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Now the Phocaeans were the first of the Greeks who performed long
voyages, and it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with the
Adriatic and with Tyrrhenia, with Iberia, and the city of
Tartessus. The vessel which they used in their voyages was not the
round-built merchant-ship, but the long penteconter. On their
arrival at Tartessus, the king of the country, whose name was
Arganthonius, took a liking to them. This monarch reigned over the
Tartessians for eighty years, and lived to be a hundred and twenty
years old. He regarded the Phocaeans with so much favour as, at
first, to beg them to quit Ionia and settle in whatever part of his
country they liked. Afterwards, finding that he could not prevail
upon them to agree to this, and hearing that the Mede was growing
great in their neighbourhood, he gave them money to build a wall about
their town, and certainly he must have given it with a bountiful hand,
for the town is many furlongs in circuit, and the wall is built
entirely of great blocks of stone skilfully fitted together. The
wall, then, was built by his aid.
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