Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/225

Rh other, and as stock increased the process would rapidly extend. The liability to failure of and to  must have led to storing of  in  of plenty, and to occasional  in the first necessary of. The earliest of commerce on an international scale are to be found in the. Such a transaction as that of, for example, down &ldquo;four hundred s of,  with the ,&rdquo; for the field of , is suggestive of a group of facts and ideas indicating an advanced condition of commercial intercourse,— in ,  of ,  of  and  s, the use of  of  as a common , and  an established , or. That other passage in which we read of  by his  for twenty pieces of  to &ldquo;a  of, coming from , with their s bearing ry, , and  to ,&rdquo; extends our vision still farther, and shows us the  and   in commercial relationship with , and ns, foreign to both, as intermediaries in their , generations before the  was founded. The allusions in and other ancient writings do not bespeak so advanced a state of  as those in. There would seem to have been  among the riors engaged at the  of ; and the s of ic es cost, some nine, some more splendid a hundred , implying much rude magnificence in the form of ; and yet probably not such , pure and simple, as is seen in the present day at  and , on the  borders of , where chests of  are  in bulk for   of  or. One might fairly infer, from such archaic touches of the, that he had in view an  and  state of , in which , from their more ready power of purchase than any other , had become a rough ; but  could not in any state of  be a general , and the  of , by which  were effected in , is curiously illustrative of the transition of real into symbolic value. It may be doubted whether the hundred paid by  for a field in  were  or  of  having  as their. The  of, which appears to have been ic, was probably much more valuable than the   of , which had an intrinsic worth. Any of the first rank in a public  might become in small  pieces the  of so much of that  to be delivered to order, and from the constancy of that particular, might be relied upon for the purchase of other. But, generally speaking, the use of and  as  betokens a much higher commercial development than where  are priced by a number of, or by s of  or ; and it is on  that the  were thus employed in  and , some 2000 sundefined, as they, no doubt, had been much anterior to that date both in  on the one hand and in the rich and   of the  and  on the other.

The first foreign of whom we read, carrying goods and bags of from one distant region to another, were the, reputed descendants of  and. Touching in their territory on the south the and the right  of the, and on the north and east the most densely inhabited tracts of , and accustomed in their own interior  to a free and ic life, it may have occurred to the more  and  of  to enter on this new and adventurous course. Their traffic could only have small beginnings, but they were s of foreign, and showed to their richer neighbours that the could be pierced. On the other hand, the first and  carriers of goods of whom we read were the, the débris of the  overthrown by the conquering , who, intent on the  of the , the  of , and the sacred —the long &ldquo;promised land,&rdquo;—allowed the dispossessed to settle on a narrow strip of territory along the  of the. As the clearance proceeded the number of s increased, and this outcast, with one on the  and the other barely on the , soon outstripped the  and the  in the career of commerce. They founded and, of whose opulence there are abundant proofs both in  and in. Launching their ed on the, and steering close along the  so as to be able to take shelter in the nearest age from a , they established a securer and cheaper passage between  and  than had before been known. The and  of the  and the, , , and  of  flowed into their. From they became, and to  they added. They enlarged their, grew bolder in , and hoisted. In the s of their  had penetrated the, and brought back to the great  the wealth of ; but that this land of  was in , and that the n  crossed the  are conclusions unsupported by evidence. It is certain that they traversed thoroughly the of the, both al and , established settlements and  in many of the  of the , and, greatest of all, founded , one of the most noted, and probably the most lamented in its fall, of the commercial  and  of the. The of  and, though often involved in the s and troubles of , remained for the most part in friendly alliance with  and , to whom they were the most valuable of  both in a commercial and defensive point of view; and it was their adhesion to the cause of ,  of , that brought upon the  the terrible and all but fatal revenge of ,  of , 3416undefined But while their old  on the  was being reduced to  by a thirteen ' , the portion of inhabitants who clung to the defence built a new  on an adjacent , and thus took a new lease of life from the —a process which was destined to be almost identically repeated by  many centuries afterwards, when the  was falling under the blows of the. But never fully recovered her former power, and the coup de grace was given to this famous commercial  in the capture of  by, 250  after the struggle with. The whole inhabitants of the once proud, who had not saved themselves by flight, were either put to the , , or sold into. After this event the name of the ns disappeared from, or was soon absorbed in the rising splendour of the commercial of —, , , and their ; of , still in full fame; and of  , and built in a spot so well chosen that the  retains its importance to the present.

In the commerce of the ante- ages the do not appear to have performed any conspicuous part. Both the and the   of their  were unfavourable to a vigorous prosecution of foreign. In such as they had with other s they were served on their eastern borders by , and on the west and south by the. 