In the time of Homer, all Italy was "an unknown country." Phocean navigators discovered the Tyrrhenian sea, west of Sicily, and yet more daring adventurers from Tartessus sailed to the Pillars of Hercules. In due time, Colæus of Samos, clearing for Egypt, was driven by easterly winds (Herodotus adds significantly, "not without divine intervention,") through the straits into the ocean. Thus was the remotest border of the known world unwillingly passed, and a nearer approach made to the divinely attested Hesperides of the West. In contemplating the sublime and immortal rank which Greece held in the designs of Providence, the relation of her commerce to science should not be overlooked. The fable respecting the flight of Dædalus from Crete, is supposed to signify that he escaped by means of a vessel with sails, the first use of which, in that primitive age, might well be regarded as a description of wings. Inland and maritime navigation, were made to contribute much to that prolific race. Ivory, ebony, indigo, the purple dye mentioned by Ctesias, and gum-resins were imported from Arabia and Africa, together with pearls and cotton from the Persian Gulf. Caravans of camels richly ladened crossed Arabia to Egypt, and the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris conveyed vast stores of raw material to western Asia and Greece. Not only were the shrines of many a deity enriched with vessels and decorations wrought out of "barbaric gold," but every department of productive art and science was kept active through the demands of a wide and untrammeled commerce. The great intelligences of the age struggled with laudable intent, to embody the conceptions, and diffuse the effulgence they possessed. As in that national game so significant of the master-passion and glorious mission of the Greeks, they threw onward the blazing torch from one to the other, until light kindled in every eye, and the flying symbol exhilarated every breast. No man then professed to teach, and was paid for teaching, who yet had nothing to communicate.