LONDON, SATURDAY, JULY 3. 1858.

Notes.

THE AMBER TRADE OF ANTIQUITY.

The Greek word electron had a double signification it denoted amber, and also a metallic compound, formed by the mixture of gold and silver in certain proportions. Whichever of these significations was the original one, it is certain that the transfer from one to the other was owing to the tawny colour and the lustre which were common to the two substances.

The use of the word electron in Homer and Hesiod, where it is described as applied to different ornamental purposes, does not determine its meaning. Buttmann, however, in his dissertation on the subject (Ueber das Elektron, Mythologus, vol. ii. p. 337.), has made it probable that it signifies amber in the early epic poetry; and he derives the word from λw, in allusion to the electric properties of amber. The use of the word in the plural number for the ornaments of a necklace in two passages of the Odyssey (xv. 460., xviii. 295.), though not decisive, agrees best with the supposition that knobs or studs of amber are meant, as in the passage of Aristophanes, where it denotes the ornaments fastened to a couch. (Eq. 532.) Upon this hypothesis, the acceptation of the word in the sense of pale gold would be derivative and secondary. (Compare Boeckl, Metrol. Untersuchungen, p. 129.)

The fable of the daughters of the sun being changed into poplars on the banks of the river Eridanus, and their tears for the death of their brother Phaethon being converted into amber, though posterior to the early epic poetry, is anterior to Eschylus and the Attic tragedians, who introduced it into their dramas. Hyginus even ascribes this fable to Hesiod. (Buttmann, Ib. p. 342.)

The notions of the ancients both as to the nature of amber, and the places where it occurred, were singularly conflicting and indistinct; as we learn from the full compilation in Pliny (H. N., xxxvii. 11.). But although Theophrastus speaks of it as having been found in Liguria (De Lapid., § 16. edit. Schneider), it may be considered as certain that the amber imported into ancient Greece and Italy was brought from the southern shores of the Baltic, where it is now almost exclusively obtained. According to Herodotus, amber was in his time reported to come from a river, called Eridanus by the barbarians, which flowed into the sea to the north. Herodotus however rejects this story he considers the name Eridanus as being manifestly of Greek origin, and as invented by some poet; he cannot ascertain that such a river exists, or that Europe is bounded by sea to the west. He believes however, with respect

:

both to amber and tin, that they come from countries at the extremity of the earth (iii. 115.). The account of Pytheas the navigator (about 350 B.C.), as recited to us by Pliny, is, that a shore of the ocean called Mentonomon, reaching 6000 stadia (750 miles) in length, was inhabited by the Guttones, a nation of Germany; that beyond this coast, at the distance of a day's sail, the island of Abalus was situated; that amber was thrown upon this island in spring by the waves, and was a marine concretion; and that the natives used it as a fuel, and likewise sold it to their neighbours the Teutoni. The account of Pytheas was, according to Pliny, followed by Timæus; with this exception, that he called the island, not Abalus, but Basilia (xxxvii. 11.). The testimony of Timæus is, however, differently reported by Pliny in another place (iv. 27.); he there states that, according to Timæus, there was an island one day's sail from the northern coast of Scythia, called Raunonia, into which amber was cast up by the waves in spring. In the same chapter he likewise says, that a large island off the northern coast of Scythia, which others called Baltia, was by Timæus called Basilia. The account of Diodorus is not very different, and is apparently derived from a similar source. He states that Basileia is an island in the ocean opposite the coast of Scythia beyond Galatia: that amber is cast up by the sea on this island, and that it occurs nowhere else; and that it is here collected and carried by the natives to the opposite continent, whence it is imported to Greece and Italy (v. 23.).

Tacitus informs us, in his Germania (c. 45.), that the Estui, who dwell on the right or eastern shore of the Suevic Sea, find in the shoal water and on the shore, amber, which they call glesum. Like other barbarians (he continues) they were incurious about its nature, and it lay for a long time among the other substances cast up by the sea; they made no use of it, until Roman luxury gave it value; they now collect it and send it onwards, in a rude and unmanufactured state, and wonder at the price which they receive for it. Tacitus himself believes it to be a gum, which distils from trees in the islands of the west, under the immediate influence of the sun, falls into the sea, and is carried by the winds to the opposite coast. One of the islands in the Northern Ocean is stated by Pliny to have been named by the Roman soldiers Glessaria, from its producing glessum, or amber (glass); it had been reduced by Drusus, and was called Austrania, Austravia, or Actania, by the natives (iv. 27., xxxvii. 11.). Pliny places it near the island of Burchana, which was between the mouths of the Rhine and the Sala, and was likewise taken by Drusus (Strab. vii. 1. 3.).

