It was probably the after effect of these foreign successes which

first induced the Carthaginians to pass from the position of tenants

and occupants by concession to that of actual owners and conquerors.

In the 300th year of Rome the Carthaginians seem to have first freed

themselves from the payment of ground-rent, which they had hitherto

been obliged to deliver to the natives. Thus it became possible to

cultivate the soil on a large scale for themselves. Even as landowners,

the Phœnicians had always relied on making use of their capital and on

cultivating the fields to a great extent, by means of slaves or hired

workmen; thus a great part of the Jews were employed in this fashion

for a daily wage by the Tyrian merchant princes. The Carthaginians

could now exploit the rich Libyan soil to an unlimited extent through

a system analogous to that of the planters of the present day. Chained

slaves tilled the ground--we find that individual citizens possessed

as many as twenty thousand of them. More than this. The agricultural

towns in the neighbourhood were forcibly subdued, and the free Libyan

peasants transformed into fellahs, who paid their masters a tribute of

the fourth part of the produce, and were subject to a regular system of

recruiting in order that Carthage might have an army of its own. Feuds

with the wandering shepherd tribes (νομαδες) on the frontiers were

constant; but a chain of fortified military posts secured the pacified

districts and these tribes were slowly pushed back into the deserts and

mountains, or compelled to recognise the Carthaginian supremacy, pay

tribute, and furnish troops.

Besides this the dominion of Carthage was finally extended over the

rest of the Phœnicians in Africa, the so-called Liby-Phœnicians. These

consisted partly of the smaller bands of settlers which had been led

from Carthage to places along the whole northern and part of the

northwestern coast of Africa, and cannot have been without importance,

since at one time thirty thousand such colonists were settled on the

Atlantic shore alone; and partly of ancient Phœnician settlements,

which were especially numerous on the coast of the modern province of

Constantine and of the Beylik of Tunis, and included, for example,

Hippo, later called Regius (Bonah), Adrumetum (Susa), the lesser Leptis

(south of Susa),--the second city of the African Phœnicians,--Thapsus,

and greater Leptis (near Tripoli). How it came about that all these

towns placed themselves under the command of Carthage, and whether

they did so voluntarily to shelter themselves from the attacks of the

Cyrenæans and Numidians or under compulsion, cannot now be discovered;

it is certain that they were described in official documents as

subjects of the Carthaginians, were obliged to pull down their walls

and had to pay taxes and render military service to Carthage.

Thus the Tyrian factory had become the capital of a powerful North

African empire, which reached from the desert of Tripoli as far as the

Atlantic sea, and though it is true that in the western half (Morocco

and Algiers) it contented itself with a somewhat nominal occupation

of the coast, on the other hand in the wealthier East it ruled over

the modern districts of Constantine and Tunis, as well as over the

interior and was continually advancing its southern frontiers; the

Carthaginians, as an ancient author significantly remarks, had changed

from Tyrians into Libyans.

The period in which this transformation of Carthage into the capital

city of Libya took place is all the more difficult to determine since

the change was doubtless effected by degrees. The author just referred

to mentions Hanno as the reformer of the nation; if this is the same

man who lived in the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be

regarded as the perfecter of the new system, which was presumably

worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries of the city of Rome.

Side by side with the rise of Carthage went the decline of the great

Phœnician cities in the mother-country, of Sidon and especially of

Tyre, whose prosperity was ruined partly as the result of internal

commotions, partly by pressure from without, in particular the sieges

by Shalmaneser in the first century of Rome, by Nebuchadrezzar in

the second, and by Alexander in the third. The noble families and

the ancient commercial houses of Tyre removed for the most part to

the secure and flourishing daughter-city and brought thither their

intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. When the Phœnicians

came into touch with Rome, Carthage was emphatically the first

Canaanite city as Rome was the first Latin community.

But the dominion over Libya was only one-half of the Carthaginian

power; their maritime and colonial supremacy had, at the same time,

developed not less formidable proportions. In Spain the chief seat of

the Phœnicians was the ancient Tyrian settlement in Gades (Cadiz); west

and east of the latter they also possessed a chain of factories, and in

the interior the territory of the silver mines, so that they occupied

the modern Andalusia and Granada, at least their coasts. Ebusus and

the Balearic Isles the Carthaginians had themselves colonised at an

early period, partly for the sake of the fisheries, partly as advance

posts against the Massaliots with whom, from this base, they carried

on an eager war. Similarly by the end of the second century of Rome

the Carthaginians had established themselves in Sardinia, which they

exploited in exactly the same way as Libya.

[Sidenote: [450-350 B.C.]]

