Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/209

 times the arts and sciences appear to have originated in the East; and from thence, by the aid of Greece and Rome, civilization extended until it included almost all the known parts of Western Africa and Europe. Before the beginning of the sixth century, however, owing to the incursions and settlements of Goths and Vandals, those western countries had retrograded nearly to the same level of barbarism from which they had been rescued formerly by the civilizing arms of Rome.

In the earliest ages the trade of the Mediterranean was entirely in the hands of the Semitic race; and from their great ports of Tyre and Sidon the Phoenicians penetrated with their well-laden ships even as far as Spain and Britain, disposing of their native manufactures and imported wares on every coast within their reach. But with the rise and spread of Hellenic civilization, commerce became more cosmopolitan; and by the conquests of Alexander the Greeks were made practically cognizant of a Far East teeming

Iliad, vi, 288.

[Greek: Hentha de Phoinikes nausiklytoi hêlython andres Trôktai, myri' agontes athyrmata nêi melainê Tên d' ara Phoinikes polypaipaloi êperopeuon. k.t.l.]

Odyssey, xv, 415.

The recently discovered ruins in Mashonaland (Rhodesia) prove, perhaps, that their unrecorded expeditions reached to S. Africa; see works by Bent, Neal and Hall, Keane, etc.]