Another curious thing is that it is more than probable that the Irish preference of the color green, for their flag and their sashes, arose from a mistake among those who had lost a thorough knowledge of the old Irish language. The sun, in Irish, is called by a word pronounced like our word "green"; and it is likely that the Irish fondness for that color arose from the word's exact likeness in sound to their word for the sun. In the same way, when we talk about greenhouses, we think they are called so because the plants are kept green in them during winter. Yet it is far more probable that "green," here, is the Irish word meaning, not the color, but the sun; because greenhouses are built so as to catch the sun's rays and store them up while it is hidden by clouds, as happens more than half the time in showery Ireland.
But to return to Kadmus, the man, or the representation of the men, who to the ancient Greeks seemed to come out of the East. There was in Greece an ancient people whom men called the Pelasgi, or sea-people, because they seemed to live on the sea, so easy and so much at home were they on board their long black ships. Moreover, "sea-people" was a ready enough name for those who dwelt so much on islands. This Pelasgian folk at one time conquered the half of Egypt with their fleets, and with the aid of other nations. Now, when in the course of centuries, the Greeks had learned a great many things besides masonry and seacraft from the Pelasgians, and letters and seamanship from the Phoenicians,--they too, like the Syrian nations, began to push the people who had been their teachers out of their islands and towns. Doubtless the Phoenicians were very arrogant and imperious people, who fancied that their riches made them the superiors of all poorer folk, and that justice only existed for the rich. By that time they had made many flourishing settlements in Italy, Spain, and Northern Africa, and they became famous for the last time in their towns of Northern Africa, where they left numerous different alphabets. Finally the Romans, jealous of their commerce and wealth, managed to ruin their navies, defeat their armies, and sack and destroy their cities, among which the greatest was Carthage, meaning, in Phoenician, New Town. Some day, if you have not yet studied it, you can learn in Roman history all about the Roman destruction of Carthage and the time of the Punic wars. When those wars occurred, the Carthaginians were making a last effort to remain masters of the western parts of what are now called Europe and Africa, then the most western portion of the civilized world.