mean persons, in respect of the great Hermes, the first who was honoured by that name for his noble qualities, as much or more than for his mighti

ness.

After the finishing and dedication of the temple and house of the Lord, Solomon fortified Jerusalem with a triple wall, and repaired Hazor, which had been the ancient metropolis of the Canaanites before Joshua's time; so did he Gaza of the Philistines; he built Berothon, Gerar, and the Millo, or munition of Jerusalem. For Pharaoh, (as it seemeth in favour of Solomon,) came up into the edge of Ephraim, and took Gerar, which place the Canaanites yet held, and put them to the sword and burnt their city. The place and territory he gave Solomon's wife for a dowry. And it is probable, that because Solomon was then busied in his magnificent buildings, and could not attend the war, that he entreated his father-in-law to rid him of these neighbours, which Pharaoh performed. But he thereby taught the Egyptians to visit those parts again before they were sent for; and in his son's Rehoboam's time, Sheshack, this man's successor, did sack Jerusalem itself.

Solomon also built Megiddo in Manasseh, on this side Jordan; and Balah in Dan; also Tadmor, which may be either Ptolemy's Thamoron in the desert of Judah, or as Josephus thinks Palmyra in the desert of Syria'; which Palmyra, because it stood on the utmost border of Solomon's dominion, to the north-east of Libanus, and was of David's conquest when he won Damascus, it may seem that Solomon therefore bestowed thereon the most cost, and fortified it with the best art that that age had. Josephus calls this place Thadamora ", by which name, saith he, given by Solomon, the Syrians as yet call it. Jerome, in his book of Hebrew places, calls 11 Joseph,

9 Joseph. Ant. 1. viii. c. ii. L viii. Ant. c. ii.

10 Joseph. 1. viii. Ant. c. ii:

it Thermeth. In after-times, when it was rebuilt by Adrian the emperor, it was honoured with his name, and called Adrianopolis.

In respect of this great charge of building, Solomon raised tribute throughout all his dominions; besides an hundred and twenty talents of gold received from Hiram's servants. Solomon offered Hiram twenty towns in or near the upper Galilee; but be cause they stood in an unfruitful and marshy ground, Hiram refused them, and thereof was the territory caled Chabul. These towns, as it is supposed, lay in Galilee of the Gentiles, 'non quod, gentes ibi habitarent; 'sed quia sub ditione regis gentilis erat ;' not that it was possessed by the Gentiles, (saith Nauclerus,) but because it was under the rule of a king that was a Gentile. Howsoever it were, it is true that Solomon, in his twenty-first year, fortified those places which Hiram refused. Further, he made a journey into Syria-Zobah, and established his tributes; the first and last war, (if in that expedition he were driven to fight,) that he made in person in all his life. He then visited the border of all his dominions, passing from Tadmor to the north of Palmyrena, and so to the deserts of Idumea, from whence he visted Ezion-gaber and Eloth, the uttermost place of the south of all his territories, bordering to the Red sea; which cities I have described in the story of Moses.

SECT. III.

Of Solomon's sending to Ophir, and of some seeming contradictions about Solomon's riches; and of Pineda's conceit of two strange passages about Africk. HERE Solomon prepared his fleet of ships for India, with whom Hiram joined in that voyage, and furnished him with mariners and pilots; the Tyrians being of all others the most expert seamen. this part of Arabia which at this time belonged to Edom and was conquered by David, did the fleet

From

pass to the East Indies, which was not far off, namely, to Ophir, one of the islands of the Moluccas, a place exceeding rich in gold;-witness the Spaniards, who, notwithstanding all the abundance which they gather in Peru, do yet plant in those islands of the east at Manilla, and recover a great quantity from thence, and with less labour than they do in any one part of Peru, or New Spain.

The return which was made by these ships a-mounted to four hundred and twenty talents, but, in 2 Chron. viii., it is written, four hundered and fifty talents; whereof thirty went in expence for the charge of the fleet and wages of men ; and four hundred and twenty talents, (which make five and twenty hundred and twenty thousand crowns') came clear. And thus must those two places be reconciled. As for the place, 1 Kings x. 14., which speaketh of six hundred sixty and six talents of gold, that sum, as I take it, is of other receipts of Solomon's which were yearly, and which came to him, besides these profits from Ophir.

