Saba
Could not find Sabam in Logeion dictionaries.
Sabam Proper-name noun: feminine accusative singular of Saba
- The largest town in Arabia Felix, especially celebrated for its myrrh, frankincense, etc.: turifera, Plin. 12, 14, 30, § 52.—Hence,
- II Să-baeus, a, um, adj., = Σαβαῖος, Sabaean: tus, Verg. A. 1, 416: odor, Col. poët. 10, 262: nubes, Stat. S. 4, 8, 1: flores, id. ib. 5, 1, 211: myrrha, Sen. Herc. Oet. 376; cf. flos, i. e. of myrrh, Val. Fl. 6, 709: terra, Ov. M. 10, 480: cumulus, a funeral pyre perfumed with myrrh, etc., Claud. Phoen. 43.—As substt.: Săbaea, ae, f. (sc. terra), the territory of Saba, i.e. Arabia Felix, Hor. C. 1, 29, 3.—Săbaei, ōrum, m., a numerous people in Arabia Felix (named after their capital city, Saba), the Sabaeans: Sabaei Arabum propter tura clarissimi, Plin. 6, 28, 32, § 154; cf. Mel. 3, 8, 6; Verg. G. 1, 57; 2, 117; id. A. 8, 706; Flor. 4, 11, 7; Claud. Cons. Hon. 4, 305; Jul. Val. Rer. Gest. Alex. 3, 23.
(Σάβας), or Sabas, a celebrated Greek ecclesiastic of the fifth century. He was a native of Mutalasca, a village in Cappadocia, where he was born, as his biographer, Cyril of Scythopolis, records, in the seventeenth consulship of the emperor Theodosius II., A. D. 439. His parents, named Joannes and Sophia, were Christians, and persons of rank. His father being engaged in military service at Alexandria, he was left at Mutalasca, under the care of Hermias, his maternal uncle; but the depraved character of his uncle's wife led to his removal and his being placed under the care of another uncle, Gregorius, his father's brother, who resided in the village of Scandus, in the same neighbourhood. His two uncles having a dispute about the guardianship of the boy, and the management of his absent father's property, he was placed in a monastery, called Flavianae, about twenty miles from Mutalasca, where he was trained up in the strictness of monastic observance, to which he so heartily devoted himself, that when, upon his uncles' reconciliation, he was invited to leave the monastery and take the charge of his father's property, he refused, quoting the declaration of Jesus Christ, that "no man putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of Heaven." His biographer Cyril represents his removal to his uncle Gregory's house, and afterwards to the monastery, as his own acts, which, from his tender age (he being only five years old at his father's departure), is hardly probable, though it may have been the consequence of his own wish. In the monastery of Flavianae he spent ten years.
When in his eighteenth year Saba was seized with the desire of visiting Jerusalem, and of leading a solitary life in the wilderness near that city; and having obtained permission, though with difficulty, from his archimandrite or abbot, he set out and reached Jerusalem in A. D. 457, toward the close of the reign of the Eastern emperor Marcianus. After rejecting the invitations of several monastic communities to settle among them, he withdrew to the wilderness east of the city, and would have placed himself in the monastery of which Euthymius, the most eminent of the monks of Palestine, was the abbot; but Euthymius rejected him, as too young, and recommended him to the care of another abbot, Theoctistus, to be by him further trained in monastic severities. While under the care of Theoctistus, he was allowed to accompany one of the monks who had private business at Alexandria ; and in that city he was recognised by his parents. who appear to have been strangely ignorant, if not regardless of their child. They would have had him engage in military service, in which his father, who had assumed the name of Conon, had risen to an important command. Saba, as might have been expected, refused to comply with their wishes, and returned to his monastery. After a time he accompanied Euthymius into the wilderness of Ruba, near the Jordan, and then into the wilderness south of the Dead Sea, and appears to have been present with him at his death, in or about A. D. 573.
