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PLAUTIANUS' ZEBRAS: A ROMAN EXPEDITION TO EAST AFRICA IN THE EARLY THIRD CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2019

C.T. Mallan
C.T. Mallan*
Affiliation:
University of WesternAustralia
*
christopher.mallan@uwa.edu.au
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Extract

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus (PIR2 F 554) was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and (according to one author) even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows (Dio Cass. 76[75].14.3):

καὶ τέλος ἵππους Ἡλίῳ <ἱεροὺς> τιγροειδεῖς ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ νήσων, πέμψας ἑκατοντάρχους, ἐξέκλεψεν·

In the end he even stole tiger-like horses <sacred> to Helios from the islands in the Erythraean Sea, having sent some centurions to carry out the task.

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Shorter Notes
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , May 2019 , pp. 461 - 465
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

The kleptocratic supremacy of the praetorian prefect C. Fulvius Plautianus (PIR 2 F 554) was felt throughout the city of Rome, the Empire and (according to one author) even beyond the imperial frontiers. Indeed, for the senatorial historian Dio Cassius, there was no more picturesque demonstration of Plautianus' acquisitiveness than his seizure of strange striped horse-like creatures from ‘islands in the Erythraean Sea’. The passage, as preserved in the text of Xiphilinus' Epitome, reads as follows (Dio Cass. 76[75].14.3):

καὶ τέλος ἵππους Ἡλίῳ <ἱεροὺς>Footnote 1 τιγροειδεῖς ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῇ Ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῃ νήσων, πέμψας ἑκατοντάρχους, ἐξέκλεψεν·

In the end he even stole tiger-like horses <sacred> to Helios from the islands in the Erythraean Sea, having sent some centurions to carry out the task.

The animal described in our text has been identified as Grévy's Zebra (Equus grevyi), a creature native to the regions near modern-day Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya.Footnote 2 Dio's fascination with these creatures was justified. On the whole, zebras were a rarity in the Mediterranean world, which may explain the almost complete absence of zebras in Roman visual arts before Late Antiquity.Footnote 3 Indeed, the only other certain reference to zebras before the fifth century is again in Dio, who records the appearance of a zebra, there styled an ἱππότιγρις,Footnote 4 during the sole-reign of Caracalla, but this time as a beast to be killed in the arena.Footnote 5

Scholarly discussion of the former passage has focussed on the zebras themselves, but two important issues remain unanswered. First, the location of these ‘islands’ in the Red (or Erythraean) Sea and, second, why centurions were sent to capture these creatures. Both questions have the potential to shed light on Rome's exploration of the Erythraean Sea at the turn of the third century.

In the Greco-Roman imagination the term Erythraean Sea applied to the Arabian and Persian Gulf and to the Indian Ocean more generally. The presence of zebras must confine our search to the African coast, unless the beasts had been transported to an entrepôt on the Arabian Peninsula.Footnote 6 Given that zebras did not appear at Rome until so late, especially in comparison with other African quadrupeds (giraffes, rhinoceroses, lions), we may suppose that the zebras were found south of Adulis and the Horn of Africa.Footnote 7

The idea that zebras were associated with the sun/Helios may point to the equatorial coast of Africa. It seems likely that this comment is reflective of the way in which the zebras were presented to the people of Rome, rather than the way in which the people of the islands held these creatures. From the Hellenistic period on, geographers and fabulists placed communities of Sun worshippers in the southern part of the Erythraean Sea. The fantasy of Iambulus, as transmitted by Diodorus Siculus, speaks of the Islands of the Sun, which are located in the Erythraean Sea close to the equator.Footnote 8 It is doubtful that the utopian fantasy of Iambulus can be associated with any precise geographical location, and any attempt to do so is quixotic. What it does suggest is a tendency in ancient thought to associate equatorial regions with Sun worship.

The Periplus maris Erythraei offers valuable information regarding the geography and settlement of the East Coast of Africa during the first century a.d.Footnote 9 Two island groups along this part of the African coast are named, the Pyralaoi Islands (the Lamu archipelago off the coast of Kenya)Footnote 10 and the island of Menouthias, which is clearly one of (or a conflation of) the islands in the Zanzibar archipelago (Pemba, Zanzibar, Mafia).Footnote 11 Dio/Xiphilinus' ‘islands of the Erythraean sea’ likely refer to one or the other of these island groups, although Zanzibar (or Pemba) is the more appealing of the two.

