V Strabo, lib. VI., towards the end. Arabia as an island. — Aristob. in Strabo, w Seeing Babylon overflowed, he lib. XVI. looked upon the neighboring country of x See the book " Rerum Indicarum."
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 345 the Tyrians, Idumeans, and the Jews on the ocean, but even to the navigation of the Red Sea. I am apt to think that the destruction of the first Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, together with the subversion of several petty nations and towns bordering on the Red Sea, had obhterated all their former knowledge of commerce.
Egypt, at the time of the Persian monarchy, did not front the Red Sea; it contained only that long narrow neck of land which the Nile covers with its inundations, and is inclosed on both sides by a chain of mountains.^ They were, therefore, under the necessity of making a second discovery of the ocean and the Red Sea; and this discovery engaged the curiosity of the Grecian monarchs.
They ascended the Nile, and hunted after elephants in the countries situated between that river and the sea; by this pro- gression they traced the sea-coast; and as the discoveries were made by the Greeks, the names are all Grecian, and the temples are consecrated to Greek divinities.^ The Greeks settled in Egypt were able to command a most extensive commerce; they were masters of all the harbors on the Red Sea; Tyre, the rival of every trading nation, was no more; they were not constrained by the ancient superstitions a of the country; in short, Egypt had become the centre of the world.
The kings of Syria left the commerce of the south to those of Egypt, and attached themselves only to the northern trade, which was carried on by means of the Oxus and the Caspian Sea. They then imagined that this sea was part of the North- ern Ocean; b and Alexander,^ some time before his death, had fitted out a fleet d in order to discover whether it communicated with the ocean by the Euxine Sea, or some other eastern sea towards India. After him, Seleucus and Antiochus applied themselves to make discoveries in it, with particular attention; and with this view they scoured it with their fleets.^ That part which Seleucus surveyed was called the Seleucidian Sea; that y Strabo, lib. XVI. z Ibid. c Pliny, lib. II. cap. Ixvii., and lib. VI.
a These gave them an aversion to cap, ix. and xii., and Strabo, lib. XI.; strangers. Arrian, " de expedit. Alexandri," lib.
b It is true that Strabo, Pomponius III. p. 74, and lib. V. p. 104.
Mela, and Pliny believed the Caspian a d Arrian, " de expedit. Alexandri," lib.
part of the Northern Ocean, while their VII.
Predecessors Diodorus, Aristotle, and e Pliny, lib. II. cap. Ixiv. lerodotus were correct in their sur- mises that it was an isolated sea. — Ed. ' 346 MONTESQUIEU which Antiochus discovered received the name of the Sea of Antiochus. Attentive to the projects they might have formed on that side, they neglected the seas on the south; whether it was that the Ptolemies, by means of their fleets on the Red Sea, had already become the masters of it, or that they dis- covered an invincible aversion in the Persians against engag- ing in maritime afifairs. The southern coasts of Persia sup- pHed them with no seamen; there had been none in those parts, except towards the latter end of Alexander's reign. But the Egyptian kings, being masters of the Isle of Cyprus, of Phoe- nicia, and of a great number of towns on the coast of Asia Minor, were possessed of all sorts of conveniences for undertak- ing maritime expeditions. They had no occasion to force; they had only to follow the genius and bent of their subjects.
I am surprised, I confess, at the obstinacy with which the ancients believed that the Caspian Sea was a part of the ocean. The expeditions of Alexander, of the kings of Syria, of the Parthians and the Romans, could not make them change their sentiments; notwithstanding these nations described the Cas- pian Sea with wonderful exactness: but men are generally tenacious of their errors. When only the south of this sea was known, it was at first taken for the ocean; in proportion as they advanced along the banks of the northern coast, instead of imagining it a great lake, they still believed it to be the ocean, that here made a sort of bay: surveying the coast, their dis- coveries never went eastward beyond the Jaxartes, nor west- ward farther than the extremity of Albania. The sea towards the north was shallow, and, of course, very unfit for navigation.^ Hence it was that they always looked upon this as the ocean.
