The Adventures of Captain Mago

The people were all Dorians; tall, well-built men, with fair complexions, straight noses, and dark curly hair clustering over lofty foreheads. Nearly all of them came quite unarmed. Some of them were attired in old kitonets, evidently of Phœnician production; others wore a tasteless imitation of the same, made of coarse cloth of their own manufacture. For the most part they were bare-headed, the exceptions being the few who wore a kind of flat hat of plaited straw. There were some women of the party, and these well-nigh all were much to be admired in face and form; they were attired in long plain dresses, almost as simple as sacks, with openings at the seams to allow the head and arms to pass through; but these were covered by short open bodices, coming just below the waist, and becomingly slashed on either side. No jewellery nor any ornament whatever was to be seen about their persons.

Before my visitors arrived, I took the precaution of making an enclosure for my merchandise by driving some strong upright stakes into the ground and running a rope along from one to another, and told Hanno to make the natives understand that they could not be allowed to pass the rope. They readily understood him, and appeared to be altogether very intelligent, although somewhat reserved in their manner.

One of their number, who carried a long copper-headed staff and wore a cloth band round his head, acted as spokesman. He was evidently a sort of chief, and his companions waited in silence while we listened to what he said. The Dorians appear to be addicted to long speeches, and the chief stepped forward, and scarcely raising his eyes, made us a formal harangue. Hanno interpreted sufficiently well to enable me thoroughly to comprehend the purport of his speech. He began by bidding us welcome, and proceeded to pay us a variety of compliments, addressing us as demi-gods, calling us kinsmen of the tutelary deities of our ships, and concluded by asking that he and his people might be allowed to inspect the wonderful commodities that we had brought from the divine city of Sidon.

I was already aware that all the tribes that bear in common the name of Hellenes are accustomed to regard the Phœnicians as being of divine origin. The magnitude of our ships, the length of our voyages, the mysterious remoteness of our cities, all combine to confirm them in their belief, and it was not for our advantage at present to undeceive them; the time would come when they would be brought into closer relationship with our colonies, and they would find out by experience that we were ordinary mortals like themselves. Meanwhile they regarded us as superior beings, and listened with eager attention to whatever tales we pleased to pour into their ears.

By my instructions, Hanno informed the chief that we had brought with us many strange things from Caucasus, the land of giants; from Cilicia, where the mountains are the open mouths of the infernal world and spit out flames of fire; from Sidon, the metropolis of the gods; from Arabia, the land of the devout, where men live for three centuries and more; and from Egypt, where there are bull-gods, crocodiles, and serpents two stadia long. I made him understand that if his people could bring us ox-hides, Chalcidian copper, woven wool, or goats' horns, we, in exchange, could give them coats, glass beads, perfumes, nectar, or nearly anything they liked to ask for; and without delay, he despatched a number of the men back to the village, to procure such goods as we required.

"What awful lies!" said Chamai to me, aside, "didn't you tell them that the Midianites are a devout race? And didn't you say that the children of Ishmael live three hundred years? And did I hear aright that you should say there are gods in Egypt?"

I only smiled at this outburst of indignation; but Himilco laughed aloud and said:

"Never mind, Chamai; there may be worse lies than these; they will answer their purpose if they make these folks good buyers."

The chief had offered to sell me some pilegech, or young female slaves that he had captured in a recent raid upon the mainland; but I declined to make any purchase of the kind, knowing that there was no market for women-slaves either in our Libyan colonies or in Tarshish. Our word "pilegech" he pronounced pellex. The Dorians manifestly have considerable difficulty in articulating our language; for example, they say "kiton," for kitonet; "kephos," for koph, and "kassiteros," for kastira. Sometimes, like other savage nations, they fail to understand the true meaning of a word, and pervert it altogether; for instance, when speaking of the great sea beyond Gades, instead of calling it the Sea of Og, they describe it as a river named "Oceanos," and believe it to be a god.

The men that had been sent back by the chief soon returned with a very fair supply of good copper, ox-hides, and goats' horns, some of which were large enough to make good bows. They likewise brought some very excellent woollen cloth which they had themselves imported from the mainland. For all their goods the prices they demanded were singularly moderate.

