Forgotten Wars - The Roman Invasion of Arabia (26 BC) DOCUMENTARY

The Roman army campaigned across the known world, winning many spectacular victories, and suffering its fair share of devastating defeats. Both are studied in great depth by academics and the general public. However, some of these campaigns have been lost to history, forgotten by almost all in our own times. Today we'll be exploring another one of Rome's forgotten wars, the invasion of Arabia by Aelius Gallus in 26 BC. This video was sponsored by Magellan TV. They're an awesome documentary streaming service run by filmmakers, with a selection of over 3,000 videos to choose from among the categories of history, science, nature, space, and more. When it comes to history documentaries, Magellan TV has the richest and most varied content anywhere. Ancient, modern, current, war, biography, and even related genres like science and crime which are historical in nature. As a great accompanying piece to our episode today, I highly recommend watching Arabia, Land of Illusion, which does a fantastic job showing the sorts of sights, sounds, and smells a Roman soldier would have experienced during their campaign of 26 BC into Arabia Felix. Magellan TV is compatible with Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Google Play, and iOS, which means you can watch it anytime, anywhere on your television, laptop, or mobile device. Sign up today to get 30% off an annual membership, which starts with a two-week free trial. That's less than $3.50 a month for access to thousands of documentaries. The offer is available for both new and returning users, so be sure to click the link in the description below or go to try.magellantv.com. Enjoy! Arabia was a largely inhospitable and sparsely populated land that had long existed at the fringes of the Mediterranean consciousness. Here's a brief passage from Pliny which speaks of their existence, saying, quote, that the nomads live on milk and the flesh of wild animals, that the rest of the tribes extract wine out of palm trees, as the natives do in India, and get oil from sesame, that the Himyarites are the most numerous tribe, that the Menaeans have land that is fertile in palm groves and timber and wealth in flocks, that the Carbaeans and Agraeans, and especially the Hadrumites, excel as warriors. The Arabs wear turbans or else go with their hair unshorn. They shave their beards but wear a mustache. Others, however, leave the beard also unshaven. As time went on, more information would trickle in about these lands and later Romans would characterize it into three regions, Arabia Petraea, Arabia Deserta, and Arabia Felix. Arabia Petraea was perhaps the most well known as a frontier region which bordered Egypt and the Levant. While largely arid, some areas of relative fertility allowed for the growth of more developed urban centers like Aqaba and Petra. These in turn could work alone or together to exert control over trade routes passing through their lands and rise to power. It's in this way that the Nabataean kingdom was able to become a key regional player which served as a bulwark between the civilized powers of the Mediterranean and the barbarians of the interior. This latter group was said to occupy the large expanse of land known as Arabia Deserta, sometimes referred to as the empty quarter, and for good reason. This vast stretch of land is one of the driest on the planet with endless deserts and sun-baked rocks that make it hard to imagine how anyone could survive this otherworldly landscape. And yet for millennia, it has been inhabited by roving nomadic tribes of Bedouins. Unfortunately, little of their history has been recorded and they largely appear in the accounts of others who engage with them through trade or military clashes. The last region was known as Arabia Felix. The name, meaning lucky or fertile, alludes to the fact that this region of Arabia was blessed by more rainfall than the rest of the peninsula which allowed its people to grow and sustain a highly developed agricultural system. In addition, the many cities which cropped up along the coast were perfectly placed to take advantage of the east-west trade routes which saw an enormous amount of wealth flowing north through the Persian Gulf to Mesopotamia or south through the Red Sea to Egypt. But the people of Arabia Felix were not simply middlemen either. They had their own valuable products to add to the markets such as frankincense, myrrh, gold, silver, cinnamon, and all kinds of other spices. All of this combined caused the emergence of a vibrant civilization with many notable kingdoms such as Saba, Himyar, and Aswan to name just a few. To the far-off Romans, many of the affairs of Arabia were completely off their radar. It's only as the empire began to expand its reach into the neighboring areas of Egypt and Judea around the first century BC that they slowly became interested. This was perhaps fueled by the blossoming trade in the region which the historian Strabo remarks once saw just a few ships making the route to India under the Ptolemies but now featured fleets in the hundreds. It's certain that Roman merchants operating in the area were keen to this new economic opportunity and swarmed in to make a profit. However, the slower moving apparatus of the Roman state was a bit more delayed in turning its attention to Arabia. After all, Augustus Caesar had only recently consolidated his dominion of the empire following the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. He had a huge administrative mess to clean up after years of civil war but slowly began to restructure the realm for a new era. Part of this activity involved overhauling the newly minted province of Egypt. The task of securing its borders and rebuilding its economy was given to a long-time supporter of Augustus by the name of Cornelius Gallus. By all accounts, he seems to have done a good job revamping programs like local police, dealing with fractious tribes, and putting down a revolt in Thebes. However, he flew a bit too close