ANCIENT KINGS OF AlIABIA. 131 



Sardis to Babylon.* The project of Alexander the 

 Great, after he had overthroAvn the Persian empire, 

 to add Arabia to his dominions, was frustrated by a 

 premature death. That prince, as we learn from 

 Arrian and Strabo, intended to fix his royal resi- 

 dence there ; and it was with this view that the 

 fleet of Nearchus, the Columbus of antiquity, was 

 ordered to make a survey of the whole peninsula. 



Antigonus sent an army of 4000 foot and 600 

 horse to chastise the Nabatha^ans for the ravages 

 they had committed, and their refusal to allow him 

 to collect the bitumen of the Lake Asphaltites ; but 

 they were taken by surprise, and almost entirely cut 

 to pieces. None of Alexander's successors appear 

 to have made any eflbrts to extend their authority 

 beyond the frontier districts of Arabia. When 

 the Macedonian empire was partitioned into four 

 kingdoms (B. C. 301), this country was indeed in- 

 cluded as a province in that which fell to the inher- 

 itance of Ptolemy ; but the name is evidently ap- 

 plied merely to the regions that bordered on Egypt 

 and Palestine. Ptolemy Euergetes had made him- 

 self master of the Arabian and Ethiopian coasts of 

 the Red Sea ; but he penetrated no farther into the 

 country, t 



From about the year 220 B. C, to the Christian 

 era, several of the Arab kings distinguished them- 

 selves in the wars in which the Jews were engaged, 

 sometimes joining the Syrians, and sometimes the 



* Herodot. lib. i. iii. Prideaux's Counex. vol. i. p, 1, 47, 

 Xen. Cyropaed. lib. viii. p. 515, &c. 



t The nations conquered by Ptolemy are pompously recorded 

 in the famous Adulitic Inscription, which mentions his having 

 subdued "the whole coast from Leuke Kome to Sabaea; and 

 his being the tirst to conceive the design, and carry it nito exe- 

 cution." But for this curious monument, which was preserved 

 by Cosmas Indiropleustes, in his Topographia Christiana, the 

 victories of Ptolemy might have been buried in oblivion. They 

 paved the way for the Abyssinian power in xVrabia. — Vincent's 

 Periplus, vol, i. Apppnd. ii. Valentia's Travels, vol. iii. chap. 5, 



