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 'Bethoron, Gerar, and the Millo or munition of Jerusalem. For Pharaoh (as it seemeth in favour of Salomon) came up into the edge of Ephraim, and took Gerar, which the Canaanites yet held, and put them to the sword, and burnt their city. The place and territory he gave Salomon's wife for a dowry. And it is probable, that because Salomon was then busied in his magnificent buildings, and could not attend the war, that he entreated his father-in-law to rid him of those neighbours, which Pharaoh performed. But he thereby taught the Egyptians to visit those parts again before they were sent for; and in his son Rehoboam's time Sheshack, this man's successor, did sack Jerusalem itself.

Salomon also built Megiddo in Manasse, on this side Jordan, and Balah in Dan; also Thadmor, which may be either Ptolemy's Thamoron, in the desert of Juda, or (as m Josephus thinks) Palmyra in the desert of Syria, which Palmyra, because it stood on the utmost border of Salomon's dominion, to the north-east of Libanus, and was of David's conquest when he won Damascus, it may seem that Salomon 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 Salomon, the Syrians as yet call it. Jerome, in his book of Hebrew places, calls 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, Salomon raised tribute through all his dominions; besides an hundred and twenty talents of gold received from Hiram's servants, Salomon offered Hiram twenty towns in or near the Upper Galilee; but because they stood in an unfruitful and marish ground, Hiram refused them, and thereof was the territory called Chabul.

These towns, as it is supposed, lay in Galilee of the Gen

1 Joseph. Ant. 1. 8. c. 2.

m Ibid.

n Ibid.

tiles, Non quod Gentes ibi habitarent: sed quia sub ditione regis Gentilis erat; "Not that it was possessed by the Gen"tiles," saith Nauclerus," but because it was under the “ rule of a king that was a Gentile." Howsoever it were, it is true that Salomon, 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 Thadmor to the north of Palmyrena, and so to the deserts of Idumæa, from whence he visited Eziongaber 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 Salomon's sending to Ophir, and of some seeming contradictions about Salomon's riches, and of Pineda's conceit of two strange passages about Africk.

HERE Salomon 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. From this part of Arabia, which at this time belonged to Edom, and was conquered by David, did the fleet pass on 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 Manilia, 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 amounted to four hundred and twenty talents; but in 2 Chron. viii. it is written four hundred and fifty talents; whereof thirty talents went in expense for the charge of the fleet and wages of men, and four hundred and twenty talents, which makes five and twenty hundred and twenty thousand crowns, came clear. And thus must those two places be reconciled. As for the

RALEGH, HIST. WORLD. VOL. II.

Nn

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 Salomon'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 Calismalis, in old times called Tartessus, which is the south-west corner of that province, to be the Tharsis from whence Salomon 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 that it should be three year 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 traffick, and in their land carriages between Jerusalem and the Red sea, and perhaps also elsewhere: so that we have no need to make Salomon'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 Salomon and the Israelites knew not, the Tyrians which went with them could not have been ignorant of) was along the Mediterran 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

Chap. 8. sect. 9. 10. §. 5. Lib. 4. de Rebus Salomonis, c. 6. et 15.

countries; and within thirty mile of Jerusalem, at Joppe, or some other haven in Salomon'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 Salomon's ships from passing through the straits of Gibraltar: for this he allegeth Plato in Timæo. But that this calamity happened about Salomon's time, or that thereby the straits of Gades were filled with mud, and made unpassable, that there could be no coming to Gades by the Mediterran 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 Salomon'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 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 Manilia, finding in those parts no less quantity of gold (the small territory which he there possesseth considered) than in Peru.

The same P Pineda hath another 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 Mediterran sea, and taken up there by a whale; that this whale, in three days, swimming above twelve thousand English miles, along the Mediterran seas, 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

P De Rebus Sal. 1. 4. c. 12. 11. As it appears he took ship at Japho, or Joppe, ch. i. 3.

Suph, which oftentimes is an epitheton 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 miracle 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, 9 Non sunt miracula gratis danda, nec pro arbitrio nova fingenda; "Miracles are not to be multiplied without necessity, nor "delivered without cause, nor feigned at pleasure." Therefore to leave this man in his dreams, which (were he not otherwise very learned and judicious) might be thought unworthy the mentioning. But to proceed with our story of Salomon.

The queen of Saba's coming from far to Salomon, (as it seems from Arabia Felix, and not, as some think, from Ethiopia,) and her rich presents, and Salomon's reciprocal magnificence, and his resolving of her difficult questions, those are set down at large in the text. But herein rJosephus is greatly mistaken, who calls this queen of Saba Nicaules, the successor (saith he out of Herodotus) of those thirty and eight Egyptian kings which succeeded Mineus, the founder of Memphis; adding, that after this Egyptian, and the father-in-law of Salomon, the name of Pharaoh was left off in Egypt. For as it is elsewhere proved that the queen was of Arabia, not of Egypt and Ethiopia; so were there other Pharaohs after the father-in-law of Salomon ; yea, above three hundred years after Salomon, s PharaohNecho slew Josias king of Juda.

It is also written of Salomon, that he kept in garrisons fourteen thousand chariots and twelve thousand horsemen ;

r

Ing. F.

Joseph. Ant. l. 8. 1, 2.

• 2 Kings xxiii. and 2 Chron. xxv Jer. xlvi. 2,