The modern world, with its common fund of culture and its community of interests uniting different peoples, could arise from these conditions only after long centuries of struggle. The unity of the Christian faith was needed to confirm the union of peoples in a common civilization. The process of union begins, however, at the point which we have reached; the great conquests of Alexander of Macedon, and those of Rome, did much to break down the barriers between peoples, and to prepare them for the acceptance of a common civilization and a common religion. It is to be hoped that the student knows already something of the narrative of those conquests. We shall have to confine ourselves to the results as they appear in the history of commerce. Here the reader can merely be reminded that Alexander united the eastern world into an empire extending from Greece to India, a little before 300 B.C., and that the Romans began about 200 B.C. to extend their authority outside the Italian peninsula, and before the birth of Christ had subjected to it practically all the peoples whose history we have been studying.
21. Effect of Alexander’s conquests on commerce; decline of Greece.—In appearance the empire of Alexander outlived its founder but a few years, and then dissolved. Alexander, however, was a civilizer as well as a conqueror; he endowed the East with a common fund of Greek culture; and however distinct or hostile the states might seem thereafter the peoples were united as they had never been before. Commerce took on a new aspect. Greece, which before had been at the center of the great commercial movements, was now left on the western edge. Greek merchants could for a time use their former commanding position to share in the great commercial development, but in the long run their struggle was hopeless. The most energetic Greeks left their home to settle in eastern countries which were richer, more populous, and closer to the great currents of trade. Corinth was the only city which managed to maintain and extend its trade. Athens declined rapidly in commercial importance; and grass grew and cows were pastured in the streets of other towns which had once been important markets.
22. Rise of great cities.—Some indication of the development of commerce, and of the rearrangement of its important centers, can be got from a study of the great cities of the ancient world. Before the time of Alexander there were only three cities of the Mediterranean with a population of over 100,000, Syracuse, Athens, Carthage; none of these had a population far above that figure. About 200 B.C., scarcely more than a century afterward, there were four cities with a population over 200,000, Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch, Carthage; one city with a population far above 100,000, Syracuse; and of cities with a population about 100,000 there were Corinth, Rome, Rhodes, Ephesos, and possibly others. The names of some of these cities are already familiar to us. Carthage was enjoying its last century of commercial greatness, before Rome robbed it of its influence in the northern Mediterranean. Syracuse was the chief Greek colony of the West, destined also to fall under the Roman power just before 200. Other names, however, are entirely new to history, or first became of great importance at this time, and the best idea of the commerce of the period can be got by considering the reasons for their greatness.
23. Alexandria, Seleukia, Antioch.—Alexandria, as its name suggests, was founded by the Macedonian conqueror. It was situated on a tongue of land between a lagoon and the sea, near the most western of the mouths of the Nile. It had a double harbor, formed by the island Pharos, which has given the name for lighthouse in some of the modern languages (French, phare, Italian, fáro), as the most celebrated lighthouse of antiquity was erected there. Alexandria furnished the only good harbor for large vessels on the coast of Egypt; it had access to the Nile, tapping one of the great granaries of antiquity, and connected with the Red Sea through the canal that ran from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes. It was at the point where the sea-route from the far East reached the Mediterranean, and it became by right the greatest market and the largest city that the world had known.
Next to it in size and importance came two other cities, Seleukia and Antioch, which were founded even later than Alexandria. Seleukia, on the Tigris, took the place of the earlier Babylon and the later Bagdad; it was situated in a rich plain at the points where the routes from the Persian Gulf and the Persian highlands met on their way westward. Antioch was at the focus of the routes by which the trade with inner Asia was carried on. Situated at a point where the Euphrates approaches to within a few days’ march of the coast, and where the valley of the Orontes offers the best means of reaching the sea from the interior, it had the full benefit of the revival of eastern commerce which followed the conquests of Alexander and the enlightened rule of his successors.
24. Rhodes.—Only one other city, Rhodes, deserves especial attention, and this not because of its size alone but also because it was so specifically a commercial city. The little island could offer but scanty products to commerce, but it enjoyed an exceptionally favorable position, where navigators from Egypt and Syria, avoiding the dangers of the open sea, would put in for shelter and to trade. Rhodes followed a far-sighted foreign policy, guided by the idea of securing the greatest freedom of trade; it policed the seas and repressed piracy with vigor; and established a code of mercantile law which was celebrated as a model and which invited dealings in its market. The Rhodians were skilful navigators, and developed the principles of commercial association to a point of high efficiency. It is little cause for wonder, therefore, that commerce flowed hither from all parts of the eastern Mediterranean and even from the Black Sea; that foreign merchants sent their sons there to learn the conduct of commerce; and that great riches were accumulated, of which one evidence was furnished by the many colossi, gigantic statues, about the city.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. Prove the statement in the text, regarding the Greek islands. Take a good map, measure off on the scale 25 miles, the distance at which hills of about 125 feet are visible (the Greek islands are mountainous and the air very clear), and show by what stepping-stones timid sailors could advance.
2. Study in detail the influence of the physical characteristics of Greece on the people and their history. [See Myers, chap. 1; Holm, vol. 1, chap. 2.]
3. Write a report on the evidences of early civilization and trade. [Holm, vol. 1, chap. 8.]