16 



mIucIi Herodotus has preserved, " The Phoenicians,"* says the father 

 of history, " anciently dwelt, as they allege, on the borders of the Red 

 Sea." Pliny, where speaking of the people of Tyre, accredits this 

 account, and Vossius, in his work on the Origin and Progress of Ido- 

 latry, -f fully supports it. That the name of Phoenicians was subse- 

 quently assumed, is an axiom of history, which needs no proof, but 

 the occasion and the time when it was introduced, are now matter of 

 varied conjecture. — " We know it is not found in the books of 

 Scripture written in Hebrew, but only in those whose original is 

 (ireek, as the Maccabees, and the books of the New Testament."."}: 

 According to the Grecian historians, it was derived from Phoenix, 

 one of the kings of the country, and brother of that Cadmus, who in- 

 troduced letters into Greece ; while the Irish annals, by a curious 

 coincidence, state that a king named Phenius was of the lineal ances- 

 try of the prince who led the above colony from the Red Sea, and 

 that he was so particularly devoted to the study of languages, as 

 actually to compose an alphabet, digest a language, and prescribe the 

 elements of grammar. § After some residence in this country of their 

 retreat, the Irish historians proceed to say, that domestic differences, 

 or, as other accounts have it, growing power, rendered further emigra- 

 tion necessary, and that accordingly a particular branch colony was 

 sent out about the very time, when the newly termed Phoenicians, 



"Prima ratem ventis credere docta Tyrus,"|| 



commenced their colonizing system. Notwithstanding the altered 

 appellative, however, the Irish historians, with much propriety as well 

 as historical accuracy, though more, perhaps, from a proud and natu- 



• " 0( ^iiyiKii T» TTaAsKof ttxtct (41; uvTci Asyoys-f) £?r( ti) Ejutfgi) Sa^xirn-r,." HerodotUS, 1. 7. C. 8'J. 

 t Lib. 1. c. 34. § Vide Keating's Ireland, B. 1. p. 2. c. 3. 



J Calmet's Diet, of the Bible, title " Phoenicia." || TibuUus, lib. 1. elegia 7. 1. 20. 



