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The Spirit of Laws, With D'alembert's Analysis of the Work, Tr. by T. Nugent
The Spirit of Laws With D'alembert's Analysis of the Work Tr by T Nugent Author:Charles de Secondat Montesquieu General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1878 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: could be no doubt but he designed to carry on the commerce of India by the way of Babylon and the Persian Gulf. There are some who pretend that Alexander wanted to subdue Arabia, and had formed a design to make it the seat of his empire : but how could he have pitched upon a place with which he was entirely unacquainted ? f Besides, of all countries, this would have been the most inconvenient to him; for it would have separated him from the rest of his empire. The Caliphs, who made distant conquests, soon withdrew from Arabia to reside elsewhere. 9. -- Of the Commerce of the Grecian Kings after the Death of Alexander. At the time when Alexander made the conquest of Egypt, they had but a very imperfect idea of the Bed Sea, and none at all of the ocean, which, joining this sea, on one side washes the coast of Africa, and on the other that of Arabia; nay, they thought it impossible to sail round the peninsula of Arabia. They who attempted it on each side had relinquished their design. " How is it possible," said they, J " to navigate to the southern coast of Arabia, when Cambyses' army, which traversed it on the north side, almost entirely perished; and the forces which Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, sent to the assistance of Seleucus Nicator at Babylon, underwent incredible hardships, and, upon account of the heat, could march only in the night ?" The Persians were entire strangers to navigation. When they had subdued Egypt, they introduced the same spirit into that country as prevailed in Persia: hence, so great was the supineness of the Persians in this respect, that the Grecian kings found them qui...« less