fplendid diadem formed to refemble oak-leaves, and glittering with precious ftones; twenty fhields of folid gold; fixty-four fets of complete armour all of gold, with greaves of gold, probably of a vast magnitude, and these were displayed in the proceffion in honour of Mars or Hercules; dishes, phials, vafes, and pitchers, of gold; and, in particular, five tables decorated with gold goblets; a prodigious cornucopia of gold, of the height of thirty cubits; the whole pomp being closed with twenty carts loaded with smaller veffels of gold; and four hundred full of pateræ, veffels, and other utenfils, of filver.* The reader, who does not poffefs a warm Oriental fancy, may poffibly be inclined to think all this a fable wilder than Arabian; and yet Athenæus is an author of great refpectability, and due attention to what has before been observed, concerning the rich and abundant fources whence the treasures of Eastern princes were derived, renders the whole account extremely probable; for, notwithstanding all the expenfive, and fome disastrous, wars, in which the Ptolemies were engaged * Vide Athenæi Deipnofophift. lib. v. p. 197 to 203. Edit. Cafaubon. VOL. VII. L for for a feries of years with the kings of Syria, their potent rivals in wealth and fame, from the Roman accounts of the aftonishing magnificence that reigned in the court of Cleopatra, we may be convinced, that the fource of the vaft treasures of that dynasty was not dried up; for, in truth, that fource was the commerce with India, inftituted by the firft Ptolemies, and preferved facred and inviolable by the last; a commerce, of the magnitude of which fome judgment may be formed from this circumstance, that, in the time of Auguftus Cæfar, the taxes paid to the Roman government by Alexandria alone amounted, according to the lowest calculation by which Dr. Arbuthnot could estimate that amount, to one million fix hundred twenty-feven thousand five hundred pounds. The particular inftance of the fplendor and profufion in which Cleopatra lived is to be found in the fame Athenæus, from whom I have extracted the long defcription above, and it proves that the gold and filver plate enumerated in it ftill remained in great abundance in the palace of Alexandria; for, having invited Anthony to a banquet at Arbuthnot on Coins, p. 193. which the vast number of gold cups, fet with jewels, excited his admiration and astonishment, that queen immediately presented him with the whole affortment made ufe of at the entertainment, and ordered her attendants to carry them all to his house. The fucceeding day he was again invited to a royal banquet, and requested to bring with him all the chief officers of his army; and, when that banquet was over, every guest was prefented with the gold cup out of which he had drunk.* Nay, her extravagance was carried to fuch an extreme, that, having in her ears two of the finest and largest pearls ever feen, each fuppofed to be worth above eighty thousand pounds of our money, fhe diffolved one of them in vinegar, and drank it off; and was going to diffolve the other in the fame manner that Anthony might pledge her in a draught of fimilar coft, but was prevented by the interference of the company. It is probable that the famous pearl with which Julius Cæfar presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, and worth, according to Arbuthnot, * Athenæus Deipnofophift. lib. iv. p. 147. + Plinii, lib. xxxiii. cap. 3. L 2 £48,457 iQs. £48,457 163. fterling, came from the fame quarter; for, Cæfar had been the prior favourite of the voluptuous Cleopatra. After these well-attested facts, which were, in Pliny's time, commonly known at Rome, our author's affertion will probably more eafily obtain credit with the reader, that the regular annual revenue of Ptolemy Philadelphus amounted to fourteen thousand eight hundred talents in money, independent of the immense tribute paid in kind by many of the provinces of Egypt, whence money could not conveniently be drawn; and that, at his deceafe, were actually found in his treasury feven hundred and forty thousand talents, a fum amounting to one hundred and ninety millions fterling.* Having taken this view of the riches and grandeur displayed in the capital of one of the dynafties founded after the decease of Alexander, we must now direct our furvey to those of another, the Selucida, who, though denominated fovereigns of Syria, yet, in fact, poffeffed all the rich and extensive domains that Athenæus, lib. v. p. 103, and Bernard on the Weights and Measures of the Ancients, p. 186. formerly formerly conftituted the Perfian empire; but Seleucus, the first of that dynafty, having built the fuperb city of Antioch, in Syria, fixed on that city, as did the fovereigns, his fucceffors, for the metropolis of his empire. There can be no doubt, that, with the throne of Perfia, a very confiderable portion of its ancient riches was affigned to Seleucus, as well to maintain its fplendor as to defray the expenses of a government that ftretched in a vaft line from the fhores of the Mediterranean to the river Indus. It should also be remembered, that, in this partition of the empire of Alexander, his Indian conquests fell to the lot of Seleucus, and though he bartered away thofe conquefts to Sandrocottus, by the mediation of Megafthenes, his ambaffador at Patna, then the capital of India, we may reft affured, that, from that quarter, by commerce or otherwife, no fmall quantity of treafure poured into the provinces adjoining its western confines, which must ultimately find its way to the distant capital. Engaged, how. ever, in almost inceffant wars, and, when peace arrived, refolutely pursuing, like Ptolemy, the wife projects of Alexander in erecting cities, and encouraging that extenfive |