enician merchants from
Tyre, as early as 1100 B.C.; and in the 7th century it had already become
the great mart of the west for amber and tin from the Cassiterides
(_q.v._). About 501 B.C. it was occupied by the Carthaginians, who made it
their base for the conquest of southern Iberia, and in the 3rd century for
the equipment of the armaments with which Hannibal undertook to destroy the
power of Rome. But the loyalty of Gades, already weakened by trade rivalry
with Carthage, gave way after the second Punic War. Its citizens welcomed
the victorious Romans, and assisted them in turn to fit out an expedition
against Carthage. Thenceforward, its rapidly-growing trade in dried fish
and meat, and in all the produce of the fertile Baetis (Guadalquivir)
valley, attracted many Greek settlers; while men of learning, such as
Pytheas in the 4th century B.C., Polybius and Artemidorus of Ephesus in the
2nd, and Posidonius in the 1st, came to study the ebb and flow of its
tides, unparalleled in the Mediterranean. C. Julius Caesar conferred the
_civitas_ of Rome on all its citizens in 49 B.C.; and, not long after L.
Cornelius Balbus Minor built what was called the "New City," constructed
the harbour which is now known as Puerto Real, and spanned the strait of
Santi Petri with the bridge which unites the Isla de Leon with the
mainland, and is now known as the Puente de Zuazo, after Juan Sanchez de
Zuazo, who restored it in the 15th century. Under Augustus, when it was the
residence of no fewer than 500 _equites_, a total only surpassed in Rome
and Padua, Gades was made a _municipium_ with the name of _Augusta Urbs
Gaditana_, and its citizens ranked next to those of Rome. In the 1st
century A.D. it was the birthplace or home of several famous authors,
including Lucius Columella, poet and writer on husbandry; but it was more
renowned for gaiety and luxury than for learning. Juvenal and Martial write
of _Jocosae Gades_, "Cadiz the Joyous," as naturally as the modern
Andalusian speaks of _Cadiz la Joyosa_; and throughout the Roman world its
cookery and its dancing-girls were famous. In the 5th century, however, the
overthrow of Roman dominion in Spain by the Visigoths involved Cadiz in
destruction. A few fragments of masonry, submerged under the sea, are
almost all that remains of the original city. Moorish rule over the port,
which was renamed _Jezirat-Kadis_, lasted from 711 until 1262, when Cadiz
was captured, rebuilt and repeopled by Alpho