The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0000/00005.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 32KB | 485 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00005}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Cleopatra, Queen Of Egypt
Chapter III: Alexandria}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Abbott, Jacob}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{alexandria
city
every
ptolemy
books
library
built
copies
museum
upon}
$Date{1900}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Cleopatra, Queen Of Egypt
Book:        Cleopatra
Author:      Abbott, Jacob
Date:        1900

Chapter III: Alexandria

     It must not be imagined by the reader that the scenes of vicious
indulgence, and reckless cruelty and crime, which were exhibited with such
dreadful frequency, and carried to such an enormous excess in the palaces of
the Egyptian kings, prevailed to the same extent throughout the mass of the
community during the period of their reign.  The internal administration of
government, and the institutions by which the industrial pursuits of the mass
of the people were regulated, and peace and order preserved, and justice
enforced between man and man, were all this time in the hands of men well
qualified, on the whole, for the trusts committed to their charge, and in a
good degree faithful in the performance of their duties; and thus the ordinary
affairs of government, and the general routine of domestic and social life,
went on, notwithstanding the profligacy of the kings, in a course of very
tolerable peace, prosperity, and happiness.  During every one of the three
hundred years over which the history of the Ptolemies extends, the whole
length and breadth of the land of Egypt exhibited, with comparatively few
interruptions, one wide-spread scene of busy industry.  The inundations came
at their appointed season, and then regularly retired.  The boundless fields
which the waters had fertilized were then every where tilled.  The lands were
plowed; the seed was sown; the canals and water-courses, which ramified from
the river in every direction over the ground, were opened or closed, as the
case required, to regulate the irrigation.  The inhabitants were busy, and,
consequently, they were virtuous.  And as the sky of Egypt is seldom or never
darkened by clouds and storms, the scene presented to the eye the same
unchanging aspect of smiling verdure and beauty, day after day, and month
after month, until the ripened grain was gathered into the store-houses, and
the land was cleared for another inundation.

     We say that the people were virtuous because they were busy; for there is
not principle of political economy more fully established than that vice in
the social state is the incident and symptom of idleness.  It prevails always
in those classes of every great population who are either released by the
possession of fixed and unchangeable wealth from the necessity, or excluded by
their poverty and degradation from the advantage, of useful employment.
Wealth that is free, and subject to its possessor's control, so that he can,
if he will, occupy himself in the management of it, while it sometimes may
make individuals vicious, does not generally corrupt classes of men, for it
does not make them idle.  But wherever the institutions of a country are such
as to create an aristocratic class, whose incomes depend on entailed estates
or on fixed and permanent annuities, so that the capital on which they live
can not afford them any mental occupation, they are doomed necessarily to
inaction and idleness.  Vicious pleasures and indulgences are, with such a
class as a whole, the inevitable result; for the innocent enjoyments of man
are planned and designed by the Author of nature only for the intervals of
rest and repose in a life of activity.  They are always found wholly
insufficient to satisfy one who makes pleasure the whole end and aim of his
being.

     In the same manner, if, either from the influence of the social
institutions of a country, or from the operation of natural causes which human
power is unable to control, there is a class of men too low, and degraded, and
miserable to be reached by the ordinary inducements to daily toil, so certain
are they to grow corrupt and depraved, that degradation has become in all
languages a term almost synonymous with vice.  There are many exceptions, it
is true, to these general laws.  Many active men are very wicked; and there
have been frequent instances of the most exalted virtue among nobles and
kings.  Still, as a general law, it is unquestionably true that vice is the
incident of idleness; and the sphere of vice, therefore, is at the top and at
the bottom of society - those being the regions in which idleness reigns.  The
great remedy, too, for vice is employment.  To make a community virtuous, it
is essential that all ranks and gradations of it, from the highest to the
lowest, should have something to do.

     In accordance with these principles, we observe that, while the most
extreme and abominable wickedness seemed to hold continual and absolute sway
in the palaces of the Ptolemies, and among the nobles of their courts, the
working ministers of state, and the men on whom the actual governmental
functions devolved, discharged their duties with wisdom and fidelity, and
throughout all the ordinary ranks and gradations of society there prevailed
generally a very considerable degree of industry, prosperity, and happiness.
This prosperity prevailed not only in the rural districts of the Delta and
along the valley of the Nile, but also among the merchants, and navigators,
and artisans of Alexandria.

     Alexandria became, in fact, very soon after it was founded, a very great
and busy city.  Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial
emporium.  In the first place, it was the depot of export for all the surplus
grain and other agricultural produce which was raised in such abundance along
the Egyptian valley.  This produce was brought down in boats to the upper
point of the Delta, where the branches of the river divided, and thence down
the Canopic branch to the city.  The city was not, in fact, situated directly
upon this branch, but upon a narrow tongue of land, at a little distance from
it, near the sea.  It was not easy to enter the channel directly, on account
of the bars and sand-banks at its mouth, produced by the eternal conflict
between the waters of the river and the surges of the sea.  The water was
deep, however, as Alexander's engineers had discovered, at the place where the
city was built, and, by establishing the port there, and then cutting a canal
across to the Nile, they were enabled to bring the river and the sea at once
into easy communication.

     The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and through the
canal to the city.  Here immense warehouses and granaries were erected for its
reception, that it might be safely preserved until the ships that came into
the port were ready to take it away.  These ships came from Syria, from all
the coasts of Asia Minor, from Greece, and from Rome.  They brought the
agricultural productions of their own countries, as well as articles of
manufacture of various kinds; these they sold to the merchants of Alexandria;
and purchased the productions of Egypt in return.

     The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and
animation.  Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or lying at
anchor in the roadstead.  Seamen were hoisting sails, or raising anchors, or
rowing their capacious galleys through the water, singing, as they pulled, to
the motion of the oars.  Within the city there was the same ceaseless
activity.  Here groups of men were unloading the canal boats which had arrived
from the river.  There porters were transporting bales of merchandise or sacks
of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one landing to another.  The
occasional parading of the king's guards, or the arrival and departure of
ships of war to land or to take away bodies of armed men, were occurrences
that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as perhaps the people then would
have said, to adorn this scene of useful industry; and now and then, for a
brief period, these peaceful avocatio