Among these Libyans--called by the Greeks _Afri_, and by the Romans, _Africani_--agriculture was in a highly flourishing condition at the epoch of the earliest myths and legends of Greece: all the Hellenic legends relating to the distant sea-wanderings of gods or heroes, carry them to the Libyan shores about the _Regio Syrtica_--Tripolis. Among these are the Argonauts and Heraklides, Perseus, Kadmos, Odysseus, and Menalaos. So the Greek myths of Atlas and the Garden of the Hesperides have their spring and source in that part of Libya. All this presupposes a very old culture. Herodotus says that the Ægis of the Greek Pallas originated in Libya, as also that Athene here received Gorgona's head for her Ægis. Even at the present day, the chiefs of some of the tribes in the southern part of ancient Libya carry the skins of leopards and other wild beasts on their shoulders in such a way that the head of the animal, Ægis-like, covers their breast. The adventurous Phoenician and Greek navigators of the earliest period accordingly found the Libyans already a highly cultivated people. This culture, too, they possessed previous to their intercourse with the Canaanites, Phoenicians, or Greeks--anterior even to the wanderings of Astarte, Anna, or Dido. At this epoch the Libyans were possessed of written language. Their alphabet was, in certain peculiarities, of an older type than even the Phoenician--that father of so many eastern and western alphabets. _Leptis_ and _Oka_ are Libyan names for Libyan cities which were in existence previous to any Phoenician colonizations--though these colonizations are themselves anterior to positive history. Goats, sheep, and other domestic animals were introduced into Greece and Italy from Libya; and from thence also came the knowledge of how to breed and rear them. The Libyans also, in all probability, first taught them the mode of keeping and rearing bees, as the Greek word for "wax," _keros_--Latin, _cera_, is by some deduced from the Berber (Libyan) _ta-kir_, and the Greek designation for honey, _meli_, _mel_--Latin, _mel_, from the Berber _ta-men-t_. Others, however, trace both those words to a Sanscrit root.