In Sicily, finally, it is true that the roads from Messana and

the eastern and larger half of the island had early fallen into

the hands of the Greeks; but by help of the Carthaginians the

Phœnicians maintained themselves, some in the smaller islands in the

neighbourhood, the Ægates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra, of which the

colony in Malta was especially flourishing; some on the western and

northwestern coasts of Sicily, where, from Motya, and later from

Lilybæum, they kept up relations with Africa and from Panormus and

Solœis with Sardinia. The interior of the island remained in possession

of the native Elymi, Sicani, and Sicels.

All these settlements and possessions were considerable enough in

themselves; but they were of still greater importance as the pillars of

the Carthaginian dominion of the sea. By the possession of the south of

Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the west of Sicily and Melita,

in union with the prevention of Hellenic colonisation on the eastern

Spanish coast, as well as on Corsica and in the neighbourhood of the

Syrtis, the lords of the North African coast closed their seas against

the foreigner and monopolised the western waters. The Phœnicians had

indeed to share the Tyrrhenian and Gallic seas with other nations;

but this might be tolerated so long as the Etruscans and Greeks

counterbalanced each other there, and with the former as the less

dangerous rival, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the

Greeks.

But after the downfall of the Etruscan power, which, as is usually

the case in alliances entered into under stress of circumstances,

Carthage had probably not exactly used all her strength to avert, and

after the frustration of the schemes of Alcibiades, when Syracuse was

indisputably the first Greek naval power, this system of balance could

no longer be maintained. As the rulers of Syracuse began to aim at

the dominion over Sicily and lower Italy, and over the Tyrrhenian and

Adriatic seas, the Carthaginians had perforce to pursue an energetic

policy. The first result of the long and obstinate struggle between

them and their opponent, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367), a prince

as powerful as he was infamous, was the annihilation or reduction to

impotence of the central Sicilian states, in the interest of both

parties, and the partition of the island between the Syracusans and

Carthaginians. But each party constantly renewed the attempt to

dislodge its rival. Four times the Carthaginians were masters of

all Sicily, save Syracuse, and were baffled by its strong walls;

almost as often the Syracusans under able leaders, such as the elder

Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, appeared to be almost as near

success. But gradually the balance became more and more in favour

of the Carthaginians. Meantime the struggle on the sea was already

decided. Pyrrhus’ attempt to restore the Syracusan fleet was the

last. When it had failed the ships of the Carthaginians ruled the

whole western Mediterranean without a rival; and their attempts to

occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum showed what they could do and

what was their object. Side by side with this went the endeavour to

gradually monopolise the maritime trade of these regions against both

foreign countries and their own subjects; and it was not a Carthaginian

practice to shrink forever from the violence required to further an

object. A contemporary of the Punic war, Eratosthenes, the father of

geography, testifies that any foreign sailor, who fell into the hands

of the Carthaginians on his way to Sardinia or the Straits of Gades,

was thrown by them into the sea.

[Sidenote: [350-283 B.C.]]

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the first Punic war,

describes the Carthaginian government as having passed from a monarchy

into an aristocracy or a democracy inclining towards oligarchy; for he

calls it by both names. The conduct of business lay first of all with

the council of Elders, which like the Spartan Gerusia consisted of two

annually appointed kings and twenty-eight Gerontes, who also, as it

appears, were elected year by year by the citizens. It was this council

which to all intents and purposes carried on the business of the state;

for example, it took the steps necessary for war, gave orders for

levies and recruiting, appointed the general, and gave him a number of

Gerontes as colleagues, from amongst whom the subordinate commanders

were as a rule taken; to it the despatches were addressed. It is

doubtful whether a larger council stood side by side with this small

one; in no case was it of much importance, nor does it appear that any

special influence appertained to the kings; their chief function was

that of supreme judges, as they are not unfrequently styled (suffets,

_prætores_). The general’s power was greater; Isocrates, an elder

contemporary of Aristotle, says that at home the Carthaginians obeyed

an oligarchical government, but in the field a monarchical one, and so

the office of the Carthaginian general is described by Roman authors as

that of a dictator, although the Gerontes joined with him must have,

practically at least, limited his power, as must also the regular

account which was unknown to the Romans and which he had to render on

laying down his office. Above the Gerusia and the officials stood the

body of the hundred and four, or, more briefly, the hundred, or judges,

the chief bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. This was not part of

the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate,

took its rise in the aristocratic opposition to the monarchical

elements in that constitution. Owing to the system of purchasing

offices and the small number of the members of the highest court, a

single Carthaginian family, that of Hago, which was pre-eminently

distinguished for its wealth and military glory, threatened to unite

the administration in war and peace, with the charge of justice, in

their own hands; this led, about the time of the decemvirs to a change

in the constitution and the establishment of this new authority.

