[6][7] According to the 1st-century Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the "port of spices" (Aromaton emporion, Ἀρωμάτων ἐμπόριον) had a roadstead or anchorage (hormos) in the land of the Barbaroi.
[12] According to the 2nd-century Geography of Ptolemy, a merchant named Diogenes, returning from India, was driven south by a north wind as he approached Aromata.
Citing Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy adds that a merchant named Theophilos sailed from Rhapta to Aromata in twenty days with a south wind blowing.
He cites a certain Dioskoros for the location of Cape Prason, the southernmost point the Greeks reached in Africa, being "many days" beyond Rhapta.
[17] According to the Periplus, a ship warned at Aromata of an approaching storm on the Indian Ocean could take refuge at Tabai (Chori Hordio), two days' sailing and on the other side of the cape.
[19][20] Paul Henze takes this to refer to the whole of the "dry coastal region, a major source of incense" from the lowlands of what is today Eritrea through Somalia and perhaps even a part of South Arabia.
[21] L. P. Kirwan distinguishes two lands of incense: that of the Monumentum Adulitanum (which he places in South Arabia) and that of the Christian Topography itself (which is the Aromata of the Periplus and Ptolemy).