After the death of this eminent person, Saba withdrew altogether from his monastery into the wilderness near the Jordan; and from thence removed to a cave near "the brook that flows from the fountain of Siloam," where in his forty-fifth year (A. D. 483 or 484) he began to form a community from those who now resorted to him, and founded the "Laura" or monastery, known afterwards as Magna Laura, the inmates of which soon amounted to a hundred and fifty. In his fifty-third year, A. D. 491 or 492 (Cyrill. Scythop. Sabae Vita, 100.19), not his forty-fifth, as Cave affirms, he received ordination as presbyter. He was the founder of some other monastic societies beside that of Magna Laura; and was appointed by the Patriarch of Jerusalem archimandrite of the anchorets of Palestine. But the peace of these solitaries was disturbed by the seditious proceedings of some of them; and by the disputes occasioned by the revival and progress of Origenistic and other opinions [Origenes] regarded by Saba as heretical. In his seventy-third year (A. D. 512) Saba was sent, with some other heads of the anchorets of Palestine, by Elias I., patriarch of Jerusalem, to avert the displeasure of the Eastern emperor Anastasius, who, in consequence of the great monophysite schism, was at variance with the patriarch. The great reputation of Saba secured for him a gracious reception at court, and several gifts and favours from the emperor: the gold he distributed among the monasteries of which he was the founder or the virtual superior. His interposition, however, did not divert the imperial patronage from the Monophysites, or prevent the ultimate deposition (A. D. 513) of the patriarch Elias, who strenuously opposed them. Saba, who supported the same party (that of the Council of Chalcedon) as Elias, in conjunction with Theodosius, another eminent archimandrite of Palestine, superior of the Coenobites, persuaded Joannes, the successor of Elias, to break the engagement to support the Monophysite party, which had been the condition of his elevation: they also supported him in defying the imperial mandate. For this contumacy, Joannes, Saba, and Theodosius, would probably all have suffered banishment, had not the troubles excited by Vitalianus the Goth (A.D. 514) diverted the emperor's attention. [Anastasius I.] In A. D. 518, Saba, now in his eightieth year, visited the expatriarch Elias, in his place of exile, Aila, the modern Akaba, at the head of the gulf of Akaba, an arm of the Red Sea. Soon after this, the accession of Justinus I. to the empire having overthrown the ascendancy of the Monophysites, Saba was sent by the patriarch Joannes, to publish in the cities of Palestine the imperial letter, recognizing the Council of Chalcedon. In his ninety-first year (A. D. 529 or 530) he undertook another journey to Constantinople, where he obtained from Justinianus I., now emperor [Justinianus I.], a remission of taxes for Palestine, in consideration of the ravages occasioned by a revolt of the Samaritans, an incident worthy of notice, as furnishing one of the few links in the obscure history of that remarkable people. He received also many gifts for his monasteries. Saba died in his monastery, the Magna Laura (A. D. 532), in his ninety-fourth year.
Saba was a man of great energy. He acted an important part in that turbid period of ecclesiastical history, and fearlessly threw himself into the agitation arising from the great Monophysite schism ; nor does age seem either to have diminished his ardour or restricted his exertions. Works
Early in the seventeenth century (A. D. 1603, also in 1613 and 1643) there was printed at Venice, in folio, an office book, or Liturgy of the Greek Church, entitled, τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἀκολουθίας τοῦ χρόνου ὅλου, Typia um, Javvente Deo, continens lstegrum Officii Ecclesia.,Iici Ordinewn per totum Annm. It is a compilation, the first work in which is described by Cave as, "Typicon τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἀκολουθίας, Sanctae Laurae in Hierosolymis, quod et in aliis Monasteriis Hierosolymitanis aliisque Ecclesiis obtinet exv Praescripto S. Sabae Capita lix. complezum" (Hist. Litt. Dissert. Secunda de Libris Eccles. Graecor.). This Typicon he elsewhere describes as written by S. Saba, and used in all the monasteries of Jerusalem; and states that having been corrupted and almost lost in the various invasions and disturbances of Palestine, it was restored by Joannes Damascenus. But Oudin considers that the work is at any rate much interpolated, and that it probably is not the work of Saba nt all; but has received his name, because conformed to the usage of his monastery. His supposition that the Typicon was a forgery of Marcus, surnamed Hamartolus (Peccator, the Sinner), is improbable [Marcus, No. 16]. The title of the work in Greek, as given in a Vienna MS. cited by Oudin, Τυπικὸν τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἀκολουθίας τῆς ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἁγίας Λαύρας τοῦ ὁσίου καὶ θεοφόρον πατρὸς ἡμῶν Σάββα, Typicon, s. Ordo Officii Ecclesiastici Monasterii Hieroslymitani Sancti Patris nostri Sabae, indicates, not that the work was written by S. Saba, but only that it is conformed to the practice of his monastery. Further Information
