INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 537 



of Uctara Kuru by the stony tower* (probably a fortified 

 caravansery), south of the sources of the Jaxartes through the 

 valley of the Oxus to the Caspian and Black Seas. On the 

 Other hand, the principal traffic of the Ptolemaic empire was, 

 in the strictest sense of the word, a sea trade, notwithstanding 

 the animation of the navigation on the Nile, and the commu- 

 nication between the banks of the river, and the artificially 

 constructed roads along the shores of the Red Sea. According 

 to the grand views of Alexander, the newly founded Egyptian 

 city of Alexandria and the ancient Babylon were to have con- 

 stituted the respective eastern and western capitals of the 

 Macedonian empire ; Babylon never, at any subsequent period, 

 realised these hopes, and the prosperity of Seleucia, which 

 was built by Seleucus Nicator on the Lower Tigris, and had 

 been connected by canals with the Euphrates,! contributed to 

 its entire downfall. 



Three great rulers, the three first Ptolemies, whose reigns 

 occupied a whole century, gave occasion, by their love of 

 science, their brilliant institutions, for the promotion of mental 

 culture, and their unremitting endeavours for the extension of 

 maritime trade, to an increase of knowledge regarding distant 

 nations and external nature hitherto unattained by any people. 

 This treasure of genuine, scientific cultivation passed from the 

 Greek settlers in Egypt to the Romans. Under Ptolemasus Phi- 

 ladelphus, scarcely half a century after the death of Alexander, 

 and even before the first Punic war had shaken the aristocratic 

 republic of the Carthaginians, Alexandria was the greatest 

 commercial port in the world, forming the nearest and most 

 commodious route from the basin of the Mediterranean to the 

 south-eastern parts of Africa, Arabia, and India. The Ptolemies 

 availed themselves with unprecedented success of the advan- 

 tages held out to them by a route which nature had marked, as 

 it were, for a means of universal intercourse with the rest of the 

 world by the direction of the Arabian Gulf, J and whose import- 

 ance cannot even now be duly appreciated until the savage vio- 

 %ice of eastern nations, and the injurious jealousies of western 

 powers, shall simultaneously diminish . Even after it had become 



* Compare my geographical researches, in Aiie centrale, t. i. pp. 145 

 tad 151-157; t. ii. p. 179. 

 t Plin., vi. 26 (?). 

 t See Proysen, Gesch. de* hellemstiscrien S^uitensysUt/is, s. 74y. 



