History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2. Napoleon III

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СКАЧАТЬ than 12,000 horsemen.421 These armies, it is true, comprised auxiliaries of different nations. The Jews of the district of Carmel alone could raise 40,000 men.422

      The fleet was no less imposing. Phœnicia counted numerous ports and well-stored arsenals; such were Aradus (Ruad), Berytus (Beyrout), Tyre (Sour). This latter town raised itself gradually from its decline. It was the same with Sidon (Saïde), which Antiochus III., in his war with Ptolemy, did not venture to attack on account of its soldiers, its stores, and its population.423 Moreover, the greater part of the Phœnician towns enjoyed, under the Seleucidæ, a certain autonomy favourable to their industry. In Syria, Seleucia, which Antiochus the Great recovered from the Egyptians, had become the first port in the kingdom on the Mediterranean.424 Laodicea carried on an active commerce with Alexandria.425 Masters of the coasts of Cilicia and Pamphylia, the kings of Syria obtained from them great quantities of timber for ship-building, which was floated down the rivers from the mountains.426 Thus uniting their vessels with those of the Phœnicians, the Seleucidæ launched upon the Mediterranean considerable armies.427

      Distant commerce also employed numerous merchant vessels; the Mediterranean, like the Euphrates, was furrowed by barques which brought or carried merchandise of every description. Vessels sailing on the Erythræan Sea were in communication, by means of canals, with the shores of the Mediterranean. The great trade of Phœnicia with Spain and the West had ceased, but the navigation of the Euphrates and the Tigris replaced it for the transport of products, whether foreign or fabricated in Syria itself, and sent into Asia Minor, Greece, or Egypt. The empire of the Seleucidæ offered the spectacle of the ancient civilisation and luxury of Nineveh and Babylon, transformed by the genius of Greece.

      Egypt.

      XVI. Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II., contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned in it.428 The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II., the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs [£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi429 of wheat.430 Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year. Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria, yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a half [£1,860,000]).431 A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents (more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]).432 The sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of francs [172 millions sterling]).433 In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten millions of measures of wheat.434 The precious metals abounded in the empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage, towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first commercial city in the world.435 It was fifteen miles in circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed the largest ships to anchor along the quay.436 There arrived the merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa; some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on the Red Sea.437 The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a stop to the piracies of the Arabs,438 and led to the establishment of numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia, gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes.439 All these products were exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues, and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts and Greek papyrus, prove that the most varied descriptions of industry were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high degree of perfection. The excellence of the products and the delicacy of the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II., the army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and 200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000 men.440 The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class, together with light craft; the king had, besides these, more than four thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him.441 It was especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly extended.

      Cyrenaica.

      XVII. Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (the regency of Tripoli), formerly colonised by the Greeks and independent, had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended even into the mountains;442 wine, oil, dates, saffron and different plants, such as the silphium (laserpitium),443 were the object of considerable traffic.444 The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in Greece,445 and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their coursers.446 Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at the ancient prosperity of the country,447 which previously formed, by its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the colonies founded by the Greeks.

      Cyprus.

      XVIII. The numerous islands of the Mediterranean enjoyed equal prosperity. Cyprus, colonised by the Phœnicians, and subsequently by the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had a population which preserved, from its native country, the love of commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians.448 No country was richer in timber. Its fertility passed for being superior to that of Egypt.449 To its agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked from an early period,450 СКАЧАТЬ