and importing their several goods; as they also mixed with the
Phoenicians, who lived by the sea-side, by means of their love of
lucre in trade and merchandise. Nor did our forefathers betake
themselves, as did some others, to robbery; nor did they, in
order to gain more wealth, fall into foreign wars, although our
country contained many ten thousands of men of courage sufficient
for that purpose. For this reason it was that the Phoenicians
themselves came soon by trading and navigation to be known to the
Grecians, and by their means the Egyptians became known to the
Grecians also, as did all those people whence the Phoenicians in
long voyages over the seas carried wares to the Grecians. The
Medes also and the Persians, when they were lords of Asia, became
well known to them; and this was especially true of the Persians,
who led their armies as far as the other continent [Europe]. The
Thracians were also known to them by the nearness of their
countries, and the Scythians by the means of those that sailed to
Pontus; for it was so in general that all maritime nations, and
those that inhabited near the eastern or western seas, became
most known to those that were desirous to be writers; but such as
had their habitations further from the sea were for the most part
unknown to them which things appear to have happened as to Europe
also, where the city of Rome, that hath this long time been
possessed of so much power, and hath performed such great actions
in war, is yet never mentioned by Herodotus, nor by Thucydides,
nor by any one of their contemporaries; and it was very late, and
with great difficulty, that the Romans became known to the
Greeks. Nay, those that were reckoned the most exact historians
(and Ephorus for one) were so very ignorant of the Gauls and the
Spaniards, that he supposed the Spaniards, who inhabit so great a
part of the western regions of the earth, to be no more than one