Cyrillus Scythopol. S. Sabae Vita, apud Coteler. Eccles. Graec. Monumenta, vol. iii.; Cave, Hist. List. ad ann. 484, vol. i. p. 457, and vol. ii. Dissert. Secunda, p. 38, &c., ed. Oxon. 1740-1743; Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. x. p. 319; Oudin, Commentar. de Scriptorib. Eccles. vol. i. col. 1394; Tillemont, >Mém. vol. xvi. Confusion with other figures named Saba
There were some other persons of the name of Saba (Phot. Biblioth. cod. 52; Fabric. l.c.), but they do not require notice. [J.C.M]
SABA, SABAEI (Σάβη or Σαβαί: Eth. Σαβαῖος, fem. Σαβαία), were respectively the principal city and nation in Yemen, or Arabia Felix. [ARABIA] Ancient geographers differ considerably as to the extent of territory occupied by the Sabaeans, Eratosthenes assigning to it a much larger area than Ptolemy. The difference may perhaps be reconciled by examining their respective accounts.
Our knowledge of the Sabaeans is derived from three sources: the Hebrew Scriptures, the Greek historians and geographers, and the Roman poets and encyclopedists, Pliny, Solinus, &c. The Arabian geographers, also, throw some light upon this ancient and far-extending race. 1. In the Hebrew genealogies (Genesis, 10.6, 25.3) the Sabaeans are described as the descendants of Cush, the son of Ham. This descent was probably not so much from a single stem, as from several branches of Hamite origin; and as the tribes of the Sabaeans were numerous, some of them may have proceeded immediately from Cush, and others from later progenitors of the same stock. Thus one tribe descended from Seba, the son of Cush, another from Jokshan, Abraham's son by Keturah; a third from Sheba, the son of Raamah--the Ῥεγμὰ of the LXX. (Compare Psalm 72.10; Isaiah, 45.14; Ezekiel, 27.22, 23, 38.13.) The most material point in this pedigree is the fact of the pure Semitic blood of the Sabaeans. The Hebrew prophets agree in celebrating the stature and noble bearing, the enterprise and wealth of this nation, therein concurring with the expression of Agatharchides, who describes the Sabaeans as having τὰ σώματα ἀξιολογώτερα. Their occupations appear to have been various, as would be the case with a nation so widely extended ( Sabaei... ad utraque maria porrecti,Plin. Nat. 6.28. s. 32): for there is no doubt that in the south they were actively engaged in commerce, while in the north, on the borders of Idumea, they retained the predatory habits of nomades. (Job, 2.15.) The Queen of the South,i . e. of Yemen or Sabaea, who was attracted to Palestine by the fame of Solomon, was probably an Arabian sovereign. It may be observed that Yemen and Saba have nearly the same import, each signifying the right hand; for a person turning his face to the rising sun has the south on his right, and thus Saba or Yemen, which was long regarded as the southern limit of the habitable zone, is the lefthand, or southern land. (Comp. Hdt. 3.107--113; Forster's Geogr. of Arabia, vol i. pp. 24--38.) A river Sabis, in Carmania (Mela, 3.8.4), and a chain of mountains Sabo, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf (Arrian, Periplus. M. Erythr., ὄρη μέγιστα λεγόμενα Σάβα; comp. Ptol. 6.7.23), apparently indicate an extension of the Sabaeans beyond Arabia Proper. That they reached to the eastern shore of the Red Sea is rendered probable by the circumstance that a city named Sabu or Sabe stood there, about 36 miles S. of Podnu, in lat. 14° N. (Ptol. 6.7.38, 5.22.14.)2. The first Greek writer who mentions the Sabaeans by name is Eratosthenes. His account, however, represents a more recent condition of this nation than is described by Artemidorus, or by Agatharchides, who is Strabo's principal authority in his narrative of the Sabaeans. On the other hand, Diodorus Siculus professes to have compiled his accounts of them from the historical books of the Aegyptian kings, which he consulted in the Alexandreian Library. (Diod. 3.38, 46.) There can be little question that Herodotus, although he does not name the Sabaeans, describes them in various passages, when speaking of the Arabians, the southernmost people of the earth. (Hdt. 2.86, 3.107--113.) The commerce of Yemen with Phoenicia and Aegypt under the Pharaohs would render the name of the Sabaeans familiar in all the havens of the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. The Aegyptians imported spices largely, since they employed them in embalming the dead; and the Phoenicians required them for the Syrian markets, since perfumes have in all ages been both favourite luxuries and among the most popular medicines of the East. At the time when Ptolemy wrote (in the second century A.D.) their trade with Syria and Aegypt, as the carriers of the silks and spices so much in request at Rome, brought the Sabaeans within ken of the scientific geographer and of the learned, generally.3. Accordingly, we meet in the Roman poets with numerous, although vague, allusions to the wealth and luxury of the Sabaeans. Molles,divites,beati,a re the epithets constantly applied to them. (See Catull. 