The land army of Alexander had been on the east only as far as the Hypanis, which is the last of those rivers that fall into the Indus: thus the first trade which the Greeks carried on with the Indies was confined to a very small part of the coun- try. Seleucus Nicator penetrated as far as the Ganges, and thereby discovered the sea into which this river falls, that is to say, the Bay of Bengal.^ The moderns discover countries by voyages at sea; the ancients discovered seas by conquests at land.
Strabo,^ notwithstanding the testimony of Apollodorus, / See the Czar's Chart. g Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xvii. h Lib. XV.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 347 seems to doubt whether the Grecian kings of Bactria proceeded farther than Seleucus and Alexander.* Were it even true that they went no farther to the east than Seleucus, yet they went farther towards the south; they discovered Siger, and the ports on the coast of Malabar, which gave rise to the navigation I am going to mention./ Pliny informs us that the navigation of the Indies was suc- cessively carried on in three dififerent ways.* At first they sailed from the Cape of Siagre to the island of Patalena, which is at the mouth of the Indus. This we find was the course that Alex- ander's fleet steered to the Indies. They took afterwards a shorter and more certain course, by sailing from the same cape or promontory to Siger: I this can be no other than the kingdom of Siger mentioned by Strabo,w and discovered by the Grecian kings of Bactria. Pliny, by saying that this way was shorter than the other, can mean only that the voyage was made in less time: for, as Siger was discovered by the kings of Bactria, it must have been farther than the Indus: by this passage they must, therefore, have avoided the winding of certain coasts, and taken advantage of particular winds. The merchants at last took a third way; they sailed to Canes, or Ocelis, ports situated at the entrance of the Red Sea; whence by a west wind they arrived at Muziris, the first staple town of the Indies, and thence to the other ports. Here we see that instead of sailing to the mouth of the Red Sea as far as Siagre, by coasting Arabia Felix to the northeast, they steered directly from west to east, from one side to the other, by means of the monsoons, whose regular course they discovered by sailing in these lati- tudes. The ancients never lost sight of the coasts, except when they took advantage of these and the trade winds, which were to them a kind of compass.w Pliny 0 says that they set sail for the Indies in the middle of summer and returned towards the end of December, or in the beginning of January. This is entirely conformable to our naval journals. In that part of the Indian Ocean which is be- tween the Peninsula of Africa, and that on this side the Ganges, t'ApolIonius Adrumatinus in Strabo, fn Lib. XI. " Sigertidis regnum."
lib. II. n The monsoons blow part of the year j The Macedonians of Bactria, India, from one quarter, and part from anand Ariana, having separated themselves other; the trade winds blow the whole from Syria, formed a great state. year round from the same quarter.
k Lib. VI. cap. xxiii. o Lib. VI. cap. xxiii.
/Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xxiii.
348 MONTESQUIEU there are two monsoons; the first, during which the winds blow from west to east, begins in the month of August or September; and the second, during which the wind is in the east, begins in January. Thus we set sail from Africa for Malabar at the sea- son of the year that Ptolemy's fleet used to put to sea thence; and we return too at the same time as they.
Alexander's fleet was seven months in sailing from Patala to Susa. It set out in the month of July, that is, at a season when no ship dare now put to sea to return from the Indies. Be- tween these two monsoons there is an interval, during which the winds vary; when a north wind, meeting with the common winds, raises, especially near the coasts, the most terrible tem- pests. These continue during the months of June, July, and August. Alexander's fleet, therefore, setting sail from Patala in the month of July, must have been exposed to many storms, and the voyage must have been long, because they sailed against the monsoon.
Pliny says that they set out for the Indies at the end of sum- mer; thus they spent the time proper for taking advantage of the monsoon in their passage from Alexandria to the Red Sea.
Observe here, I pray, how navigation has, little by little, ar- rived at perfection. Darius's fleet was two years and a half in falling down the Indus and going to the Red Sea./* After- wards the fleet of Alexander,? descending the Indus, arrived at Susa in ten- months, having sailed three months on the Indus, and seven on the Indian Ocean; at last the passage from the coast of Malabar to the Red Sea was made in forty days.r Strabo,^ who accounts for their ignorance of the countries between the Hypanis and the Ganges, says there were very few of those who sailed from Egypt to the Indies that ever pro- ceeded so far as the Ganges. Their fleets, in fact, never went thither: they sailed with the western monsoons from the mouth of the Red Sea to the coast of Malabar. They cast anchor in the ports along that coast, and never attempted to get round the peninsula on this side the Ganges by Cape Comorin and the coast of Coromandel. The plan of navigation laid down by the kings of Egypt and the Romans was to set out and return the same year.^ p Herodotus, " Melpomene." 5 Lib. XV.
q Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xxiii. t Pliny, lib. VI. cap. xxiii.
r Ibid.
