so 



Aristotle clearly designates its discoverers, when he expressly names 

 the Phoenicians of Cadiz, {^'tovq ^oiviKag tovq KuroiKovvTaQ ra 

 Tu^uQa KoXovf^ieva") as navigating the seas beyond the Pillars of 

 Hercules, and carrying fish thence to Carthage, (^^Sfvvvwv 7r\r}6o£ 

 « » • # * diaKOfii^ovcnv eig Kap^T]dova.")* 



This mention of Carthage suggests the possibility of its being 

 urged, that the Greeks obtained their knowledge of Ireland from Car- 

 thaginian and not from Phoenician intercourse with that country. The 

 passage just cited has been put forward as an answer to this, by shew- 

 ing that the Phoenicians were the persons who carried any commerce 

 with the Atlantic into Carthage; but the supposition is far more dis- 

 tinctly negatived by an account of the first mission that ventured from 

 that city to explore the west of Europe, the period of which is fixed to 

 somewhat more than three centuries before Christ, by the remark of 

 Pliny, ^Uhat Hanno, when Carthage was in the plenitude of her 

 power, having made a circumnavigation from Cadiz to the extremity of 

 Arabia, recorded his voyage in writing, while Himilco was at the same 

 time sent to explore the extreme parts of Europe ;-{- and is also shewn 

 by the internal evidence of Hanno's work, who, among other matters, 

 mentions Tyre as flourishing under its own king, and as situated in an 

 island. A brief sketch of this expedition of Himilco as from a record, 

 a ^^prodidit scripto," similar to that of Hanno, is singularly one of the 

 few fragments of Carthaginian annals, now preserved in the Iambics of 

 Festus Avienus,:|, "It is two days' sail," says he, "from the ^strym- 

 nides, (i. e. the Cassiterides, or.Scilly Isles,) to the island which the 

 ancients called the " Sacred Island." In the midst of its waves it 



* Aristot. de Mirab. &c. Casaubon, Lugd. 1590, vol. 1. p. 71 1. 



f "Et Hanno Carthaginis potentia florente circumvectus a Gadibus ad finem Arabiae, 

 navigationem earn prodidit scripto : sicut ad extera Europae noscenda missus eodem tempore 

 HimUco."— Plinii. Hist. lib. 2. c, 67. 



