110 DANIEL WILSON ON 
followed in 1497. The object of Hanno’s expedition, as stated in the “ Periplus,” was to 
found Liby-Pheenician cities beyond the pillars of Hercules. How far south his voyage 
actually extended along the African coast is matter of conjecture, or of disputed interpre- 
tation, for the original work is lost. It is sufficient for our purpose to know that he did 
pursue the same route which led in a later century to the discovery of Brazil. Aristotle 
applies the name of “ Antilla” to a Carthaginian discovery; and Diodorus Siculus assigns 
to the Carthaginians the knowledge of an island in the ocean, the secret of which they 
reserved to themselves, as a refuge to which they could withdraw, should fate ever 
compell them to desert their African homes. It is far:from improbable, that we may 
identify this obscure island with one of the Azores, which lie 800 miles from the coast 
of Portugal. Neither Greek nor Roman writers make other reference to them; but the 
discovery of numerous Carthaginian coins at Corvo, the extreme north-westerly island of 
the group, leaves little room to doubt that they were visited by Punic voyagers. So that 
there would be nothing extravagant in the assumption that we have here the “ Antilla” 
mentioned by Aristotle. While the Carthaginian oligarchy ruled, naval adventure was 
still encouraged; but the maritime era of the Mediterranean belongs to more ancient 
centuries. The Greeks were inferior in enterprise to the Phœænicians; while the Romans 
were essentially unmaritime; and the revival of the old adventurous spirit with the rise 
of the Venetian and Genoese republics, was due to the infusion of fresh blood from the 
great northern home of the sea-kings of the Baltic. 
The history of the ancient world is, for us, to a large extent, the history of civilisation 
among the nations around the Mediterranean Sea. Its name perpetuates the recognition 
of it from remote times as the great inland sea which kept apart and yet united, in inter- 
course and exchange of experience and culture, the diverse branches of the human family 
settled on its shores. Of the history of those nations, we only know some later chapters. 
Disclosures of recent years have startled us with recovered glimpses of the Khita, or Hittites, 
as a great power centred between the Euphrates and the Orontes, but extending into Asia 
Minor, and about B.C. 1200 reaching westward to the Aigean Sea. All but their name 
seemed to have perished; and they were known only as one among diverse Canaanitish 
tribes, believed to have been displaced by the Hebrew inheritors of Palestine. Yet now, 
as Professor Curtius has pointed out, we begin to recognise that “ one of the paths by which 
the art and civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria made their way to Greece, was along the 
great highroad which runs across Asia Minor;” and which the projected railway route 
through the valley of the Euphrates seeks to revive. For, as compared with Egypt, and 
the earliest nations of Eastern Asia, the Greeks were, indeed, children. It was to the 
Pheenicians that the ancients assigned the origin of navigation. Their skill as seamen was 
the subject of admiration even by the later Greeks, who owned themselves to be their 
pupils in seamanship, and called the pole-star, the Phcenician Star. Their naval commerce 
is set forth in glowing rhetoric by the prophet Ezekiel. “O Tyrus, thou that art situate at 
the entry of the sea, a merchant of the people of many isles. Thy borders are in the 
midst of the seas. The inhabitants of Zidon and Arvad were thy mariners. Thy wise men, 
O Tyrus, were thy pilots. All the ships of the sea, with their mariners, were in thee to 
occupy thy merchandise.” But this was spoken in the last days of Tyre’s supremacy. 
Looking back then into the dim dawn of actual history, with whatever fresh light 
recent discoveries haye thrown upon it, this, at least, seems to claim recognition from us, 
