But the Arabian commerce was at all events broken down partly by the measures, to be explained further on, of the Roman government for protecting the Egyptian navigation, partly by a blow struck by the Romans against the chief mart of Indo-Arabian traffic. Whether under Augustus himself, possibly among the preparations for the invasion to be carried out by Gaius, or under one of his immediate successors, a Roman fleet appeared before Adane and destroyed the place; in Vespasian’s time it was a village, and its prosperity was gone. We know only the naked fact,[267] but it speaks for itself. A counterpart to the destruction of Corinth and of Carthage by the republic, it, like these, attained its end, and secured for the Romano-Egyptian trade the supremacy in the Arabian gulf and in the Indian Sea. [Sidenote: Later fortunes of the Homerites.] The prosperity, however, of the blessed land of Yemen was too firmly founded to succumb to this blow; politically it was even perhaps in this epoch only that it more energetically rallied its resources. Mariaba, at the time when the arms of Gallus failed before its walls, was perhaps no more than the capital of the Sabaeans; but already at that time the tribe of the Homerites, whose capital Sapphar lay somewhat to the south of Mariaba, also in the interior, was the strongest in Arabia Felix. A century later we find the two united under a king of the Homerites and of the Sabaeans reigning in Sapphar, whose rule extends as far as Mocha and Aden, and, as was already said, over the island of Socotra and the coast of Somal and Zanzibar; and at least from this time we may speak of a kingdom of the Homerites. The desert northwards from Mariaba as far as the Roman frontier did not at that time belong to it, and was under no regular authority at all;[268] the principalities of the Minaei and of the Chatramotitae continued also to be under sovereigns of their own. The eastern half of Arabia formed constantly a part of the Persian empire (p. 13), and never was under the sceptre of the rulers of Arabia Felix. Even now therefore the bounds were narrow and probably remained so; little is known as to the further development of affairs.[269] In the middle of the fourth century the kingdom of the Homerites was united with that of the Axomites, and was governed from Axomis[270]--a subjection, however, which was subsequently broken off again. The kingdom of the Homerites, as well as the united Axomitico-Homeritic, stood as independent states in intercourse and treaty with Rome during the later imperial period. [Sidenote: Commercial intercourse of the Homerites.]