These accounts agree in pointing to the northern coast of Europe as the place in which amber was

bank should be localised on the large river which falls into the upper part of the Adriatic (see Bunbury in Dr. Smith's Geogr. Dict., art. ERIDANUS). The collection of marvellous stories ascribed to Aristotle, written about 300 B.C., describes amber as a gum which liquefied from poplars near the Eridanus, in the extremity of the Adriatic, and which, having hardened into the consistency of a stone, was collected by the natives, and exported into Greece (De Mirab. Ausc. c. 81., see also Scymnus, v. 395.). Ovid relates this story in its original form of a metamorphosis, and shows how the tears of the Heliades hardened by the sun, and falling into the Eridanus, produced ornaments for the Roman ladies.

"Cortex in verba novissima venit.
Inde fluunt lacrimæ, stillataque sole rigescunt
De ramis electra novis, quæ lucidus amnis
Excipit, et nuribus mittit gestanda Latinis."
Met. ii. 363-6.

An unnecessary attempt has been made by some writers to identify the Eridanus with some real river falling into the Baltic having a name of similar sound (see Bayer de Venedis et Eridano Fluvio in Comm. Acad. Petrop. 1740, vol. vii. p. 351.); but Heeren has remarked with justice that the Eridanus is a fabulous stream, which existed only in popular legend, and in the imagination of poets; and that nothing is gained by explaining it to mean the Rhine or the Raduna; the truth being that all such interpretations are purely arbitrary (Ideen, ii. 1. p. 179.).

The story of amber being found near a river, as in the mythological fable, or in an island, as in the accounts of Pytheas and Timæus, does not rest on any foundation of fact. Even the insula Glessaria, which must be one of the islands to the east of the Helder, off the coast of Holland and Friesland, appears to have received its name from some accidental connexion with amber; as the islands on this coast are not known to have yielded that substance. The notion of amber being found in islands gave rise to the belief in the existence of the Electrides at the mouth of the Po, at the extremity of the Adriatic (Aristot. ib.; Steph. Byz. in v.; Mela, ii. 7.). Both Strabo and Pliny (ib.) remark that the Electrid islands are a fiction, and that none such exist in the spot indicated. It may be remarked that the obscurity of vision, caused by distance, multiplied Britain into a group of tin islands (Cassiterides).

There is no mention of amber in the Old Testament, and, after the facts above collected, we may confidently reject the suggestion of Heeren, that the Tyrians sailed into the Baltic, and traded directly with the Prussian coast (ib. p. 178.). Even with respect to tin, nearly all our positive evidence points to its being brought from Britain across Gaul to Massilia. The fact of its being called "Celtic tin," in the Aristotelic collection of Mar

vellous Stories, affords a strong presumption that it was known to the Greeks of that age merely as an article procured at a Celtic port. The remark of Hüllmann, as to trade with remote countries being carried on by land in early times, seems to apply to tin not less than to amber. (See "N. & Q.," 2nd S. v. 101.)

We learn from Pliny that Hanno, during the prosperous period of Carthage, sailed from Gades to the extremity of Arabia, and left a written account of his voyage. He adds that Himilco was sent at the same time to examine the external coasts of Europe (ii. 67., and see v. 1.). The periplus of Hanno is extant; his voyage was partly for the foundation of colonies, and partly for discovery; he is supposed to have sailed along the coast as far as Sierra Leone; and, according to the best-considered conjecture, his expedition took place about 470 B.C. (C. Müller, Geogr. Græc. Min. vol. i. Prol. p. xxii.) The discoveries of Himilco, as preserved in a written record, are referred to by Avienus in his geographical poem, the Ora Maritima. He describes certain islands, called the Estrymnian islands, off the coast of Spain, with which the Tartessians traded, which produced tin and lead, and which were only two days' sail from the islands of the Hibernians and the Albiones. He proceeds to say that the Carthaginians, both of the mother-country and the colonies, passed the Pillars of Hercules, and navigated the western sea. Himilco stated from personal experience that the voyage occupied at least four months, and he described the dangers of these unknown waters by saying that there was no wind to impel the. ship; that its course was impeded by weed; and that while in this helpless state, it was surrounded by marine monsters (v. 80-119.). If the date of the voyages of Hanno and Himilco is correctly fixed, it follows that, at a period subsequent to the expedition of Xerxes, the Carthaginians, though there was a Phoenician establishment at Gades, had not carried their navigation far along the coasts of the Atlantic; and that they then sent out two voyages of discovery one to the south, the other to the north-at the public expense. The report of Himilco, that the voyage from Gades to the tin islands (i. e. to Cornwall) occupied at least four months; and that navigation in these remote waters was impeded by the motionless air, by the abundance of seaweed, and by the monsters of the deep,-fables which the ancient mariners recounted of unexplored seas, could not be very attractive to the traders of the Carthaginian colonies. We learn however from Scylax that in his time the. Carthaginians had established many factories to the west of the Pillars of Hercules; and it is highly probable that the merchants who dwelt in them may have sailed along the coasts of Spain and Gaul for a certain distance to the north. Whatever were the profits of this distant trade,