It appears that although the Carthaginian citizens were not expressly

limited to a passive assistance at the discussion of questions

concerning the state, as was the case in Sparta, yet practically their

influence in such matters was very slight. At the elections to the

Gerusia a system of open bribery prevailed; at the appointment of a

general the people were indeed consulted, but probably only when in

reality the appointment had already been made on the suggestion of the

Gerusia; and in other matters the people were only referred to when the

Gerusia thought good or could not agree. Popular tribunals were unknown

in Carthage. The impotence of the citizens was probably an essential

condition of their political organisation; the Carthaginian messes,

which are mentioned in this connection and compared to the Spartan

_pheiditia_, may have been fraternities conducted on an oligarchical

basis. We even hear of a distinction between “citizens” and “manual

workers,” which leads us to suppose a very degraded position for the

latter, and perhaps no rights at all.

Regarded as a whole, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have

been a government by capitalists, such as is conceivable in a citizen

community without a well-to-do middle class, and consisting on the one

hand of a crowd owning no property and living from hand to mouth, on

the other of great merchants, estate owners and noble magistrates. Nor

was Carthage without that infallible token of a corrupt city oligarchy:

the system of enriching the impoverished masters at the cost of the

subjects by sending them to the subordinate communities as treasurers

and superintendents of forced labour. Aristotle describes this as the

main cause of the tried stability of the Carthaginian constitution.

Down to his time no revolution worth mentioning had been effected in

Carthage, either from above or beneath; the crowd remained leaderless

in consequence of the material advantages which the ruling oligarchy

was in a position to offer to all ambitious or distressed members of

the upper class, and were compensated by the crumbs which fell to them

from the master’s table in the form of bribes at elections or in some

other fashion.

Of course with such a government there could not fail to be a

democratic opposition; yet even at the time of the first Punic war this

was completely powerless. Later on, partly under the influence of the

defeats suffered, their political influence is seen rapidly increasing,

and far more rapidly than that of the similar and contemporary

Roman party; the popular assembly began to give the final decision

in political questions and broke the all-powerful influence of the

Carthaginian oligarchy. A patriotic and reforming energy prevailed in

the opposition; still we cannot overlook the fact that it rested on

a corrupt and rotten foundation. The Carthaginian citizenhood, which

well-informed Greeks have compared to the Alexandrian, was so corrupt

that in this respect it deserved to be powerless, and it might well be

asked what good could come from revolutions where, as in Carthage, the

scamps were instrumental in making them.

From a financial standpoint Carthage maintained in all relations

the first place among the cities of antiquity. At the time of the

Peloponnesian war this Phœnician city was, according to the testimony

of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all Greek

states, and her revenues are compared to those of the Great King.

Polybius calls her the richest city in the world. The close relation

between Phœnician agriculture and capital is characteristic. The

idea of never acquiring more land than could be properly cultivated

is quoted as a leading principle of Phœnician agriculture. The

Carthaginians also made their profit out of the wealth of the country

in horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, in which, according to the

testimony of Polybius, Libya at that time surpassed all other countries

on earth by reason of her nomad tribes.

As in the exploitation of the soil, so also in the exploitation of

their subjects the Carthaginians were the instructors of the Romans;

through them was poured into Carthage the ground-rent “of the best

part of Europe” and of the fertile North-African districts, which in

some regions, for instance in Byzakitis and on the lesser Syrtis, was

superabundantly favoured. In Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, learning

and art seem to have been generally dominated by Hellenic influence,

but were not neglected; a considerable Phœnician literature existed,

and at its conquest the city was found to contain valuable libraries

and many treasures of art, though it is true that these had not been

produced in Carthage but carried off from the Sicilian temples. But

intellect also was here at the service of capital; even the general

distribution of certain kinds of knowledge and in particular of an

acquaintance with foreign languages, in which Carthage may at this

period have stood almost on a line with imperial Rome, shows the

thoroughly practical direction which was given to Hellenic culture in

Carthage.

The superiority of Carthage is not expressed merely in the amount

of her revenue; amongst all the important states of antiquity it is

here alone that we find the economical principles of a later and more

advanced period; we hear of foreign government loans, and in the money

system we find, besides gold coins, a piece of money of a material in

itself worthless, a thing elsewhere unknown to antiquity. In fact, if

the state were a speculation, none would ever have fulfilled its task

more brilliantly than Carthage.

[Illustration]

WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE

[Sidenote: [283-264 B.C.]]

