other produce of India and Arabia.  Pliny is express and particular on this point, and takes notice of the precautions employed by the merchants there, in order to guard against adulteration and fraud.  Cinnamon, another of the exports of Arabia to Rome, though not a production of that country, was also in high repute, and brought an extravagant price.  Vespasian was the first who dedicated crowns of cinnamon, inclosed in gold filagree, in the Capitol and the Temple of Peace; and Livia dedicated the root in the Palatine Temple of Augustus.  The plant itself was brought to the emperor Marcus Aurelius in a case seven feet long, and was exhibited at Rome, as a very great rarity.  This, however, we are expressly informed came from Barbarike in India.  It seems to have been highly valued by other nations as well as by the Romans:  Antiochus Epiphanes carried a few boxes of it in a triumphal procession:  and Seleucus Callinicus presented two minae of it and two of cassia, as a gift to the king of the Milesians.  In the enumeration of the gifts made by this monarch, we may, perhaps, trace the comparative rarity and value of the different spices of aromatics among the ancients:  of frankincense he presented ten talents, of myrrh one talent, of cassia two pounds, of cinnamon two pounds, and of costus one pound.  Frankincense and myrrh were the productions of Arabia; the other articles of India; of course the former could be procured with much less difficulty and expence than the latter.  Spikenard, another Indian commodity, also reached Rome, through Arabia, by means of the port of Alexandria.  Pliny mentions, that both the leaves and the spices were of great value, and that the odour was the most esteemed in the composition of all unguents.  The price at Rome was 100 denarii a pound.  The markets at which the Arabian and other merchants bought it were Patala on the Indus, Ozeni, and a mart on or near the Ganges.

Sugar, also, but of a quality inferior to that of India, was imported from Arabia, through Alexandria, into Rome.  The Indian sugar, which is expressly mentioned by Pliny, as better and higher priced, was brought to Rome, but by what route is not exactly known, probably by means of the merchants who traded to the east coast of Africa; where the Arabians either found it, or imported it from India.  In the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, and likewise in the rescript of the Roman emperors, relative to the articles imported into Egypt from the East, which was promulgated by Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus, about the year A.D. 176, it is denominated cane-honey, otherwise called sugar (sacchar).  So early, therefore, as the Periplus (about the year A.D. 73,) the name of sacchar was known to the Romans, and applied by them to sugar.  This word does not occur in any earlier author, unless Dioscorides lived before that period, which is uncertain.  It may be remarked, that the nature, as well as the proper appellation of sugar, must have been but imperfectly, and not generally known, even at the time of the rescript, otherwise the explanatory phrase, honey made from cane, would not have been employed.