to the sun and eventually crossed the line by erecting a monument in his own glory. Augustus, ever wary of competition, promptly fired him and encouraged the man to commit suicide. Shamed and effectively barred from any position of power ever again, Cornelius Gallus indeed killed himself. In his place would be appointed another prefect, Aelius Gallus, relation to Cornelius Gallus unclear, who took command in 26 BC. He was well aware of the fate of his predecessor and enjoying having his head attached, was determined to bring only positive results to his emperor. Soon Augustus would have a mission for him. The ruler was keen to win foreign victories to bring gold and glory to Rome and sought a worthy target. His current campaigns into Germania were tiresome slogs yielding little material benefit. Perhaps the far off lands to the east of which the merchants spoke would prove more rewarding. Thus Augustus sent orders to his loyal prefect Aelius Gallus to embark on an expedition into the unknown. Our best sources on these adventures is the far-traveling Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian Strabo. He writes the following, quote, Aelius Gallus was sent by Augustus Caesar to explore the tribes and the places not only in Arabia but also in Ethiopia. Accordingly he conceived the purpose of winning the Arabians over to himself or of subjugating them. Another consideration was the report which had prevailed from all time that they were very wealthy and that they sold aromatics and the most valuable stones for gold and silver but never expended with outsiders any part of what they received in exchange for he expected either to deal with wealthy friends or to master wealthy enemies. He was encouraged also by the expectation of assistance from the Nabataeans since they were friendly and promised to cooperate with him in every way. With these instructions Gallus went about making the wishes of his emperor a reality. Some surviving scraps of papyrus show that in this time period the blacksmiths of Egypt were commissioned to begin weapons production en masse while the prefect himself began recruiting men. This military buildup would have been rather significant. While Rome already had legions in Egypt it's likely that the bulk of these forces would have been left in place to secure the stability of the province which was a bread basket of the empire. Who knew what sorts of border raids or uprisings might flare up in their absence. Thus only a small number of these men and perhaps auxiliaries were diverted for the expedition. The rest of the army would be built atop this skeleton force using local recruits. While these new forces were being raised Gallus also made other preparations. The main task would be to establish a reliable logistics chain. This meant stockpiling goods and preparing a fleet to transport the men, keep them supplied and inevitably do battle with the Arabian navy he assumed would come to challenge them. Unfortunately for Gallus the Ptolemies had focused most of their naval efforts on the Mediterranean and largely ignored the Red Sea. There was no significant source of warships or shipbuilding facilities or even timber for him to use at all for the Arabian invasion. So how to solve this problem? Well one option would have been to first import the wood then build the facilities then to construct the ships. However this would all have been slow and costly. Two things that were sure to anger Augustus and so with the will of the emperor bearing down on him like the sand in an hourglass he formulated a plan. Gallus would concentrate his fleet in the Mediterranean and then transport it to the Red Sea. At the time there was no connecting Suez canal but there was an ancient structure known as the Canal of the Pharaohs which connected a finger of the Nile to the Bitter Lakes. Over the years it had fallen in and out of disrepair and now seems to have been largely silted up. It seems plausible that Gallus may have still found use for the canal and use it to transport his fleet across the land either whole or in parts. In either case he eventually managed to assemble at least 80 ships and arsenal which soon was expanded to 130 transports and green ships when he realized that no Arabian fleet would come to challenge them. As the navy approached completion Gallus mustered his 10,000 men and began to load them onto the ships. So far all seemed to be going according to plan and the invasion force set out. The immediate goal of the fleet was to make its way over to the Nabataean port city of Lucerome. Unfortunately it seems that Gallus had not fully appreciated the difficulty of this first leg of the journey. The Gulf of Suez was regularly buffeted by adversarial winds which slowed travel, was filled with rocky obstructions that could damage ships, and was flanked by unbeachable shores that made nightly docking difficult. Thus it took a long 15 days of hardship and distress for the Roman force to crawl its way to Lucerome. Along the way they seemed to have lost a chunk of their forces to the treacherous seas. In addition a large number of them developed a bad case of scurvy which ancient authors blamed on the local waters and herbs but which today we would associate with poor provisioning and malnutrition. To the modern observer it seems like much of this could have been avoided had the army instead taken the overland route from Judea and rendezvoused at the Nabataean staging point where they could have enlisted the help of a smaller localized merchant fleet to help them. This critique was probably evident to others at the time as well. It's probably for this reason that blame for the decision was later placed on the hired guide Solaeus who was said to have harbored a deep hatred for the Romans and tricked Gallus into making this boneheaded move. However it's hard to take this claim at face value given just how common it is to see failures by commanders pinned on such people. In any case the Roman army was finally here on the border of Arabia. However the initial