granary of Carthage.

goats were innumerable.

Her herds of oxen and sheep, horses and

IBERIA, OR SPAIN.

In those days Spain appears to have had a numerous and warlike population, rich by its mines, its harvests, and its commerce. The six great rivers were navigable to the light craft of the ancients, long chains of mountains, dense forests, and fertile valleys diversified the country. The central parts of the peninsula were occupied by the Iberian and Celtiberian races; and the coasts had settlements of Carthaginians and Greeks, consequently we find the inhabitants of the coasts far more civilized than those of the interior. Gades (Cadiz), at the extremity of Boetica (Andalusia), was the port in which ships were fitted out, which ventured on the perilous voyage beyond the pillars of Hercules, to Armorica, Britain, and the Canaries. The riches of Spain flowed through Gades; her sheep and horses were famous; her mines of gold and copper, silver and mercury, yielded abundantly. To the north and centre of the peninsula, her wealth was derived from the breeding of cattle, and agriculture; vests of goats' hair, or a kind of flannel, and called "sags," were made there, and sent in great numbers to Italy, as well as a fine cloth woven from flax, and much prized even as far as Greece. In a word, the Iberian peninsula was then reckoned among the most populous and richest regions of Europe.

SOUTHERN GAUL.

Numerous migrations arriving from the east had pushed back the population, and the Gauls found themselves straitened in their frontiers. Not less energetic than the Iberians, they were gentle and hospitable, and by their contact with the Greek colonies, spread from the Maritime Alps to the Pyrenees, acquired early some of the civilization of the East. Breeding of cattle, and the cultivation of the fields, were their chief sources of wealth. The Gauls, as well as the Celtiberians, manufactured 'sags," which were much sought after, and exported largely to Italy. Merchandise and timber were transported by the Gallic sailors down the Seine, the Rhine, the Saône, the Rhône, and the Loire, and even from the coasts of the channel, and were deposited in the Phocæan trading ports on the Mediterranean, viz., Antibes, Nice, the isles of Hyères, Monaco, which were so many shipping stations for Spain and Italy. Marseilles had no large extent of

territory, but her influence extended far into the interior of Gaul. To this town Gaul was indebted for the acclimatisation of the olive and the vine, and each season thousands of oxen were driven to feed on the thyme which grew in the neighbourhood of Marseilles. The merchants of Massalia traversed Gaul to selltheir wine and manufactured produce. This small Phocæan republic early formed an alliance with the Romans, and as early as the fifth century of Rome, Massalian houses had been established at Syracuse and at Alexandria.

LIGURIA, CIS-ALPINE GAUL, VENETIA, AND ILLYRIA.

Some of the towns on the Ligurian coast, especially Genoa, supported themselves less by regular traffic than by piracy; the Ligurians, alone, on the coast of the Tyrrhene, or Sicilian Sea, had not then risen out of the almost savage life which the Iberians, who were of the same stock, originally led.

The Gaulish tribes settled in the Cis-alpine region had, on the contrary, reached a certain civilization through contact with the Etruscans. Fond of agriculture, like other Gauls, the Cis-alpines bred droves of swine in their forests, enough to provision all Rome. Gold sand, collected in the waters of their rivers, was coined a proof of the abundance of that metal. Goods were transported by means of canals crossing Venetia, dug partly by the Etruscans. The commercial relations entertained by Venetia with Germany, Illyria, and Rhotia go back far beyond the Roman period, and at a remote antiquity it was Venetia which received the amber from the shores of the Baltic. Moreover, occupied in breeding their horses and cultivating their lands, the Veneti formed a favourable contrast to the piratical population spread over the north and north-eastern coasts of the Adriatic. The Istrians, the Liburni, and the Illyrians were formidable as pirates. The Adriatic was infested by their light and rapid barques, which troubled the navigation between Italy and Greece.

Epirus was a kind of Helvetia, intersected with mountains, a country of pastures and shepherds. Ambracia was a fine town, the residence of Pyrrhus. His palace contained two hundred and eighty-five statues in bronze, and two hundred and thirty in marble, besides paintings by Zeuxis, and immense riches in gold.

GREECE.

When Greece had lost her political and commercial supremacy, she was still rich in objects of art. Athens still preserved remnants of a civilization which had attained the highest degree of splendour, and those unequalled buildings of the age of Pericles. Among the most noted were the Acropolis, with its Parthenon and its Propyloea (masterpieces of Phidias); the statue of Minerva in gold and ivory, and another in bronze, the casque and spear of which were visible afar off at sea, the arsenal of the Piræus, the work of the architect Philo, also very admirable.

Sparta still possessed the famous portico of the Persians, built after the Median wars, the columns of which were of white marble, and stood in the market-place. Mount Taygetus yielded iron, which the Spartans worked with considerable skill into weapons and agricultural implements. On the coast of Laconia, a shell was found from which a purple, hardly less esteemed than that of Tyre, was obtained. Arcadia possessed two noted temples, that of Minerva at Tegea, and that of Apollo at Phigalia, situated at an elevation of 3000 feet above the sea-coast. These fine buildings testified that even the shepherds of Arcadia were not insensible to the arts.

