The trade of the early Roman Empire had wide ramiﬁcations and was bound up with much explo- ration and colonization on the part Greeco-Romans and Indians. When, after a long eclipse, the power of the Chola kings revived in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seafaring instincts of the people had not deserted them and that, in the favourable con- ditions then obtaining, they attempted tasks more venturesome than anything they had achieved in the earlier age.