AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION CONCERNING ANCIENT INDIA. SECTION II. INTERCOURSE WITH INDIA, FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ROMAN DOMINION IN EGYPT, TO THE CONQUEST OF THAT KINGDOM BY THE MAHOMEDANS. UPON the conquest of Egypt by the Romans, and the reduction of that kingdom to a province of their empire, the trade with India continued to be carried on in the same mode under their powerful protection: Rome, enriched with the spoils and the tribute of almost all the known world, had acquired a taste for luxuries of every kind. Among people of this description, the produc tions of India have always been held in the highest estimation. The capital of the greatest empire ever established in Europe, filled with citizens, who had now no occupation but to enjoy and dissipate the wealth accumulated by their ancestors, demanded every thing elegant, rare, or costly, which that remote region could furnish, in order to support its pomp, or heighten its pleasures. To supply this demand, new and extraordinary efforts became requisite, and the commerce with India increased to a degree, which (as I have observed in another place*) will appear astonishing even to the present age, in which that branch of trade has been extended far beyond the practice or conception of any former period. Besides the Indian commodities imported into the capital of the empire from Egypt, the Romans received an additional supply of them by another mode of conveyance. From the earliest times, there seems to have been some communication between Mesopotamia, and other provinces on the banks of the Euphrates, and those parts of Syria and Palestine, which lay near the Mediterranean. The migration of Abram from Ur, of the Chaldees from Sichem in the land of Canaan, is an instance of this. The journey through the desert, which separated these countries, was much facilitated. by its affording one station abounding with water, and capable of cultivation. As the intercourse in.. creased, the possession of this. station became an object of so much importance, that Solomon, when he turned his attention towards the extension of commerce among his subjects, built a fenced city there.1 Hist. of America, vol. i. p. 25. ↑ Genes, xi. xii. its Syrian name of Tadmor in the wilderness, and its Greek one of Palmyra, are both descriptive of its situation in a spot adorned with palm-trees. This is not only plentifully supplied with water, but surrounded by a portion of fertile land, which (though of no great extent) renders it a delightful habitation in the midst of barren sand, and an inhospitable desert. Its happy position, at the distance of eighty-five miles from the river Euphrates, and about one hundred and seventeen miles from the nearest coast of the Mediterranean,* induced its inhabitants to enter with ardour into the trade of con veying commodities from one of these to the other. As the most valuable productions of India, brought up the Euphrates from the Persian Gulf, are of such small bulk as to bear the expense of a long landcarriage, this trade soon became so considerable that the opulence and power of Palmyra increased rapidly. Its government was of the form which is best suited to the genius of a commercial city, republican; and from the peculiar advantages of its situation, as well as the spirit of its inhabitants, it long maintained its independence, though surrounded by powerful and ambitious neighbours. * In a former edition, I stated the distance of Palmyra from the Euphrates at sixty miles, and from the Mediterranean at two hundred and three miles. Into these errors I was led by M. D'Anville, who, in his Memoire sur l'Euphrate et le Tigris, a work published in old age, did not retain his wonted accuracy. From information communicated by major Rennell, I have substituted the true distances. Under the Syrian monarchs descended from Seleucus it attained to its highest degree of splendour and wealth, one great source of which seems to have been the supplying their subjects with Indian commodities. When Syria submitted to the irresistible arms of Rome, Palmyra continued upwards of two centuries a free state, and its friendship was courted with emulation and solicitude by the Romans, and their rivals for empire, the Parthians. That it traded with both, and particularly that from it Rome as well as other parts of the empire received the productions of India, we learn from Appian, an author of good credit.* But in tracing the progress of the commerce of the ancients with the East, I should not have ventured, upon his single testimony, to mention this among the channels of note in which it was carried on, if a singular discovery, for which we are indebted to the liberal curiosity and enterprising spirit of our own countrymen, did not confirm and illustrate what he relates. Towards the close of the last century, some gentlemen of the English factory at Aleppo, incited by what they heard in the East concerning the wonderful ruins of Palmyra, ventured, notwithstanding the fatigue and danger of a journey through the desert, to visit them. To their astonishment they beheld a fertile spot of some miles in extent arising like an island out of a vast plain of sand, covered with the remains of temples, porticoes, aqueducts, and other public works, which, Appian. de Bello Civil. lib. v. p. 1076. edit. Tollii. H in magnificence and splendour, and some of them in elegance, were not unworthy of Athens or of Rome in their most prosperous state. Allured by their description of them, about sixty years thereafter, a party of more enlightened travellers, having reviewed the ruins of Palmyra with greater attention and more scientific skill, declared that what they beheld there exceeded the most exalted ideas which they had formed concerning it.* From both these accounts, as well as from recollecting the extraordinary degree of power to which Palmyra had attained, when Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, and a considerable part of Asia Minor were conquered by its arms; when Odenatus, its chief magistrate, was decorated with the imperial purple, and Zenobia contended for the dominion of the East with Rome under one of its most warlike emperors, it is evident that a state which could derive little importance from its original territory must have owed its aggrandisement to the opulence acquired by extensive commerce. Of this the Indian trade was undoubtedly the most considerable, and most lucrative branch. But it is a cruel mortification, in searching for what is instructive in the history of past times, to find that the exploits of conquerors who have desolated the earth, and the freaks of tyrants who have rendered nations unhappy, are recorded with minute * Wood's Ruins of Palmyra, p. 37. |