It was now necessary, in order to find space and leisure for repairing our ships, that the throng of buyers, which seemed continually increasing, should be drawn away from the neighbourhood of the beach. To effect this, I placed a quantity of the merchandise under the charge of Hadlai, one of the most trustworthy of the sailors, and sent him into the interior of the island to dispose of what he could, instructing him to be sure and return to us in eight-and-forty hours, by which time I expected to complete the repairs. Bichri volunteered to act as an escort; and Jonah, with whose trumpet the Dorians seemed immensely amused, was sent to summon the natives to the sale.

In the course of the day I sent eight of my men to cut down an oak from the forest on the valley side, to make a new yard for the Dagon. The Dorians permitted us to take whatever wood we wanted without any charge, deeming it a sufficient compensation to themselves to watch our carpentering, and to listen to the wonderful tales of such of our sailors as could speak anything of their language. They were most attentive in bringing us firewood, water, and what else we wanted; and whatever they may be in their bearing to other nations, I can testify that to us Phœnicians they were most courteous and considerate.

The Dorians plied Chryseis with countless questions about the Pheakes, and made all kinds of inquiries about their country, their cities and their king; and she, pleased with the sound of a dialect kindred to her own, conversed with them willingly, and made them stare with surprise, as she recounted the glories of our temples, and the magnificence of our palaces. They had no clear idea of what Phœnicia really was, but imagined it to be an island, evidently confounding it with our colony of Chittim, or with our settlement at Chalcis, which was considerably nearer to them. They almost seem to think Phœnicians ubiquitous, for they give the name of Phœnicia to the coast of Caria, where our merchants have established some marts. This is really the country of the Carian Leleges, who, together with the Phrygians, were the Dorians' predecessors in the isle of Crete, and the first to drive the Cydonians to the highlands. The Dorians assert that the Leleges and Pelasgians preceded them on the mainland, and that many of them still remain. I can readily understand that the Carians, Æolians, and others, whom we drove from their own coasts, succeeded in reaching Crete; for the Carians were not ignorant of navigation, and at that part of the Archipelago, where the sea is thickly studded with islands, the voyage from the coast of Asia hither, even in small boats, would be by no means difficult. It is a fact, too, that the principal mountain in Crete is known by the Pelasgo-Ionian name of Ida, the same as that borne by the mountain in Æolia, opposite the island of Mitylene; the evidence, therefore, is very strong that the Pelasgians and Leleges, who were of the same race as the Carians, Æolians, Lycians, and Dardanians, must have occupied not only the entire coast from the Straits of Thrace down to the regions opposite Rhodes, but likewise all the mainland and islands between Thrace and Cape Malea. The Cydonians must be a remnant of some still earlier inhabitants of quite another race, driven back, first by the Pelasgians and Leleges, and afterwards by the Dorians, Ionians, and those others who are now advancing to establish themselves alike upon the coast and in the islands. The accuracy of this conclusion is borne out by the fact that our ancestors were acquainted with the Pelasgians long before they knew anything of Dorians and Ionians, and it is well known that there are still in existence cities large and populous, though badly built and weakly fortified, such as Plakir and Sculake in the Propontis, some distance north of Dardania and the isle of Tenedos.

I enter into all these details because I consider it part of the duty of a Phœnician mariner to make himself acquainted not only with the configuration of both land and sea, the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the laws of navigation and of commerce, but also with the origin, language, religion, and habits of every nation with whom he may be brought in contact; and my experience in my naval life has taught me that although the knowledge thus acquired is to be very cautiously revealed to strangers and foreigners, yet it cannot be too freely disseminated amongst one's own countrymen.

