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ALEPPO AND ANTIOCH 429
much nearer to the old Greek city. But those who
complain thus always come back to the awkward
fact that Aleppo had a great trade and Antioch
little. And this comment brings the reader to a
question upon which any one who has visited Aleppo
and considered the trade of these parts must have
speculated often. Looking at Aleppo's position on
the map, you wonder why this old city should be
here and why it should have shown such vitality.
At this day you marvel at its appearance of prosperity
and activity. You cannot well imagine how it
lives.
Agriculture, commerce by road, and manufactures,
of which few signs can be seen, do not appear to
explain its busy existence. You can understand well
why Antioch, sixty miles away, near the sea, and
upon a gorge giving access to a port, should have
been a great and famous city. And yet Greek
Antioch, like so many great Greek cities of the past,
has decayed, and is now merely a town of twenty
thousand inhabitants, while Aleppo has remained
and grown. Antioch you would have thought had
every element of geographical position and glorious
site to ensure permanence and prosperity. A great
fertile plain coming to its gates ; a limitless country
of agricultural and pastoral wealth beyond this local
plain ; the sea and a port twenty miles distant,
reached by an easy passage through the mountains ;
and all on the highroad, so to say, between Europe
and Asia and Africa. And for the amenities it had
the Amanus range beside it, rushing streams, a lake,
a river, and the Syrian climate.
You wonder at the failure of Antioch to hold its
own in this great position, and wonder still more
that Aleppo should stand while Antioch failed, till
you look a little farther afield. Then it becomes
clear that Antioch grew and flourished on a local
basis— on the sea, the local plains, on the beauty
and strictly local advantages of site ; on the character
and peculiarities of its Greek citizens ; but stood outside
the area of those wider influences which ensure