On the Origins or the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language

at which place some strive to understand the sea, and that the kings of Arabia and Ethiopia will offer gifts, he understands it not of the kings of the fish, or of the water, but of the land. But I would easily believe he said that concerning the maritime places and the islands. Ophir certainly seems to be a certain place closer because of the familiarity of the word, and in that place where the ancient cosmographers used to place, or imagine, the Golden Chersonese, where Maslacha is today; but Tarshish is a more remote place, as is evident from the navigation itself. For there (I speak in the books of Kings and Paralipomenon) it is written that the navigation was accustomed to be completed every three years, which would bring gold, silver, precious stones, aromatics, monkeys, peacocks, ebony, and things of that kind; all these things increase the account for me of a journey from the Arabian Gulf to the Moluccas and the mainland in the gulf of the Sea of Sur, regions most full of all those things and more. For it was necessary to sail there through a winding sea, and one not sufficiently known at that time, and full of islands, more or less through 150 degrees of equinoctial longitude, where there is also usually a great lack of winds. You may take these things regarding Tarshish in good part. Regarding Kittim, where Kition he would have called the Cyprians "Cittaeans," and would have left there the city of Citium—which bore us the philosopher Zeno—named from his own name; he contends, if we believe the compendium of Berosus, that it refers to Italy. Which is thence called Kittim by all the Hebrews, a general name which Josephus brings forward that the islands of the Mediterranean Sea were called in his age. It does not escape me that in Isaiah 66, Italy is called Tubal, which word signifies confusion. St. Peter and Jerome dared to name this word, changed into a more common term, "Babylon" (understanding especially its head, Rome), that is, "confusion," whence a slop would one day go forth to infect the whole world with all vices—which passage is declared more clearly than light by Petrarch in two fourteen-line poems. He named the Rhodanim, that is, the Rhodians or Colossians, by the affinity of the elements. For the dalet (ד) and the resh (ר) have much in the figure of affinity. Now