With reference to the Arabians of Yemen the Romans pursued the very opposite policy to that adopted towards the Axomites. Augustus, for whom the non-enlargement of the empire was the starting-point of the imperial government, and who allowed almost all the plans of conquest of his father and master to drop, made an exception of the south-west coast of Arabia, and here took aggressive measures of his own free will. This was done on account of the position which this group of peoples occupied at that time in Indo-Egyptian commercial intercourse. In order to bring the province of his dominions, which was politically and financially the most important, up, in an economic aspect, to the level which his predecessors in rule had neglected to establish or had allowed to decline, he needed above all to obtain inter-communication between Arabia and India on the one hand and Europe on the other. The Nile-route for long competed successfully with the Arabian and the Euphrates routes; but Egypt played in this respect, as we saw, a subordinate part at least under the later Lagids. A trading rivalry subsisted not with the Axomites, but doubtless with the Arabians; if the Egyptian traffic was to be converted from a passive into an active, from indirect into direct, the Arabs had to be overthrown; and this it was that Augustus desired and the Roman government in some measure achieved. [Sidenote: Expedition of Gallus.] In the sixth year of his reign in Egypt (end of 729) {25 B.C.} Augustus despatched a fleet, fitted out expressly for this expedition, of 80 warships and 130 transports, and the half of the Egyptian army, a corps of 10,000 men, without reckoning the contingents of the two nearest client kings, the Nabataean Obodas and the Jew Herod, against the states of Yemen, in order either to subjugate or at least to ruin them,[262] while at the same time the treasures there accumulated were certainly taken into account. But the enterprise completely miscarried, and that from the incapacity of the leader, the governor of Egypt at the time, Gaius Aelius Gallus.[263] Since the occupation and the possession of the desolate coast from Leuce Come downwards to the frontier of the enemy’s territory was of no consequence at all, it was necessary that the expedition should be directed immediately against the latter, and that the army should be conducted from the most southern Egyptian port at once into Arabia Felix.[264] Instead of this the fleet was got ready at the most northerly, that of Arsinoe (Suez), and the army was landed at Leuce Come, just as if it were the object to prolong as much as possible the voyage of the fleet and the march of the troops. Besides, the war-vessels were superfluous, since the Arabians possessed no war-fleet, the Roman sailors were unacquainted with the navigation on the Arabian coast, and the transports, although specially built for this expedition, were unsuited for their purpose.