74 Before Chrift 326. 



dia, Perfia, and Arabia, it became a celebrated emporium, and remain- 

 ed a place of confiderable commerce, till the modern compendious voy- 

 ages to the farther parts of India carried moil of the trade away from 

 it. 



When Alexander arrived at the Ocean, he ordered Nearchus, a Cret- 

 an officer, to take the command of the fleet, and proceed wellward, 

 along the fhore, to the head of the Perfian gulf. The voyage was ac- 

 cordingly performed, and accounts of it, and of the countries and peo- 

 ple difcovered in it, were written by Nearchus, and by Oneficritus, alfo 

 an officer in the fleet. 



Alexander propofed to difpatch Nearchus on a fecond voyage round 

 the coafl of Arabia and up the Red fea, that he might obtain more 

 ample knowlege of the coafts of the Indian, or Erythraean, fea, for the 

 purpofes of commerce and government. But that expedition, together 

 with all the ambitious projedls, and alfo, as there is good reafon to be- 

 lieve, the many commercial fchemes of Alexander, were interrupted by 

 his death, in the thirty-third year of his age (a°. 324) *. This extraor- 

 dinary man, who was neither fo perfeft a charader as his panegyrifls 

 make him, nor fuch a mere madman as others have ralhly called him, 

 appears to have been feniible of the great importance of commerce. It 

 was impofllble for him not refled, that the vaft and populous empire of 

 Perfia, and all the nations he had ever attacked, either in Europe or in 

 Afia, had funk under his power with lefs oppofition than he had met 

 with from the fingle mercantile city of Tyre. The reflection could not 

 fail to imprefs him with a very high idea of the refources to be derived 

 from a flourifhing and well-diredled commerce ; and of the great exer- 

 tions, even of military force, which a community of merchants were 

 capable of making, when compelled to employ their money, the finews 

 of trade, and alio of war, in the defence of their native country. The 

 foundation of Alexandria has been already related : and many others of 

 his actions fliow, that, amid ft all his plans of war and conqueft, he never 

 loft fight of a grand defign of making the commerce of his fubjeds ftill 

 more extenfive than his empire. With this view he built about feventy 

 towns in fituations well adapted for commercial intercourfe. With this 

 view he opened the navigation of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Eu- 

 loeus, which were faid to have been obftruded by the blind policy of pre- 



* Among the weftern nations who font congia- Livy, has amufcd liiniTclf [Z. ix, c. 17] with 

 tiilatory, or adulatory, addrefTts to Alexander, making up a lill of Roman licrots contemporary 

 were the Romaui, according to Clitcirchus, an with Alexander, who would have conquered him, 

 hiftnrian who attended him in his expedition, and, if he liad prcfumed to come in their way. Livy 

 by Pliny's account, the fecond Greek writer who did not know, or was willing to forget, tliat the 

 mentioned the Romans; the firll being Theopom- Romans were repeatedly defeated, not by Alex- 

 pus, who only recorded the capture of Rome by andir, but by Alexander's veteran warriors, 7,000 

 the Gauls. [P/;'h. Z. iii, r. 5.] Neither of thefe of whom were in the army of Pyrrhus king of 

 notices was *ery flattering to the pride of the Epirus. 

 coDJjucrors of the world, whofc ronui.tic hiRorian, 



