THE MEDITERRANEAN, PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL. 267 



Mediterrauean, which had hitherto been the central sea of human inter- 

 course, to a position of secondary importance. 



Time ^yill not permit me to enter into further details regarding the 

 physical geography of this region, and its history is a subject so vast 

 that a few episodes of it are all that I can possibly attempt. It is in- 

 timately connected with that of every other country in the world, and 

 here were successively evolved all the great dramas of the past and 

 some of the most important events of less distant date. 



As I have already said, long before the rise of Greece and Kome its 

 shores and islands were the seat of an advanced civilization. Phoenicia 

 had sent out her pacific colonies to the remotest parts, and not iusig- 

 nificant vestiges of their handicraft still exist to excite our wonder and 

 admiration. We have the megalithic temples of Malta, sacred to the 

 worship of Baal, the generative god, and Ashtoretl), the conceptive 

 goddess, of the universe. The three thousand nurhagi of Sardinia, 

 round towers of admirable masonry, intended probably for defense in 

 case of sudden attack, and the so-called giant graves, were as great a 

 mystery to classical authors as they are to us at the present da\'. 

 Minorca has its talayots, tumuli somewhat analogous to but of ruder 

 constructioD than the fiurhagi, more than 200 groups of which exist in 

 various parts of the island. With these are associated subordinate con- 

 structions intended for worship, altars composed of two immense 

 monoliths erected in the form of a T, sacred inclosures and megalithic 

 habitations. One type of talayot is especially remarkable, of better 

 masonry than the others, and exactly resembling inverted boats. One 

 is tempted to believe that the Phoenicians had in view the grass hab- 

 itations or mapalia of the Numidians described by Sallust, and had 

 endeavored to reproduce them in stone: Oblonga, incurvis laterihns 

 tecta, quasi navimn carince sunt. 



For a long time the Phoenicians had do rivals in navigation, but 

 subsequently the Greeks — especially the Phocians — established colonies 

 in the western Mediterrauean, in Spain, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta, and 

 the south of France, through the means of which they propagated not 

 only their commerce but their arts, literature, and ideas. They intro- 

 duced many valuable plants, such as the olive, thereby modifying pro- 

 foundlj^ the agriculture of the countries in which they settled. They 

 have even left traces of their blood, and it is no doubt to this that the 

 women of Provence owe the classical beauty of their features. 



But they were eclipsed by their successors. The empire of Alexander 

 opened out a road to India, in which, indeed, the Phceuicians had pre- 

 ceded him, and introduced the produce of the East into the Mediter- 

 ranean ; while the Tyrian colony of Carthage became the cai)ital of 

 another vast emjnre, which, from its situation midway between the 

 Levant and the Atlantic Ocean, enabled it to command the Mediter- 

 ranean trafiBc. 



The Carthaginians at one time ruled over territory extending along 



