Miscellanies 1.16.75

Cadmus, the inventor of letters for the Greeks, was a Phoenician, as Ephorus says; hence Herodotus writes that the letters were called Phoenician; others say that the Phoenicians and Syrians first devised letters. They say that Apis, a native Egyptian, invented medicine before Io came to Egypt, and that afterward Asclepius advanced the art. Atlas the Libyan first built a ship and sailed the sea. Celmis and Damnameneus, the Idaean Dactyls, first found iron in Cyprus; Delas, another Idaean, found the alloy of bronze, or, as Hesiod says, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented the so-called harpe (a curved sword), and were the first to use light shields on horseback. Likewise the Illyrians invented the so-called parma. They say too that the Tuscans devised sculpture, and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first made the oblong shield. Cadmus the Phoenician discovered stone-cutting and devised the gold mines around Mount Pangaeus. And another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, as the Assyrians did the two-stringed lyre. The Carthaginians first built the quadrireme, and Bosporus built it on the spot.