The great Phoenician colony of Carthage, founded before 800 B.C., perpetuated the commercial enterprise of the parent state, and extended the sphere of practical trade to the ocean shores of Africa and Europe. The most celebrated voyage of antiquity undertaken for the express purpose of discovery was that fitted out by the senate of Carthage under the command of Hanno, with the intention of founding new colonies along the west coast of Africa. According to Pliny, the only authority on this point, the period of the voyage was that of the greatest prosperity of Carthage, which may be taken as somewhere between 570 and 480 B.C. The extent of this voyage is doubtful, but it seems probable that the farthest point reached was on the east-running coast which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north. Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno, was charged with an expedition along the west coast of Iberia northward, and as far as the uncertain references to this voyage can be understood, he seems to have passed the Bay of Biscay and possibly sighted the coast of England. The Greeks. The sea power of the Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor and in the Archipelago began to be a formidable rival to the Phoenician soon after the time of Hanno and Himilco, and peculiar interest attaches to the first recorded Greek voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Pytheas, a navigator of the Phocean colony of Massilia (Marseilles), determined the latitude of that port with considerable precision by the somewhat clumsy method of ascertaining the length of the longest day, and when, about 330 B.C., he set out on exploration to the northward in search of the lands whence came gold, tin and amber, he followed this system of ascertaining his position from time to time. If on each occasion he himself made the observations his voyage must have extended over six years; but it is not impossible that he ascertained the approximate length of the longest day in some cases by questioning the natives. Pytheas, whose own narrative is not preserved, coasted the Bay of Biscay, sailed up the English Channel and followed the coast of Britain to its most northerly point. Beyond this he spoke of a land called _Thule_, which, if his estimate of the length of the longest day is correct, may have been Shetland, but was possibly Iceland; and from some confused statements as to a sea which could not be sailed through, it has been assumed that Pytheas was the first of the Greeks to obtain direct knowledge of the Arctic regions. During this or a second voyage Pytheas entered the Baltic, discovered the coasts where amber is obtained and returned to the Mediterranean. It does not seem that any maritime trade followed these discoveries, and indeed it is doubtful whether his contemporaries accepted the truth of Pytheas's narrative; Strabo four hundred years later