19 



watching until it was ripe, gathered in their harvest and re-embarked, 

 Coasting in this manner along Africa, they in two years reached the 

 pillars of Hercules, entered the Mediterranean, and went up to the 

 mouth of the Nile in the third year after their setting out.* It is worthy 

 of remark, that Herodotus strenuously endeavours to throw suspicion 

 and doubts on the truth of this narrative, and treats as fabulous the 

 very circumstance which confirms the veracity of the story, not being 

 able to conceive, as he expressed it, how these navigators could see 

 the sun in a position contrary to that in which he is seen in Europe. -f- 

 Sohnus has the following confirmatory passage. " In the Gulf 

 of Boetica there is an island distant seven hundred paces from the 

 main land, which the Tyrians, who came from the Red Sea, called 

 Erythraea, and the Carthaginians, in their language, denominated 

 Gadir, i. e. the enclosure.".]: The opinion of Vossius is also 

 worth adding, as he refers to other ancient authorities on which it 

 is grounded. " The Iberes," he concludes, " zs>€re a people of Asia, 

 the descendants of Thubal, they led a colony into Spain, and gave 

 the name of Iberus to a river, and of Iberia to the country. So Jose- 

 phus mentions, whose words have been before cited, and Pliny, fol- 

 lowing the authority of Varro, places the Iberes or Iberi in the ear- 

 liest rank among the nations who occupied Spain before the Romans ; 

 for these are the words of Pliny:§ — M. Varro records that the Iberi, 



and Persians, and Phoenicians, and Celts, and Carthaginians, occupied 



» 



* Herod, lib. 4. c' 42. 



h^icc." — Herod. Id. 



l"In capita Boetica insula a continenti septingenlis passibus memoratur, quam 

 Tyrii a Rubro profecti mari Erythraeam, Poeni sua lingua Gadir (id est sepem) nomina- 

 rtint." Chap. 36. 



§ Lib. 3. cbap. L 



d2 



