the Red Sea and conquered his enemies; he put to
death Damianus, the King of the Homeritse, and made a new treaty
with the Emperor of Constantinople. The Hexumitae promised to become
Christians. They sent to Alexandria to beg for a priest to baptise them,
and to ordain their preachers; and Justinian sent John, a man of piety
and high character, the dean of the church of St. John, who returned
with the ambassadors and became bishop of the Hexumitae.

It was possibly this conquest of the Homeritae by Hadad, King of the
Hexumitae, which was recorded on the monument of Adule, at the foot of
the inscription set up eight centuries earlier by Ptolemy Euergetes. The
monument is a throne of white marble. The conqueror, whose name had
been broken away before the inscription was copied, there boasts that
he crossed over the Red Sea and made the Arabians and Sabaaans pay him
tribute. On his own continent he defeated the tribes to the north of
him, and opened the passage from his own country to Egypt; he also
marched eastward, and conquered the tribes on the African incense coast;
and lastly, he crossed the Astaborus to the snowy mountains in which
that branch of the Nile rises, and conquered the tribes between that
stream and the Astapus. This valuable inscription, which tells us of
snowy mountains within the tropics, was copied by Cosmas, a merchant of
Alexandria, who passed through Adule on his way to India.

Former emperors, Anastasius and Justin, had sent several embassies to
these nations at the southern end of the Red Sea; to the Homeritae,
to persuade them to attack the Persian forces in Arabia, and to the
Hexumitae, for the encouragement of trade. Justinian also sent an
embassy to the Homeritae under Abram; and, as he was successful in his
object, he entrusted a second embassy to Abram's son. Nonnosus landed
at Adule on the Abyssinian coast, and then travelled inward for fifteen
days to Auxum, the capital. This country was then called Ethiopia; it
had gained the name which before belonged to the valley of the Nile
between Egypt and Meroe. On his way to Auxum, he saw troops of wild
elephants, to the number, as he supposed, of five thousand. After
delivering his message to Elesbaas, then King of Auxum, he crossed the
Red Sea to Caisus, King of the Homeritae, a grandson of that Arethas
to whom Justin had sent his embassy. Notwithstanding the natural
difficulties of the journey, and those arising from the tribes through
which