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 349 Thus it is demonstrable that the commerce of the Greeks and Romans to the Indies was much less extensive than ours. We know immense countries, which to them were entirely un- known; we traffic with all the Indian nations; we even man- age their trade and carry on their commerce.
But this commerce of the ancients was carried on with far greater facility than ours. And if the moderns were to trade only with the coast of Guzerat and Malabar, and, without seek- ing for the southern isles, were satisfied with what these island- ers brought them, they would certainly prefer the way of Egypt to that of the Cape of Good Hope. Strabo informs us w that they traded thus with the people of Taprobane.
10. — Of the Circuit of Africa We find from history that before the discovery of the mar- iner's compass four attempts were made to sail round the coast of Africa. The Phoenicians sent by Necho^' and Eu- doxus,w flying from the wrath of Ptolemy Lathyrus, set out from the Red Sea, and succeeded. Sataspes x sent by Xerxes, and Hanno by the Carthaginians, set out from the Pillars of Hercules, and failed in the attempt.
The capital point in surrounding Africa was to discover and double the Cape of Good Hope. Those who set out from the Red Sea found this cape nearer by half, than it would have been in setting out from the Mediterranean. The shore from the Red Sea is not so shallow as that from the cape to Hercules' Pillars.y The discovery of the cape by Hercules's Pillars was owing to the invention of the compass, which permitted them to leave the coast of Africa, and to launch out into the vast ocean, in order to sail towards the island of St. Helena, or towards the coast of Brazil.^ It was, therefore, possible for them to sail from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, but not to set out from the Mediterranean to return by the Red Sea.
Thus, without making this grand circuit, after which they could hardly hope to return, it was most natural to trade to the u Lib. XV. s In the months of October, Novem- V He was desirous of conquering it. — ber, December, and January the wind Herodotus, lib. IV. in the Atlantic Ocean is found to blow w Pliny, lib. II. cap. Ixvii.; Pomponius northeast; our ships therefore cross the Mela. lib. III. cap. ix. line, and to avoid the wind, which is X Herodotus, in " Melpomene." there generally east, they direct their y Add to this what I shall say in chap. course to the south; or else they enter 11 of this book on the navigation of into the torrid zone, in those places Hanno. where the wind is west.
350 MONTESQUIEU east of Africa by the Red Sea, and to the western coast by Her- cules' Pillars.
The Grecian kings of Egypt discovered at first, in the Red Sea, that part of the coast of Africa which extends from the bottom of the gulf, where stands the town of Heroum, as far as Dira, that is, to the strait now known by the name of Babel- mandel. Thence to the promontory of Aromatia, situate at the entrance of the Red Sea,o the coast had never been surveyed by navigators: and this is evident from what Artemidorus tells us,& that they were acquainted with the places on that coast, but knew not their distances: the reason of which is, they suc- cessively gained a knowledge of those ports by land, without sailing from one to the other.
Beyond this promontory, at which the coast along the ocean commenced, they knew nothing, as we learn from Eratosthenes and Artemidorus.c Such was the knowledge they had of the coasts of Africa in Strabo's time, that is, in the reign of Augustus. But after the prince's decease, the Romans found out the two capes Raptum and Prassum, of which Strabo makes no mention, because they had not as yet been discovered. It is plain that both those names are of Roman origin.
Ptolemy, the geographer, flourished under Adrian and An- toninus Pius; and the author of the Periplus of the Red Sea, whoever he was, lived a little after. Yet the former limits known Africa to Cape Prassum,^^ which is in about the 14th degree of south latitude; while the author of the Periplus e con- fines it to Cape Raptum, which is nearly in the loth degree of the same latitude. In all likelihood the latter took his limit from a place then frequented, and Ptolemy his from a place with which there was no longer any communication.
