Compared with Gades and Tartessus, Belon was an insignificant settlement. Its name[5180] and coins[5181] mark it as Phoenician, but it was not possessed of any special advantages of situation. The modern Bolonia, a little south of Cadiz, is thought to mark the site.[5182] We have reached now the limits of Phoenician colonisation towards the West. While their trade was carried, especially from Gades, into Luisitania and Gallæcia on the one hand, and into North-western Africa on the other, reaching onward past these districts to Gaul and Britain, to the Senegal and Gambia, possibly to the Baltic and the Fortunate Islands, the range of their settlements was more circumscribed. As, towards the north-east, though their trade embraced the regions of Colchis and Thrace, of the Tauric Chersonese, and Southern Scythia, their settlements were limited to the Ægean and perhaps the Propontis, so westward they seem to have contented themselves with occupying a few points of vantage on the Spanish and West African coasts, at no great distance from the Straits, and from these stations to have sent out their commercial navies to sweep the seas and gather in the products of the lands which lay at a greater distance. The actual extent of their trade will be considered in a later chapter. We have been here concerned only with their permanent settlements or colonies. These, it has been seen, extended from the Syrian coast to Cyprus, Cilicia, Rhodes, Crete, the islands and shores of the Ægean and Propontis, the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, and North Africa, the Balearic Islands, Southern Spain, and North-western Africa as far south as Cape Non. The colonisation was not so continuous as the Greek, nor was it so extensive in one direction,[5183] but on the whole it was wider, and it was far bolder and more adventurous. The Greeks, as a general rule, made their advances by slow degrees, stealing on from point to point, and having always friendly cities near at hand, like an army that rests on its supports. The Phoenicians left long intervals of space between one settlement and another, boldly planted them on barbarous shores, where they had nothing to rely on but themselves, and carried them into regions where the natives were in a state of almost savagery. The commercial motive was predominant with them, and gave them the courage to plunge into wild seas and venture themselves among even wilder men. With the Greeks the motive was generally political, and a safe home was sought, where social and civil life might have free scope for quiet development. CHAPTER VI--ARCHITECTURE