18 



and he passed by the lake of Sahnse to the altars of the Philistines, 

 and between Rusicada and the mountains Azare, and by the river 

 Malva, and he voyaged by sea to the pillars of Hercules, making his 

 course through the Tuscan Sea, and he made for Spai7i, and he dwelt 

 therefor many years, and he increased and was multiplied, and his 

 people were multiplied."* 



The basis of tradition is truth, and it needs but to submit this 

 narrative of Nennius in detail to the test of external testimony. The 

 wanderings of the Scythian through Africa, unquestionably refer to 

 the colonies planted by the Phoenicians along its coast, which Sallust, 

 in his account of the Jugurthine war, and various other historians, 

 satisfactorily enumerate. The interesting account of the circumnavi- 

 gation of Africa, which has been preserved in the pages of Hero- 

 dotus, seems also to have some bearing on this emigration. It was 

 performed, says the father of history, by the Phoenicians, and by the 

 order of Necho, king of Egypt, (i. e. about seven centuries before 

 the Christian era.) The Phoenician fleet sailed from the Red Sea, 

 entered the Southern Ocean, and kept constantly in sight of land. 

 When autumn approached they went on shore, saved grain, and 



* " Si quis scire voluerit quanto tempore fuit inhabitabilis et deserta Hibemia, sic mihi 

 peritissimi Scotorum nunciaverunt. Quando venerunt filii Israel transeundo Rubrum mare, 

 venerunt ^gyptii et secuti sunt eos, demersique in mari ut Scriptura refert. Erat in illis 

 diebus Moysis vir nobilis de Scythia cum magna familid apud jEgyptios, expulsus regno 

 sno; et ibi erat quando .^Egyptii mersi sunt; ipse non ivit ad persequendum populum 

 Domini. TUi autem qui superfuerunt injecerunt consilium ut expellerent ilium, ne regnum 

 illorum obsideret et occuparet, quia fratres illorum submersi erant in Rubro Mari, sicque 

 expulsus est. At ille per xl et duos annos ambulavit per Africani, et venit ad aras Philisti- 

 norum per lacum Salinarum et venit inter Rusicadam et monies Azare, et venit per flumen 

 Malva, transiitque per maritimam ad columnas Herculis, navigans per mare Tyrrhenum ; et 

 applicuit ad Hispaniam habitavitque ibi per mullos annos, et crevit nimisque multiplicatus 

 est et gens ejus multiplicata est." — Hist. Britt. c. ix. (in Gale's Collection.) The Geography 

 of the passage is fully explained in Orosii Hist, lib. 1 . c. 2. 



