SABE'ANS, the supposed descendants of one, two, or three Sliebas mentioned in the Bible. Historically, the Sabreans appear chiefly as the inhabitants of Arabia Felix or Yemen (to the n. of the present Yemen), the principaL city of which was called Saba. and the queen of which is said to have visited Solomon, attracted by the fame of his wisdom. Josephus, however (Ant. viii. 6, 5), makes her the queen of Ethiopia (Merin), and the modern Abyssinians claim her as their own. Her name, according to their tra dition, was Makeda; and her visit to Jerusalem made her not only a proselyte to the religion of Solomon, but she became one of his wives, and had by him a son, 3Ienilek, who afterward ruled Ethiopia (q.v.). The Arabs, on the othei: hand, called her Balkis, the earliest name that occurs of a Himyaritic queen; but there is uo more historical value to be attached to this tradition than to the innumerable legends that have clustered round her name in connection with the great king.
Numerous passages in Greek and Roman writers, as well as in the Bible, testify to the vast importance of these dwellers in Yemen as a wealthy, widely-extended, and enterprising people, of fine stature and noble bearing. Their chief greatness lay in their trattic, the principal articles of which consisted of gold and perfumes, spice, incense and precious stones, a very small portion of which, however, was of home production, being only productive in corn, wine, and the like matters of ordinary consump tion. But the fact was, that the Sabmans held the key to India, and were the interme diate factors between Egypt and Syria, which again spread the imported wares over Europe; and even when Ptolemy Philadelphus (274 n.c.) had established an Indian em porium in Egypt, the Sabreans still remained the sole monopolists of the Indian trade, being the only navigators who braved the perilous voyage. As in many other respects, they also resembled the Phenicians in this, that, instead of informing other people of their sources and tire tracks of their ships, they told them the most preposterous tales about the countries they visited, and the fearful dangers they encountered; and in regard to most things, endeavored to impress upon the minds of their customers that what they sold them was, if artificial, their own manufacture—if natural products, home growth.
Being the principal -merchants of those things which the over-refined luxury of late clas sical times considered as absolute necessities of life, they could not fail to gather enor mous riches; e.g., in the 3d c. of the Roman empire, every pound of silk—a material enormous quantities of which•were used—that came from Arabia was paid by a pound of silver, at times even of gold. As a natural consequence, the Sabmans became luxuri ous, effeminate, and idle. The pictures of them drawn by the classic writers are doubt less exaggerated. The country itsclf, according to the reports of Greck writers, grew spice-wood to such an extent that its odor caused apoplexy among the inhabitants, and had smells had to be used to counteract these over-potent influences. The meanest uten sils in the houses of these merchant princes were—if we were to credit those writers— wrought in the most cunning fashion, and were of gold and silver; their vases were incrusted with gems, their firewood was cinnamon. Their colonies must, in the nature of things, have extended over immense tracts of Asia—the Ethiopian Sabmans probably being one of the first foreign settlements; yet nothing beyond the vaguest conjectures can be given about them. Regarding their government, Dio Cassius informs us that they had a king, who never was allowed to leave his palace, and that the first child born, after the accession of a new king, into one of a certain number of noble families, was considered the heir-presumptive for the time being. Commerce had also done for them what it did for the Plienicians—it civilized them, and caused them to carry civilization further; and they stand out among the ancient semi-barbarous Arabs as a common wealth of high culture. Respecting their religion, see ZABISM. Their language is sup posed to have been a Semitic (Arabic) dialect, which, however, is almost entirely lost to us now. Some tablets with Himyaritic inscriptions have been found, but their readings are not quite satisfactorily fixed as yet. See SILEMITIC LANGUAGES, ARABIA.