For more than a century the feud between the powers of Carthage and

Syracuse had ravaged the beautiful Sicilian island. The war was

carried on on both sides partly by political propaganda, Carthage

maintaining relations with the aristocratic-republican opposition party

in Syracuse, and the Syracusan dynasties with the national parties in

the Greek cities that paid tribute to Carthage, and partly by means

of mercenary armies with the aid of which Timoleon and Agathocles, as

well as the Phœnician generals, had fought their battles. As both sides

used the same methods, the contest was carried on with a disregard for

truth and honour unknown in the history of occidental peoples. The

Syracusans were finally defeated. In 314, before the breaking out of

the war, Carthage claimed only a third of the island, that lying west

of Heracleia Minoa and Himera, and had recognised the hegemony of the

Syracusans over several of the eastern states. The expulsion of Pyrrhus

from Sicily and Italy (276) left the greater part of the island,

especially Acragas, in the possession of Carthage, only Tauromenium

and the southeastern end remaining to Syracuse. About 283 a Campanian

troop that had served under Agathocles, and had continued marauding

on their own account since his death, had established themselves in

Messana, the second largest city on the eastern coast, and seat of

the anti-Syracusan party. They massacred or drove out the citizens,

divided the women, children, and houses among themselves, and settling

down to complete possession of the city soon became the third power

in the island. The Carthaginians witnessed these proceedings by which

the Syracusans received a powerful adversary as neighbour instead of

a kindred or friendly people, without displeasure; with the support

of Carthage the new-comers, or _Mamertines_ (Sons of Mars), arranged

themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely withdrawal of this king

restored to the Carthaginians all their powder.

A young Syracusan officer Hiero, son of Hierocles, who had drawn

attention to himself by reason of his close kinship to Pyrrhus and

the bravery with which he had fought in the battles of that king, was

appointed head of the Syracusan army (274). By his moderation and wise

generalship he won the confidence of all his supporters, dismissing

the mercenaries, reorganising the citizen-militia, and trying first

as general, later as king, at the head of civic troops to restore the

vanished power of Hellas. With the Carthaginians, who in conjunction

with the Greeks had driven Pyrrhus from the island, the Syracusans

were at that time at peace; their nearest enemy being the Mamertines,

kinsmen of the hated mercenaries. In alliance with the Romans, who

about this time sent their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium,

Hiero turned towards Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero

was made king of the Siceliotes (269), he succeeded in confining the

Mamertines within the limits of their own city, and after the siege had

lasted several years they were reduced to extremity--finding themselves

unable longer to defend the city unaided against Hiero. A conditional

surrender was impossible, the axe of the executioner that had been used

upon the Rhegium Campanians was surely awaiting those of Messana in

Syracuse, and their only hope of safety lay in delivering over the city

either to the Carthaginians or the Romans, to both of whom the conquest

of the important position must be of equal moment.

Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender to the Phœnicians or

to the lords of Italy was doubtful; after long hesitation the majority

of the Campanian citizens finally decided to give over possession of

their fortress to the Romans. Rome was striving for the possession of

Italy as Carthage was for that of Sicily; but the plans of neither

power could proceed further at that time. Just here lay a reason for

the wish of each that a neutral power should permanently establish

itself on its frontier--Rome looking to Tarentum, Carthage to Syracuse

and Messana. Failing this, each preferred to occupy the cities itself

rather than let them fall into the hands of its rival.

[Sidenote: [264 B.C.]]

As Carthage had tried in Italy,--Rome being on the point of taking

Rhegium and Tarentum,--to acquire these cities for herself, her purpose

being frustrated by a mere accident, so Rome now saw in Sicily an

opportunity of bringing Messana into her symmachy; should this design

fail, the city could not hope to remain independent or turn Syracusan,

she would be thrown into the arms of Phœnicia. Would it be justifiable

to let an opportunity, that would certainly never return, escape,

of taking possession of the natural bridge-head between Sicily and

Italy and by securing it to themselves by a firm and, for very good

reasons, reliable occupation; was it also justifiable to sacrifice, in

renouncing all hopes of Messana, dominion over the last free passage

between the eastern and western seas and Italy’s free trade? Other

objections than those of sentiment and justice arose to the occupation

of Messana. That it must lead to a war with Carthage was the least

among them, Rome having nothing to fear from such a war, however

serious it might be. It was far more important that she should, by the

crossing of the sea, depart from the purely Italian and continental

policy she had formerly pursued; so the system founded by the authors

of Rome’s greatness was relinquished for another, the consequences of

which no one could foresee. It was one of those moments when reflection

and calculation cease, and faith in a personal star and that of the

fatherland alone gives courage to grasp the hand that beckons out

of the future, and follow wherever it may lead. Long and earnestly

the Senate deliberated upon the offer of the councillors to send the

legions to the assistance of the Mamertines, yet came to no decision.

But among the citizens to whom the matter was finally referred, there

was alive that consciousness of strength of a power that has come

to greatness through its own efforts. The conquest of Italy gave to

the Romans, as that of Macedonia had given to the Greeks, courage to

blaze a new political path for themselves; support of the Mamertines

was warranted by the power of protection claimed by Rome over various

Italian states. The Italians from over seas were taken into the Italian

confederation, and on the proposition of the citizens’ council it was

decided to send them aid (264).

ROME AND CARTHAGE

[Sidenote: [264-241 B.C.]]

