Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/287

UTIC A. - CARTHAGE. - GADES. 271 of Tyre, and the distant navigation of her vessels through the Red sea and along the coast of Arabia, back to the days of David and Solomon. And as neither Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, nor Indians, addressed themselves to a seafaring life, so it seems that both the importation and the distribution of the products of India and Arabia into Western Asia and Europe, was performed by the Idumrcan Arabs, between Petra and the Red sea, by the Arabs of Gerrha on the Persian gulf, joined as they were in later times by a body of Chalda?an exiles from Babylonia, and by the more enterprising Phenicians of Tyre and Sidon in these two seas as well as in the Mediterranean. 1 The most ancient Phenician colonies were Utica, nearly on the northernmost point of the coast of Africa, and in the same gulf, (now known as the gulf of Tunis) as Carthage, over against cape Lilybieum in Sicily, and Gades, or Gadeira, on the south-western coast of Spain ; a town which, founded perhaps near one thousand years before the Christian era, 2 has maintained a con- tinuous prosperity, and a name (Cadiz) substantially unaltered, longer than any town in Europe. How well the site of Utica was suited to the circumstances of Phenician colonists may be inferred from the fact that Carthage was afterwards established in the same gulf and near to the same spot, and that both the two cities reached a high pitch of prosperity. The distance of Gades from Tyre seems surprising, and if we calculate by time instead of by space, the Tyrians were separated from their Tartessian colonists by an interval greater than that which now divides an Englishman fromBombay ; for the ancient navigator always coasted along the land, and Skylax reckons seventy-five days 3 of voyage 1 See Hitter, Erdkundc von Asien, West-Asien, Buch iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, s. 29, p. 50. 2 Strabo, speaks of the earliest settlements of the Phenicians in Africa and Iberia as f^tKpbv ruv TfjuiiciJv iiarspov (i, p. 48). Utica is affirmed to have been two hundred and eighty-seven years earlier than Carthage ( Aristot Mirab. Auscult c. 134): compare Velleius Paterc. i, 2. Archaleus, son of Phoenix, was stated as the founder of Gades in tha Phenician history of Claudius Julius, now lost (Etymolog. Magn. v, Yadeipa). Archaleus is a version of the name Hercules, in the opinion of Movers. 3 Skylax, Pcriplus, c. 1 10. " Carteia, ut quidam putant, aliquando Tar tcssns ; et quam transvccti ex Africa Phocniccs habitant, atque undo nos suraus, Tingentera." (Mela, ii, G, 75.) The expression, tranxvecli ex A fried