What confirms me in this notion is that the people about Cape Prassum were Anthropophagi.^ Ptolemy takes notice g of a great number of places between the port or emporium Aromatum and Cape Raptum, but leaves an entire blank bea The sea to which we give this name called Austricornu; and Eratosthenes, was called by the ancients the Gulf of Cinnamomiferam.
Arabia; the name of Red Sea they gave d Lib. I. cap. vii.; lib. IV. cap. ix.
to that part of the ocean which borders table ^ of Africa, on this gulf. e This Periplus is attributed to Arrian.
h Strabo, lib. XVI. / Ptol. lib. IV. cap. ix.
c Ibid. Artemidorus settled the bor- g Lib. IV. cap. vii. and viii. dcrs of the known coast at the place THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 351 tween Capes Raptum and Prassum. The great profits of the East India trade must have occasioned a neglect of that of Africa. In fine, the Romans never had any settled navigation; they had discovered these several ports by land expeditions, and by means of ships driven on that coast; and as at present we are well acquainted with the maritime parts of Africa, but know very little of the inland country, the ancients, on the contrary, had a very good knowledge of the inland parts, but were al- most strangers to the coasts.^ I said that the Phoenicians sent by Necho and Eudoxus un- der Ptolemy Lathyrus had made the circuit of Africa; but at the time of Ptolemy, the geographer, those two voyages must have been looked upon as fabulous, since he places after i the Sinus Magnus, which I apprehend to be the Gulf of Siam, an unknown country, extending from Asia to Africa, and terminat- ing at Cape Prassum, so that the Indian Ocean would have been no more than a lake. The ancients who discovered the Indies towards the north, advancing eastward, placed this un- known country to the south.
II. — Of Carthage and Marseilles The law of nations which prevailed at Carthage was very ex- traordinary: all strangers who traded to Sardinia and towards Hercules* Pillars this haughty republic sentenced to be drowned. Her civil polity was equally surprising; she for- bade the Sardinians to cultivate their lands, upon pain of death. She increased her power by her riches, and afterwards her riches by her power. Being mistress of the coasts of Africa, which are washed by the Mediterranean, she extended herself along the ocean. Hanno, by order of the Senate of Carthage, distributed thirty thousand Carthaginians from Hercules' Pil- lars as far as Cerne. This place, he says, is as distant from Hercules' Pillars as the latter from Carthage. This situation is extremely remarkable. It lets us see that Hanno limited his settlements to the 25th degree of north latitude; that is, to two or three degrees south of the Canaries.
h See what exact descriptions Strabo world had waged with the people of and Ptolemy have given us of the dif- Africa, to the alliances they had con- ferent parts of Africa. Their knowledge tracted, and to the trade they had car- was owing to the several wars which ried on with those countries, the two most powerful nations in the • Lib. VII. cap. iii.
352 MONTESQUIEU Hanno being at Cerne undertook another voyage, with a view of making further discoveries towards the south. He took but little notice of the continent. He followed the coast for twenty-six days, when he was obliged to return for want of provisions. The Carthaginians, it seems, made no use of this second enterprise. Scylax says; that the sea is not navigable beyond Cerne, because it is shallow, full of mud and sea-weeds: k and, in fact, there are many of these in those latitudes./ The Carthaginian merchants mentioned by Scylax might find ob- stacles which Hanno, who had sixty vessels of fifty oars each, had surmounted. Difficulties are at most but relative; be- sides, we ought not to confound an enterprise in which bravery and resolution must be exerted with things that require no ex- traordinary conduct.
The relation of Hanno's voyage is a fine fragment of an- tiquity. It was written by the very man that performed it.
His recital is not mingled with ostentation. Great com- manders write their actions with simplicity; because they re- ceive more glory from facts than from words.
The style is agreeable to the subject; he deals not in the marvellous. All he says of the climate, of the soil, the behavior, the manners of the inhabitants, correspond with what is every day seen on this coast of Africa; one would imagine it the journal of a modern sailor.