Let us compare the powers of Rome and Carthage. Both were agricultural

and commercial states with no other claim to greatness; the subordinate

and eminently practical position held by the arts and sciences was

in both virtually the same, the balance being perhaps a trifle in

favour of Carthage. But in Carthage commercial industries led those of

agriculture, while in Rome they occupied second place, so that at a

time when the Carthaginian farmers were leaving their fields to become

large slave and property owners the great mass of the Roman citizens

were still at the plough. In Carthage was to be seen the opulence

peculiar to great commercial centres, but Rome still displayed in her

customs and police regulations old-fashioned strictness and economy.

When the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome they represented the

parsimony of the Roman councillors as exceeding all accounts, alleging

that a single silver service did duty for the entire council, and

confronted its members anew in every house to which they were invited.

In all else the systems of both states were alike, the judges of

Carthage and the senators of Rome rendering decision according to the

same code. The strict dependence in which the Carthaginian governing

bodies held their officials, their orders to the citizens not to learn

the Greek language and to hold no intercourse with any Greek save

through the medium of an interpreter, reveal the same spirit as that

that inspired the Roman laws, but in contrast to the cruel and stupid

severity of these Carthaginian regulations, the Roman fines and censure

laws appear mild and reasonable. The Roman Senate which opened its

doors to the highest ability worthily represented the nation and had

no reason to fear her or her officials. The Carthaginian Senate, on

the contrary, represented only the aristocratic families and was held

under the most jealous governmental control; an institution founded on

mistrust above and below it could be sure neither of the support of the

people nor of security from usurpation by officials. To their freedom

from these defects may be ascribed the steadily onward course of Roman

politics that never retreated a step because of disaster, and did not

forfeit fortune’s favour through indolence or irresolution. Carthage

on the other hand would frequently retire from the contest that one

last rally might have won, and weary or unmindful of her great national

undertakings would let the structure she had half erected tumble to

the ground only to commence her work anew after a little time. Between

the capable Roman official and the governing board existed a perfect

understanding, whereas at Carthage these two classes were at constant

war, the officials often being forced to take stand against their

superiors and make common cause with their political opponents.

Both Carthage and Rome had dominion over people of many races besides

their own. Rome admitted to citizenship district after district of

these aliens, even leaving a legal way of entrance open to the Latins

themselves; whereas Carthage shut herself off entirely from all her

dependencies, extending to them not the slightest hope that she would

ever admit them to such equality. Rome permitted the communities

that were of kindred race to have a share in the spoils of war, and

sought by specially favouring the rich and influential of tributary

states to reconcile them to Roman dominion. Carthage not only kept for

herself all the fruits of victory, but deprived tributary cities of

their most useful privilege--free trade. Rome never entirely denied

independence to even the weakest of her subject states, and never

burdened them with heavy taxes; Carthage sent representatives far and

wide and laid even the ancient Phœnician cities under exorbitant toll,

treating their inhabitants little better than they would slaves. In the

African-Carthaginian alliance there was thus not a single commonalty,

with the exception of Utica, which did not aspire to bettering its

political and material condition through the fall of Carthage, whereas

in the Roman-Italian alliance there was not one which by rebelling

against a rule that promoted its material welfare, without directly

challenging the political opposition party, would not have lost more

than it gained. When the Carthaginian statesmen thought to have linked

to Carthage Phœnician dependencies by arousing their fear of a Libyan

revolt, and the dominant states by the payment of oracle money to their

temple, they were carrying mercantile practices over into a field

where these did not belong. Experience showed that the Roman symmachy,

despite the less solid front it opposed to Pyrrhus, held together like

a wall of rock; while that of Carthage fell apart like a spider-web

as soon as a hostile power set foot on the soil of Africa. This was

evidenced at the landing of Agathocles and Regulus, and also in the war

against the mercenaries, while the spirit that prevailed in Africa is

shown by the fact that the Libyan women voluntarily sacrificed their

jewels to the mercenaries to carry on the war against Carthage. In

Sicily she appears to have acted with greater moderation, hence to have

obtained better results. Her dependencies there were allowed relative

freedom in their trade with other lands, using metal money exclusively

from the first in their domestic commerce, and enjoying in every

respect greater liberty of action than was accorded to Sardinians and

Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into her hands, all this would have soon

been changed; but no such thing occurred, and under the wise moderation

of Carthaginian rule, favoured by the unfortunate disarray of the

Sicilian Greeks, a distinctly Phœnician party arose in Sicily; Philinus

of Acragas, for example, writing the history of the great war after the

loss of the island to the Romans entirely from a Phœnician point of

view. Still, on the whole, the Sicilians, as subjects and as Hellenes,

must have borne an aversion to their Phœnician masters equal to that

shown by the Tarentians and the Samnitians towards Rome.

