COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 517
The expedition of Colaeus of Samos does not, however,
alone indicate an epoch in which the Hellenic races, and the
nations to whom their cultivation was transmitted, developed
new views that led to the extension of maritime expeditions,
hut it also immediately enlarged the sphere of ideas. The
great natural phenomenon which, by the periodic elevation of
the level of sea, exhibits the connection existing between the
earth, and the sun, and moon, now first permanently arrested
the attention of men. In the African Syrtic Sea this phenomenon
had appeared to the Greeks to be accidental, and had
not unfrequently been attended by danger. Posidonius, who
had observed the ebb and flow of the sea at Ilipa and Gadeira,
compared his observations with the facts of which he was
informed by the experienced Phoenicians concerning the influence
supposed to be exercised by the moon.*
EXPEDITIONS OF THE MACEDONIANS UNDER ALEXANDER
THE GREAT. CHANGES IN THE RELATIONS OF THE
WORLD. FUSION OF THE WEST WITH THE EAST.
THE GREEKS PROMOTE THE INTERMIXTURE OF RACES
FROM THE NILE TO THE EUPHRATES, THE JAXARTES
AND THE INDUS. SUDDEN EXTENSION OF COSMICAL
VIEWS, BOTH BY MEANS OF DIRECT OBSERVATION OF
NATURE, AND BY THE RECIPROCAL INTERCOURSE OF
ANCIENT CIVILISED AND INDUSTRIAL NATIONS.
THE campaigns of the Macedonians under Alexander the
Great ; the downfall of the Persian dominion ; the rising in-
tercourse with Western India; and the action of the Graeco-
Bactrian empire, which continued to prevail for one hundred
and sixteen years, maybe regarded as amongst the most important
social epochs in the process of the development of the his-
the elevation passes through the Taurus, the chains of Demavend and
Hindoo-coosh, the Northern Thibetian Kuen-lun and the mountains of
the Chinese provinces Sse-tschuan and Kuang-si, which are perpetually
covered with snow. See my orographical
researches on these lines of
elevation in my A sie sentale, t. i. pp. 104-114, 118-164; t. ii. pp. 413
and 438.
* Strabo, lib. iii. p. 173 (Examen crit., t. iii. p. 98).