[515] Strabo speaks of the earliest settlements of the Phenicians in Africa and Iberia as μικρὸν τῶν Τρωϊκῶν ὕστερον (i, p. 48). Utica is affirmed to have been two hundred and eighty-seven years earlier than Carthage (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134): compare Velleius Paterc. i, 2.
Archaleus, son of Phœnix, was stated as the founder of Gadês in the Phenician history of Claudius Julius, now lost (Etymolog. Magn. v. Γαδεῖρα). Archaleus is a version of the name Hercules, in the opinion of Movers.
[516] Skylax, Periplus, c. 110. “Carteia, ut quidam putant, aliquando Tartessus; et quam transvecti ex Africâ Phœnices habitant, atque unde nos sumus, Tingentera.” (Mela, ii, 6, 75.) The expression, transvecti ex Africâ applies as much to the Phenicians as to the Carthaginians: “uterque Pœnus” (Horat. Od. ii, 11) means the Carthaginians, and the Phenicians of Gadês.
[517] Strabo, xvii, p. 836.
[518] Cape Soloeis, considered by Herodotus as the westernmost headland of Libya, coincides in name with the Phenician town Soloeis in western Sicily, also, seemingly, with the Phenician settlement Suel (Mela, ii, 6, 65) in southern Iberia or Tartêssus. Cape Hermæa was the name of the north-eastern headland of the gulf of Tunis, and also the name of a cape in Libya, two days’ sail westward of the Pillars of Hêraklês (Skylax, c. 111).
Probably, all the remarkable headlands in these seas received their names from the Phenicians. Both Mannert (Geogr. d. Gr. und Röm. x, 2, p. 495) and Forbiger (Alte Geogr. sect. 111, p. 867) identify cape Soloeis with what is now called cape Cantin; Heeren considers it to be the same as cape Blanco; Bougainville as cape Boyador.
[519] Sallust, Bell. Jug. c. 78. It was termed Leptis Magna, to distinguish it from another Leptis, more to the westward and nearer to Carthage, called Leptis Parva; but this latter seems to have been generally known by the name Leptis (Forbiger, Alte Geogr. sect. 109, p. 844). In Leptis Magna, the proportion of Phenician colonists was so inconsiderable that the Phenician language had been lost, and that of the natives, whom Sallust calls Numidians, spoken: but these people had embraced Sidonian institutions and civilization. (Sall. ib.)
[520] Strabo, xvii, pp. 825-826. He found it stated by some authors that there had once been three hundred trading establishments along this coast, reaching thirty days’ voyage southward from Tingis or Lixus (Tangier); but that they had been chiefly ruined by the tribes of the interior,—the Pharusians and Nigritæ. He suspects the statement of being exaggerated, but there seems nothing at all incredible in it. From Strabo’s language we gather that Eratosthenês set forth the statement as in his judgment a true one.
[521] Compare Skylax, c. 111, and the Periplus of Hanno, ap. Hudson, Geogr. Græc. Min. vol. i, pp. 1-6. I have already observed that the τάριχος (salt provisions) from Gadeira was currently sold in the markets of Athens, from the Peloponnesian war downward.—Eupolis, Fragm. 23; Μαρικᾶς, p. 506, ed. Meineke, Comic. Græc.
Πότερ᾽ ἦν τὸ τάριχος; Φρύγιον ἢ Γαδειρικόν;