The Homeric poems often mention amber, which, worked into ornaments, Phenician ships brought to the Greeks. Ornaments of amber are met with in the oldest tombs of Cumae, in the tombs at the Lion's Gate at Mycenæ.[547] Hence the Phenicians must have been in possession of amber as early as the eleventh century B.C. Amber was found not only on the shores of the Baltic, but also on the coast of the North Sea, between the mouth of the Rhine and the Elbe. We may therefore draw the conclusion that in the eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. they must have advanced far enough in the Channel towards the mouth of the Rhine, or beyond it, to obtain amber by exchange or collect it themselves, unless we assume an extensive intercourse between the Celts and Germans.[548] The starting-point, harbour, and emporium for the trade in the West and the voyages beyond the pillars of Melkarth in the Atlantic Ocean was Gades. Long after the naval power of the Phenicians and Carthage had perished, Gades remained a great, rich, and flourishing city of trade. Strabo describes it thus: "Situated on a small island not much more than a hundred stades in length, and scarce a stade in breadth, without any possessions on the mainland or the islands, this city sends out the most and largest ships, and seems to yield to no other city, except Rome, in the number of the inhabitants. But the greater part do not live in the city, but on ships."[549] In the tenth century B.C. the navigation and trade of the Phenicians extended from the coasts of the Arabian Sea, from the Somali coast, and perhaps from the mouths of the Indus as far as the coast of Britain; from the coasts of Mauritania on the Atlantic to the Tigris, from Armenia to the Sabæans. Stretching out far in every direction, they had as yet suffered reverses in one region only, in the basin of the Ægean Sea. Their trade and intercourse was not indeed destroyed, but their mines, their colonies on the islands of this sea and the coasts of Hellas, were lost. Before Hiram ascended the throne of Tyre, the Phenicians, after teaching Babylonian weights and measures, the building of fortresses and walls, and mining to the Greeks, and bringing them their alphabet (p. 57), were compelled to retire before the increasing strength of the Greek cantons, not only from the coasts of Hellas, but also from the islands of the Ægean. The trade, however, with the Hellenes continued as before, in lively vigour, so far as the Homeric descriptions can be accepted as evidence. The most valuable possessions in the treasuries of the Greek princes are Sidonian works of art. Phenician ships often show themselves in Greek waters. When one of these merchantmen is anchored, the wares are set out in the ship, or under tents on the shore, or the Phenicians offer them for sale in the nearest place. A Phenician vessel laden with all kinds of ornaments lands on an island; after the Phenicians have sold many wares they offer to the