the light, which beamed upon them from the Higher Afia and from Egypt, was reflected from Greece upon Europe; they were the focal point in which the rays of Oriental genius were concentrated; at the same time they were to us the medium through which those rays were tranfmitted. We were awed by their majestic beauty; we were dazzled by their tranfcendant luftre; and mistook the reflected for the primordial beam.

Cecrops, who, according to Diodorus Siculus,* with a colony of Egyptians inhabiting the Saitic mouth of the Nile, and therefore mariners, and an exception to the generality of the Egyptians who fhrunk with horror from fea-adventures, migrated hither fo early as the year 1600 before Chrift, doubtlefs brought with them fuch general elements of the science of navigation as were then known in the infant world; and we learn from the fame author, that, when he founded the monarchy of Attica, (for Attica, though in fucceeding ages a republic of the first note in history, was at firft a monarchy,) that prince divided the people into four diftinct tribes, called Cecropis, Autochton, Actea, and Pa

ralia, in which he acted with remarkable conformity to the maxims of the Indian and Egyptian legislators, who thus divided the nations over whom they respectively ruled. Nearly a century afterwards, Danaus failed into Greece from the fame quarter, and feized on the throne of Argos; while Minos, the great legiflator of Crete, the fimilitude of whose name and laws to thofe of the great Menu of India has been remarked by Sir William Jones,* had a numerous navy on the Cretan fea. Numerous, however, as it was, it must still have been very inadequate to any ufeful purpose of defence or commerce, fince Dædalus, whom the Greeks, in a well-known mythological fiction, have recorded as the firft inventor of fails, was not then born. Their grand and united effort, the Argonautic expedition, did not take place till about 1150 before Chrift. The difputed object of that expedition is out of the queftion; it is fufficient to remark, that it was the firft fhip equipped for war that failed out of the ports of Greece; and in those days the voyage to Colchis was a fubject of scarcely lefs celebrity than the dif covery, in more recent periods, of the voyage

* Institutes of Menu, in the Preface, p. 9..`

to

to India by the Cape of Good Hope. The confequence of that expedition upon the maritime genius and efforts of all the Grecian ftates was fuch, that, in lefs than fifty years, they were able to furnish twelve hundred fhips, of all descriptions, to carry on the war against Troy; and of that number the Athenians alone, according to Homer,* furnished fifty veffels.

With the deftruction of Troy expired that ardor of naval enterprize, which had begun to distinguish the rifing republics of Greece; an additional proof of its having in great part originated from a foreign fource, the immediate impulfe of which upon their minds having ceased, their conduct was of course no longer influenced by it. No grand naval exploit of that nation is, for feveral centuries, recorded on the page of history: their mariners, during this long interval, were either dispersed among the veffels of the Phoenician merchants, or piratically infested that element on which the daring nautical genius of the former engroffed the traffic, and difdained a rival.

The ruin of the elder Tyre, near the commencement of the fixth century before Christ,

* Iliad, lib. ii. v. 94.

by

by the Affyrian monarch Nebuchadnezzar, called forth into action the dormant ambition of Athens, to poffefs the palm of commerce and the fovereignty of the ocean. Their progrefs, however, in navigation, was neceffarily flow, from the infant ftate of aftronomical science among them, fince, as yet, they only knew to fteer the course of their veffels by the ftars in Urfa Major; a moft uncertain guide in remote and hazardous voyages, fince that conftellation very imperfectly points out the pole, and the stars in its extremities are at the distance of above forty degrees from it. It was not till Thales, the inventor, according to the Greeks, of the afterism of the Leffer Bear, had returned from Egypt, that they became acquainted with, and were able to fail by, the unerring light of the pole-ftar. That philofopher brought with him the grand postulatum, together with many other splendid attainments in fcience, from the caverns of the Thebais, about the middle of this century, and proved to Greece what the Cynofure was to navigation; the guiding ftar of its expanding genius. From that inftant her naval glory began to dawn, but it was not till after the invafion of Greece by Xerxes, and the final annihilation of the Tyrian empire by Alexander,

Alexander, that it reached its meridian. The Athenians were not without rivals in the contest for maritime dominion; the indefatigable race of Ægina, and the voluptuous, yet mercantile, fons of Corinth, long combated their claim to that enviable diftinction; till, at length, the former being fubdued by the Athenian arms directed against them by the immortal Pericles, and the latter having called in the fame power to aid them against the Spartan army, which, under the command of Agefilaus, had laid fiege to their fumptuous metropolis, the Athenians became triumphant on the ocean; and, closely pursuing the tract of the Phoenician veffels, difplayed the banners of Greece on the fhores of the Caffiterides and in the Gulph of Cambay.

Before, however, I proceed to ftate the particulars of the flourishing trade carried on by this enterprizing people with those remote regions, it is neceffary I fhould notice two events, in producing which the Greeks were greatly inftrumental; events of great importance as to their confequence on the commerce and kingdoms of the Eaft, but principally relative to those of Egypt and Persia, to whose history therefore I muft, for a fhort period, direct the attention of the indulgent reader.

CURSORY