He observed from his fleet that in the daytime there was a prodigious silence on the continent, that in the night he heard the sound of various musical instruments, and that fires might then be everywhere seen, some larger than others.wt Our rela- tions are conformable to this; it has been discovered that in the day the savages retire into the forests to avoid the heat of the sun, that they light up great fires in the night to dis- perse the beasts of prey, and that they are passionately fond of music and dancing.
The same writer describes a volcano with all the phenomena of Vesuvius; and relates that he captured two hairy women, ;■ See his " Periplus," under the article weed covers the surface of the water in of Carthage. such a manner as to be scarcely perk See Herodotus, in " Melpomene," ceived, and ships can only pass through on the obstacles which Sataspes en- it with a stiff gale, countered. m Pliny tells us the same thing, speak- / See the charts and relations in the ing of Mount Atlas: " Noctibus micare first volume of " Voyages that con- crebris ignibus, tibiarum cantu timpatributed to the establishment of an East norumque sonitu strepere, neminem in- India company," part I. p. 201. This terdiu cerni.'
THE SPIRIT OF LAWS 353 who chose to die rather than follow the Carthaginians, and whose skins he carried to Carthage. This has been found not void of probability.
This narration is so much the more valuable as it is a monu- ment of Punic antiquity; and hence alone it has been regarded as fabulous. For the Romans retained their hatred of the Carthaginians, even after they had destroyed them. But it was victory alone that decided whether we ought to say the Punic or the Roman faith.
Some moderns n have imbibed these prejudices. What has become, say they, of the cities described by Hanno, of which even in Pliny's time there remained no vestiges? But it would have been a wonder, indeed, if any such vestiges had remained. Was it a Corinth or Athens that Hanno built on those coasts? He left Carthaginian families in such places as were most com- modious for trade, and secured them as well as his hurry would permit against savages and wild beasts. The calamities of the Carthaginians put a period to the navigation of Africa; these families must necessarily then either perish or become savages. Besides, were the ruins of these cities even still in being, who is it that would venture into the woods and marshes to make the discovery? We find, however, in Scylax and Polybius that the Carthaginians had considerable settlements on those coasts. These are the vestiges of the cities of Hanno; there are no others, from the same reason that there are no others of Car- thage itself.
The Carthaginians were in the high road to wealth; and had they gone so far as four degrees of north latitude, and fifteen of longitude, they would have discovered the Gold Coast. They would then have had a trade of much greater importance than that which is carried on at present on that coast, at a time when America seems to have degraded the riches of all other coun- tries. They would there have found treasures of which they could never have been deprived by the Romans.
Very surprising things have been said of the riches of Spain. If we may believe Aristotle,^ the Phoenicians who arrived at Tartessus found so much silver there that their ships could not hold it all; and they made of this metal their meanest utensils.
n Mr. Dodwell. See his Dissertation 0 " Of Wonderful Things."
on Hanno's " Periplus."
354 MONTESQUIEU The Carthaginians,/' according to Diodorus,g found so much gold and silver in the Pyrenean mountains, that they adorned the anchors of their ships with it. But no foundation can be built on such popular reports. Let us, therefore, examine the facts themselves.
We find in a fragment of Polybius, cited by Strabo,*' that the silver mines at the source of the river Ba^tis, in which forty thousand men were employed, produced to the Romans twen- ty-five thousand drachmas a day, that is, about five million livres a year, at fifty livres to the mark. The mountains that contained these mines were called the Silver Mountains: s which shows they were the Potosi of those times. At present, the mines of Hanover do not employ a fourth part of the workmen, and yet they yield more. But as the Romans had not many copper mines, and but few of silver; and as the Greeks knew none but the Attic mines, which were of little value, they might well be astonished at their abundance.
In the war that broke out for the succession of Spain, a man called the Marquis of Rhodes, of whom it was said that he was ruined in gold mines and enriched in hospitals,^ proposed to the Court of France to open the Pyrenean mines. He alleged the example of the Tyrians, the Carthaginians, and the Romans. He was permitted to search, but sought in vain; he still alleged, and found nothing.
The Carthaginians, being masters of the gold and silver trade, were willing to be so of the lead and pewter. These metals were carried by land from the ports of Gaul upon the ocean to those of the Mediterranean. The Carthaginians were desirous of receiving them at the first hand; they sent Himilco to make a settlement in the isles called Cassiterides,w which are imagined to be those of Scilly.
