SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT | 121epigraphy are now revealing how, from the mid- fifth century, the South Ara-
bian kingdom of Himyar projected its authority into central and northern
Arabia, anticipating the peninsula’s unification under Islam. At the same
time, both Iran and Rome were maneuvering for allies there.^107 When the
Jewish ruler of Himyar staged a revolting massacre of Christians at Najrān in
523, the news raced through the Mountain Arena provoking a flurry of let-
ters and pamphlets in Syriac and Greek, and armed Aksumite intervention
instigated by Constantinople.^108 Subsequently the kingdom passed under
Sasanid control. Sixth- century Arabia was no mere periphery of the pre-
Islamic world.
As for contemporary responses to the Mountain Arena we may begin, like
the First Millennium itself, with the Emperor Augustus. Augustus was given
to deep reflection on what a sustainable Roman Empire within defensible
frontiers might look like, and was certainly no improvident expansionist.
Even so, between 26 and 20 BCE he tried to strengthen Rome’s position in
both the immense, fortress- like blocks of mountains—the Caucasus and
Transcaucasia (South Caucasus) to the North, and yemen and Ethiopia to
the South—which confined the Mountain Arena in their respective direc-
tions.^109 Despite their inaccessibility, he launched military expeditions into
South Arabia as far as Mārib (perhaps to bring pressure on the Arsacids^110 ),
and to the upper Nile Valley as far as the fourth cataract, while making the
first of a series of interventions in Armenia designed to impose rulers conge-
nial to Rome’s interests. Then again in 2 BCE Augustus sent his grandson
Gaius Caesar to assert Rome’s position first in Arabia (apparently in the Gulf
of ‘Aqaba) and then in Armenia. On this occasion, two historians contrib-
uted to the effort, Isidore of Charax with an account of the Arsacid Empire,
and King Juba II of Mauritania with a book covering the southerly regions
from West Africa via Eg ypt, Arabia and the Red Sea, Mesopotamia and
parts of Iran, as far east as India, with special emphasis on Arabia’s natural
resources and trade routes.^111
For six centuries after Augustus, Roman emperors pursued East- West
equilibrium with Iran by strengthening their position in one or both of these
107 C. J. Robin, “Les arabes de Himyar, des “romains” et des perses (IIIe- V Ie siècles de l’ère chré-
tienne,” Semitica et classica 1 (2008) 167–202; Gajda, Royaume de Himyar [3:76] 43–58, 137–46; G.
Fisher, Between empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in late Antiquity (Oxford 2011) 84–91; id.,
“Kingdoms or dynasties? Arabs, history, and identity before Islam,” JLA 4 (2011) 254–58; G. W. Bower-
sock, The throne of Adulis: Red Sea wars on the eve of Islam (New york 2013).
108 Gajda, Royaume de Himyar [3:76] 20–23, 97–109; J. Beaucamp and others (eds), Juifs et chré-
tiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles (Paris 2010).
109 Fowden, Empire to commonwealth [4:53] 103.
110 C. Marek, “Die Expedition des Aelius Gallus nach Arabien im Jahre 25 v.Chr.,” Chiron 23
(1993) 121–56.
111 D. W. Roller, The world of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene (New york 2003) 212–43; A. Luther,
“Zum Orientfeldzug des Gaius Caesar,” Gymnasium 117 (2010) 103–27.