90 ([return])
[ Polyb. l. xv. c. 2.]
91 ([return])
[ Appian in Punicis, p. 84.]
Spain, by a very singular fatality, was the Peru and Mexico of the old world. The discovery of the rich western continent by the Phœnicians, and the oppression of the simple natives, who were compelled to labor in their own mines for the benefit of strangers, form an exact type of the more recent history of Spanish America. [92] The Phœnicians were acquainted only with the sea-coast of Spain; avarice, as well as ambition, carried the arms of Rome and Carthage into the heart of the country, and almost every part of the soil was found pregnant with copper, silver, and gold. [921] Mention is made of a mine near Carthagena which yielded every day twenty-five thousand drachmns of silver, or about three hundred thousand pounds a year. [93] Twenty thousand pound weight of gold was annually received from the provinces of Asturia, Gallicia, and Lusitania. [94]
92 ([return])
[ Diodorus Siculus, l. 5. Oadiz was built by the Phœnicians a little more than a thousand years before Christ. See Vell. Pa ter. i.2.]
921 ([return])
[ Compare Heeren’s Researches vol. i. part ii. p.]
93 ([return])
[ Strabo, l. iii. p. 148.]