11.5; Propert. 2.10. 16, ib. 29. 17, 3.13. 8; Virgil, Georg. 1.57, 2.150, Aeneid. 1.416; Horace, Carm. 1.29. 2, 2.12. 24; Id. Epist. 1.6. 6, ib. 7. 36; Statius, Silv. 4.8. 1; Senec. Hercules, Oet. 5.376.) The expedition of Aelius Gallus, indeed (B.C. 24), may have tended to bring Southern Arabia more immediately under the notice of the Romans. But their knowledge was at best very limited, and rested less on facts than on rumours of Sabaean opulence and luxury. Pliny and the geographers are rather better informed, but even they had very erroneous conceptions of the physical or commercial character of this nation. Not until the passage to India by the Cape had been discovered was Sabaea or Yemen really explored by Europeans.
Assuming, then, that the Sabeans were a widely spread race, extending from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, and running up to the borders of the desert in the Arabian peninsula, we proceed to examine the grounds of their reputation for excessive opulence and luxury. A portion of their wealth was undoubtedly native; they supplied Aegypt and Syria from the remotest periods with frankincense and aromatics; and since the soil of Yemen is highly productive, they took in exchange, not the corn or wine of their neighbours, but the precious metals. But aromatics were by no means the capital source of their wealth. The Sabaeans possessed for many centuries the keys of Indian commerce, and were the intermediate factors between Aegypt and Syria, as these countries were in turn the Indian agents for Europe. During the Pharaonic eras of Aegypt, no attempt was made to disturb the monopoly of the Sabaeans in this traffic. Ptolemy Philadelphus (B.C. 274) was the first Aegyptian sovereign who discerned the value of the Red Sea and its harbours to his kingdom. He established his Indian emporium at Myos-Hormus or Arsinoe, and under his successors Berenice, which was connected with Coptos on the Nile by a canal, shared the profits of this remunerative trade. But even then the Sabaeans lost a small portion only of their former exclusive advantages. They were no longer the carriers of Indian exports to Aegypt, but they were still the importers of them from India itself. The Aegyptian fleets proceeded no further than the haven of Sabbatha or Mariaba; while the Sabaeans, long prior even to the voyage of Nearchus (B.C. 330), ventured across the ocean with the monsoon to Ceylon and the Malabar coast. Their vessels were of larger build than the ordinary merchant-ships of the Greeks, and their mariners were more skilful and intrepid than the Greeks, who, it is recorded, shrunk back with terror from the Indian Ocean. The track of the Sabaean navigators lay along the coast of Gedrosia, since Nearchus found along its shores many Arabic names of places, and at Possem engaged a pilot acquainted with those seas. In proportion as luxury increased in the Syro-Macedonian cities (and their extravagance in the article of perfumes alone is recorded by Athenaeus, xii.), and subsequently in Rome, the Indian trade became more valuable to the Sabaeans. It was computed in the third century of the Empire, that, for every pound of silk brought to Italy, a pound of silver or even gold was sent to Arabia; and the computation might fairly be extended to the aromatics employed so lavishly by the Romans at their banquets and funerals. (Comp. Petronius, 100.64, with Plutarch, Plut. Sull. 100.38.) There were two avenues of this traffic, one overland by Petra and the Elanitic gulf, the other up the Red Sea to Arsinoe, the Ptolemaic canal, and Alexandreia. We may therefore fairly ascribe the extraordinary wealth of the Sabaeans to their long monopoly of the Indian trade. Their country, however, was itself highly productive, and doubtless, from the general character of the Arabian peninsula, its southern extremity was densely populated. The Sabaeans are described by the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Arabian writers as a numerous people, of lofty stature, implying abundance of the means of life; and the recurrence of the name of Saba thoughout the entire region between the Red Sea and Carmania shows that they were populous and powerful enough to send out colonies. The general barrenness of the northern and central districts of Arabia drove the population down to the south. The highlands that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by the plenty of wood and water; the air is temperate, the animals are numerous (the horses of Yemen are strong and serviceable), and the fruits delicious. With such abundance at home the Sabaeans were enabled to devote themselves to trade with undivided energy and success.
