t, and 40,000 horse; and that he had 300 elephants, 2000 armed
chariots, and an armoury at Alexandria, stocked with 300,000 complete suits
of armour, and all other necessary weapons and implements of war,--we shall
form some idea of the extent and fruitfulness of Egyptian commerce, from
which the whole, or nearly the whole, of this immense wealth must have been
derived.

Having thus brought our historical sketch of the progress of discovery and
commercial enterprize among the Egyptians down to the period of the
conquest of Egypt by the Romans, we shall, in the next place, revert to the
Romans themselves, in whom, at the date of their conquest of this country,
the geographical knowledge and the commerce of the whole world may justly
be said to have centered. As, however, we have hitherto only adverted to
the Romans, in our account of the discoveries and commerce of the
Carthaginians, it will be proper to notice them in a much more detailed and
particular manner. We shall, therefore, trace, their geographical
knowledge, their discoveries and their commerce, from the foundation of
Rome, to the period of their conquest of Egypt; and in the course of this
investigation, we shall give a sketch of the commerce of those countries
which successively fell under their dominion--omitting such as we have
already noticed: by this plan, we shall be enabled to trace the commerce of
all the known world at that time, down to the period when Rome absorbed the
whole.

The account which Polybius gives, that before the first Carthaginian war
the Romans were entirely ignorant of, and inattentive to sea affairs--if by
this statement he means to assert that they were unacquainted with maritime
commerce, as well as maritime warfare, is expressly contradicted by the
treaties between Rome and Carthage, which we have already given in our
account of the commerce of Carthage. The first of those treaties was made
250 years before the first Punic war; and the second, about fifty years
before it. Besides, it is not probable that the Romans should have been
entirely ignorant of, and inattentive to maritime commerce for so long a
period; since several nations of Italy, with which they were at first
connected, and which they afterwards conquered, were very conversant in
this commerce, and derived great consideration, power, and wealth from it.

The Romans had conquered Etruria, and made themselves masters of the Tuscan
powers both by sea and land, before