Both agree that Darius also played a role, but in Pliny, Darius just thought
about it whereas in Strabo he had it near completion when he was“per-
suaded by a false notion”to abandon the project. For Pliny thefirst ruler to
do any digging was Ptolemy II (282– 246 BCE), who had a trench 100 feet
across and 30 feet deep dug for 34 miles, a little over half the distance
between the Nile and the Red Sea. He called a halt after being warned that
the level of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Nile Valley so that if
connected the sea would pour into Egypt andflood it. So, according to
Pliny, the canal was never completed. In Strabo, Ptolemy II cut all the way
through“so that when they wished they could sail out without hindrance
into the outer sea and sail in again.”Unfortunately archaeological evidence
has not clarified the issue.
By the time the Romans invaded in 30BCE,Egypt had undergone 1,000
years, more or less, of slow decline. Yet the Romans still considered it to be
the richest country in the world.
A closer look: trade and the authorities
The relationship between long-distance traders and the political authorities
who ruled in the places where they did business varied greatly across time
and space, ranging from the Egyptian example, in which trade was a royal
monopoly, to situations in which rulers partnered with private traders, to
conditions under which the authorities were less than supportive or on
occasion even hostile. By their nature the roles of ruler and trader operated at
cross-purposes: traders were capital accumulators; rulers were capital con-
sumers. But rulers who mistreated traders discovered to their detriment that
this did not benefit their own long-term interests. Expropriating the goods
of visiting merchants, cheating them, taxing them excessively, or abusing
them in some other way would likely rechannel theflow of traders, their
products, and their taxes in the direction of rival states.
Ideally the interests of rulers and traders were complementary. Merchants
needed the stability and protection a political authority could provide, and
governments saw merchants as a source of revenue that was usually more
willing to be taxed than other groups with surplus income such as warrior or
religious elites. The state usually acted in the interests of special groups it
favored, including the ruler and his family, which determined the parameters
under which trade was allowed to operate. Government interference could
come in the form of import or export restrictions, price controls, or other
hindrances intended to benefit someone in some way at the cost of under-
mining strict economic efficiency. In the main, governments did not bother
to become involved as a matter of public policy intended to benefit society at
large.
Relations between traders and host societies were not always symbiotic. In
China, merchants were considered to be parasitic as, unlike farmers or
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