was situated on the same side of the Mediterranean Sea, in a much
more advantageous position for receiving the productions of the East,
and equally advantageous for distributing them.

The Phoenicians never recovered their importance; and indeed it was
not the interest of the Persian monarch to encourage trade by [end of
page #24] the old channel of the Red Sea and Rhinocolura, but rather
to come directly through the Persian Gulf, ascend the Euphrates, and
cross the country to the borders of the Mediterranean, which was a
way not much more expensive than by the old rout =sic=. As the
greater part of the produce imported was to be consumed at the
luxurious court of Persia, and in the numerous rich cities with which
that empire was filled, there is no doubt that the way by the Persian
Gulf was by much the least expensive; for even Solomon, King of
Jerusalem, long before, though he lived at one extremity of the
journey, and had ships for trading by the other channel, had carried on
trade by this way; and, in order to facilitate it, had laid the foundation
of the magnificent city of Palmyra, nearly in the middle between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Persia.

Whilst those revolutions were effecting amongst the ancient nations
on the continents of Asia and Africa, the Greeks, who had been the
most barbarous of all, became, by degrees, the most refined; their
learning and arts were all founded, originally, on the Egyptian
learning; and though at last they carried them to a higher pitch than
their masters; yet Egypt, for many centuries, was looked up to, even
by the Greeks, as they were afterwards for a number of centuries by
the Romans, and the other nations of the world.

The education of the Greeks; very different in some of the states from
what it was in others, had, however, the same tendency in all; that
tendency was to invigorate the body, and instruct and strengthen the
mind. While this continued, we see them at first resist the Persians,
though in very unequal numbers; and, at last, the Grecian vigour,
discipline, and skill, subdue the whole of the then civilized world.

After the conquests of Alexander, the wealth and luxury of Asia were
introduced into Greece, and indeed the Greeks refined on that luxury.
At Athens and the other cities which might be said to give manners to
the rest, shews, and theatrical representations were after that more
attended to than the military art; and cabal, intrigue, and corr