alexandrians were severely punished by the emperor.

[Illustration:  117.jpg COINS OF MARCUS AURELIUS]