Page:The Golden verses of Pythagoras (IA cu31924026681076).pdf/44

 dour. For fifteen centuries she had lost her unity by the extinction of her imperial dynasties. Many rival kingdoms were formed, whose constant quarrels had left them neither the leisure nor the possibility of watching over and supporting their colonies from afar. The gradual lowering of the Mediterranean, and the alluvial deposit of the shores of Egypt raising the Isthmus of Suez, had cut off all communication between this sea and the Red Sea, and, by barriers difficult to surmount, separated the primitive Phœnicians, established upon the shores of the Indian Ocean, from those of Palestine. The meridional Arabs were separated