Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/231

 and linen. Greece, and the Greek islands, Samos, Cos, and Thrace, furnished green marble, dyes, cambrics, and earthenwares; and from the Euxine were imported wax, hemp, and pitch, and wool of the finest quality; while the ancient trade with Persia, through Trebizond, remained unbroken during the Roman supremacy, greatly increasing when Constantinople became the eastern capital of the empire. Phrygia produced alabaster; Miletus woollen goods, and Tyrian purple; and Sidon and Tyre, glass manufactures and rich work in embroidery. From Africa proper the Romans imported very considerable quantities of corn, drugs, and horses, together with the wild elephants and lions required for their gladiatorial exhibitions.

Next to Egypt, Spain was the largest seat of their foreign trade. Its products of lead, iron, copper, silver, and gold, were sources of vast wealth; and the corn, wool, wine, oil, honey, wax, pitch, dyes, and salted provisions of a superior quality afforded a large and lucrative commerce to the merchants, ship-owners, and manufacturers of Rome. Indeed, so extensive were the commercial transactions carried on in the Spanish Peninsula, that nearly as many ships were employed in its trade as in that with the whole of Africa. Nor need we doubt that the vessels so occupied were as large as those engaged in the Egyptian trade already noticed. New Carthage (Cartagena), Saguntum, Tarragona, and Bilbilis (Bilboa), even then famous for its steel, had a large commercial intercourse with Rome, in provisions, cordage, and linens of