But, however important to the country itself and in their ultimate results to the world at large might be the events that took place within Arabia during the pre-Islamitic epoch, they had small bearing on the nations outside the peninsula. The Yemenite queen of Sheba’s ambassage to Solomon, even if an historical event, led at least to no historical results; and with other coeval rulers and nationalities, Greek, Persian, and Macedonian, the Arabs rarely came into any other contact than that of distant and desultory traffic. Nor do the frontier skirmishes by which an Antigonus or a Ptolemy attempted, without success, to gain a footing in Arabia, deserve more than a passing notice; and Pompey himself, victorious elsewhere, was foiled on its frontiers. At last during the reign of Augustus, Ælius Gallus, the Roman prefect of Egypt, undertook a military expedition against Yemen itself, with the view of annexing that region, which report enriched with immense treasures, to the Roman Empire. With an army composed of ten thousand Roman infantry, five hundred Jews, and one thousand Nabatæans, he crossed the Red Sea in two hundred and ten galleys, and landed at Moilah, or Leuce Come, in 25° N. lat., near the modern Yambo. After some delay, the consequence of disease and disorganisation among his troops, he marched southward until he reached the inland district and city of Nejran, on the nearer frontier of Yemen. The town of Nejran he is said to have taken by assault, as well as a few neighbouring places, probably mere villages, of little note. Meanwhile a large force of Arabs had assembled to oppose him, but Gallus easily defeated them, and advanced to Mareb itself, then, we may suppose, the capital of Yemen. But the Roman soldiers, unaccustomed to the heat of the tropical climate, and much reduced in numbers, were incapable of laying siege to that town; and their general thus found himself forced to retreat, and recrossed the sea to Egypt without having effected any permanent settlement on the Arab side. Later attempts, made by Roman governors or generals under Trajan and Severus, were restricted to the neighbourhood of the Assyrian frontier; and the ruined cities of Bosrah and Petra yet indicate the landmarks of the extreme southerly limits reached by imperial dominion over Arab territory.