the Carthaginians seem to have maintained their commercial monopoly with the utmost jealousy. They are stated by Strabo to have sunk any strange ship which sailed even as far as Sardinia or Cadiz (xvii. 1. 19.); and the same geographer tells a story of a patriotic Carthaginian wrecking his own vessel in order to prevent a Roman navigator, who had followed him, from finding the course to the tin islands. Up to that time, he says, the Carthaginians carried on the tin trade from Cadiz, and secured the monopoly by concealing the route. At length, however, the Romans discovered the way; and when P. Crassus, the lieutenant of Cæsar, had crossed over to the tin islands, the navigation became well known, although their distance from the mainland was greater than that of Britain (iii. 5. 11.). This story is not very intelligible, nor is it easy to fix a date for the occurrence; for the Romans were not a seafaring people, and they were not likely to attempt voyages beyond the Pillars of Hercules before the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.; whereas after that time the Carthaginians had no ships or factories; Gades had been sixty years in the hands of the Romans; and even since the end of the Second Punic war the Romans had been able to extort the secrets of the Carthaginians without resorting to stratagem. The account of P. Crassus opening the navigation with the tin islands (which Strabo considered as distinct from Britain) cannot be easily reconciled with the fact that before and during Cæsar's life the trade in British tin was carried on through Gaul.

Gades was originally a Tyrian settlement; it subsequently became Carthaginian, but its fidelity to Carthage seems to have been ambiguous; for there was a party in it which was in traitorous correspondence with the Romans during the Second Punic war (Livy, xxviii. 23. 30.). Strabo says that the Phoenicians occupied the productive district of southern Spain from a period earlier than Homer down to the time when it was taken from them by the Romans (iii. 2. 14.). Their presence can be clearly traced westwards along the coast inhabited by the Bastuli as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and from the Pillars along the Turdetanian coast as far as the Anas or Guadiana, or perhaps as far as the Sacred Promontory, the south-western extremity of Lusitania (Cape St. Vincent). See Movers, Das Phönizische Alterthum, vol. ii. pp. 615-647. Ulysippo, the modern Lisbon, is treated by Greek traditions as a foundation of Ulysses. This is a mere etymological mythus; and the conjecture of Movers, derived from the occurrence of the termination -ippo in other proper names, that this is a Phoenician form, is probable (Ib. 639.). But if the Phoenicians, either of Tyre or Carthage, established any colonies or factories on the western coast of Spain, they must have been obscure and

unimportant, and have perished without leaving any historical vestiges of their origin.

Some commerce was doubtless carried on by the Carthaginians, from Gades, with the external coasts of Spain and Gaul, and with the southern shores of Britain; but there is nothing to show that the Tyrians traded with any country beyond the Pillars of Hercules, except the passage in Ezekiel alluding to the tin trade with Tarshish, and the existence of tin in Greece at the time of Homer. If we suppose tin to have been conveyed across Gaul in those early times, these facts prove nothing more than a trade between Tyre and a port in the western part of the Mediterranean. This last is the hypothesis respecting the Tyrian tin trade which is adopted by Movers in his learned work on the Phoenicians. He rejects the theory of an ancient trade in tin between Tyre and India, which has been founded on the resemblance of the Sanscrit Kastira to the Greek κaσσíτερος. He holds, on the contrary, that this form, as well as the Aramaic Kastir and the Arabic Kasdir, were derived from the Greek; he refers to the passages concerning tin in the Periplus of Arrian, as showing that this metal was anciently imported into Arabia and India from Alexandria; and he believes that the Malacca tin had not been worked in antiquity (Tb. iii. 1. pp. 62-5.) only trace of Indian tin which occurs in any ancient author, is the article in Stephanus of Byzantium, which states, on the authority of the Bassarica of Dionysius, that Cassitira was an island in the ocean near India, from which tin was obtained. The Bassarica was a poem; and its author, Dionysius, was apparently Dionysius Periegetes, who lived at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century of our era. It celebrated the exploits of Bacchus, and, among others, recounted his expedition to India, where it enumerated many names of places (see Bernhardy ad Dionys. Perieg. pp. 507. 515.). Whether this geographical poet knew of tin being imported into Europe from the island of Banca, or whether he considered the Indian island of Cassitira as a tin island on mere etymological grounds, cannot now be determined; though the latter supposition seems the more probable.

