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HISTORY OF ABYSSINIA. ^47 
them to become an integral part of the state. From Axum^ their 
conquests soon extended to the Red Sea ; and here, finding friends 
in the inhabitants of the city of Adulis (which had also been built 
by refugees from Egypt), they together formed a very powerful 
nation, which was enabled to assume a consequence in the Red Sea, 
that the then possessors of the trade were unequal to oppose. Of 
these facts we have information also in the Adulitic and Axum in- 
scriptions, and in the Periplus, written, I conceive, after the time of 
Pliny, who, except Strabo, was the first to notice this rising nation ; 
the latter writer having only remarked, in his account of the Ethi- 
opians, that *' as yet none of the Ethiopians had interfered with the 
commerce of the Red Sea." From the date of the Adulitic inscrip- 
tion, their power became supreme in this part of the world ; and 
they formed a maritime barrier between the Romans and the Per- 
sians, which induced the former to conciliate them by repeated 
embassies, and annual presents, the magnificence of which strongly 
points out the consequence that they held in the scale of eastern 
politics,* which consequence continued, in some degree, until a con- 
siderable time after the rise of the Arabians under Mahomet. 
"As idolatry declined among the Romans, by the same channel 
that the worship of Mars had been introduced, the true religion of 
Christ found its way into Abyssinia, and at length was happily 
established as the religion of the country, about the year 330, 
in the reign of Abreha, or, as he was called by the Romans, Aeizana, 
(who had at this time taken his brother Abybeha, or Saeizana, to 
share in the empire). The persons to whom the introduction -f of 
* Nicephorus, p. 719, ch. cxviii. f Vide Fred. Spanheim Historia Christiana, 
Secul. iv. cap. iv. viii. and Socrates, lib. 1. cap. xix. 
