INFLUENCE OF THE PTOLEMAIC EPOCH. 171 



est sense of the word, a sea trade, notwithstanding the anima- 

 tion of the navigation on the Nile, and the communication be- 

 tween 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 consti- 

 tuted the respective eastern and western capitals of the Mace- 

 donian empire ; Babylon never, at any subsequent period, 

 realized 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 sci- 

 ence, their brilliant institutions for the promotion of mental 

 culture, and their unremitting endeavors for the extension of 

 maritime trade, to an increase of knowledge regarding distant 

 nations and external nature hitherto unattained by any peo 

 pie. This treasure of genuine, scientific cultivation passed 

 fronf the Greek settlers in Egypt to the Romans. Under 

 Ptolemseus Philadelphus, scarcely half a century after the 

 death of Alexander, and even before the first Punic war had 

 shaken the aristocratic republic of the Carthaginians, Alexan- 

 dria was the greatest commercial port in the world, forming 

 the nearest and most commodious route from the basin of the 

 Mediterranean to the southeastern parts of Africa, Arabia, 

 and India. The Ptolemies availed themselves with unpre- 

 cedented success of the advantages held out to them by a 

 route which nature had marked, as it were, for a means of 

 universal intercourse witi the rest of the world by the direc- 

 tion of the Arabian Gulf,t and whose importance can not even 

 now be duly appreciated until the savage violence of Eastern 

 nations, and the injurious jealousies of Western powers, shall 

 simultaneously diminish. Even after it had become a Ro- 

 man province, Egypt continued to be the seat of immense 

 wealth, for the increased luxury of Rome, under the Caesars, 

 reached to the territory of the Nile, and turned to the uni- 

 versal commerce of Alexandria for the chief means of its sat- 

 isfaction. 



The important extension of the sphere of knowledge regard- 

 ing external nature and difl^erent countries under the Ptole- 

 mies was mainly owing to the caravan trade in the interior 



* Plin., vi.,26 (?). 



♦ See Droysen, Gesch. des Hellenistischen Staatensy stems, s. 7 19. 



