eign merchants of whom we read, carrying goods and bags of
silver from one distant region to another, were the southern Arabs,
reputed descendants of Ishmael and Esau. The first notable navigators
and maritime carriers of goods were the Phoenicians. In the commerce of
the ante-Christian ages the Jews do not appear to have performed any
conspicuous part. Both the agricultural and the theocratic constitution
of their society were unfavourable to a vigorous prosecution of foreign
trade. In such traffic as they had with other nations they were served
on their eastern borders by Arabian merchants, and on the west and south
by the Phoenician shippers. The abundance of gold, silver and other
precious commodities gathered from distant parts, of which we read in
the days of greatest Hebrew prosperity, has more the character of spoils
of war and tributes of dependent states than the conquest by free
exchange of their domestic produce and manufacture. It was not until the
Jews were scattered by foreign invasions, and finally cast into the
world by the destruction of Jerusalem, that they began to develop those
commercial qualities for which they have since been famous.

Primary conditions of commerce.

There are three conditions as essential to extensive international
traffic as diversity of natural resources, division of labour,
accumulation of stock, or any other primal element--(1) means of
transport, (2) freedom of labour and exchange, and (3) security; and in
all these conditions the ancient world was signally deficient.

The great rivers, which became the first seats of population and empire,
must have been of much utility as channels of transport, and hence the
course of human power of which they are the geographical delineation,
and probably the idolatry with which they were sometimes honoured. Nor
were the ancient rulers insensible of the importance of opening roads
through their dominions, and establishing post and lines of
communication, which, though primarily for official and military
purposes, must have been useful to traffickers and to the general
population. But the free navigable area of great rivers is limited, and
when diversion of traffic had to be made to roads and tracks through
deserts, there remained the slow and costly carriage of beasts of
burden, by which only articles of small bulk and the rarest value could
be conveyed with any hope of profit. Corn, though of the first
necessity, could only be thu