lands.
It is a significant fact, that Ptolemy III. Euergetes voluntarily
restored all his conquests to Seleucus Callinicus except the seaport
of Antioch. Partly by this means, partly by its favourable
geographical situation, Egypt attained, with reference to the two
continental powers, an excellent military position either for defence
or for attack. While an opponent even in the full career of success
was hardly in a position seriously to threaten Egypt, which was almost
inaccessible on any side to land armies, the Egyptians were able by
sea to establish themselves not only in Cyrene, but also in Cyprus
and the Cyclades, on the Phoenico-Syrian coast, on the whole south
and west coast of Asia Minor and even in Europe on the Thracian
Chersonese. By their unexampled skill in turning to account the
fertile valley of the Nile for the direct benefit of the treasury,
and by a financial system--equally sagacious and unscrupulous
--earnestly and adroitly calculated to foster material interests,
the court of Alexandria was constantly superior to its opponents even
as a moneyed power. Lastly, the intelligent munificence, with which
the Lagidae welcomed the tendency of the age towards earnest inquiry
in all departments of enterprise and of knowledge, and knew how to
confine such inquiries within the bounds, and entwine them with the
interests, of absolute monarchy, was productive of direct advantage to
the state, whose ship-building and machine-making showed traces of the
beneficial influence of Alexandrian mathematics; and not only so, but
also rendered this new intellectual power--the most important and the
greatest, which the Hellenic nation after its political dismemberment
put forth--subservient, so far as it would consent to be serviceable
at all, to the Alexandrian court. Had the empire of Alexander
continued to stand, Greek science and art would have found a state
worthy and capable of containing them. Now, when the nation had
fallen to pieces, a learned cosmopolitanism grew up in it luxuriantly,
and was very soon attracted by the magnet of Alexandria, where
scientific appliances and collections were inexhaustible, where kings
composed tragedies and ministers wrote commentaries on them, and where
pensions and academies flourished.

The mutual relations of the three great states are evident from
what has been said. The maritime power, which ruled the coasts and
monopolized the sea, could not but after the first grea