a fleet of 1113 ships, at the expense, it is calculated, of nearly five millions sterling.  This fleet, with an immense army on board, sailed from Constantinople to Carthage, but it effected nothing.  Genseric, taking advantage of a favourable wind, manned his largest ships with his bravest and most skilful sailors; and they towed after them vessels filled with combustible materials.  During the night they advanced against the imperial fleet, which was taken by surprise; confusion ensued, many of the imperial ships were destroyed, and the remainder saved themselves by flight.  Genseric thus became master of the Mediterranean; and the coasts of Asia, Greece, and Italy, were exposed to his depredations.

Towards the end of the fifth century, the Romans under Theodoric exhibited some slight and temporary symptoms of reviving commerce.  His first object was to fit out a fleet of 1000 small vessels, to protect the coast of Italy from the incursions of the African Vandals and the inhabitants of the Eastern empire.  And as Rome could no longer draw her supplies of corn from Egypt, he reclaimed and brought into cultivation the Pomptine marshes and other neglected parts of Italy.  The rich productions of Lucania, and the adjacent provinces, were exchanged at the Marcilian fountain, in a populous fair, annually dedicated to trade:  the gradual descent of the hills was covered with a triple plantation of divers vines and chestnut trees.  The iron mines of Dalmatia, and a gold mine in Bruttium, were carefully explored and wrought.  The abundance of the necessaries of life was so very great, that a gallon of wine was sometimes sold in Italy for less than three farthings, and a quarter of wheat at about five shillings and sixpence.  Towards a country thus wisely governed, and rich and fertile, commerce was naturally attracted; and it was encouraged and protected by Theodoric:  he established a free intercourse among all the provinces by sea and land:  the city gates were never shut; and it was a common saying, “that a purse of gold might safely be left in the field.”  About this period, many rich Jews fixed their residence in the principal cities of Italy, for the purposes of trade and commerce.

The most particular information we possess respecting the geographical knowledge, and the Indian commerce of the ancients at the beginning of the sixth century, is derived from a work of Cosmas, surnamed Indico Pleustes, or the Indian navigator.  He was originally a merchant, and afterwards became a monk; and Gibbon justly observes, that his work displays the knowledge of a merchant, with the prejudices of a monk.  It is entitled Christian Topography, and was composed at Alexandria, in the middle of the fifth century, about twenty years after he had performed his voyage.  The chief object of his work was to confute the opinions that the earth was a globe, and that there was a temperate zone on the south of the torrid zone.  According to Cosmas, the earth is a vast plane surrounded by