On Phoenician Letters

for his Gomerites or Gauls the letters which had taken their origin from Phoenicia or the Holy Land. For before the flood, as Berosus a Babylonian priest and chronicler testifies, Noachus was living in Phoenicia, whose province's characters he preserved and handed down to the Western peoples, destined to advance from the west to the east, in the manner of the planets, in the glory of both letters and deeds. From there, however, the name of the Gauls, Celts, or Cimbri, or Cimmerians, derived from Gomerus, was spread through all of Europe to the borders of Asia, as I have taught in my books on the origins of Gaul, following Appianus, Diodorus, Valerius, Strabo, Eustathius, and many other most trustworthy authors. Hence it happened that there was a consensus of the entire world, or of all nations, to use the letters of the Ionians or Phoenicians, since Gomerus, the son of Iapetus Japheth, together with his father and grandfather, had first brought them to his own Gauls or Celts. But the Gauls [dwelled] in Italy before [they dwelled] in Gaul, immediately after the flood