equate. Cleomenes fled to the banks of the Nile, where
he found his august ally reposing under the successful banners of a
numerous army, which he had just led home from the savage mountains of
Ethiopia, whither his love of romantic conquest had conducted them. He
appears to have penetrated into the interior provinces of Abyssinia,
and to have subdued the rude tribes which dwelt on the shores of the
Red Sea, levying on the unfortunate natives the most oppressive
contributions in cattle, gold, perfumes, and other articles belonging
to that valuable merchandise which the Ethiopians and Arabs had long
carried on with their Egyptian neighbours. At Adule, the principal
seaport of Abyssinia, he collected his victorious troops, and made them
a speech on the wonderful exploits which they had achieved under his
auspices, and on the numerous benefits which they had thereby secured
to their native country. The throne on which he sat, composed of white
marble and supported by a slab of porphyry, was consecrated to the god
of war, whom he chose to claim for his father and patron, and that the
descendants of the vanquished Ethiopians might not be ignorant of their
obligations to Ptolemy Euergetes, King of Egypt, he gave orders that his
name and principal triumphs should be inscribed on the votive chair. But
not content with his real conquests, which reached from the Hellespont
to the Euphrates, he added, like Ramsesr that he had conquered
Thrace, Persia, Media, and Bactria. He thus teaches us that monumental
inscriptions, though read with difficulty, do not always tell the truth.
This was the most southerly spot to which the kings of Egypt ever sent
an army. But they kept no hold on the country. Distance had placed it
not only beyond their power, but almost beyond their knowledge; and
two hundred years afterwards, when the geographer Strabo was making
inquiries about that part of Arabia, as it was called, he was told of
this monument as set up by the hero Sesostris, to whom it was usual to
give the credit of so many wonderful works. These inscriptions, it
is worthy of remark, are still preserved, and constitute the only
historical account that has reached these times of the Ethiopian warfare
of this Egyptian monarch. About seven hundred years after the reign
of Euergetes, they were first published in the _Topography_ of Cosmas
Indicopleustes, a Grecian monk, by whom they were copied on the spot.
The traveller Bruce, moreover, informs u