Bibliotheca Historica

​Antigonus, having recovered all Syria and Phoenicia without danger, undertook to campaign against the land of the Arabs who are called Nabataean. For, judging this nation to be hostile to his interests, he chose Athenaeus, one of his friends, and giving him four thousand light-armed infantry and six hundred cavalry suitable for rapid movement, he ordered him to fall upon the barbarians suddenly and carry off all their plunder.

​It is useful, for the sake of those who are ignorant of it, to describe the customs of these Arabs, by practicing which they seem to preserve their liberty. Now they have an outdoor life, calling their homeland the uninhabited land which has neither rivers nor abundant springs from which a hostile army could obtain water.

​And they have a law neither to sow grain, nor to plant any fruit-bearing plant, nor to use wine, nor to build a house; and whoever is found doing contrary to these, death is his penalty.

​They observe this law because they believe that those who possess these things would easily be forced by the powerful to do what is commanded of them, for the sake of their utility. Some of them raise camels, and others sheep, pasturing them in the desert. Although there are not a few Arabian tribes that pasture in the desert, these far surpass the others in wealth, though they are in number not much more than ten thousand;

​for not a few of them are accustomed to bring down to the sea frankincense and myrrh and the most costly of spices, receiving them from those who convey them from what is called Arabia Felix.

​They are exceedingly lovers of freedom, and whenever a large force of enemies approaches, they flee into the desert, using this as a stronghold; for being waterless, it is inaccessible to others, but to them, who have prepared excavated and plastered vessels under the earth, it alone provides indeed safety.

​Since the land is partly clayey and partly of soft stone, they make great excavations in it, the mouths of which they construct completely small, but making them always wider in depth, they finally complete them to such a size that each side is a plethron.

​Filling these vessels with rainwater they plug up the mouths, and making them level with the rest of the ground they leave signs which are recognizable to themselves but inconceivable to others.

​And they water their cattle every three days so that in waterless regions and flights they may not need constant supplies of water. They themselves use for food meat and milk and those plants growing from the earth that are suitable;

​for wild pepper grows among them, and from the trees much of what is called wild honey, which they use as a drink with water. And there are also other tribes of Arabs, some of whom even practice agriculture, mixing with those who pay tribute, and share the same customs with the Syrians except for dwelling in houses.