Nature and history assuredly conspired to give the country an exceptional position. Without being an island it possessed the advantages of an insular position; for it was bounded on two sides by the sea and on the other two by the desert or barbarous tribes whose raids and predatory incursions might incommode the province but could never become a menace to the existence of the empire. Thus the Egyptians could hardly be drawn into the political broils of the continent so long as they confined themselves within their natural frontiers; and for this reason the third Ptolemy Euergetes acted wisely when of his own free will he restored his conquests to Seleucus king of Syria. His military situation had nothing to lose by such a step, for Egypt proper was easy to defend and difficult to attack, and was accessible to a land force only by way of Pelusium. On the other hand any power that established itself in the country found there such an abundance of resources as was offered by hardly any other country of ancient times. The fecundity of Egypt has passed into a proverb; even in a season of moderate harvests great quantities of corn could be exported every year, and after the country had been conquered by the Romans the grain tribute of Egypt was absolutely necessary for the sustenance of the capital. Whoever held Egypt could procure a famine in Rome and Italy at his pleasure; and for that reason pretenders of later times always secured Egypt first and then Italy. The wealth of the country was increased by commerce and trade, and it was therefore densely populated, even more so than at the present day. The abundant resources of the fertile valley of the Nile were united and almost doubled by a homogeneous and strictly centralised administrative body; Egypt was ruled by a scribbling bureaucracy of a kind up to that time unknown to the ancient world; and its inhabitants, though wholly unaccustomed to arms by long disuse, were none the less hard to rule. A great proportion of the fertile land was the private property of the prince, as it has been down to our own times; but this very proprietorship, coupled with the excitable temper of the populace of a great city like Alexandria, placed great obstacles in the way of regular government, and would have rendered it absolutely impossible had not a military been quartered in the country in sufficient strength to maintain order. The presence of several legions in Egypt was in itself enough to give the Cæsar reason for excluding senatorial government; and the Cæsars always strove with jealous care to keep men of the senatorial class away from Egypt, because the consequences of an attempt at rebellion there might well have been most serious.