University of Virginia Library

21.9. 9. Of the Commerce of the Grecian Kings after the Death of
Alexander.

At the time when Alexander made the conquest of Egypt, they had but a very imperfect idea of the Red Sea, and none at all of the ocean, which, joining this sea, on one side washes the coast of Africa, and on the other that of Arabia; nay, they thought it impossible to sail round the peninsula of Arabia. They who attempted it on each side had relinquished their design. "How is it possible," said they, [48] "to navigate to the southern coast of Arabia, when Cambyses' army, which traversed it on the north side, almost entirely perished; and the forces which Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, sent to the assistance of Seleucus Nicator at Babylon, underwent incredible hardships, and, upon account of the heat, could march only in the night?"

The Persians were entire strangers to navigation. When they had subdued Egypt, they introduced the same spirit into that country as prevailed in Persia: hence, so great was the supineness of the Persians in this respect, that the Grecian kings found them quite strangers, not only to the commerce of the Tyrians, Idumeans, and the Jews on the ocean, but even to the navigation of the Red Sea. I am apt to think that the destruction of the first Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, together with the subversion of several petty nations and towns bordering on the Red Sea, had obliterated all their former knowledge of commerce.

Egypt, at the time of the Persian monarchy, did not front the Red Sea; it contained only that long narrow neck of land which the Nile covers with its inundations, and is enclosed on both sides by a chain of mountains. [49] They were, therefore, under the necessity of making a second discovery of the ocean and the Red Sea; and this discovery engaged the curiosity of the Grecian monarchs.

They ascended the Nile, and hunted after elephants in the countries situated between that river and the sea; by this progression they traced the sea-coast; and as the discoveries were made by the Greeks, the names are all Grecian, and the temples are con- secrated to Greek divinities. [50]

The Greeks settled in Egypt were able to command a most extensive commerce; they were masters of all the harbours on the Red Sea; Tyre, the rival of every trading nation, was no more; they were not constrained by the ancient superstitions [51] on the country; in short, Egypt had become the centre of the world.

The kings of Syria left the commerce of the south to those of Egypt, and attached themselves only to the northern trade, which was carried on by means of the Oxus and the Caspian Sea. They then imagined that this sea was part of the northern ocean; and Alexander, [52] some time before his death, had fitted out a fleet [53] in order to discover whether it communicated with the ocean by the Euxine Sea, or some other eastern sea towards India. After him, Seleucus and Antiochus applied themselves to make discoveries in it, with particular attention; and with this view they scoured it with their fleets. [54] That part which Seleucus surveyed was called the Seleucidian Sea; that which Antiochus discovered received the name of the Sea of Antiochus. Attentive to the projects they might have formed on that side, they neglected the seas on the south; whether it was that the Ptolemies, by means of their fleets on the Red Sea, had already become the masters of it, or that they discovered an invincible aversion in the Persians against engaging in maritime affairs. The southern coasts of Persia supplied them with no seamen; there had been none in those parts, except towards the latter end of Alexander's reign. But the Egyptian kings, being masters of the Isle of Cyprus, of Phoenicia, and of a great number of towns on the coast of Asia Minor, were possessed of all sorts of conveniences for undertaking maritime expeditions. They had no occasion to force; they had only to follow the genius and bent of their subjects.

I am surprised, I confess, at the obstinacy with which the ancients believed that the Caspian Sea was a part of the ocean. The expeditions of Alexander, of the kings of Syria, of the Parthians and the Romans, could not make them change their sentiments; notwithstanding these nations described the Caspian Sea with wonderful exactness: but men are generally tenacious of their errors. When only the south of this sea was known, it was at first taken for the ocean; in proportion as they advanced along the banks of the northern coast, instead of imagining it a great lake, they still believed it to be the ocean, that here made a sort of bay: surveying the coast, their discoveries never went eastward beyond the Jaxartes, nor westward farther than the extremity of Albania. The sea towards the north was shallow, and of course very unfit for navigation. [55] Hence it was that they always looked upon this as the ocean.

The land army of Alexander had been in the east only as far as the Hypanis, which is the last of those rivers that fall into the Indus: thus the first trade which the Greeks carried on with the Indies was confined to a very small part of the country. Seleucus Nicator penetrated as far as the Ganges, and thereby discovered the sea into which this river falls, that is to say, the Bay of Bengal. [56] The moderns discover countries by voyages at sea; the ancients discovered seas by conquests at land.

