98 ANCIENT KINGS OF ARABIA. 



hordes of the desert were content to devote the 

 soSary hours of their monotonous hfe to the com- 

 pos tion of songs, or the recitation of tales. >.or is 

 Ft likely that a nation so proud of their independence 

 would be careful to preserve their annals, when 

 these could only record the invasions of their ene- 

 mies, or an endless succession of domestic feuds, in 

 which the weak constantly received the law from 

 the stron<T To have commemorated these inglo- 

 rious transactions would only have been to per- 

 petuate their own disgrace. It was, doubtless, from 

 thi^s impulse of national vanity, that no Arabian 

 author has ever mentioned the presence of a Roman 

 army in that country. i r „^ 



Little light is thrown on this obscure epoch from 

 foreign sources, except at distant intervals. If we 

 consult the Greek and Roman authors, the informa- 

 tion they furnish is far from being exact. Strabo 

 assures us, that Arabia the Happy was divided into 

 four distinct governments, and that the succession 

 of their kings was not fixed by primogeniture or even 

 by royal descent. The right extended to a certain 

 number of privileged families, and the first male child 

 born after the commencement of a new reign was 

 considered heir to the crown. Agatharcides onthe 

 contrary, tells us that their kings were heredi ary, 

 nd thai so long as they remained shut iip in their 

 mlac^s they were greatly respected; but that the 

 people assailed them with stones the moment they 

 appeared in public, and after their death buried them 

 hf dunghills Diodorus has recorded the same pe- 

 culSy Arrian places one kingdom in the western 

 part of^emen and another to the eastward ; the 

 Capitals of which he calls Sabbatha and Aphar, 

 evFdently the Saba and Dhafar of later writers. 



One main difficulty resulting from the want of 

 native or contemporary written ^^^^'^l'\f%^^ 

 determining with any tolerable precision the ^^ro 

 nological succession of events; for it does not 



