We have formerly shown that the maritime intercourse of Egypt, if not with Adulis (p. 284), at any rate with Arabia and India at the epoch which immediately preceded the Roman rule, was not carried on in the main through the medium of Egyptians. It was only through the Romans that Egypt obtained the great maritime traffic to the East. “Not twenty Egyptian ships in the year,” says a contemporary of Augustus, “ventured forth under the Ptolemies from the Arabian gulf; now 120 merchantmen annually sail to India from the port of Myos Hormos alone.” The commercial gain, which the Roman merchant had been obliged hitherto to share with the Persian or Arabian intermediary, flowed to him in all its extent after the opening up of direct communication with the more remote East. This result was probably brought about in the first instance by the circumstance that the Egyptian ports were, if not directly barred, at any rate practically closed, by differential custom-dues against Arabian and Indian transports;[273] only by the hypothesis of such a navigation-act in favour of their own shipping could this sudden revolution of commercial relations be explained. But the traffic was not merely violently transformed from a passive into an active one; it was also absolutely increased, partly in consequence of the increased inquiry in the West for the wares of the East, partly at the expense of the other routes of traffic through Arabia and Syria. For the Arabian and Indian commerce with the West the route by way of Egypt more and more proved itself the shortest and the cheapest. The frankincense, which in the olden time went in great part by the land-route through the interior of Arabia to Gaza (p. 288, note 2), came afterwards for the most part by water through Egypt. The Indian traffic received a new impulse about the time of Nero, when a skilled and courageous Egyptian captain, Hippalus, ventured, instead of making his way along the long stretch of coast, to steer from the mouth of the Arabian Gulf directly through the open sea for India; he knew the monsoon, which thenceforth the mariners, who traversed this route after him, named the Hippalus. Thenceforth the voyage was not merely materially shortened, but was less exposed to the land and sea pirates. To what extent the secure state of peace and the increasing luxury raised the consumption of Oriental wares in the West, may be discerned in some measure from the complaints, which were in the time of Vespasian loudly expressed, regarding the enormous sums which went out of the empire for that purpose. The whole amount of the purchase-money annually paid to the Arabians and the Indians is estimated by Pliny at 100,000,000 sesterces (= £1,100,000), for Arabia alone at 55,000,000 sesterces (= £600,000), of which, it is true, a part was covered by the export of goods. The Arabians and the Indians bought doubtless the metals of the West, iron, copper, lead, tin, arsenic, the Egyptian articles mentioned formerly (p.