Knowledge of the island of Menouthias was limited. Beyond Menouthias, there was one final entrepôt on the African coast, Rhapta, perhaps close to the modern Dar-es-Salaam.Footnote 12 What little the author of the Periplus says about Manouthias is consistent with either Zanzibar or Pemba. Although the author notes the presence of a fishing community, he makes no mention of a trading post on the island.Footnote 13 Yet, some activity is likely. Tantalizingly, a collection of five Parthian and Sassanian coins, the latest being a coin of Ardashir I, once held in the Beit al-Amani museum on Zanzibar, may have come from a site on the island, although the archaeological context is unrecorded and the coins may be strays.Footnote 14 The same goes for the small packet of late Roman imperial coins, which seem to have come from the island of Pemba. About the Pyralaoi Islands (Lamu archipelago), the Periplus records nothing but its location.Footnote 15

Yet, support for Zanzibar (or perhaps Pemba) being the island from where Plautianus' centurions captured their zebras may be found from an unlikely quarter. Early Jaina literature includes many stories which are derived from merchants' tales. One text, the Jñātādharmakathā (Prakrit: Nāyādhammakahāo), which may be dated to the first half of the first millennium a.d.,Footnote 16 tells a story of a group of merchants who come across an island named Kaliyadvipa. Upon returning to India, the merchants reported what they had seen to their king, including striped horses, which we may assume to be zebras. Having heard of these exotic beasts, the king ordered the merchants to return to Kaliyadivpa to bring back some of these striped horses, which they duly did.Footnote 17 As with the identification of Menouthias, that of Kaliyadivpa is similarly uncertain, although, as Moti Chandra has noted, both Zanzibar and Kaliyadivpa have the same meaning (‘black land’ or ‘land of the black-skinned people’).Footnote 18

A final aspect of Dio/Xiphilinus' testimony attracts comment: the nature of the mission. Our text states that the objective was simply the capture of the zebras. This, of course, presupposes knowledge of zebras, and it may have been that Plautianus heard about the zebras from travellers' tales, much in the same way as the Indian potentate in the Jñātādharmakathā, and sent his officers to capture specimens of the strange beast. Yet, this is not the only admissible explanation for the appearance of zebras at Rome, and it may be that Dio/Xiphilinus is guilty of confusing (or distorting) outcomes with intentions for literary purposes. Indeed, the purpose of the text is to portray Plautianus as a quasi-imperial figure, as the capture and display of exotic creatures at Rome was a mark of power and prestige for the reigning emperor or members of his family.Footnote 19 But the fact that the mission was led by centurions may be indicative of a military dimension to this voyage. Furthermore, the time at which it appears to have taken place should make us think more about the possible intentions behind the venture.

As opposed to our knowledge of the activities of traders, the extent of the Roman military and naval presence in the Red Sea during the second and third centuries a.d. is almost entirely obscure. Yet, the publication of two inscriptions from the Farasan Archipelago in the mid 2000s shines some light on this area. The earlier and far more fragmentary inscription confirms the Roman military and administrative presence on the island from the early second century.Footnote 20 The second inscription, which dates from the reign of Antoninus Pius, indicates the presence of a detachment (that is, uexillatio) and some auxiliaries from the legio II Traiana Fortis on Farasan.Footnote 21 Moreover, it seemingly attests to an administrative officer in charge of the port and sea around the island (praefectus Ferresani portus et Ponti Herculis).Footnote 22 It was perhaps from this port that Plautianus' mission was launched.

Xiphilinus' Epitome does not preserve the date of the mission, although it has been taken to be about a.d. 200, after the fall of Plautianus' ephemeral co-prefect, Q. Aemilius Saturninus.Footnote 23 What is interesting is that Xiphilinus also preserves evidence of an organized Roman mission into the Nile Valley, which was intended to penetrate into Ethiopia, but which was prevented by a plague.Footnote 24 The fact that Plautianus dispatched centurions for his mission suggests a military exploratio. We may note that an expedition under Nero into Ethiopia was led by a military tribune and two centurions.Footnote 25 It seems reasonable, therefore, to posit a connection between Severus' aborted yet seemingly contemporaneous mission into Ethiopia and Plautianus' mission along the East African coast, as part of a two-pronged exploration of the continent, spurred on by the continuing conflicts with the Parthian empire.Footnote 26

At any rate, whether we regard the presence of zebras at Rome as the result of a frivolous errand conceived solely for the prefect's delectation, or as the tangible result of a military reconnaissance, it provides a rare piece of evidence for Roman intercourse with the East African coast and with continuing Roman military activity in the Erythraean Sea at the turn of the third century.

