4.

He portrays the happiness of the people of the West, and the salubrity of their climate, having no doubt heard of the abundance of Iberia,7 which had attracted the arms of Hercules,8 afterwards of the Phœnicians, who acquired there an extended rule, and finally of the Romans. There the airs of Zephyr breathe, there the poet feigned the fields of Elysium, when he tells us Menelaus was sent thither by the gods:—

“Thee the gods

Have destined to the blest Elysian isles,

Earth’s utmost boundaries. Rhadamanthus there

For ever reigns, and there the human kind

Enjoy the easiest life; no snow is there,

No biting winter, and no drenching shower,

But Zephyr always gently from the sea

Breathes on them, to refresh the happy race.”9

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