Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/95

Rh argument on it. But even without this the evidence already given makes it very probable that the tin trade with Britain already existed. The tin derived from the Cassiterides could only have reached the Greeks through the medium of the merchantmen of Gades. That ancient city, almost alone of all the Tyrian colonies in the West, had managed to keep free from the yoke of Carthage. It is not improbable that friendly trade relations existed between her and Massalia and her colony Emporiæ. For instance, we find all three employing the same peculiar monetary system; besides, there was the strong bond of a common hatred and dread of Carthage, who was now almost at the zenith of her power.

By the time of Pytheas the trade of Massalia with Southern Spain and Gades must have been most sensibly hindered. For the Phocaic cities which had once fringed the coast of Spain as far as Malaga (the most southern of which was Mænaca) were falling one by one before the Carthaginians, whose “fleet commanded, without a rival, the whole western Mediterranean”. “They endeavoured still more thoroughly to monopolise the maritime commerce of this region at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own subjects, and it was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from any violence that might help forward their purpose. A contemporary of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes, the father of geography (275-194 B.C.), affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, was thrown by them into the sea; and with this statement the fact completely accords that Carthage, by the treaty of 348 B.C., declared the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading-vessels, whereas by that of 308 B.C. it totally closed them, with the exception of Carthage itself, to the same.” (Mommsen, Roman Hist., ii, p. 15.)

Under such circumstances Massaliote trade with Gades must have been indeed fraught with dangers, and it was