388 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO IJIQ. 



with ruins, among which are a great many pieces of very fine marble well 

 wrought; and innumerable fragments of vessels of that kind of red earthen 

 ware, which Ambrosio Morales in the first chapter of his Discurso de las 

 Antiguedades de las Ciudades de Espanna. lays down for a certain mark of a 

 Roman city, and takes to have been a composition of the clay of Saguntum. 

 often mentioned among the Romans. 



There are remains of a rude semicircular building, raised on arches, which 

 descends gradually into an area, and seems to have been a kind of theatre. I 

 brought away with me a marble pedestal of a statue, dug up near the square 

 tower, and containing the following letters finely cut, varia marge. I 

 have a considerable number of medals, found among these ruins; most of 

 them have a c^put turritum, with carteia in very legible characters. The 

 reverse is generally a fish, a neptune, or a rudder. 



The Spaniards who live about the ruins, say they are the remains of a city of 

 the Gentiles called Cartago. The corruption of Carteia into a name so much 

 more talked of, might easily happen in an oral tradition of so many years; and 

 I cannot help thinking that, where other circumstances concur, an account 

 delivered down from father to son is an evidence not to be slighted, in matters 

 of so much obscurity. 



I have some medals that were dug up at Rocadillo, with the head and club 

 of Hercules on them. On the reverse are tunny fishes, which according to 

 Strabo and Pliny abounded formerly near Carteia, and are still taken in 

 great quantities near the shore of the east sea, at a small distance from 

 Rocadillo. 



Bernardo Aldrete, an author of such weight, that Bochart does not disdain 

 to copy him on several occasions, in the 2d book and 2d chapter of his Anti- 

 guedades de Espanna, accounts for the addition of eia to Cartha; which in the 

 Syriac and Chaldean signifies Pulcher, Formosus, and was affixed to the name 

 of this city to distinguish it from the Cartha in Syria, mentioned in the 2 1st 

 chapter and 34th verse of Joshua. 



By all accounts, the Phoenicians founded most of the cities on this coast, 

 and probably Carteia was one of their earliest settlements ; for it lies very near 

 Africa, in a most inviting situation, having on one side a Bay, and on the other 

 a river, which waters a rich country. Its height gave it strength and a very 

 beautiful prospect; circumstances which seem to justify Aldretes's interpretation 

 of the latter part of its name. 



In the itinerary of Antoninus, it is Calpe-carteiam, not tanquam duae urbes 

 diversae, as Casaubon intimates in his notes on the third book of Strabo, for 

 then it would be Calpen-carteiam. Probably Calpe-carteia is for carteia ad 