Footnotes

I am grateful to Caillan Davenport, Kimberley Czajkowski, Helen Tanner, the anonymous reviewer and Bruce Gibson (in his capacity as editor of CQ) for their comments on this article.

References

1 The addition of ἱεροὺς is the conjecture of Reiske. The meaning is clear enough without it, and Boissevain omits it: Boissevain, U.P., Cassii Dionis Cocceiani Historiarum Romanarum quae supersunt (Berlin, 1898–1931), 3.352Google Scholar.

2 Thompson, D.W., ‘The Greek for a zebra’, CR (1943), 103–4Google Scholar. Thompson's identification is based on the plausible assumption that Dio's zebra is the same as that which appears in Photius' Epitome of Philostorgius (3.11).

3 As noted by Toynbee, J.M., Animals in Roman Life and Art (London, 1973), 167Google Scholar. Cf. Keller, O., Die antike Tierwelt (Leipzig, 1911), 1.274Google Scholar; Kitchell, K., Animals in the Ancient World from A to Z (London, 2014), 204CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are two known late antique (fifth–sixth century) representations of zebras: one in a martyr's shrine from Seleucia in Pieria, the other from a synagogue in Gaza: Toynbee (this note), 286–7; Ovadiah, A., ‘Excavations in the area of the ancient synagogue at Gaza (preliminary report)’, IEJ 19 (1969), 193–8Google Scholar, at 195; Metzger, B.M., ‘Antioch-on-the-Orontes’, The Biblical Archaeologist 11 (1948), 69–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 84–5. It is noteworthy that these are roughly contemporaneous with Philostorgius.

4 Pace LSJ 9 s.v. ἱππότιγρις ‘a large kind of tiger’.

5 Dio Cass. 78(77).6.2 (Xiphilinus). Dio's coeval, the poet [Oppian] (Cyn. 3.183–90) describes a beast which Thompson (n. 2), 103 takes to be a zebra. I am not convinced that [Oppian]’s creature is a zebra. The description of a beast with a single black dorsal stripe with white stripes on either side (Cyn. 3.186–7: ταινίη δὲ μέλαινα μέσην ῥάχιν ἀμφιβέβηκε | χιονέῃς ἑκάτερθη περιοσχομένη στεφάνῃσι) seems more consistent with the Equus hemionus, or the ‘Wild Ass’, which is just what [Oppian] calls it (ὄναγρος).

6 I cannot agree with the suggestion of Birley, A.R., Septimius Severus: The African Emperor (London, 1999), 137Google Scholar that the islands in question were in the Persian Gulf.

7 The historical range of zebras is uncertain. Evidence suggests that Equus grevyi tends to be found in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya. Equus burchelli (or the common zebra) is found further to the south, in south-west Ethiopia, Kenya and northern Tanzania: Bauer, I.E., Morrow, J. and Yalden, D.W., ‘The historic ranges of three equid species in north-east Africa: a quantitative comparison of environmental tolerances’, Journal of Biogeography 21 (1994), 169–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Diod. Sic. 2.56.1–2.60.3, especially 2.59.7. For Iambulus and the ‘Islands of the Sun’, see Ferguson, J., Utopias of the Classical World (London, 1975), 124–9Google Scholar.

9 The question of the date of composition has been controversial, but for the purposes of this paper it is unimportant. However, a first-century date seems preferable. Note the studies of Müller, C., Geographi Graeci Minores (Paris, 1855), 1.xcvi–xcviiGoogle Scholar; Casson, L., The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (Princeton, 1989), 6–7Google Scholar; R. Darley, ‘Indo-Byzantine exchange 4th to 7th centuries: a global history’ (Diss., University of Birmingham, 2013), 125–55.

10 Casson (n. 9), 139–40. For a map of this coast, see Bagnall, R.S. and Talbert, R.J.A., Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (Princeton, 2000), 4Google Scholar.

11 PME 15; Ptol. Geog. 4.8.2, 7.2.1. For identification, see Müller (n. 9), 1.270; Desanges, J., ‘Les relations de l'Empire romain avec l'Afrique nilotique et érythréenne, d'Auguste à Probus’, ANRW 2.10.1 (1988), 3–43Google Scholar, at 25–6; Casson (n. 9), 140–1.

