Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/31

Rh fic with the East in the time of the Flavian emperors took almost exactly the route into which, after some wide aberrations, it seems at length again to have settled down – that is, the route by Egypt, Suez, and Aden across the Indian Ocean to the ports on the Western coast of India.

The jealousy that was excited in Rome by the rich and enterprising merchants of Palmyra, who were diverting the stream of Eastern traffic into an overland route from the Persian Gulf up the Euphrates to Syria, is said to have been one reason for the destruction of that flourishing city. In this manner the Roman empire, while at its zenith, obtained a wider command over the main channels of Asiatic trade than has ever since been held by any European power except England; and England has also the great advantage that she not only commands the channels but, by her dominion in India, possesses the largest source of this mighty commercial stream.

The outpouring of the Arab tribes under Mohammed's successors upset the civilized government to which the routes by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf owed their security. When the conquests of Islam had overflowed Egypt and Syria, Constantinople became for a time the chief storehouse of the Levant, and the main current of trade with India and China took the line across Central Asia to the Black Sea, avoiding the countries recently overrun by the Mohammedans. "The commerce of Europe," as Professor Finlay remarks, "centred at Constantinople in the eighth and