III. If we once presume that the Phenicians reached CHAP. the Scilly islands, and extracted tin from them, we shall do great injustice to their memory to suppose that they, who could sail from Tyre to the Scilly islands, would not have adventured across the small sea between them and the Land's End. Indeed, the voyage of Himilco shows that the Carthaginians, the offspring of Tyre, pursued voyages even more northward than Britain. 15 We may therefore admit, without much chance of error, that the Cassiterides visited by the Phenicians were the British islands, though the Romans understood by the name the Islands of Scilly, with perhaps part of the coast of Cornwall, 16 ditions. HAVING thus stated the most authentic circum- Welsh trastances that can be now collected, of the peopling of Britain by the Kimmerians, the Keltoi, and the Phenicians; it may not be improper to state, in one view, all that the Welsh traditions deliver of the ancient inhabitants of the island. As traditions of an ancient people committed to writing, they deserve to be preserved from absolute oblivion. ACCORDING to the Welsh triads, while it was uninhabited by human colonies, and was full of bears, wolves, beavers, and a peculiar kind of wild cattle, it had the name of Clas Merddhin." In this state, Hy Cadarn led the first colony of the Cymry to it, of whom some went to Bretagne. 18 It then acquired the name of the Honey Island. 19 In the course 15 Pliny, lib. ii. c. 67. 16 Pliny has preserved the name of the Phenician navigator who first procured lead from the Cassiterides. He says, Plumbum ex Cassiteride insula primus apportavit Midacritus. Hist. Nat. lib. vii. c. 57. 17 Trioedd 1. 18 Ib. 4. and 5. 19 Ib. 1. I. 21 BOOK of time, Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, reigned in it, and from him it was called Ynys Prydain, the Isle of Prydain 20; which is its present denomination in Welsh, and which the Greeks and Romans seem to have extended into Britannia. It was afterwards visited by two foreign tribes of Kimmerian origin, the Lloegrwys, from Gwasgwyn, or Gascony; and the Brython, from Llydaw, or Bretagne. Both of these were peaceable colonists. The Lloegrwys impressed their name upon a large portion of the island. At subsequent periods, other people came with more or less violence. The Romans; the Gwyddyl Fficti (the Picts) to Alban or Scotland, on the part which lies nearest to the Baltic; the Celyddon (Caledonians) to the north parts of the island; the Gwyddyl to other parts of Scotland; the Corraniaid from Pwyll (perhaps Poland) to the Humber; the men of Galedin, or Flanders, to Wyth; the Saxons; and the Llychlynians, or Northmen." Carthaginians acquainted As the prosperity of the Phenicians declined under the hostilities of the ancient conquerors, who with Bri- emerged from Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, their tain descendants, the Carthaginians, succeeded to the possession of their European settlements; and in some places, as in Spain, and Scilly, greatly extended their territorial power. The Carthaginian occupation of Spain is fully attested to us by the Roman historians, and was distinguished by the wars in that country of the celebrated Carthaginian generals, Asdrubal and Hannibal. It was natural 20 Trioedd 1. Isidorus says, that Britain derived its name from a word of its inhabitants. 23 Ib. 7. 24 Ib. 6. 25 Ib. 7. 21 Ib. 5. 26 Ib. 6. 22 Ib. 8. 27 Ib. 8. III. that when possessed of Spain, they should also CHAP. acquire the more distant colonies of the Phenicians, and continue their commercial intercourse with the British islands, and the neighbouring shores. Hence, there is no reason to disbelieve the opinion, that the Carthaginians had the same intercourse with the British islands which the Phenicians established. The voyage of Himilco warrants the supposition. This Carthaginian officer sailed from Spain, on a voyage of discovery of the northern coasts of Europe, at the same time that Hanno was directed to circumnavigate Africa.28 28 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. ii. c. 67. ВООК I. CHAP. IV. On the Knowledge which the Greeks had of the British Islands. — And on the Tradition of the Trojan Colony. THE HE Grecian knowledge of Europe was gradually obtained. The calamities experienced at sea, by the conquerors of Troy on their return, dispersed them into many parts of the maritime regions of Europe. The subsequent settlements of several Grecian colonies in Italy, as well as that already noticed at Marseilles, from which they pursued distant navigations; and the visits of Grecian travellers and philosophers to the Phenician cities in Spain, led them to some knowledge of its western and northern seas, shores, and islands. The attack of Darius, the Persian king, on the Scythians in Europe, revealed more knowledge of these people than former ages had acquired; and the expeditions of Alexander, before his eastern adventure, disclosed to the Greeks all the north of Europe, up to the Danube. In the same manner, the restless enterprises of Mithridates made known to both Greeks and Romans the various tribes that inhabited the sea of Azoph and its vicinity." 1 Strabo, p. 223. 236. Plutarch in Nic. p. 238. 2 Of which we have an instance in Posidonius. See Strabo, 264. 3 Herodotus. 4 Strabo, p. 26. Several of the Greeks wrote on the ancient geography of Europe, whose works we have lost, as Dicæarchus, Messenius, Eratosthenes, and Posidonius, whom Strabo mentions, p. 163., and whom he seems too fond of cen IV. Hence the Grecians had much information of the CHAP. ancient chorography of Europe, though they were unacquainted, as Polybius intimates, with many of its inland regions." to the BUT that Britain and Ireland were known to the Britain Greeks, at least by name, is an unquestionable fact. The ancient Argonautica, ascribed to Orpheus, Greeks. but of much later origin, describes the voyage of the Argonauts, on their return to Greece. In this curious work, they are made to sail round the north of Europe, from the Kimmerian Bosphorus. In coming southward, the author says "they passed by the island Iernida." Whether the next island they noticed, which is described as full of pine-trees, was any part of Britain, cannot be ascertained. As this work, if not written in the time of Pisistratus, which many assert it to have been, is at least of great antiquity; it is an evidence that Ireland was known to the ancient Greeks. suring, which is one of the faults of Strabo. It was a favourite 6 Suidas says, the Argonautica was written by an Orpheus 7 Agyovautixa, 1179. p. 156. ed. Lips. 1764. Strabo, lib.iv. p. 307. calls Ireland I, and Diodorus Siculus gives it a name that approaches very near its native appellation. Its name in the Gaelic is Erin; in Diodorus it is Ip, lib. v. p. 309. 8 The antiquity of the agyovautixa has been ably vindicated by D. Ruhnkenius. He shows that it was quoted by two ancient grammarians, Orus and Draco Stratonicensis. He gives his own critical judgment of their antiquity in strong terms: |