stage of their invasion had eaten into a large part of their supplies and the available months of the campaigning season. It's for this reason that they hunkered down for the rest of the year. By the time the weather once again allowed them to take to the land and seas their Nabataean hosts must have been happy to see them leave. And so Gallus marched his army and sailed his fleet southwards with Solaeus at their head, apparently not having realized his supposed treasury. Strabo picks up the story quote again Gallus moved his army and marched through the regions of such a kind that water had to be carried by camels because of the baseness of the guides and therefore it took many days to arrive in the land of Aretas a kinsman of Obidas. Now Aretas received him in a friendly way and offered him gifts but the treason of Solaeus made difficult the journey through that country too. At any rate it took 30 days to traverse the country which afforded only Zea a few palm trees and butter instead of oil because they passed through parts that had no roads. The next country which he traversed belongs to nomads and most of it was truly desert and it was called Ararine and its king was Savos and in passing through this country through parts that had no roads he spent 50 days arriving at the city of Negrani and at a country which was both peaceable and fertile. Now the king had fled and the city was seized at first onset and from here he arrived at the river in six days. Here the barbarians joined battle with the Romans and about 10,000 of them fell but only two Romans for they used their weapons in an inexperienced manner being utterly unfit for war using bows and spears and swords and slings though most of them used a double-edged axe and immediately afterwards he took the city called Asca which had been forsaken by its king and thence he went to a city called Athrula and having mastered it without a struggle he placed a garrison in it, arranged for supplies of grain and dates for his march, advanced to a city called Marseba which belonged to the tribe of the Ramanitai which were subject to Elisarius. A bit later on we hear from Strabo, Gallus decided to besiege the settlement threatening to utterly destroy it should the people not surrender. Yet by this point the legions had been advancing for six months slowly withering away in the desert from disease and malnutrition. Thus within just six days it was he who was forced to give up out of a lack of supplies but perhaps if the army could recover just a bit of its strength they might still be able to turn things around. After all Gallus knew from the captured Arabians that he was just a few days away from the greener pastures along the south of Arabia Felix. The promised land was within his grasp yet at the same time he knew that the wealthy merchant cities of that coast would surely be better prepared to defend themselves. Perhaps if the Roman army had started its war against these forces it could have been an easy fight but now to seek battle from such a feeble position risked defeat. Such a loss might cost Gallus his life in the fighting or during the retreat but his greater fear was the certainty of death should he return home in shame to face the full wrath of Augustus. Thus the commander decided to cut his losses. The Roman force now rallied itself and came about prepping for the arduous journey ahead. Luckily for them they seemed to have found an alternate route that would take them north. Traveling along this route they found that it would take a mere 60 days to get back to Roman lands, a third of the time it had taken them to get there. Strabo declares that it was upon this realization that they discovered the treachery of their Nabataean guide. Here is his recounting of the event. Quote, thence he carried his army across the Maius harbor within 11 days and marched by land to Coptis and with all who had been fortunate enough to survive landed at Alexandria. The rest he had lost not in wars but from sickness and fatigue and hunger and bad roads for only seven men perished in war. For these reasons also this expedition did not profit us to a great extent in our knowledge of the regions but still it made a slight contribution. But the man who was responsible for this failure, I mean Solaeus, paid the penalty at Rome since although he pretend friendship he was convicted in addition to his rascality in this matter of other offenses too and was beheaded. As we've seen the campaign had been a catastrophic failure. Gallus successfully pinned the blame on the guide being fired from his job but keeping his own head in the process. Meanwhile Augustus was quick to brush the whole thing under the rug as much as This was perhaps made easier by the fact that most of the force that had perished had been composed of auxiliaries and local troops who were considered to be far more expendable than the traditional legionaries. As evidence of this hypothesis we see no attempt by the Roman government to redeploy any legions in the aftermath of the loss as had been done after many of its other military disasters. This hush-hush approach is probably why few have even heard about the As for the long-term impacts of the Arabian invasion they seem to have been quite small. Rome would never manage to exert direct control over the prosperous cities of southern Arabia though it did seek to incorporate the peoples to the north in Arabia Petraea. Far more impactful than any armed invasion would be Rome's involvement in the mercantile activities that drove ever-increasing traffic through Arabia and eventually allowed for its ascension to power. There's a ton more we could potentially discuss but for now this is where we shall end the episode. Let me know what other forgotten wars you'd like to see covered next. A huge thanks to the patrons for funding the channel and to the researchers, writers, and artists who made this episode possible. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content and check out these other related videos. See you in the next one!