The

The Greeks were for centuries acquainted both with tin and amber, probably through the intermediation of the Phoenicians, without obtaining any certain knowledge of the places from which they came. Their incurious ignorance, however, was not confined to the two articles in question; it extended likewise to ivory. That ornamental and useful substance was known to the Jews in the time of Solomon, about 1000 B.C. (1 Kings x. 22.), and to the Greeks in the time of Homer, probably about 200 years later. It reached the shores of the Mediterranean, through various hands, from India, and the remote parts of Africa (Paus. i.

12. 4., v. 12. 3.). But the early Greeks know nothing of the animal to which it belonged. The word elephas, with them, meant simply ivory. Herodotus mentions the elephant, as an animal, and describes it as occurring in the western extremity of Africa (iv. 191.). Ctesias, a contemporary of Xenophon, appears to have been the first Greek who spoke of the elephant from personal knowledge; he had seen the animal at Babylon (Elian, Hist. An. xvii. 29.; Bæhr, ad Ctes. pp. 268. 352.). The Greeks, however, may be said to have first seen the elephant in the expedition of Alexander: it was in consequence of their acquaintance with his military capacities that the successors of Alexander first used the Asiatic elephant in war, and that the Egyptian kings and the Carthaginians afterwards used the African elephant for the same purpose (see Armandi, Histoire Militaire des Eléphants, Paris, 1843, pp. 39-43. 64. 85. 134.). Armandi, in his military history of the elephant, calls attention to this fact, and remarks that the ancients for a long time decorated themselves with pearls, and wore garments of silk, before they knew that the former were obtained from a shell-fish, and that the latter was fabricated by an insect. The natural history of the pearl was indeed known to Theophrastus (De Lapid. § 36. ed. Schneider), as that of the silkworm was to Aristotle; but Virgil seems to have thought that silk, like linen and cotton, was a vegetable product: he describes it as the delicate fleece which the Seres, or Chinese, combed from the leaves of trees, Georg. ii. 121.

G. C. LEWIS.

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S EARL OF ESSEX. Some years ago, anterior to the publication by Captain Devereux of the Lives and Letters of the three Earls of Essex, I made considerable collections for a separate biography of Robert Devereux, the decapitated favourite of Queen Elizabeth. For this purpose I purchased a considerable mass of contemporary, or nearly contemporary, manuscripts; and turning them over again a day or two since, I found several, not hitherto noticed, which throw light especially on the fatal transaction which terminated the career of the principal party concerned in it, and of several of his followers. Some account of them may be acceptable in "N. & Q."

They profess to have been copied from the originals in the handwriting of Sir Robert Cecil, but whether those originals still exist is a question I am unable to answer. The first to which I shall advert has no date, but clearly belongs to the spring of 1601, and is thus headed: "The Names of such as were in the late Action of Rebellion," referring, of course, to the late rash outbreak of the Earl of Essex and his friends on February 8,

After about forty other names, including Fra. Tresham, Edw. Kynnersley, John Arden, Robert Catesby, Richard Greys (after whose name the words "for powder' are inserted), Anthony Rowse, &c., we come to the following memorandum:

"Lord Sussex, prisoner at Sir John Stanhope's, Lord Bedford, at Alderman Holydaye's, Lord Rich, at Mr. Sackford's," neither of which names have been previously inserted. The preceding list may perhaps be looked upon as in a manner introductory to the next document, which is headed, "The names of the Traytors, and the several places of imprisonment." I see that Capt. Devereux, having no particular information on the point, only dismisses it in general terms (vol. ii. p. 147.); but here we have all the particulars, none of which, as far as I am aware, were previously known to historians or biographers. Thus we are told that "Therle of Essex,

Therle of Rutland, Therle of Southamp

ton, Lord Sands,

Lo. Cromwell,

Lo. Monteagle, Sir Charles Danvers, and

Sir Christopher Blount,"

were confined in the Tower; while Sir John Davies and Sir Gilly Merricke were sent to Newgate. Tresham, "Sir Tho. Tresham's son," Sir Rob. Vernon, Sir Henry Carey, and Sir Edw. Michelborne, were secured in the Gatehouse; and Sir Charles Percy, Sir Jaslen Percy, Francis Manners, and Sir Edw. Baynham, with many others of less note, in the Fleet. Sir Thomas West," son and heire to the Lo. Leware," and five others, were confined in the Counter in the Poultry, while others, including Catesby and Littleton, were in Wood Street Counter. Sir Christr. Heydon, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Gray Bridges, son and heire to the Lo. Shandoys," were sent to the White Lion Prison. Against the names of Owen Salisbury and Tracy

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