Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians in this region, and originally perhaps a dependency of the adjoining Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, it soon outstripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity of its inhabitants.

The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring ceaselessly towards the west: it had already dislodged the Phoenicians from Greece proper and Italy, and it was preparing to supplant them also in Sicily, in Spain, and even in Libya itself.

"Strong in their military organization, fierce in their warlike spirit, and rich by their position and commercial instincts, they even threatened the ancient supremacy of the Phoenicians of the north.

Among these were the Phoenicians on the west, and the Syrians on the north.

The chroniclers mention the Guaycures and others as their ancestors, and Stahl traces their origin to a mixture of the Phoenicians with the Aborigines of remote antiquity]

We must rather assume that the Libyan alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician language that have reached us were written.

The Greeks, who were indebted to the Phoenicians for many things, may be supposed to have learned from them the art of building temples; and it is certain that the Romans borrowed from the Greeks both the worship of the gods and the construction of temples.

The Greek supplants the Phoenician in all his factories, all his colonies in the East: soon will the Roman come, and do likewise in the West.

The analogy in name and legal position between the Latins of Rome and the Liby-phoenicians of Carthage is unmistakable.

MYCENÆ, capital of Agamemnon's kingdom, in the NE. of the Peloponnesus, was in very ancient days a great city, but never recovered the invasion of the people of Argos in 468 B.C.; excavations point to its civilisation being more akin to Phoenician than Greek.

The glass beads, erroneously called Druid's beads, furnish Catlin with another proof of affiliation, which, however, is invalidated by the well-ascertained facts of glass-manufactories having, in remotest antiquity, existed in Egypt, and of glass beads having been dispersed by the Phoenicians among the nations which they visited.