and has immediately round it a fertile soil, was peculiarly favorable; as it was only 85 miles from the Euphrates, and about 117 from the nearest part of the Mediterranean.  By this route the most valuable commodities of India, most of which were of such small bulk as to beat the expence of a long land carriage, were conveyed.  From the age of Nebuchadnezzar to the Macedonian conquest, Tiredon on the Euphrates was the city at which this commercial route began, and which the Babylonians made use of, as the channel of their oriental trade.  After the destruction of Tyre by that monarch, a great part of the traffic which had passed by Arabia, or the Red Sea, through Idumea and Egypt, and that city, was diverted to the Persian Gulf, and through his territories in Mesopotamia it passed by Palmyra and Damascus, through Syria to the west.  After the reduction of Babylon by Cyrus, the Persians, who paid no attention to commerce, suffered Babylon and Ninevah to sink into ruin; but Palmyra still remained, and flourished as a commercial city.  Under the Seleucidae it seems to have reached its highest degree of importance, splendour, and wealth; principally by supplying the Syrians with Indian commodities.  For upwards of two centuries after the conquest of Syria by the Romans it remained free, and its friendship and alliance were courted both by them and the Parthians.  During this period we have the express testimony of Appian, that it traded with both these nations, and that Rome and the other parts of the empire received the commodities of India from it.  In the year A.D. 273, it was reduced and destroyed by Aurelian, who found in it an immense treasure of gold, silver, silk, and precious stones.  From this period, it never revived, or became a place of the least importance or trade.

On the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, the commercial communication between India and Europe returned to Arabia in the south, and to the Caspian and the Euxine in the north:  there seem to have been two routes by these seas, both of great antiquity.  In describing one of them, the ancient writers are supposed to have confounded the river Ochus, which falls into the Caspian, with the Oxus, which falls into the lake of Aral.  On this supposition, the route may be traced in the following manner:  the produce and manufactuers of India were collected at Patala, a town near the mouth of the Indus; they were carried in vessels up this river as far as it was navigable, where they were landed, and conveyed by caravans to the Oxus:  being again shipped, they descended this river to the point where it approached nearest to the Ochus, to which they were conveyed by caravans.  By the Ochus they were conveyed to the Caspian, and across it to the mouth of the river Cyrus, which was ascended to where it approached nearest the Phasis:  caravans were employed again, till the merchandize were embarked at Serapana on the Phasis, and thus brought to the Black Sea.  According to Pliny, Pompey took great pains to inform himself of this route; and he ascertained, that by going up the Cyrus the goods would be brought within five day’s journey of the Phasis.  There seems to have been some plan formed at different times, and thought of by the Emperor Claudius, to join Asia to Europe and the Caspian Sea, by a canal from the Cimmerian Bosphorus to the Caspian Sea.