The Dorians acknowledge themselves to be a people akin to the Ionians, and are, like them, a branch of the great family known by the name of Hellenes, Ræci, or Græci. These Hellenes, like the children of Israel, are comprised of twelve peoples or tribes; the Thessalians, the Bœotians, the Dorians, the Ionians, the Perrhebians, the Magnetes, the Locrians, the Eteans, the Achæans, the Phocians, the Dolopes, and the Malians. Their own account of themselves is, that on reaching the south of Thracia they settled in the district known as Hellopia, of which they were still in possession, and whence they spread themselves over the peninsula and the islands. Hellopia is the country traversed by the River Achelous, which empties itself into the channel that divides the island of Cephallenia from the mainland. The two oldest cities in Hellopia are Dodona and Delphi, which are both the abodes of the chief gods. It is from the name of their city that the Hellenes are sometimes called Dodonians, although they are far more frequently referred to by us as the Ionians, or sons of Ion or Javan. Amongst themselves, however, they are invariably designated Hellenes, Graii, or Græci.

All the Hellenic tribes recognise four special bonds of fraternity: first, they are of one common origin; secondly, they speak a common tongue; thirdly, they worship the same gods, and in the same modes and places; and fourthly, they cultivate a general uniformity in manners and disposition. They all send representative chiefs or elders to Dodona, and I presume to Delphi also, for the purpose of settling any common difference; and there they take a threefold oath, never to destroy any city that has ever been admitted into covenant with them; never to intercept the supply of water to any city of their fraternity, and always to unite to punish those who should violate their pledge.

Their principal god dwells at Dodona, and is named Zeus. They believe him to be the same as the Zeus of the Leleges and Pelasgians, whom the Curetes of Crete honour with songs and dances. Like Baal Chamaim, he is the god of the air and sky, and son of the heaven and the earth. He it was who, in the form of a bull, carried off the Phrygian goddess Europa to Crete; and on the south of the island, in the valley of a little river, Lethe, the Dorians have a city which I have never seen, but which they call Hellotis, where there is a plane-tree, under which Zeus and Europa are said to have reposed. Another town there is in the island, named Cnossus, founded, I believe, by the Phrygians, where Zeus has one of his places of abode.

Another deity, almost equally powerful, is Apollo, the archer and soothsayer. He is known as the Pythian prophet, and dwells at Delphi, where he is consulted about future events. He is held in especial veneration by the Dorians, whom he is said, under the form of a dolphin, to have conducted across the seas. Probably he may be the same as our Phœnician archer-god, Baal Chillekh, whom we have ourselves taught the Hellenes to worship, and it may be that because he taught them navigation, they represent him as a dolphin.

The mysterious Hermes, the god of the hidden forces of nature, is likewise an object of their high regard. It is not unlikely that they learnt his worship from the Egyptians; but whether it be so or not, it is quite certain that he has been known amongst them from a very remote antiquity.

The Cydonians have made them acquainted with Artemis, and we are ourselves leading them to the knowledge of Ashtoreth or Astarte, whom they are gradually learning to venerate above all their other divinities.

Of Beelzebub, Baal-Peor, El Adonai, Chemosh, or the Cabiri, the Hellenes know nothing. They are absolutely ignorant of the position of the Cabiri, and have no conception of guiding their course in sailing by the seventh Cabiros or Pole-star: to say the truth, they are very cowardly sailors, rarely venturing to lose sight of the shore. Their boats are large but very badly built, having no decks, ill-contrived rigging, and very defective arrangements for ballast; consequently they are equally unsteady whether they are impelled by oars or worked by sails. The people have little idea of distance; they are profoundly ignorant of the shape of the country, and are at once deterred from a voyage by the least stress of weather, or by the most insignificant current.

The towns are built in places that are difficult of access, and are rudely fortified with piles of uncemented stones. The houses are made either of rough stone, or of bricks that have been baked in the sun, and are very little better than cabins. The people are not at all skilful in any handicraft; and they can scarcely do more than manufacture their copper lance-heads, hatchets, breast-plates, and helmets, which, although very ill-formed, are covered with ornaments. They have no cavalry and very few archers, and rarely use swords in fighting; lances are their favourite weapons, and these are used by their chiefs either on foot or from the top of their chariots. In close combat they employ a kind of poignard, which very frequently is seen curved at the point into a kind of hook. By way of pastime, Hannibal and Chamai occasionally made Hanno practise with the sword, and on these occasions they would be surrounded by a group of Dorians, who were struck with wonder and admiration at the variety of the thrusts, passes, and parries of the fencing, as exhibited in the different practices of the Chaldeans, the Philistines, and the Israelites, and the dexterity they all alike required.