My opinion of the land of Ophir, that it is not Peru in America, (as divers have thought,) but a country in the East Indies; with some reason why at those times they could not make more speedy return to Jerusalem from the East Indies than in three years; and that Tharsis in scripture is divers times taken for the ocean,-hath been already declared in the first book '.

Only it remaineth, that I should speak somewhat of Pineda's strange conceits, who being a Spaniard of Bætica, would fain have Gades or Čalismalis, in old times called Tartessus, which is the south-west corner of that province, to be the Tharsis from whence Solomon fetched his gold; for no other reason, as it seems, but for love of his own country, and because of some affinity of sound between Tharsis and Tartessus. For, whereas it may seem strange

1 Chap. viii. Sect. X.

that it should be three years ere they that took ship in the Red sea, should return from the East Indies to Jerusalem, this hath been in part answered already. And further, the intelligent may conceive of sundry lets, in the digging and refining of the metal, and in their other traffic, and in their land-carriages between Jerusalem and the Red sea, and perhaps also elsewhere; so that we have no need to make Solomon's men to go many thousand miles out of their way to Gades, round about all Africk, that so they might be long a coming home.

For the direct way to Gades, (which, if Solomon and the Israelites knew not, the Tyrians, which went with them, could not have been ignorant of,) was along the Mediterranean sea; and so, besides many wonderful inconveniences and terrible navigation in rounding Africa, they should have escaped the troublesome land-carriage between Jerusalem and the Red sea, through dry, desert, and thievish countries; and within thirty miles of Jerusalem, at Joppa or some other haven in Solomon's own country, have laden and unladen their ships.

But this direct course they could not hold, saith Pineda, because the huge island of Atlantis, in largeness greater than all Africk and Asia, being swallowed up in the Atlantic ocean, hindered Solomon's ships from passing through the straits of Gibraltar : for this he allegeth Plato in Timæo. But that this calamity happened about Solomon's time or that thereby the straits of Gades were filled with mud and made impassable, so that there could be no coming to Gades by the Mediterranean sea; or, that this indraught, where the sea runneth most violently, and most easily scoureth his channel, should be filled with mud, and not also the great ocean in like manner, where this huge island is supposed to have stood; or that Solomon's ships, being in the Red sea, should neglect the golden mines of the East Indies, (which were infinitely better, and nearer to the Red sea,

1

than any in Spain,) to seek gold at Cadiz, by the way of compassing Africa,-it is most ridiculous to imagine. For the Spaniard himself, that hath also the rich Peru in the west, fortifieth in the East Indies, and inhabits some part thereof, as in Manilla, finding in those parts no less quantity of gold, (the small territory which he there possesseth considered,) than in Peru.

The same Pineda hath añother strange passage, round about all Africa", which elsewhere he dreams of; supposing, whereas Jonas sailing to Tharsis the city of Cilicia was cast out in the Mediterranean, and taken up there by a whale, that this whale, in three days swimming above twelve thousand English miles, along the Mediterranean sea, and so through the straits of Gades, and along the huge seas round about Africa, cast up Jonas upon the shore of the Red sea, that so he might have perhaps some six miles the shorter, (though much the worse,) way to Nineveh. This conceit he grounds only upon the ambiguity of the word Suph, which oftentimes is an epithet of the Red sea, (as if we should call it mare algosum, the sea full of weeds,) for the Red sea. But in Jonas ii. 5. it is generally taken in the proper signification for weeds, and not as Pineda would have it, who, in this place, against his own rule, (which elsewhere he giveth us,) supposeth strange miracles without any need. For this long voyage of the whale, finished in three days, is a greater mi racle than the very preservation of Jonas in the belly of the whale; and therefore, seeing there is no necessity of this miracle, we send it back unto him, keeping his own rule, which, in this place he forgets; 'Miracula non sunt multiplicanda.' And again, • Non sunt miracula gratis danda, nec pro arbitrio nova fingenda3:' miracles are not to be multiplied without necessity, nor delivered without cause, nor

2 De rebus Sal. I. iv. c. xii. xi. As it appears he took ship at Japho or Joppa, chap, i. v. 3. 3 Ing. F.