When Diocletian reached the southern limits of Egypt he was able to judge of the difficulty, and indeed the uselessness, of trying to hold any part of Ethiopia; and he found that the tribute levied there was less than the cost of the troops required to collect it.  He therefore made a new treaty with the Nobatae, as the people between the first and second cataracts were now called.  He gave up to them the whole of Lower Ethiopia, or the province called Nubia.  The valley for seventy miles above Syene, which bore the name of the Dodecaschonos, had been held by Augustus and his successors, and this was now given up to the original inhabitants.  Diocletian strengthened the fortifications on the isle of Elephantine, to guard what was thenceforth the uttermost point of defence, and agreed to pay to the Nobatae and Blemmyes a yearly sum of gold on the latter promising no longer to harass Upper Egypt with their marauding inroads, and on the former promising to forbid the Blemmyes from doing so.  What remains of the Roman wall built against the inroads of these troublesome neighbours runs along the edge of the cultivated land on the east side of the river for some distance to the north of the cataract.  But so much was the strength of the Greek party lessened, and so deeply rooted among the Egyptians was their hatred of their rulers and the belief that they should then be able to throw off the yoke, that soon afterwards Alexandria declared in favour of Achilleus, and Diocletian was again called to Egypt to regain the capital.  Such was the strength of the rebels that the city could not be taken without a regular siege.  Diocletian surrounded it with a ditch and wall, and turned aside the canals that supplied the citizens with water.  After a tedious siege of eight months, Alexandria was at last taken by storm in 297, and Achilleus was put to death.  A large part of the city was burnt at the storming, nor would the punishment of the citizens have there ended, but for Diocletian’s humane interpretation of an accident.  The horse on which he sat stumbled as he entered the city with his troops, and he had the humanity to understand it as a command from heaven that he should stop the pillage of the city; and the citizens in gratitude erected near the spot a bronze statue of the horse to which they owed so much.  This statue has long since been lost, but we cannot be mistaken in the place where it stood.  The lofty column in the centre of the temple of Serapis, now well known by the name of Pompey’s Pillar,* once held a statue on the top, and on the base it still bears the inscription of the grateful citizens, “To the most honoured emperor, the saviour of Alexandria, the unconquerable Diocletian.”

     * See Volume X., page 317.