Nothing more strikingly displays the ignorance of the ancient geographers as regards Sabaea than their descriptions of the opulence of the country. Their narratives are equally pompous and extravagant. According to Agatharchides and Diodorus, the odour of the spice-woods was so potent that the inhabitants were liable to apoplexies, and counteracted the noxious perfumes by the ill odours of burnt goats'-hair and asphaltite. The decorations of their houses, their furniture, and even their domestic utensils were of gild and silver: they drank from vases blazing with gems; they used cinnamon chips for firewood; and no king could compete in luxury with the merchant-princes of the Sabaeans. We have only to remember the real or imputed sumptuousness of a few of the Dutch and English East India Companies' merchants in the 18th century, while the trade of the East was in a few hands, in order to appreciate the worth of these descriptions by Agatharchides and Diodorus.
The delusions of the ancients were first dispelled by the traveller Niebuhr. (Description de l'Arabie, p. 125.) He asserts, and he has not been contradicted, that Yemen neither produces now, nor ever could have produced, gold; but that, in the district of Saade, it has iron-mines,--a fact unnoticed by earlier describers,--which were worked when he visited the country. He states, moreover, that the native frankincense is of a very ordinary quality, Sabaea yielding only the species called Libân, while the better sorts of that gum are imported from Sumatra, Siam, and Java. The distance from which the superior kinds of myrrh, frankincense, nard, and cassia were fetched, probably gave rise to the strange tales related about the danger of gathering them from the trees, with which the Sabaeans regaled the Aegyptian and Greek merchants, and through them the Greek geographers also. One cause of danger alone is likely to have been truly reported: the spice-woods were the abode of venomous reptiles; one of which, apparently a purple cobra, was aggressive, and, springing on intruders, inflicted an incurable wound. The ancients, however, said and believed that cinnamon was brought to Yemen by large birds, which build their nests of its chips, and that the ledonum was combed from the beards of he-goats.
The Sabaeans were governed by a king. (Dio Cass..) One inexorable condition of the royal office was, that he should never quit his palace: found beyond its precincts, it was allowable to stone him to death. The rule which governed the succession to the throne was singular. A certain number of noble families possessed equal claims to the crown: and the first child (females were eligible) born after an accession was presumptive heir to the reigning monarch. This seclusion of the king, and the strange mode of electing him, seem to indicate a sacerdotal influence, similar to that which regulates the choice of the Grand Lama and the homage paid to him by the Thibetians.
The precise boundaries of Sabaea it is impossible to ascertain. The area we have presumed is comprised within the Arabian Sea W., the Persian Gulf E., the Indian Ocean S., and an irregular line skirting the Desert, and running up in a narrow point to Idumea N.
For the principal divisions of the Sabaeans see the articles on ARABIA; ADRAMITAE; MINAEI.
The decline of the Sabaeans seems to have proceeded from two causes: (1) the more direct intercourse of the Aegypto-Greeks with India, and (2) the rivalry of the powerful tribe of the Homeritae, who subjugated them. In the account of their eastern traffic, and of the characteristics of their land, we have traced the features of the race. Compared with the Arabs of the Desert, the Sabaeans were a highly civilised nation, under a regular government, and, as a mercantile community, jealous of the rights of property. The author of the Periplus remarks upon similar security among the Adramitae; the interests of the merchant had curbed and softened the natural ferocity of the Arab. This also, according to Niebuhr (Descript. de l'Arabie, p. 315), is still observable in Yemen, in comparison with the inland provinces of Hejâz, and Neged.
