The efforts of the transplanted Nabateans to remain in touch with their home sanctuaries, may have opened their eyes to the possibilities of trade. In the fourth century before Christ, they attracted the attention of the western world by seizing Petra, the Ha-Sela of antiquity, which lay half-way between the head of the Gulf of Akaba and the Dead Sea at the point where the old gold and incense route from Arabia to Damascus was crossed by the overland route from India to Egypt. This appropriation gave the Nabateans the control of the Eastern trade. In order to check their progress Antigonus Cyclops, king of Syria and Palestine since B.C. 312, sent Athenæus and an army against them. The army reached Petra at the time when the Nabateans were absent on a pilgrimage. They easily overcame the aged, the women and children, and seized an enormous booty in spicery and silver. But the returning Nabateans overtook and well nigh destroyed the invading force. Another army was sent under Demetrius to seize Petra, and chastise the Nabateans. But these drew the enemy along desert tracks, and the invaders achieved nothing.[125] Henceforth the Nabateans acted as a recognised nation, whose kings from about B.C. 200 held their own by the side of the kings of Judæa. Of these kings Aretas I (_Arabic_ Harith), the contemporary of Antiochus Epiphanes (B.C. 173-164), received the fugitive Hasmoneans (2 Macc. v. 8); Malchos I dwelt at Petra and struck a coinage; Aretas III was master of Damascus and king of Cœle-Syria. Their control over the trade-routes extended in many directions. Along the Mediterranean on the north coast of Sinai they secured a foothold far beyond the limit of Cœle-Syria almost as far as the Tanitic mouth of the Nile. For excavations made at Qasr Ghait or Ouait between Kantara and Katia led to the discovery of a Nabatean sanctuary with a Nabatean inscription.[126] As the Romans advanced their frontier, they were brought into contact with the kings of Nabat. Malchos II in the year B.C. 47, supported the Romans under Cæsar, and entered into an agreement with them. As a result, a Roman tax-collector resided at Leukokome, the southernmost point of Nabat. After the conquest of Egypt in B.C. 30, the Romans, their imagination fired by the thought of the untold wealth of Arabia, entered into an agreement with the Nabateans, and sent eighty boats, with ten thousand men, including five hundred Jews and a thousand Nabateans. These sailed from Arsinoë around Sinai in B.C. 25 to invade and conquer Arabia. It was in vain that Syllæus, the Roman tax-gatherer at Leukokome, urged that the Arabians were rich in merchandise only. The expedition landed, camels were chartered and the Romans entered the country. But here they found a land bare of food and water, and no one to contend with. The expedition was a miserable failure, but Syllæus who tried to prevent it, was accused of treachery and condemned to death.[127]