II.] TREES IMPORTED INTO GREECE. 39

worthy, because he represents the Cassiterides as producing tin,
whereas that metal is not found in any of the groups of islands
which lie off the coasts of Gaul, or Britain, or Spain. The explicit
character of his statements, however, seems to have deceived his
contemporaries, and Strabo among them. The geographer's
ideas on the subject are simply fabulous, for, as we have seen, he
believed that the islands, which he says were ten in number, lay
in the open sea to the northward of Cape Finisterre, in which
position no islands ever have been ; and from this we may learn
how little reliable information on the subject had been obtained
by the Romans.

A further link of connexion between Greece and distant lands
may be traced in the trees which were introduced Treeg im_
from abroad into that country. These, like the ported into
objects of which we have just been speaking, were cece*
in most instances imported by the Phoenicians, but they came
from a different direction, namely from the side of Asia. Fore-
most among them is the palm, the name of which
in Greek, phoenix^ at once reveals the region from
which it came. This tree is not mentioned in the Iliad, but in
the Odyssey we hear of the famous palm-tree of Delos, of which
Ulysses, who compares Nausicaa's beauty to it, says that it
caused him, though a much travelled man, to stand still in
amazement1. It continued to be held in reputation as the
earliest specimen that was known in Greece, so that Euripides
calls it " the first-born palm2." The exotic character of the tree,
however, is proved by its fruit refusing to ripen in the climate
of Greece ; this Pausanias remarked in antiquity8, and the same
thing is true at the present 'day. The pomegranate,
also, was a genuinely Phoenician tree; it was
sacred to Adonis, and Aphrodite (i.e. Astarte) was
said herself to have planted it in Cyprus4. In Homer it is

1 Qd. 6. 162—7.

a vpw6yovos 0o?wŁ : Eur. jffltf. 458.

8 Speaking of the temple of Artemis in Aulis he says (9. 19. 8)
, o#/c & aira?

4 See Hehn, Kulturpfiamen und Hausthiere> (3* edit.) p. 206, . -