[W.B.D]SABA Three cities of this name are distinguished by ancient geographers: the name indeed was a common appellation of towns, and signified head of the province, or of its lesser divisions. (Comp. Plin. Nat. 6.28. s. 32.)
1.(Σαβαί, Steph. B. s. v. Σαβᾶς, Agatharch. ap. Phot. p. 63), was the chief city of the Sabaeans. It is described by Diodorus (Diod. 3.46) as situated upon a lofty wooded hill, and within two days' journey of the frankincense country. The position of Saba is, however, quite uncertain: Mannert (Geogr. der Griech. u. Röm. vol. vi. pt. 1. p. 66) places it at the modern Saade: other geographers identify it with Mareb [MARIABA]; and again Sabbatha, both from its site in the interior and its commercial importance, seems to have a good title to be considered as Saba (Σάβη of Agatharchides) or Sheba, the capital of the Sabaeans.
2.(Σάβη,Ptol. 6.7. § § 38,42; Plin. Nat. 6.23. s. 34), was also seated in the interior of the Sabaean territory, 26 miles NE. of Aden. Niebuhr (Descript. de l'Arabie, vol. 2. p. 60) identifies it with the modern Saaba.
3.(Σάβαι, Strab. 17. p. 771; Σαβάτ, Ptol. 4.7.8), on the western shore of the Red Sea, was the capital city of the Sabaeans, and its harbour was the Sabaiticum Os (Σαβαΐτικον στόμα, Strab. 17. p. 770). The position of Sabae, like that of so many Aethiopian races and cities, is very uncertain. Some writers place it at the entrance of the Arabian gulf (Heeren, Histor. Researches, vol. 1. p. 333); others carry it up as high as the bay of Adule, lat. 15° N. Bruce (Travels, vol. 3. p. 144) identifies the modern Azab with the Sabae, and places it between the tropics and the Abyssinian highlands. Combes and Tamisier (Voyages, vol. 1. p. 89) consider the island Massowa to have a better claim: while Lord Valentia (Travels, vol. 2. p. 47) finds Sabae at Port Mornington. But although neither ancient geographers nor modern travellers are agreed concerning the site of the Aethiopian Sabae, they accord in placing it on the sea-coast of the kingdom or island of Meroe, and between the Sinus Avalites and the bay of Adule, i. e. between the 12th and 15th degrees of N. latitude. On the opposite shore were seated the Sabaeans of Arabia, and as there was much intercourse between the populations of the opposite sides of the Red Sea, the Aethiopian Sabaeans may have been a colony from Arabia. Both races are described as lofty in stature and opulent (Psalm lxxii.; 1 Kings, 10.1; Isaiah, 45.14), and this description will apply equally to the Sabaeans who dwelt in the spice country of Arabia, and to those who enjoyed almost a monopoly of the Libyan spicetrade, and were not far removed from the geldmines and the emerald and topaz-quarries of the Aegyptian and Aethiopian mountains. The remarkable personal beauty of the Sabaeans is confirmed by the monuments of Upper Nubia,, and was probably reported to the Greek geographers by the slave-dealers, to whom height and noble features would be a recommendation. The Sabaeans, at least in earlier periods, may be regarded as one of the principal tribes of the Aethiopian kingdom of Meroe. [MEROE] Josephus (J. AJ) affirms that the Queen of Sheba or Saba came from this region, and that it bore the name of Saba before it was known by that of Meroe. There seems also some affinity between the word Saba and the name or title of the kings of the Aethiopians, Saba-co. [W.B.D]
(O. T. Sheba). (1) The capital of the Sabaei (q.v.), in Arabia Felix, lay on a high woody mountain, and was pointed out by an Arabian tradition as the residence of the “Queen of Sheba,” who visited King Solomon.
(2) There was another city of the same name in the interior of Arabia Felix, where a place Sabea is still found, nearly in the centre of El-Yemen.
(3) A seaport town of Aethiopia, on the Red Sea, south of Ptolemaïs Theron.