The revenues of Carthage undoubtedly exceeded those of Rome, but

this was offset by the greater likelihood of her sources of supply,

tributes, and toll, running dry at the moment when she needed them

most, and by the far greater expense entailed by her system of

warfare. From a military point of view the resources of both states,

though differing in kind, were fairly equal. At the conquest of

Carthage her population (including women and children) numbered seven

hundred thousand, and must have remained about the same up to the

end of the fifth century of Rome. At this time Carthage could, in

case of necessity, place a force of forty thousand hoplites in the

field. But, desirable as it seemed to her that the great body of her

citizens should be trained to military service, she could not bestow

upon artisans and factory-workers the rugged physical strength of the

countryman, nor could she overcome in the Phœnician his inborn aversion

to the work of war. In the fifth century of Rome there fought in the

Sicilian army a general’s guard or “sacred body” of twenty-five hundred

Carthaginians; a century later with the exception of the officers there

was to be found in all the Carthaginian forces, notably in her Spanish

army, not a single Carthaginian. The main body of the Carthaginian

army was formed of Libyans, this people furnishing recruits, who, in

the hands of capable officers, developed into unequalled foot-soldiers

and light cavalry-men. To these were added soldiers from all the

dependent states of Libya and Spain, the celebrated sling-shooters of

the Balearic Isles who seemed to have occupied a position between that

of allied troops and mercenaries, and lastly the soldiery gathered

in, in case of necessity, from other lands. Such a military force

could be increased to almost any strength, and in courage, skill in

handling weapons, and in the ability of its officers could compare

favourably with that of the Romans. But when mercenaries had to be

employed, a long time must elapse before it could be got in readiness,

whereas the Roman militia could at any moment be sent into the field.

There was further nothing to hold the Carthaginians together but the

hope of gain and loyalty to the flag, in contrast to the Romans who

were united by all the ties that bound them to the fatherland. To the

Carthaginian officer of the usual type, the hired troops fighting under

him, yes, even the Libyan peasants, were of no more account than are

cannon balls in our day; hence shameful deeds were committed, as for

example the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their commander Himilco,

which had for result a serious Libyan revolt. The term “Punic faith”

as used thereafter in connection with the Carthaginians came to be a

standing reproach that injured them not a little. All in all, Carthage

experienced every ill that fellah and mercenary armies can bring into

a land, finding on more than one occasion that paid allies were more

dangerous than sworn foes.

The faults of such a military system could not be overlooked by

the Carthaginian rulers who were constantly trying to amend them;

treasuries were kept filled and arsenals stocked that more mercenaries

might be hired at any moment; and particular attention was given that

branch of the service that corresponded in ancient times to our modern

artillery--war-machines in the use of which Carthaginians were more

expert than the Siceliotes, and elephants there having superseded the

ancient war-chariots. But the chief bulwark of the nation, the navy,

was the object of special pride and care. In the construction, as in

the navigation of ships, the Carthaginians far surpassed the Greeks.

In Carthage were built the first ships having three banks of oars, and

the rigging of their sailing ships mostly quinqueremes rendered them as

a rule swifter than those of the Greeks; the rowers, slaves belonging

to the state, who never left the galleys, were admirably drilled, and

the captains were skilled and fearless. In this respect Carthage was

decidedly superior to Rome, who with her own few ships and those of

allied Greece could not think of measuring forces on the open sea with

a power that at that time ruled supreme over the western Mediterranean.

If we summarise the knowledge gained by a close comparison of the

resources of the two great powers, we find that at the beginning

of their conflict they stood on very nearly equal ground. To this,

however, we feel obliged to add that Carthage, though exerting all her

powers of genius and wealth to provide herself with artificial means of

offence and defence, could not yet make good her lack of native troops,

or compensate the need of an independent alliance. That Rome could be

endangered only in Italy, Carthage only in Libya, was not to be denied,

and equally undeniable was it that Carthage could not long escape such

a peril.[d]

[Sidenote: [241-195 B.C.]]

The inevitable conflict between such neighbouring rivals as Rome and

Carthage, came soon and lasted long. It brought forth great figures

and impressive events on both sides.[9] In the first Punic war the

Carthaginians, after the defeat of their fleet in the Ægates, lost

their possessions in Sicily, and the groups of islands belonging to

it, and were obliged to pledge themselves to the payment of thirty-two

hundred talents. Immediately afterwards the bloody war, of more than

four years’ duration (241-237), against the rebellious mercenaries

broke out, in which the Libyan cities also took part, and in which

Hamilcar’s generalship finally won the victory over the mutineers.

In the meantime the Romans had taken possession of Sardinia, and the

Carthaginians, who did not yet feel strong enough for a fresh war, had

not only to relinquish formally the possession of that island, but

also to pay an additional tribute of twelve hundred talents. Corsica

was also snatched from them at the same time with Sardinia. After the

suppression of the revolt Hamilcar crossed to Gades (Cadiz) with the

army, to begin a war of conquest on the Pyrenæan peninsula. For nine

years he fought successfully against the Spanish tribes, until in 229

he met death in battle. His son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who succeeded him,

was able by peaceful means, rather than by war, to extend further the

bounds of Carthaginian sovereignty. In 221, when Hasdrubal had fallen

by the hand of a Gaul, the army chose Hamilcar’s famous son Hannibal

commander-in-chief, a choice no one in Carthage dared oppose.

