4 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2»d S. VI. 131., JuLT 3. '58. 



the Cai'thaginians seem to have maintained their 

 commercial monopoly with the utmost jealousy. 

 They are stated by Strabo to have sunk any 

 stran;.'e ship which sailed even as ftir as Sardinia 

 or Cadiz (xvii. 1. 19.) ; and the same geograjiher 

 tells a story' of a patriotic Cartliaginian wrecking 

 his own vessel in order to prevent a Roman navi- 

 gator, who had followed him, from finding the 

 course to the tin islands. Up to that time, he 

 says, the Carthaginians carried on the tin trade 

 from Cadiz, and secured the monopoly by conceal- 

 ing the route. At length, however, the Romans 

 discovered the way ; and when P. Crassus, the 

 lieutenant of Caesar, had crossed over to the tin 

 islands, the navigation became well known, al- 

 though their distance from the mainland was 

 greater than that of Britain (iii. 5. 11,). This 

 story is not very intelligible, nor is it easy to fix 

 a date for the occurrence ; for the Romans were 

 not a seafaring people, and they were not likely 

 to attempt voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercu- 

 les before the destruction of Carthage in 146 b.c. ; 

 whereas after that time the Carthaginians had no 

 ships or factories ; Gades had been sixty years in 

 the hands of the Romans ; and even since the end 

 of the Second Punic war the Romans had been 

 able to extort the secrets of the Carthaginians 

 without resorting to stratagem. The account of 

 P. Crassus opening the navigation with the tin is- 

 lands (which Strabo considered as distinct from 

 Britain) cannot be easily reconciled with the fact 

 that before and during Caesar's life the trade in 

 British tin was carried on through Gaul. 



Gades was originally a Tyrian settlement; it sub- 

 sequently became Carthaginian, but its fidelity 

 to Carthage seems to have been ambiguous ; for 

 there was a party in it which was in traitorous 

 correspondence with the Romans during the 

 Second Punic war (Livy, xxviii. 23. 30.). Strabo 

 says that the Plicenicians occupied the productive 

 district of southern Spain from a period earlier 

 than Homer down to the time when it was taken 

 from them by the Romans (iii. "2. 14.). Their 

 presence can be clearly traced westwards along 

 the coast inhabited by the Bastuli as far as the' 

 Pillars of Hercules, and from the Pillars along 

 the Turdetaniau coast as far as the Anas or Gua- 

 diana, or perhaps as far as the Sacred Promon- 

 tory, the south-western extremity of Lusitania 

 (Cape St. Vincent). See Movers, Das Phijni- 

 zische Alterthwn, vol. ii. pp. 615 — 647. Ulysippo, 

 the modern Lisbon, is treated by Greek tradititms 

 as a foundation of Ulysses. This is a mere etymo- 

 logical niythus ; and .the conjecture of Movers, 

 derived from the occurrence of the termination 

 -ippo in other proper names, that this is a Phoeni- 

 cian form, is probable {lb. 639.). But if the 

 Phoenicians, either of Tyre or Carthage, esta- 

 blished any colonies or factories on the western 

 coast of Spain, they must have been obscure and 



unimportant, and liave perished without leaving 

 any historical vestiges of their origin. 



Some commerce was doubtless carried on by 

 the Carthaginians, from Gades, with the external 

 coasts of Spain and Gaul, and with the southern 

 shores of Britain ; but there is nothing to show 

 that the Tyrians traded with any country beyond 

 the Pillars of Hercules, except the passage in 

 Ezekiel alluding to the tin trade with Tarshish, 

 and the existence of tin in Greece at the time of 

 Homer. If we suppose tin to have been conveyed 

 across Gaul in those early times, these facts prove 

 nothing more than a trade between Tyre and a 

 port in the western part of the Mediterranean. 

 This last is the hypothesis respecting the Tyrian 

 tin trade which is adopted lay Movers in his 

 learned work on the Phoenicians. He rejects the 

 theory of an ancient trade in tin between Tyre 

 and India, which has been founded on the resem- 

 blance of the Sanscrit Kastira to the Greek Kaa-a-'f 

 Tepos. He holds, on the contrary, that this form, 

 as well as the Aramaic Kastir and the Arabic 

 Kasdir, were derived from the Greek ; he refers to 

 the passages concerning tin in the Periplus of Ar- 

 rian, as showing that this metal was anciently im- 

 ported into Arabia and India from Alexandria ; 

 and he believes that the Malacca tin had not been 

 worked in antiquity (W. iii. 1. pp. 62-5.) The 

 only trace of Indian tin which occurs in any an- 

 cient author, is the article in Stephanus of By- 

 zantium, which states, on the authority of the 

 Bassarica of Dionysius, that Cassitira was an island 

 in the ocean near India, from which tin was ob- 

 tained. The Bassarica was a poem ; and its author, 

 Dionysius, was apparently Dionysius Periegetes, 

 who lived at the end of the third or the beginning 

 of the fourth century of our era. It celebrated 

 the exploits of Bacchus, and, among others, re- 

 counted his expedition to India, where it enume- 

 rated many names of places (see Bernhardy ad 

 Dionys. Perieg. pp. 507. 515.). Whether this 

 geographical poet knew of tin being imported into 

 Europe from the island of Banca, or whether he 

 considered the Indian island of Cassitira as a tin 

 island on mere etymological grounds, cannot now 

 be determined ; though the latter supposition seems 

 the more probable. 



The Greeks were for centuries acquainted both 

 with tin and amber, probably through the inter- 

 mediation of the Phoenicians, without obtaining 

 any certain knowledge of the places from which 

 they came. Their incurious ignorance, however, 

 was not confined to the two articles in question ; it 

 extended likewise to ivory. That ornamental and 

 useful substance was known to the Jews in the time 

 of Solomon, about 1000 b.c. (1 Kings x. 22.), and 

 to the Greeks in the time of Plomer, probably 

 about 200 years later. It reached the shores of 

 the Mediterranean, through various hands, from 

 India, and the remote parts of Africa (Paus. i. 