Strabo, [57] notwithstanding the testimony of Apollodorus, seems to doubt whether the Grecian kings of Bactria proceeded farther than Seleucus and Alexander. [58] Were it even true that they went no farther to the east than Seleucus, yet they went farther towards the south; they discovered Siger, and the ports on the coast of Malabar, which gave rise to the navigation I am going to mention. [59]

Pliny informs us that the navigation of the Indies was successively carried on in three different ways. [60] At first they sailed from the Cape of Siagre to the island of Patalena, which is at the mouth of the Indus. This we find was the course that Alexander's fleet steered to the Indies. They took afterwards a shorter and more certain course, by sailing from the same cape or promontory to Siger: [61] this can be no other than the kingdom of Siger mentioned by Strabo, [62] and discovered by the Grecian kings of Bactria. Pliny, by saying that this way was shorter than the other, can mean only that the voyage was made in less time: for, as Siger was discovered by the kings of Bactria, it must have been farther than the Indus: by this passage they must therefore have avoided the winding of certain coasts, and taken advantage of particular winds. The merchants at last took a third way; they sailed to Canes, or Ocelis, ports situated at the entrance of the Red Sea; whence by a west wind they arrived at Muziris, the first staple town of the Indies, and thence to the other ports. Here we see that instead of sailing to the mouth of the Red Sea as far as Siagre, by coasting Arabia Felix to the north-east, they steered directly from west to east, from one side to the other, by means of the monsoons, whose regular course they discovered by sailing in these latitudes. The ancients never lost sight of the coasts, except when they took advantage of these and the trade-winds, which were to them a kind of compass. [63]

Pliny [64] says that they set sail for the Indies in the middle of summer and returned towards the end of December, or in the beginning of January. This is entirely conformable to our naval journals. In that part of the Indian Ocean which is between the Peninsula of Africa, and that on this side the Ganges, there are two monsoons; the first, during which the winds blow from west to east, begins in the month of August or September; and the second, during which the wind is in the east, begins in January. Thus we set sail from Africa for Malabar at the season of the year that Ptolemy's fleet used to put to sea thence; and we return too at the same time as they.

Alexander's fleet was seven months in sailing from Patala to Susa. It set out in the month of July, that is, at a season when no ship dare now put to sea to return from the Indies. Between these two monsoons there is an interval during which the winds vary; when a north wind, meeting with the common winds, raises, especially near the coasts, the most terrible tempests. These continue during the months of June, July, and August. Alexander's fleet, therefore, setting sail from Patala in the month of July, must have been exposed to many storms, and the voyage must have been long, because they sailed against the monsoon.

Pliny says that they set out for the Indies at the end of summer; thus they spent the time proper for taking advantage of the monsoon in their passage from Alexandria to the Red Sea.

Observe here, I pray, how navigation has, little by little, arrived at perfection. Darius's fleet was two years and a half in falling down the Indus and going to the Red Sea. [65] Afterwards the fleet of Alexander, [66] descending the Indus, arrived at Susa, in ten months, having sailed three months on the Indus, and seven on the Indian Ocean; at last the passage from the coast of Malabar to the Red Sea was made in forty days. [67]

Strabo, [68] who accounts for their ignorance of the countries between the Hypanis and the Ganges, says there were very few of those who sailed from Egypt to the Indies that ever proceeded so far as the Ganges. Their fleets, in fact, never went thither: they sailed with the western monsoons from the mouth of the Red Sea to the coast of Malabar. They cast anchor in the ports along that coast, and never attempted to get round the peninsula on this side the Ganges by Cape Comorin and the coast of Coromandel. The plan of navigation laid down by the kings of Egypt and the Romans was to set out and return the same year. [69]

Thus it is demonstrable that the commerce of the Greeks and Romans to the Indies was much less extensive than ours. We know immense countries, which to them were entirely unknown; we traffic with all the Indian nations; we even manage their trade and carry on their commerce. But this commerce of the ancients was carried on with far greater facility than ours. And if the moderns were to trade only with the coast of Guzerat and Malabar, and, without seeking for the southern isles, were satisfied with what these islanders brought them, they would certainly prefer the way of Egypt to that of the Cape of Good Hope. Strabo informs us [70] that they traded thus with the people of Taprobane.

Footnotes