In the years 221 and 220 Hannibal completed the conquest of Spain as

far as the Ebro; in 219 he took Saguntum, in spite of an alliance

existing between it and Rome. This was the cause of the second

Punic war (218-201), in which the Carthaginians, under the spirited

leadership of Hannibal, who made his way across the Pyrenees and

the Alps even into Italy, at first achieved great successes, but at

last were overcome by the inexhaustible military resources and the

marvellous endurance of the Romans, who carried on the war in four

places at once.

After the defeat at Zama (202) peace was granted in 201 to Rome’s

humbled rival under the following hard conditions: surrender of all

but ten ships of war and of all elephants, the payment of ten thousand

talents, the indemnification of Massinissa, and the promise not to

take up arms again without the consent of the Romans. By wise measures

Hannibal sought gradually to uplift his oppressed fatherland; but in

this way prejudiced the interests of the aristocracy, who before this

had been unfavourable to him, and who, with the help of the Romans,

exiled him from Carthage (195).

[Sidenote: [195 B.C.-697 A.D.]]

After that Carthage was ruined within by controversies between the

aristocratic and the popular parties, and threatened from without by

Massinissa who, set at the side of the Carthaginians by the Romans

to watch them, and relying on his protectors, took from them one

piece of their territory after another. The Romans, to be sure, from

time to time sent commissioners to the spot, but only to give either

no decision at all, or one unfavourable to the Carthaginians. Marcus

Cato came there in 157 as one of these commissioners, and because the

Carthaginians declined his offer to deliver an arbiter’s judgment

(presumably an unfavourable one), he was from that time on extremely

embittered against them, and consequently closed every speech in the

senate with the words, “_Censeo ceterum, Carthaginem esse delendam_”

(“Moreover, I think Carthage must be destroyed”).

When the Carthaginians at last, after the expulsion of the party of

Massinissa (151) resisted the latter and were defeated, the Romans

declared this a breach of peace, and in 149 sent the consuls, Manius,

Manilius, and Lucius Marcius Censorinus, with eighty-four thousand men

to Sicily. The Carthaginians begged for peace, but were required first

to give three hundred children of the nobility as hostages, and to

surrender all arms and munitions of war. When the Romans thereupon gave

them the further command to abandon their city and settle again further

inland, all classes and ranks united for the most desperate defence.

Thus began a last fearful conflict (third Punic war, 149-146), which

ended with the conquest of Carthage by Publius Cornelius Scipio. Fire

raged in the city seventeen days. A large portion of the inhabitants

perished, the survivors were led into slavery. The city was razed to

the ground, and the whole Carthaginian territory, with the exception of

a few tracts that were given to the cities in alliance with the Romans,

especially to Utica and Hippo, was made into the Roman province of

Africa.

In 122, it was decided, on the proposal of Gaius Gracchus, to rebuild

the city under the name of Junonia, and to plant there a colony of six

thousand Roman citizens. However, the fall of Gracchus prevented the

execution of the project. Julius Cæsar took it up again, but was not

able to carry it out. The restoration did not begin, then, until under

Augustus, who populated the city with three thousand Roman colonists

and numerous natives from the vicinity.

The new city reached a high prosperity in the time of the empire, so

that it took the second position, after Alexandria, among the cities of

the empire outside of Rome. It was the seat of the Roman proconsul and

of most of the other Roman officials, later also of a Christian bishop,

and by reason of its favourable situation it soon became once more a

rich seat of commerce, in which, however, there was no lack of schools

of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and the other liberal arts.

LAST DAYS OF CARTHAGE

In 439 A.D. it was taken by the Vandals under Genseric, and was for

almost a century the capital of the Vandal kingdom, until in 533 it

was incorporated in the eastern Roman Empire by Justinian’s general,

Belisarius. The latter restored the ruined fortifications, and called

the city in honour of his emperor, Justiniana.[e]

The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty

years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of

the house of Omayya; and the caliph Moawiya was invited by the cries

of the Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been

informed of the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate

with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their

distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of

a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against

the complaints of their poverty and ruin; their despair was reduced

to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the

patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power,

provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman province

to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants.

The first lieutenant of Moawiya acquired a just renown, subdued an

important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away

fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold

adventurers of Syria and Egypt. But the title of conqueror of Africa

is more justly due to his successor Okbaben Nafi [Akbah]. He marched

from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and

the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and

conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is

it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The

interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious

armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab, or

Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but

the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the

ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a circumference of three leagues

will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient

metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the

well-known cities of Bugia and Tangier define the more certain limits

of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the

commodious harbour of Bugia, which in a more prosperous age is said to

have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of iron

which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a braver

people with the instruments of defence.