Elis had manufactures of tissues, which rivalled the muslins of Cos, and were sold for their weight in gold. The town of Elis possessed the finest gymnasium in Greece, and was frequented by the competitors in the Olympic games. Olympia was the holy city; in its consecrated garden stood the Jupiter of Phidias, one of the wonders of the world. When Paulus Æmilius first saw it, he believed himself in the actual presence of the divinity himself. Argos was celebrated as the birthplace of great artists; within its territory was the superb temple of Juno, with the statue of the goddess in silver and gold, the work of Polycletus.

Corinth, situated on the narrow isthmus separating the Corinthian Gulf from the Egean Sea, had celebrated manufactures of carpets and of bronze, and many dye-houses, besides marble palaces, adorned with statues and vases-all works of art-for everywhere in Greece the Romans found paintings and precious statues. What, too, must have been the riches of Delphi-the ancient opulence of which had nevertheless passed to her colonies-for from the extremity of the Black Sea to Cyrene, traces of her splendour were to be found?

Macedonia was an emporium for the riches and resources of Asia since the time of Alexander. The gorgeous equipment of

the Macedonian troops, and the sumptuousness of the court, were revealed by the booty brought away by Paulus Æmilius, consisting of paintings, statues, tapestries, vases of gold, silver, bronze, and ivory-all masterpieces-for Macedonia had absorbed much of the ancient riches of Greece, as well as of Asia.

Byzantium was a Greek colony, whose commerce was fed by the ships of Athens, who sought the wheat of Tauris and the fish of the Euxine when the Athenians, driven from Athens in her decline, with their arts and letters, found a refuge in Byzantium.

Asia Minor seems to have been a mine of wealth to the Roman generals during a period of twenty-five years; they are said to have drawn from that country some twenty-eight millions sterling. Cicero says, "Asia is so rich and fertile that the fecundity of its plains, the variety of its products, the extent of its pastures, the multiplicity of the objects of commerce exported from it give it an incontestible superiority over all other countries of the earth."

SYRIA.

By the foundation of the empire of the Seleucidæ, Greek civilization penetrated into the interior of Asia, and Greek art and letters flourished from the sea of Phoenicia to the banks of the Euphrates. Numerous towns were built in Syria and Assyria with all the richness and elegance of the edifices of Greece. Antioch rivalled the finest towns of Egypt or Greece, its walls excited the wonder of travellers in the Middle Ages. The delightful wood of Daphne, consecrated to Apollo and Diana, was near the town. The temple of the sun, at Heliopolis (Baalbek), was the most colossal building that ever existed. Caravans placed Syria in communication with Arabia, whence came ebony, ivory, resins, spices, and perfumes. Babylonia competed with Phrygia in embroidered tissues; Tyre, too, contributed its dyes and stuffs; Sidon its glass, goldsmiths' work, and dyes. Silk stuffs reached Europe from the frontiers of China; later on, the Parthian invasion cut off the heart of Asia from the. Greeks. Hence Seleucus Nicator formed the scheme of opening a communication between Greece and Bactriana, by a canal between the Black and Caspian Seas. Palestine furnished abundance of wheat, oil, and wine. In the seventh century of Rome, Syria was still so prosperous that her inhabitants were represented as indulging in continued festivals dividing their

time between their agricultural labour, banquets, and the exercises of the gymnasium.

The numerous islands of the Mediterranean possessed equal prosperity-Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes especially. The latter was no less great in arts and letters than in commerce; it became the seat of a famous school of painting and sculpture, from which issued the authors of the Laocoon and the Farnese Bull. The town contained 3000 statues, and 100 colossi-among others the celebrated statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world. Egypt was the gift of the Nile, with its wonderful fecundity, its pyramids, and early civilization. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, was named after the Siculi, a race which had once peopled a portion of Italy. Greek and Phoenician colonies settled in Sicily; the eastern part being chiefly Grecian, and the western Carthaginian; after the Roman conquest it became the granary of Italy.

Syracuse, Agrigentum, Panormus, Drepana, and Lilybæum were vast ports, with docks for ship-building and arsenals. The roadstead of Messina and the ruins of its ancient monuments still remain, and assure us that Sicily, as well as the other countries round the Mediterranean, were twenty centuries ago the centre of a life and civilization which, in some respects, was not inferior to our own. Yet all this barbaric splendour is not our civilization, and we can, therefore, hardly measure the present with the past-the Christian world with that of the pagan.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE CITY OF ROME IN THE TIME OF AUGUSTUS.

ON emerging from the defiles of an amphitheatre of hills an open plain is reached, near the centre of which an isolated cluster of eminences is seen, crowned with a vast accumulation of stately edifices-this is Rome! Two main roads led from the provincesto the capital, one was called the Flaminian from Gaul, the other known as the Appian, from Greece and Africa. The Servian wall which, in the age of Augustus still encompassed the city, was pierced with eighteen gates, each of which opened on a wellappointed road communicating with the nearer provinces. Seven imposing aqueducts brought water from distant sources to Rome, where, received in reservoirs, it rose to the required level for the