The Best Cheese Used At
Rome, Was Imported From Bithynia.
Phrygia supplied a stone like alabaster,
and the country near Laodicea, wool of excellent quality, some of which was
of a deep black colour.
The wine drank at Rome, was principally the produce
of Italy; the best foreign wine, was imported from Ionia. Woollen goods,
dyed with Tyrian purple, were imported from Miletus, in Caria. An inferior
species of diamond, copper, resin, and sweet oil were imported from Cyprus.
Cedar, gums, balsam, and alabaster, were supplied by Syria, Phoenicia, and
Palestine. Glass was imported from Sidon, as well as embroidery and purple
dye, and several kinds of fish, from Tyre. The goods that were brought from
India, by the route of Palmyra, were shipped for Rome, from the ports of
Syria. Egypt, besides corn, supplied flax, fine linen, ointments, marble,
alabaster, salt, alum, gums, paper, cotton goods, some of which, as well as
of their linens, seem to have been coloured or printed, glass ware, &c. The
honey lotus, the lotus, or nymphaea of Egypt, the stalk of which contained a
sweet substance, which was considered as a luxury by the Egyptians, and
used as bread, was sometimes carried to Rome; it was also used as provision
for mariners. Alexandria was the port from which all the produce and
manufactories of Egypt, as well as all the ports which passed through this
country from India, were shipped. In consequence of its becoming the seat
of the Roman government in Egypt, of the protection which it thus received,
and of its commerce being greatly extended by the increased wealth and
luxury of Rome, its extent and population were greatly augmented; according
to Diodorus Siculus, in the time of Augustus, from whose reign it became
the greatest emporium of the world, it contained 300,000 free people.
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