BOOK II.] History of Nature. 109 



and held on his Course as far as Gades. And Ccelius Antipater, 

 long before him, reporteth, that he saw the Man who had 

 sailed from Spain to Ethiopia, in pursuit of Merchandise. 

 The same Nepos maketh Report concerning the compassing 

 about of the North, that unto Qu. Metellus Celer (Colleague 

 to-C. Afranius in the Consulship, but at that Time Proconsul 

 in Gaul) certain Indians were given by a King of the Sue- 

 vians 1 , who, as they sailed out of India, for Traffic, as Mer- 



on the right ; which being the very thing that should have happened, 

 and disbelieved only through his ignorance, strongly fortifies our inclina- 

 tion to credit the story." Wern. Club. 



1 At an early period the Phoenicians, and probably the Greeks, did 

 not scruple to entrap, and sell for slaves, strangers and others who had 

 never kindled their resentment. In the fourteenth book of the " Odys- 

 sey," Ulysses represents himself as having narrowly escaped a snare of this 

 kind; and as the whole narrative is an artful fiction, intended to have 

 the appearance of truth to an Ithacan peasant, the practice of kidnapping 

 slaves could not then have appeared incredible to any inhabitant of that 

 island : 



" A false Phoenician, of insidious mind, 

 Versed in vile arts, and foe to humankind, 

 With semblance fair invites me to his home ; 

 I seized the proffer (ever fond to roam) : 

 Domestic in his faithless roof I stay'd, 

 Till the swift sun his annual circle made. 

 To Libya then he meditates the way ; 

 With guileful art a stranger to betray, 

 And sell to bondage in a foreign land : 

 Much doubting, yet compell'd, I quit the strand. 

 * * * * * 



* * but Jove's intent 



Was yet to save the oppress'd and innocent." POPE. 



Tacitus ("Agricola," cap. xxviii.) mentions an instance of shipwrecked 

 persons having been treated as pirates, and sold into slavery. He is speak- 

 ing of a cohort of the Usipians serving in Britain, who, having left the 

 island in three light galleys, became the sport of winds and waves. In 

 this distress they sailed round the extremity of the island, and, through 

 want of skill in navigation, were wrecked on the Continent, where they 

 were treated as pirates, first by the Suevians, and afterwards by the Fri- 

 sians. Being sold to slavery, and in the way of commerce turned over to 

 different masters, some of them reached the Roman settlements on the 

 banks of the Rhine, and there grew famous for their sufferings, and the 



