s of Taprobana, Serendib, and Ceylon, have
been successively applied, manifests how imperfectly the seas and lands
to the east of Cape Comorin were known to the Romans. 1. Under the reign
of Claudius, a freedman, who farmed the customs of the Red Sea, was
accidentally driven by the winds upon this strange and undiscovered
coast: he conversed six months with the natives; and the king of Ceylon,
who heard, for the first time, of the power and justice of Rome, was
persuaded to send an embassy to the emperor. (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 24.)
2. The geographers (and even Ptolemy) have magnified, above fifteen
times, the real size of this new world, which they extended as far as
the equator, and the neighborhood of China. * Note: The name of Diva
gens or Divorum regio, according to the probable conjecture of M.
Letronne, (Trois Mem. Acad. p. 127,) was applied by the ancients to the
whole eastern coast of the Indian Peninsula, from Ceylon to the Canges.
The name may be traced in Devipatnam, Devidan, Devicotta, Divinelly, the
point of Divy.----M. Letronne, p.121, considers the freedman with his
embassy from Ceylon to have been an impostor.--M.]

[Footnote 7: These embassies had been sent to Constantius. Ammianus, who
unwarily deviates into gross flattery, must have forgotten the length of
the way, and the short duration of the reign of Julian.]

[Footnote 8: Gothos saepe fallaces et perfidos; hostes quaerere se
meliores aiebat: illis enim sufficere mercators Galatas per quos ubique
sine conditionis discrimine venumdantur. (Ammian. xxii. 7.) Within less
than fifteen years, these Gothic slaves threatened and subdued their
masters.]

[Footnote 9: Alexander reminds his rival Caesar, who depreciated the
fame and merit of an Asiatic victory, that Crassus and Antony had felt
the Persian arrows; and that the Romans, in a war of three hundred
years, had not yet subdued the single province of Mesopotamia or
Assyria, (Caesares, p. 324.)]

[Footnote 10: The design of the Persian war is declared by Ammianus,
(xxii. 7, 12,) Libanius, (Orat. Parent. c. 79, 80, p. 305, 306,)
Zosimus, (l. iii. p. 158,) and Socrates, (l. iii. c. 19.)]

If Julian had flattered himself, that his personal connection with the
capital of the East would be productive of mutual satisfaction to the
prince and people, he made a very false estimate of his own character,
and of the manners of Antioch. [11] The warmth of the climate disposed
the natives to the most intempera