304 JOhN K. DAVIES
their panegyris, ‘at which those of the region are accustomed to travel to sell
goods or to buy useful articles, leaving on a certain rock their possessions,
the old men, children, and women’ (Diod. Sic. 95.1-2).
It all reads as a text-book description of self-sufficiency, assisted by a remark-
able ability to deter invaders. However, it has to be read sceptically, not so much
because of the risk of ethnographic cliché^26 as because Herodotus reports ‘the
Arabs’,^27 although not formally subject to the Achaemenids, as nonetheless
giving the king an annual ‘gift’ of 1,000 talents of frankincense.^28 Consistently
enough, Athenaeus’ campaign of 312 initially captured ‘most of the frankin-
cense and myrrh and about 500 T of silver’ (Diod. Sic. 19.95.3), which the
Nabataeans recaptured (19.96.1), just as they were later able to fend Demetrius
off by providing ‘the richest of the gifts they had’ (19.97.6), including 700 cam-
els.^29 Not surprisingly, therefore, already in 312, on Hieronymus’ account, the
Nabataeans ‘far surpass the other [Arabian peoples] in wealth although they are
not much more than 10,000 in number, for not a few of them are accustomed
to bring down to the sea frankincense and myrrh and the most valuable kinds
of spices, which they procure from those who convey them from what is called
Arabia Eudaimon’ (19.94.4-5).
The third panel of the triptych is a miniature. Alone of the Alexander histo-
rians, Plutarch preserves the story that in autumn 332, after his capture of Gaza,
Alexander avenged a rebuke for extravagance from his former tutor Leonidas
by sending him 500 talents of frankincense and 100 talents of myrrh from
the booty obtained in the sack of the city.^30 Given the figures already set out,
such quantities are credible, and imply that the total haul of such commodities
from the city will have been far larger. Hence, although there will no doubt
have been other transfer points on the Mediterranean coast for the traffic, and
although other areas of consumption will have been supplied by other routes,
it is a safe inference that by 332 Gaza had an established role as a (main?)
Mediterranean port for aromatics – a role that, notwithstanding severe inter-
vening disruptions, it was again fulfilling in the time of the Elder Pliny.^31
The picture of the traffic which emerges for the late fourth century BCE
is clear enough. There was an initial node, or gathering point for the pro-
duce, later (and perhaps already) located in the Hadramawt at the royal city of
Šabwa, the transactions being managed as described by Theophrastus. The pro-
duce was then carried northwest (but not by Nabataeans), presumably along
some version of the trail which was later marked out into sixty-five stages,^32
and presumably by the camel caravans which are explicitly attested (see dis-
cussion later in this chapter), whether by the ‘direct across’ transit mode as
described by Geertz^33 or by the ‘along the line’ pattern theorised by Renfrew.
‘Petra’ formed a second node, where the Nabataeans themselves took over the
carriage down to the sea (thus Hieronymus),^34 whether to Gaza or elsewhere.
Whether ‘Petra’ also served as a ‘junction’, other caravans proceeding thence