12 Casson (n. 9), 141–2. PME 17 makes it clear that there was trade with this region, especially in ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shell and nautilus shell. For the last of these, note Casson, L., ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei: three notes on the text’, CQ 30 (1980), 495–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 496–7.

13 PME 15.

14 The coins were first published by Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., ‘Some recent archaeological work on the Tanganyika coast’, Man 58 (1958), 106–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 110–11. For discussion, see Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The Medieval History of the Coast of Tanganyika (Oxford, 1962), 22–3Google Scholar, 184, 189–90; Chittick, N., ‘Six early coins from new Tanga’, Azania 1 (1966), 156–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 157; Horton, M.C., ‘Early maritime trade and the settlement of eastern Africa’, in Reade, J. (ed.), The Indian Ocean in Antiquity (London, 1996), 439–59Google Scholar, at 447.

15 PME 15.

16 For the formation of the canon of Jana sutras by the mid fifth century a.d., see Law, B.C., Some Jaina Canonical Sutras (Bombay, 1949), 1Google Scholar.

17 Chandra, M., Trade and Trade Routes in Ancient India (Delhi, 1977), 166Google Scholar. For a summary of the stories in the Jñātādharmakathā, see Law (n. 16), 38–42.

18 Chandra (n. 17), 166.

19 Examples of the display of exotic animals are legion, but, to cite one example, we may note the displaying and killing of exotic African animals under Commodus, including hippopotami, elephants, rhinoceroses and a giraffe (Dio Cass. 73[72].10.3 [Xiph.]).

20 AE 2005.1640 = AE 2007.1659.

21 AE 2005.1638–9 = AE 2010.1761. For discussion of the Farasan inscriptions, see Villeneuve, F., ‘Une inscription latine sur l'archipel Frarsân, Arabie Séoudite, sud de la mer Rouge’, CRAI 148 (2004), 419–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Speidel, M.A., ‘Außerhalb des Reiches? Zu neuen lateinischen Inschriften aus Saudi-Arabien und zur Ausdehnung der römischen Herrschaft am Roten Meer’, ZPE 163 (2007), 296–306Google Scholar, at 297–301; Nappo, D., ‘Roman policy on the Red Sea in the second century c.e.’, in de Romanis, F. (ed.), Across the Ocean: Nine Essays on Indo-Mediterranean Trade (Leiden, 2010), 55–72Google Scholar, at 65–8; Speidel, M.A., ‘Wars, trade, and treaties: new, revised, and neglected sources for the political, diplomatic, and military aspects of Imperial Rome's relations with the Red Sea Basin and India, from Augustus to Diocletian’, in Matthew, K.S. (ed.), Imperial Rome, Indian Ocean Regions and Muziris: New Perspectives on Maritime Trade (London, 2016), 83–128Google Scholar, at 89–94.

22 AE 2005.1638–9 = AE 2010.1761, lines 6–7: Auito praef(ecto) Ferresani portus (?) | et Pont(i) Hercul(is) fec(erunt) et d[ed(icauerunt)].

23 Saturninus (PIR 2 A 403): Dio Cass. 76(75).14.2. The fall of Saturninus is not preserved in Xiphilinus but in the Excerpta. However, the correspondences between Xiphilinus and the lengthy passage quoted in the Excerpta suggest that they belong to the same part of Dio's narrative.

24 Dio Cass. 76(75).13.1 [Xiphilinus]; Desanges (n. 11), 30.

25 Plin. HN 6.181; Sen. QNat. 6.8.3–5; Sherk, R., ‘Roman geographical exploration and military maps’, ANRW 2.1 (1974), 534–62Google Scholar, at 540–1.

26 That Severus authorized a similar fact-finding mission prior to his campaigns in Britain has been argued on the basis of an inscribed dedication slab in Risingham (RIB 1.1235 = CIL 7.1002) attesting the presence of a unit of scouts (exploratores): Austin, N.J.E. and Rankov, N.B., Exploratio: Military and Political Intelligence in the Roman World from the Second Punic War to the Battle of Adrianople (London and New York, 1995), 194Google Scholar. We may note for comparison the strategic importance of the East Coast of Africa and the Red Sea in later conflicts between Rome and the Persians, such as those of the sixth century. Cf. Shahîd, I., Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century (Washington, 2009), 2.2.52–8Google Scholar.