A New Latin Inscription from the South Arabia (Classical Historical Geography and Roman Law in the light of the New Epigraphical Document)
Bukharin Mikhail D.
In the middle of the 1st century AD, Rome had allies in Aksum and in the kingdom of Saba’ and dhū-Raydān. However, the caravan trade of South Arabia with the Mediterranean declined and Rome could not bring the tribes of Western Arabia under direct control. Aksum undertook a campaign in East Africa, crossed (presumably with the Roman help, at least with Rome’s permission) the Red Sea from Berenice to modern al-Wajh (ancient Leuke Kome), proceeded with military operations in Western Arabia and restored peace on the caravan and sea routes there. The Aksumites could not bypass the Farasân islands on their way back to Adulis, which point to direct Roman help for crossing of the Red Sea. Here lay the necessity to establish a Roman port on the Farasân islands, which is signaled in the Latin inscription found there. The analysis of this text by F. Villeneuve’s brakes primary foundations of classical historical geography (e.g., location of Hersperia on the shores of the Red Sea, ignoring of the division of the Ocean – Outer Sea into four parts with their own names and their location and frontiers between ancient continents), mythology (Heracles’ voyage to Emathion – king of Ethiopians as if it took place in the east of Africa, i.e. in the south, not in the eastern extremity of the world), and Roman law (non-taking into consideration of legal nature of dedicatio), as well as Latin epigraphy (misunderstanding of abbreviations nature), linguistics (wide use of «contaminations» instead of rules of historical phonetics in equations of ethnic and place-names) and history of Roman institutions (presumed non-existence of the pontiffs of single deities, presumed absence of references to them in the inscriptions without a reference to their cursus honorum and place of provenance). Mistakes were also made by F. Villeneuve in references to the ancient sources: consideration of Zoskales as the king of Adulis and that of Heracles’ crossing to the «opposite continent» in a golden cup. In fact, no Greek or Roman text under discussion connects Heracles with Arabia. Dedications required presence of both a magistrate and a pontiff. Latin and Greek inscriptions, as well as papyri and Latin literature, do point to the existence of pontiffs of various single deities, including those of Hercules, at least from the 1st century BC throughout the Roman Empire. There are numerous references to pontiffs without any cursus honorum or city-name in the inscriptions. Pontus Herculis as a place name was never attested, the abbreviation PONT < PONTI in the meaning of «sea» is not known and was impossible; PONT < PONTIS («bridge») is very rarely attested and makes no real sense in the Farasān inscription. As a result, one could confidently conclude that there was no Pontus or Pons Herculis in the analyzed text from Farasân, but rather pontifex Herculis. This pontiff oversaw accomplishment of the discussed dedication by the prefect of the port and made it valid from the point of view of sacral law.