The shields which they use are round, and made of ox-hide, those of the chiefs being faced with copper and ornamented with paintings. Before we left the island, the Dorian king of Hellotis came to visit us, and for one of our bucklers of wrought bronze offered me five-and-twenty oxen; but I allowed him to have it for some agates, to be used in making jewellery, and for an enormous pair of boar's tusks which he had brought from the mainland, and which now adorn the temple of Ashtoreth at Sidon.

On the third day after our arrival in the island, one of the sailors, who had been struck by an arrow in the Egyptian engagement, died, the wound having gangrened. According to our national custom, I had all the ships hung with black, and made inquiry of the natives for some cavern in the neighbourhood where we could inter the body. They showed me a cave in the mountain side about thirty stadia distant, and were quite ready in any way to assist me, as they are themselves very careful about the burial of their dead; in fact, there is nothing of which they entertain a greater dread than of being deprived of funeral rites, and this is one great reason that deters them from venturing out far to sea.

After the corpse had been washed, it was borne to its resting-place, a considerable crowd of Dorians following in the rear, amongst them a large proportion of women, who kept up loud cries of lamentation. The cave in which we laid the body was very deep, but by no means lofty; in it we left not only the body, but the planks and the two oars which had formed the bier. When the opening had been closed by piling up a heap of large and heavy stones, Hanno, in a solemn voice, made an invocation to Menath, Hokh, and Rhadamath, the judges of the souls in Cheol.

All these three gods of our nation are known to the Dorians, who call them by the names of Minos, Eacus, and Rhadamanthus. They believe that Minos, previous to his appointment as a judge in the infernal regions, was a king of Crete, and that, being a skilful navigator, he had sailed as far as the mainland to the Ionians, who, by way of tribute, gave him a number of boys and girls. With regard to Rhadamanthus, they suppose that he was brought to the island of Chalcis by the Phœnician demi-gods; but the truth is, that they have made some strange confusion between the god himself and the Sidonian sailors through whom they had become acquainted with his existence. In the same way, I believe, that Europa (the goddess who was carried off by Zeus) and Ariadne (known first to one of the demi-gods, and then to Dionysus, the god of rivers) are nothing more than other names for Ashtoreth, surviving from the period when the Phœnicians first imported wine to their shores. From us, too, they have derived their knowledge of Khousor Phtah, the god of the forge, whom they call Phtos or Phaistos; and in short, whatever familiarity they have either with literature, wine, or with the use of metals, all seems to have been derived from the Sidonians. As for our own knowledge, that (according to our ancestors long, long ago) was obtained from the Egyptians, and the Egyptians derived theirs from the still more ancient Atlantes, who, when the Great Sea was still to the south of Libya, came from lands in the West that have since passed away, traversing Ethiopia in their course. How true it is, that though nation may follow upon nation, the gods are immortal!

The Dorian people gave us their word of honour that the cavern in which we had buried our companion should never be desecrated, and we returned to our ships, which remained hung with black for the remainder of the day.

Towards evening Hadlai and his party made their appearance, bringing a goodly supply of purchases. Jonah, marching along with a consequential air, and encircled by a crowd who had followed him down from the mountains was carrying a calf upon his back.

"What are you going to do with that calf?" I asked.

"Eat it," he said; "I have earned it."

"How? by blowing your trumpet?"

"No; not by blowing my trumpet, but by wrestling: they matched their strongest against me, and I levelled them all; and so I won my calf. A capital country is this! I will knock them over, every one, if only they will give me a calf every time."

And, catching sight of the King of the Dorians, who had come with a herd of oxen, he shouted to him:

"Yes, you too; give me a bullock, and I will knock you down. Give me two, and I will break every bone in your skin."

"Silence, fool!" I cried, hoping to bring him to his senses. The King did not understand Phœnician, and asked what the man was saying; but I did not think it necessary to enlighten him.

