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Updated: May 8, 2025
In Sardinia, however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of the coasts.
I will now add the records of the Phoenicians; for it will not be superfluous to give the reader demonstrations more than enough on this occasion.
The occupation of the islands by "the Phoenicians" is asserted by Strabo, but we cannot be sure that he does not mean Phoenicians of Africa, i.e. Carthaginians. Still, on the whole, modern criticism inclines to the belief that, even before the foundation of Carthage, Phoenician colonisation had made its way into the Balearic Islands, directly, from the Syrian coast.
Heaven have mercy upon those who pass beyond this meeting-place of sky and water, where all is black despair and death. And for centuries and centuries after man had built his first clumsy boats, he remained within the pleasant sight of one familiar shore and kept away from the horizon. Then came the Phoenicians who knew no such fears. They passed beyond the sight of land.
Before Solon lived, Lycurgus had given laws to the Spartans. This lawgiver, one of the descendants of Hercules, was born, according to Grote, about eight hundred and eighty years before Christ, and was the uncle of the reigning king. There is, however, no certainty as to the time when he lived; it was probably about the period when Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians.
The change of rulers was, on the whole, in consonance with the wishes and feelings of the Phoenicians.
In general, the ancient Phoenicians appear to have had the spirit of sculptors rather than of architects. They did not construct in great masses, but every one laboured on his own account. Hence there was no exact measurement, and no symmetry. Even the capitals of the columns at Um-el-Awamid are not alike; in the portions which most evidently correspond the details are different."
If they had been navigators and colonizers like the Phoenicians of old, like the Greeks and Romans, if they had had a Columbus, a Balboa, a Cabrillo, a Drake, the whole history of the country west of the Rocky Mountains might have been totally different.
On the shores of the Mediterranean, or at no great distance from that sea, among the Israelites, the Phoenicians, and the Egyptians, we must look for the earliest traces of navigation and commerce; and, in the only authentic history of the remotest period of the world, as well as amidst the scanty and fabulous materials supplied by profane writers, these nations are uniformly represented as the most ancient navigators and traders.
Besides the ordinary metals, Spain was capable of yielding an abundance of quicksilver; but this metal seems not to have attracted the attention of the Phoenicians, who had no use for it. The methods employed by the Phoenicians to obtain the metals which they coveted were not, on the whole, unlike those which continue in use at the present day.
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