l processions and religious shows, and which
usually lay in dock at Schedia, on the Canopic River, five and twenty
miles from Alexandria. He was no doubt in part withheld from war by this
luxurious love of ease; but his reign taught the world the new lesson,
that an ambitious monarch may gratify his wish for praise and gain the
admiration of surrounding nations, as much by cultivating the blessed
arts of peace as by plunging his people into the miseries of war.

He reigned over Egypt, with the neighbouring parts of Arabia; also over
Libya, Phoenicia, Cole-Syria, part of Ethiopia, Pamphylia, Cilicia,
Lycia, Caria, Cyprus, and the isles of the Cyclades. The island of
Rhodes and many of the cities of Greece were bound to him by the closest
ties of friendship, for past help and for the hope of future. The
wealthy cities of Tyre and Sidon did homage to him, as before to his
father, by putting his crowned head upon their coins. The forces of
Egypt reached the very large number of two hundred thousand foot and
twenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, four hundred Ethiopian
elephants, fifteen hundred ships of war and one thousand transports. Of
this large force, it is not likely that even one-fourth should have been
Greeks; the rest must have been Egyptians and Syrians, with some Gauls.
The body of chariots, though still forming part of the force furnished
for military service by the Theban tenants of the crown, was of no
use against modern science; and the other Egyptian troops, though now
chiefly armed and disciplined like Greeks, were very much below the
Macedonian phalanx in real strength. The galleys also, though no doubt
under the guidance and skill of Greeks and Phoenicians, were in part
manned by Egyptians, whose inland habits wholly unfitted them for the
sea, and whose religious prejudices made them feel the conscription for
the navy as a heavy grievance.

These large forces were maintained by a yearly income equally large, of
fourteen thousand eight hundred talents, or twelve million two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, beside the tax on grain, which was taken
in kind, of a million and a half of artabas, or about five millions of
bushels. To this we may add a mass of gold, silver, and other valuable
stores in the treasury, which were boastfully reckoned at the unheard-of
sum of seven hundred and forty thousand talents, or above five hundred
million dollars.

[Illustration: 149.jpg A TYPICAL NILE PILOT]

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