Jonah continued muttering and grumbling to himself: "Why should I not fight them, if they like it? If I were to challenge a man of the tribe of Dan or Judah, I should soon find a knife in my ribs! But here they like it, and give me a calf. Fine country this!"

That evening the wind blew briskly from the north-north-west, but not with violence enough to make us hesitate about taking our departure next morning. The Dorians were full of surprise at our determination to put to sea, and owned that nothing would induce them to face the peril of such a wind.

"Can it really be," asked one of the chiefs, "that you intend to start upon your voyage with this gale in your very teeth?"

Upon my assuring him that I had fully made up my mind, he continued:

"And that, too, with the recollection so fresh of the terrific storm in which you came? Truly, you are demi-gods indeed!"

"Aye, yes," I said; "children of Ashtoreth we are; and we rode the seas that night in a way that was worthy of our fame!"

"And were not the Cabiri considerate for me?" interposed Himilco; "the salt sea made me thirsty, and they sent me a goat-skin full of luscious wine."

Without noticing him, the chief continued:

"Assuredly the Phœnician deities maintain a careful watch to guard their children. I shall not soon forget how I saw their mighty chariot roll above the waves to your assistance."

It was now Himilco's turn to look astonished.

"Chariot upon the waters!" he exclaimed; "what was it like?"

"It was high, and round, and parti-coloured, and had great sea-monsters drawing it over the raging sea."

He spoke with a kind of awe; but it struck me that he might perchance have seen Bodmilcar's gaoul, and that the lightning's glare had given it the variegated effect which he had noticed. I suggested this, in an undertone, to Himilco, who only said:

"If Bodmilcar were the sea-god, I should like to have the chance of getting into the sea-god's chariot and ringing the sea-god's neck."

While we had been talking, I had observed Hamilcar and several others closely scrutinising something that the waves had cast upon the beach. Curious to see what was interesting them, I joined them, and found some fragments of a ship.

"This is no Phœnician work," said Hamilcar, pointing to a bolt still hanging to one of the planks.

"No," I agreed; "and from the thickness of the wood, and from the bolts being driven in without wedges, I have no doubt that it is an Egyptian craft that has been wrecked."

"Look here!" cried Himilco; "here is proof positive; the goose's neck from the prow!"

"It may be," I said, "that some Egyptians accompanied Bodmilcar, and have come to grief in the tempest."

"I hope Bodmilcar has not shared their fate," said Gisgo; "drowning is too good for him; I want him to have a stout rope round his neck. And besides, the rascal has three-quarters of our merchandise that I should like to get back."

"Rather too much to expect, I am afraid," I said; "however, we must now embark. We are bound for Sicily where perhaps you may recover your lost ears."

A grim smile passed over the old pilot's face.

"Until the wind changes," I observed, "we shall have to keep on tacking;" and I moved towards the ships.

At this moment the Dorian King approached me with the air of having something important to communicate; he broke out abruptly:

"You are a Phœnician, a ruler of the sea: I am a Dorian prince, a ruler of my people: so far we are equal. These oxen, these horses, these chariots are all mine; from my thirty villages I can summon twelve thousand men. I am favoured of the gods. I am mighty."

I thought he surely was about to make some demand, but a single glance satisfied me that he was not in a position to exact anything by force; not only were Hanno, Chamai, Bichri and Jonah still on shore, but Hannibal, too, was close at hand, supported by forty of his men, while the King was attended only by about a score and a half of lancers. I made no reply, but waited for him to proceed.

"Ruler of the Phœnicians," he said, "I want you to sell me your pilegech Chryseis: you have only to name your own price for the Ionian, and that price is yours."

Hanno made a start forward, but I held him back.

"King of the Dorians!" I said, "Chryseis is not designed for sale. However, she is free to answer for herself. To us your kindness and courtesy have been great; and I am ready to consent, in return, to give the maiden up to you. But this one condition must be fixed; she must become yours by her own free choice."

Hanno glanced eagerly at Chryseis, and imploringly at me.

The King advanced to where the girl was standing, and proffering his hand, said:

"Daughter of the Helli! kinswoman of our tribe! come and be the Queen of the Dorians of Hellotis!"