Well, the matter is not so far-fetched, and it was close to being. Roman geographers divided the Arabian peninsula into three large, poorly defined territories beyond the so-called Limes Arabicus :Petroleum Arabia , the ancient kingdom of the Nabataeans that approximately occupied present-day Jordan, the Sinai and southern Syria, which was annexed by Cornelius Palma in the time of Trajan as a Roman province until the thrust of Islam took it from Byzantium in 635; Arabia Deserta , unfathomable and inhospitable center of the peninsula inhabited by nomadic tribes, and the Arabia Felix , southwestern tip of the peninsula comparable in size to modern-day Yemen and Oman and the presumed place where the legendary kingdom of Saba was located, which is mentioned in the Bible.
We will focus on this last territory, Arabia Felix, the most attractive to ruthless Roman greed. Greek travelers already called that territory "the fertile Arabia" (εὐδαιμονία ), due to the influence of the native Semitic y-m-n which meant fertile, due to the fertility of that coastal and mountainous corner of the Arabian Peninsula where it did rain regularly, there were irregular rivers and drinking water and it was an unavoidable point of passage and toll in the maritime trade of spices from the Far East. In addition to the monopoly of the indica cinnamon, in those wild lands incense was produced (so demanded in all the temples of the Ecumene and well paid by the merchants) and a small fruit that when roasted served as a stimulating drink. Coffee is still drunk today with the name of the Arab port from which it was exported:Mocha .
Before that halo of wealth, the magpies would soon appear. There were no more greedy people in all of classical antiquity than the Roman provincial governors, those praetors who knew that their mandate outside Rome was short-lived and the benefit immense if they had few scruples. It was the year 26 B.C. Cleopatra and Mark Antony had been dead for four years and the first Roman governor of Egypt, the poet and personal friend of Augustus, Gaius Cornelius Gallus , he had been deposed for spending plundering the province of Egypt; Aelio Galo exercised the praeture in his place , a man with a dark past and no previous military achievements worth mentioning.
It seems that by direct order of the princeps , the prefect Aelio Galo he undertook an "armed exploration" from his residence in Alexandria towards Arabia Felix. Dion Cassius and Pliny the Elder give notice of it, as well as of the great friendship of the prefect with a Greek geographer whom he had known during his pretura and who, in the end, would be the only one to take advantage of that expedition:we speak of Strabo . That curious Greek had already accompanied him to the southern border of the province, Aswan, touring the Nile and its territories and, knowing his eagerness to describe every corner of the Ecumene, he could well have been one of the inducers of this risky incursion into unknown, rich and presumably hostile lands.
The expedition started badly, and what starts badly ends worse. Aelius Gallus trusted a disreputable Nabataean guide named Sylleus that from the beginning of the campaign he had them cross a deserted and sun-scorched country with little water with which to water beasts and quench thirst. As he would happen to the Spanish Armada centuries later, Galo was defeated by the elements before releasing a single pilum to the Arab horsemen. After six months of unspeakable suffering trying to reach those treasures that the immense Arabia guarded, harassed by horsemen and the harsh climate of the desert alike, the prefect decided to return to Alexandria. He had lost two-thirds of his troops in the attempt. Perhaps because of this monumental disaster, a short time later he was dismissed as governor of Egypt, a position that was awarded to a better military man and close friend of Augustus, Gaius Petronius , the future victor of Meroe … But that's another story.