The island Cyprus was discovered by the Phoenicians not long before; for Eratosthenes [225] tells us, that Cyprus_ was at first so overgrown with wood that it could not be tilled, and that they first cut down the wood for the melting of copper and silver, and afterwards when they began to sail safely upon the Mediterranean_, that is, presently after the Trojan war, they built ships and even navies of it:  and when they could not thus destroy the wood, they gave every man leave to cut down what wood he pleased, and to possess all the ground which he cleared of wood.  So also Europe at first abounded very much with woods, one of which, called the Hercinian, took up a great part of Germany, being full nine days journey broad, and above forty long, in Julius Caesar’s days:  and yet the Europeans had been cutting down their woods, to make room for mankind, ever since the invention of iron tools, in the days of Asterius and Minos.

All these footsteps there are of the first peopling of Europe, and its Islands, by sea; before those days it seems to have been thinly peopled from the northern coast of the Euxine-sea by Scythians descended from Japhet, who wandered without houses, and sheltered themselves from rain and wild beasts in thickets and caves of the earth; such as were the caves in mount Ida in Crete, in which Minos was educated and buried; the cave of Cacus, and the Catacombs in Italy near Rome and Naples, afterwards turned into burying-places; the Syringes and many other caves in the sides of the mountains of Egypt; the caves of the Troglodites between Egypt and the Red Sea, and those of the Phaurusii in Afric, mentioned by [226] Strabo; and the caves, and thickets, and rocks, and high places, and pits, in which the Israelites hid themselves from the Philistims in the days of Saul, 1 Sam. xiii. 6.  But of the state of mankind in Europe in those days there is now no history remaining.

The antiquities of Libya were not much older than those of Europe; for Diodorus [227] tells us, that Uranus the father of Hyperion, and grandfather of Helius and Selene, that is Ammon the father of Sesac, was their first common King, and caused the people, who ’till then wandered up and down, to dwell in towns:  and Herodotus [228] tells us, that all Media was peopled by [Greek:  demoi], towns without walls, ’till they revolted from the Assyrians, which was about 267 years after the death of Solomon:  and that after that revolt they set up a King over them, and built Ecbatane with walls for his seat, the first town which they walled about; and about 72 years after the death of