Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c10.3

c10.3

Many circumstances concurred, in the two centuries before Christ, to make the Red Sea route the most popular trade-route with the East. The anarchy reigning in Syria, and the growth of the hostile empire of Parthia, diverted the commerce from the more northerly routes. These were rendered still more unsafe by the irruption of the Scythian tribes from beyond the Oxus into Baktria. Another circumstance which tended to make Alexandria the metropolis of the Eastern Mediterranean, and which had effectually crippled her only possible rival, was the sack by Alexander of the great city of Tyre.