History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)Lindsay, W. S. (William Schaw)
History
History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)
Lindsay, W. S. (William Schaw)
Commerce -- History; Shipping -- History; Steam navigation -- History
There was likewise a very considerable trade between Malta and the
Tiber in white cloths of wool and linen. Greece, and the Greek
islands, Samos, Cos, and Thrace, furnished green marble, dyes,
cambrics, and earthenwares; and from the Euxine were imported wax,
hemp, and pitch, and wool of the finest quality; while the ancient
trade with Persia, through Trebizond, remained unbroken during the
Roman supremacy, greatly increasing when Constantinople became
the eastern capital of the empire. Phrygia produced alabaster;
Miletus woollen goods, and Tyrian purple; and Sidon and Tyre, glass
manufactures and rich work in embroidery. From Africa proper the
Romans imported very considerable quantities of corn, drugs, and
horses, together with the wild elephants and lions required for their
gladiatorial exhibitions.[309]
[Sidenote: Trade with Spain.]
Next to Egypt, Spain was the largest seat of their foreign trade. Its
products of lead, iron, copper, silver, and gold, were sources of vast
wealth; and the corn, wool, wine, oil, honey, wax, pitch, dyes, and
salted provisions of a superior quality afforded a large and lucrative
commerce to the merchants, ship-owners, and manufacturers of Rome.
Indeed, so extensive were the commercial transactions carried on in
the Spanish Peninsula, that nearly as many ships were employed in its
trade as in that with the whole of Africa. Nor need we doubt that the
vessels so occupied were as large as those engaged in the Egyptian
trade already noticed. New Carthage (Cartagena), Saguntum, Tarragona,
and Bilbilis (Bilboa), even then famous for its steel, had a large
commercial intercourse with Rome, in provisions, cordage, and linens
of remarkable whiteness and texture. The province of Gaul formed a
rich appendix to the Roman empire, though the only ports directly
connected with the Tiber were Massalia (Marseilles), Arelate (Arles),
and Narbo[310] (Narbonne), at that period the most frequented and most
populous city in Gaul. Narbonne has since suffered the same fate as
Ostia, the silting up of its port having entirely destroyed its value.
[Sidenote: Pharos, or lighthouse at Gessoriacum.]
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