Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous languages." The greatest part of the information they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it has been derived from an authentic source, it never fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those attributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries. "En somme," M. Ampère says, "Alexandre fut très grecque, assez juive et presque point égyptienne."[1] And if Alexandria was not the means of communicating Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less was it the channel of learning from the farther East. It is an error to suppose that Alexandria was on the chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. During the whole period which followed the foundation of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was no direct communication between this city and the distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia, Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and Petra, the chief town of the Nabataeans.[2]
- ↑ Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampère refutes the opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of the Alexandrian School.
- ↑ "Presque tout le temps que les Ptolémées regnèrent en Egypte, les navires qui partaient des côtes égyptiennes ne depassaient pas la
