This description perfectly applies to the luxuriant and uninterrupted
vegetation of tropical climates.
From the time of Homer to that of Herodotus, the Greeks spread themselves
over several parts of the countries lying on the Mediterranean sea. About
600 years before Christ, a colony of Phocean Greeks from Ionia, founded
Massilia, the present Marseilles; and between the years 500 and 430, the
Greeks had established themselves in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and even in
some of the southern provinces of Spain. They were invited or compelled to
these emigrations by the prospect of commercial advantages, or by intestine
wars; and they were enabled to accomplish their object by the geographical
and nautical charts, which they are said to have obtained from the
Phoenicians, and by means of the sphere constructed by Anaximander the
Milesian. The eastern parts of the Mediterranean, however, seem still to
have been unexplored. Homer tells us that none but pirates ventured at the
risk of their lives to steer directly from Crete to Lybia; and when the
Ionian deputies arrived at Egina, where the naval forces of Greece were
assembled, with an earnest request that the fleet might sail to Ionia, to
deliver their country from the dominion of Xerxes, who was at that time
attempting to subdue Greece, the request was refused, because the Greeks
were ignorant of the course from Delos to Ionia, and because they believed
it to be as far from Egina to Samos, as from Egina to the Pillars of
Hercules.
[1] Dr. Vincent, in the 2nd vol. of his Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, has
a very elaborate commentary on this chapter of Ezekiel, in which he
satisfactorily makes out the nature of most of the articles mentioned
in it, as well as the locality of the places from which they are said
to have come.
[2] One of the most celebrated gods of the Phoenicians was Melcartus. He is
represented as a great navigator, and as the first that brought tin
from the Cassiterides. His image was usually affixed to the stern of
their vessels.
[3] In the time of Solomon, about two hundred years after the period when
it is supposed the Phoenicians began to direct their course by the
Lesser Bear, - it was 17 1/2 degrees from the North Pole: in the time
of Ptolemy, about one hundred and fifty years after Christ, its
distance had decreased to 12 degrees.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRIZE,
FROM THE AGE OF HERODOTUS TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT, B.C. 324.
From the scanty materials respecting the Phoenicians, with which we are
supplied by ancient history, it is evident that they founded several
colonies, either for the purpose of commerce, or, induced by other motives,
in different parts of Africa. Of these colonies, the most celebrated was
that of Carthage: a state which maintained an arduous contest with Rome,
during the period when the martial ardour and enterprize of that city was
most strenuously supported by the stern purity of republican virtue, which
more than once drove it to the brink of ruin, and which ultimately fell,
rather through the vice of its own constitution and government, and the
jealousies and quarrels of its own citizens, and through the operation of
extraneous circumstances, over which it could have no controul, than from
the fair and unassisted power of its adversary.
