INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 659
Greek world, a development unfortunately compensated by the lowering of the level of its civilization, as is generally the case. And the means of communication were also those of conquest and invasion.
The conquest was able to proceed by the very means of the ways of communication, that is to say, of the existing instrument of civilization. Two great routes united Asia Minor to Persia and to India. The older, that of the north, the royal, military road, existed prior to Achemenides ; through Sardis, its terminus, it connected with the coast at three points, Cyme, Smyrna, Ephesus; and passing through Ptera it extended as far as the Taurus. The southern route was the commercial one; from Ephesus, its terminus, it passed Magnesia and struck the Euphra- tes, and reached beyond as far as the Taurus ; strengthened later by the Seleucidse it became the great route to India. Thus from the time of Alexander economic relations have existed between Greece and the Orient ; as is almost always the case, military con- quest drew after it colonization and commerce ; the economic and other frontiers of Greece had long since passed beyond the penin- sula when Alexander extended its military and political boun- daries. At his death the empire included the whole of the peninsula to the south of Istras, with the exception of Epirus and Illyricum, all of Asia Minor except the greater part of the south- ern coast of the Pontus Euxinus, all of Syria and Egypt as far as Elephantine, all the basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris between the Caspian and the Arabian Seas, as well as all the rest of Asia between 40 and 23 of latitude included in the basin of the Indus, and as far as the deserts lying to its east. In short it comprised all the earlier historic civilizations of Asia and of Europe with the exception of China and Italy. Let us note that this military empire had had its cradle in the frontier zone of Greece proper, where it was in contact with the barbarians ; it was naturally due to its situation upon the military borders that there was formed a strong and authoritative power which by conquest became the point of departure of an empire.
At the death of the conqueror, the empire was dismembered, being divided into military and administrative satrapies whose
