Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/227

Rh resources of ancient. Such as exist must be protected from, the s and s from ; goods must have safe passage and safe storage, must be held in a manner sacred in the territories through which they pass, be  against accidents, be respected even in the madness of ; the s of s must give a guarantee on which rs can proceed in their operations with reasonable confidence; and the s, while protecting the commerce of their s with foreigners as if it were their own enterprise, must in their , and in all their s, be endued with the highest spirit of commercial honour. Every great breach of this security stops the continuous circulation, which is the life of and of the  to which it ministers. But in the we see commerce exposed to great risks, subject to constant,  down in peace, and utterly extinguished in. Hence it became necessary that foreign should itself be an  force in the ; and though the  of purely commercial origin soon fell into the same  and wiles as the powers to which they were opposed, yet their  exhibits clearly enough the necessity out of which they arose. Once organized, it was inevitable that they should meet intrigue with intrigue, and force with force. The s, while but imperfectly developing  and  within their own territories, had little sympathy with any means of prosperity from without. Their sole was either to absorb under their own spirit and conditions of, or to destroy, whatever was rich or great beyond their borders. Nothing is more marked in than this struggle of commerce to establish conditions of security and means of with distant parts. When almost driven from the, it often found both on the ; and often, when its success had become brilliant and renowned, it perished under the assault of stronger powers, only to rise again in new centres and to find new channels of intercourse.

While Rome was giving s and order to the half- of,, operating on a different base, and by other methods, was opening with less accessible parts of. The strength of was in her s, that of  in her, and her  could cover ground where the s were powerless. Her mariners had passed the ical into the, and established the  of. Within the itself they founded  and  on the same, and ahead of the  s had s and rs on the  of. After the destruction of, became the greatest power in the , and inherited the  of her n ancestors with , , and , as well as her own settlements in  and on the an s. An antagonism between the great  and the great  power, whose interests crossed each other at so many points, was sure to occur; and in the three   measured her strength with that of  both on  and  with no unequal success. But a commercial state impelled into a series of great s has departed from its own proper base; and in the year 146undefined was so totally destroyed by the  that of the, more than 20 s in , and containing at one period near a million of inhabitants, only a few thousands were found within its ruined. In the same year, one of the greatest of the capitals and s, was captured, ed of vast wealth, and given to the  by a. and her magnificent of the  fell into the same hands 60 s later. It may be presumed that went on under the  conquests in some degree as before; but these were grave events to occur within a brief period, and the spirit of the seat of  in every case having been broken, and its means and resources more or less ed, and dissipated in some cases, as in that of, irreparably the most necessary commerce could only proceed with feeble and languid interest under the , ar, and ar  of  at that period. It may be remarked that, the great of , having been destroyed by , , the great inland centre of n , was visited with a still more complete annihilation by the    within little more than half a century after the capture and  of. The were razed to their foundations; the —men, women, children, and the rustics round —were all either d or dispersed; and the   was carried  to. had for centuries, as a centre of commercial, been of great service to her neighbours, east and west In the s of the and ns she was respected by both as an  of common interests which it would have been simple  to invade or injure; and when the ns were subdued, and  became a  annexe, she continued to nourish as before. Her relations with Rome were more than ly; they became enthusiastic and ic; and her s, in a most brave expedition, having inflicted signal chastisement on the of  for the  of the , the admiration of this conduct at  was so great that their spirited leader , the  of , was proclaimed , and became co- with. But the ns, on receiving this exalted honour from the  and, might have said, &ldquo;Timeo Danaos dona ferentes,&rdquo; for it introduced into their secure, -covered, and lucrative s of commerce the bane of   and ambition; and it was the passionate impulse of  and  to erect an  of their own that brought down upon them the terrible and enduring retribution of. It is obvious that the destruction of must not only have doomed, already bereft of her s, to greater  and commercial isolation than had been known in long preceding ages, but have also rendered it more difficult to  herself to hold or turn to any profitable account her conquests in ; and, being an example of the policy of  to the seats of  over nearly the whole ancient world, it may be said to contain in graphic characters a presage of what came to be the actual event—the collapse and fall of the  itself.

The repeated invasions of by the  and  gave rise to a seat of  in the, which was to sustain during more than a thousand s a  of unusual splendour. The undefined  s on the, and built several s, of which  was the chief. They appear from the earliest note of them in to have been both an  and  ; and they offered a rich prey to the  s when these broke through every barrier into the  of. Thirty before  razed the neighbouring  of, the s and  of , oppressed and terrified by the prior ravages of  passed a  for erecting , the largest of the numerous s at the  of the , into a chief  and , not more as a convenience to the ers than as a security for themselves and their goods. But every fresh incursion, every new act of by the dreaded enemies, increased the flight of the rich and the  to the s, and thus gradually arose the second, whose glory was so greatly ro exceed that of the first. Approachable from the 