The Dutch Tiphys

...the force of the roaring winds could not restrain their efforts, nor prevent them from approaching regions separated by such an immense ocean for goods from another World, sought after for luxury. They would have sought heaven itself if any scent of profit breathed from there. Indeed, in the first centuries, and under the very cradle of the world, as long as mortals lived their lives in inland places, where they endured life sparingly and harshly on ancestral hearths and lands,

These verses are adapted from the Roman poet Lucretius’s work On the Nature of Things. They describe a "Golden Age" of human history where, despite the sea's natural violence, men were safe because they had not yet invented the "wicked" art of navigation driven by greed.

The Phoenicians first, with their trades and wares, imported greed, magnificence, and insatiable desires for all things into Greece, says Cicero The author here quotes a Greek phrase from Herodotus: "ἀπαγινέοντες φόρτια Αἰγύπτιά τε & Ἀσσύρια," meaning "carrying away Egyptian and Assyrian cargoes.". And truly, this nation of the Phoenicians was, according to Pliny, held in great glory for the invention of letters and the study of the stars, as well as for naval and military arts. Herodotus also writes at the threshold of his histories: The Phoenicians, he says, who set out from the sea called "Red" To ancient writers, the "Red Sea" often referred to the entire Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf, rather than just the modern Red Sea., having established their dwellings in that region which they inhabit even now, immediately applied themselves to long-distance voyages; and by transporting Egyptian and Assyrian goods, when into other