Page:Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer's Life and Writings.pdf/101

Rh 88 Western Ocean, serve to cool the Air, and fan the Inhabitants of the happy Shore.' This Description of Elysium makes it just such a Place as the Fields in the Neighbourhood of Cadix, or the adjacent Andaluzian Plain.—

P.266. (a) / 275/ (r)

'Posidonius the Philosopher and Historian, in describing this rich Country, seems all in Raptures with his Hyperboles.'—He says, 'that every Mountain and every Hill teems with Materials of Coin: That it seems to be the ever-flowing Treasure of Nature, and the inexhausted Magazine of Government : That the whole Coast is not only rich, but underlaid with Wealth ; and that it is not Pluto or Dis who lives under it, but Plutus, or the God of Riches in his greatest Glory.'

Indeed Strabo himself asierts, " That it yields to no Spot in the Earth for the Richness of the Soil, and the Excellency of the Productions both of Sea and Land; that for Plenty and Goodness of Grain, Wine, Oil, Wax, Honey, Saffron, Pitch, Salt, Wood/Wool, &c. no Land can compare with it : Nor for the Number and Fatness of their Flocks, and Plenty of Game in their Fields. That only the Sea, in the Multitude and Variety of Fishes of the highest Taste and Delicacy, can contend with the adjoining Coast." And Pliny adds, 'That Betica, the old TARTESUS, outstript all the Provinces in Affluence