The gain of commerce by his conquests.
- ledge. Almost everywhere he founded Greek cities
or colonies (Plutarch gives their number as seventy), diffusing the manners and customs of his own people over the vast tracts of land from the temple of Ammon in the Lybian oasis to the banks of the Indus. Thus he brought into contact with his own refined and civilized Greeks, not merely Oriental nations that were highly gifted in their own way, but also the semi-barbarous tribes of many lands, teaching them the advantages of commercial intercourse, and extending by its influence the comforts which habits of industry can alone bestow, together with the many blessings civilization confers. His conquests, like the discoveries of Columbus, made known the existence of rich regions before unsuspected, and countries where millions of the human race could find remunerative occupation.
Articles of commerce, of which the Western World had had no previous experience, were thus brought to light. Rice produced from irrigated fields; a cotton tree of a superior growth, which, from its fine tissues, furnished the materials for the manufacture of paper; various descriptions of spices and opium; wine made from rice, and from the juice of palms;[1] wool from the great bombax tree;[2] shawls made of the fine hair of the Thibetan goats; silken tissues of various kinds; oil from the white sesamum; and perfumes of the richest description. These and other products, for the most part new to the Western World, soon became articles of universal commerce, while some of them were transported to Arabia, and thence to the shores of the Mediterranean.
