s. 194. As early as the year A.D. 1676, an opinion was advanced by[32] Aylett Sammes, in a work entitled Britannia Antiqua Illustrata, that the first colonisers of Ireland were the merchants of Tyre and Sidon. In confirmation of this opinion the existence of several Eastern customs in Ireland was adduced by subsequent antiquarians. Further marks of an Eastern origin of the Irish were soon found in the Gaelic dialect of that country. Finally, the matter (in the eyes at least of the national writers) was satisfactorily settled by the famous discovery, attributed to General Vallancey, of the true meaning of the Carthaginian lines in Plautus. In the Little Carthaginian (Poenulus) of the Latin comic writer Plautus, a portion of the dialogue is carried on in the language of Carthage. That the Punic language of Carthage should closely {136} resemble that of the mother-city Tyre, which was Phoenician; and that the Phoenician of Tyre should be allied to the language of Palestine and Syria, was soon remarked by the classical commentators of the time. Joseph Scaliger asserted that the Punic of the Poenulus _differed but little from pure Hebrew_--"_Ab Hebraismi puritate parum abesse._" Emendated and interpreted by Bochart, the first ten lines of a speech in Act v. s. 1. stand thus:-- 1. N' yth alionim valionuth sicorath jismacon sith 2. Chy-mlachai jythmu mitslia mittebariim ischi 3. Liphorcaneth yth beni ith jad adi ubinuthai 4. Birua rob syllohom alonim ubymisyrtohom 5. Bythrym moth ymoth othi helech Antidamarchon 6. Ys sideli: brim tyfel yth chili schontem liphul 7. Uth bin imys dibur thim nocuth nu' Agorastocles 8. Ythem aneti hy chyr saely choc, sith naso. 9. Binni id chi lu hilli gubylim lasibil thym 10. Body aly thera ynn' yss' immoncon lu sim-- _The Same, in Hebrew Characters._ [Hebrew: N' 'T `LYWNYM W`LYWNWT SHKWRT YSMKWN Z'T:] .1 [Hebrew: KY MLKY NTMW: MTSLYCH MDBRYHM `SQY:] .2 [Hebrew: LPWRQNT 'T BNY 'T YD `DY WBNWTY:] .3 [Hebrew: BRWCH RB SHLHM `LYWNYM WBMSHWRTHM:] .4 [Hebrew: BT`RM MWT CHNWT 'WTY HLK 'NTYDMRKWN:] .5 [Hebrew: 'YSH SHYD`LY: BRM T`PL 'T CHYLY SHKYNTM L'PL:] .6 [Hebrew: 'T BN 'MYTS DBWR TM NQWT` NWH 'GWRST`WQLYS:] .7 [Hebrew: CHWTM CHNWTY HW' KYWR SH'LY CHWQ Z'T NWSH':] .8 [Hebrew: BYNY `D KY LW H'LH GBWLYM LSHBT TM:] .9 [Hebrew: BW' DY `LY TR` 'N': HNW 'SH'L 'M MNKR LW 'M] .01 Six lines following these were determined to be _Liby_-Phoenician, or the language of the native Africans in the neighbourhood of Carthage, mixed with Punic. These, it was stated, had the same meaning with the ten lines in Carthaginian. The following lines of Plautus have, by all commentators, {137} been viewed in the same light, _viz._ as the Latin version of the speech of the Carthaginian.