These voyages from Bsetica into England have made some persons imagine that the Carthaginians knew the compass: but it is very certain that they followed the coasts. There needs no other proof than Himilco's being four months in sailing from the mouth of the Bsetis to England; besides, the famous piece of history of the Carthaginian i^ pilot who, being followed by a p Diodorus speaks of the Phoenicians 5 " Mons Argentarius."
in this relation, and not of the Cartha- t He had some share in their manageginians. — Ed. ment.
q Lib. III. u See Festus Avienus.
r Lib. VI. V Strabo, lib. III., towards the end THE SPIRIT OF LAWS Roman vessel, ran aground, that he might not show her the way to England,w plainly intimates that those vessels were very near the shore when they fell in with each other.
The ancients might have performed voyages that would make one imagine they had the compass, though they had not. If a pilot was far from land, and during his voyage had such serene weather that in the night he could always see a polar star-*^ and in the day the rising and setting of the sun, it is certain he might regulate his course as well as we do now by the compass: but this must be a fortuitous case, and not a regular method of navigation.
We see in the treaty which put an end to the first Punic war that Carthage was principally attentive to preserve the empire of the sea, and Rome that of the land. Hanno,^ in his nego- tiation with the Romans, declared that they should not be suf- fered even to wash their hands in the sea of Sicily; they were not permitted to sail beyond the promontorium pulchrum; they were forbidden to trade in Sicily, Sardinia, and Africa, except at Carthage: ^ an exception that proves there was no design to favor them in their trade with that city.
In early times there had been very great wars between Car- thage and Marseilles a on the subject of fishing. After the peace they entered jointly into economical commerce. Mar- seilles at length grew jealous, especially as, being equal to her rival in industry, she had become inferior to her in power. This is the motive of her great fidelity to the Romans. The war be- tween the latter and the Carthaginians in Spain was a source of riches to Marseilles, which had now become their magazine. The ruin of Carthage and Corinth still increased the glory of Marseilles, and had it not been for the civil wars, in which this republic ought on no account to have engaged, she would have been happy under the protection of the Romans, who were not the least jealous of her commerce.
w He was rewarded by the senate of y Frenshemius's Supplement to Livy, Carthage. 2d Decad.
X Montesquieu has been found fault s In the parts subject to the Carthawith in this construction, as though he ginians.
were giving the impression that there o Justin, lib. XLIII. cap. v, was more than one North Star.— Ed.
3s6 MONTESQUIEU 12. — The Isle of Delos — Mithridates Upon the destruction of Corinth by the Romans, the mer- chants retired to Delos, an island which from religious con- siderations was looked upon as a place of safety: b besides, it was extremely well situated for the commerce of Italy and Asia, which, since the reduction of Africa and the weakening of Greece, had grown more important.
From the earliest times the Greeks, as we have already ob- served, sent colonies to Propontis and to the Euxine Sea — colonies which retained their laws and liberties under the Per- sians. Alexander, having undertaken his expedition against the barbarians only, did not molest these people.^ Neither does it appear that the kings of Pontus, who were masters of many of those colonies, ever deprived them of their own civil gov- ernment.rf The power of those kings increased as soon as they sub- dued those cities.^ Mithridates found himself able to hire troops on every side; to repair his frequent losses; to have a multitude of workmen, ships, and military machines; to pro- cure himself allies; to bribe those of the Romans, and even the Romans themselves; to keep the barbarians of Asia and Eu- rope in his pay; f to continue the war for many years, and, of course, to discipline his troops, he found himself able to train them to arms, to instruct them in the military art of the Ro- mans,sr and to form considerable bodies out of their deserters; in a word, he found himself able to sustain great losses, and to be frequently defeated, without being ruined; h neither would he have been ruined if the voluptuous and barbarous king had not destroyed, in his prosperous days, what had been done by the great prince in times of adversity.
Thus it was that when the Romans had arrived at their high- est pitch of grandeur, and seemed to have nothing to appre- 6 See Strabo, lib. X. e See Appian, in regard to the imc He confirmed the liberty of the city mense treasures which Mithridates emof Amisus, an Athenian colony which plowed in his wars, those which he had