[Sidenote: [697 A.D.]]

The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have

been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative

expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of

brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be

interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence. The province of

Mauritania Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been

imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies

were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were

seldom explored by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for

ivory and the citronwood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple

shellfish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country,

traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid

capitals of Fez and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of

the Atlantic and the great desert.

The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount Atlas,

fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at

a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate, Islands. Its banks

were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages without

laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the strange

and irresistible terrors of the oriental arms; and as they possessed

neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the female

captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand pieces

of gold. The career though not the zeal of Akbah was checked by the

prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves,

and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic:

“Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still

go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy

holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship

any other gods than thee.” Yet this Mohammedan Alexander, who sighed

for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the

universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled from the

shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only

the resource of an honourable death. The last scene was dignified by

an example of national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed

the command and failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner

in the camp of the Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to

his discontent and revenge; he disdained their offers and revealed

their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his

fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the banner

of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their

scimitars, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat

till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their slaughtered

countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa, Zuhair, avenged

and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the

natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army, which

Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.

It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the

invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to

their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat

or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to

found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might

curb the levity of the barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against

the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With

this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan,

he planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its

present decay, Kairawan still holds the second rank in the kingdom

of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south;

its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected

the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts

and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness,

was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy

plain. The vegetable food of Kairawan is brought from afar; and the

scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns

and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain-water. These obstacles

were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of

thirty-six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in

the space of five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with

a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was

supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian

marble; and Kairawan became the seat of learning as well as of empire.

But these were the glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by

the successive defeats of Akbah and Zuhair, and the western expeditions

were again interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy.

The son of the valiant Zobair maintained a war of twelve years, a siege

of seven months, against the house of Omayyah. Abdallah was said to

unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if

he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity of his father.

The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdul-malik to

resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan,

governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of

forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In the

vicissitudes of war the interior provinces had been alternately won

and lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands

of the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name

and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was

recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan

were bolder and more fortunate; he reduced and pillaged the metropolis

of Africa; and the mention of scaling ladders may justify the suspicion

that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations

of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed

by the appearance of the Christian succours. The prefect and patrician

John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople

the forces of the Eastern Empire; they were joined by the ships and

soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of the Goths was

obtained from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight

of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of

the harbour; the Arabs retired to Kairawan, or Tripoli; the Christians

landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter

was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was

irrecoverably lost; the zeal and resentment of the commander of the

faithful prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by

sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate

the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in

the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again defeated;

and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan,

who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp.

Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the

colony of Dido and Cæsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a

part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by

the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth

century the second capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a

college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts

of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the

arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept

away by the Spaniards whom Charles V had stationed in the fortress of

the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might

be unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the

footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[9] For a detailed account of the Punic wars, see Vol. V.

[Illustration: Phœnician Terracotta Chariot]

[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN BOTTLE IN FORM OF A GOURD]

CHAPTER VII. PHŒNICIAN COMMERCE

At all stages of its history Phœnicia was essentially a manufacturing

and commercial rather than a warlike nation. Nevertheless, it took a

more or less prominent part in the combats of the great nations for

many centuries. There was only one period, namely, during the reign

of Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, about 950 B.C., when

Phœnicia could aspire to anything like first rank among the nations.

It was at most a community of scattered cities, each generally

independent of the others, rather than a nation in the narrower sense.

Nevertheless, such is the vitality of a nation whose prosperity is

based on the pursuits of peace, that Phœnicia continued to hold a

respectable place among the powers of the earth, for a longer period

than almost any other of the minor nations of antiquity. Thus we find

it reviving again and again, after being subjected by the foreign

conquerors, until finally, even so late as 332 B.C., it was able to

afford most powerful opposition to Alexander, and throughout this

period, for at least a thousand years, the navy of the Phœnicians was

celebrated as being, for the most of the time, a type of excellence,

and the Phœnicians for this reason were coveted as allies, or hired

as mercenaries by such great contending powers as the Greeks and the

Persians. All in all, notwithstanding the comparatively minor place

which is always assigned to the Phœnicians, in comparison with such

great conquering powers as Egypt and Babylonia, there are many reasons

for feeling that the great manufacturers and traders of antiquity

were among the most admirable of the peoples whose history has been

preserved.

The accounts of wars and conquests must necessarily always hold a

foremost place in the records of the historian, at least in our day,

but one should not hesitate to give a due measure of praise to a nation

whose ideal was not self-aggrandisement through the destruction of

other nations, but the building up of power through the far more useful

channels of manufacture and commerce. Where other nations destroyed,

the Phœnicians constructed. They took no high rank as inventors pure

and simple, but they were acceptors of the inventions of other peoples,

and as an educating influence they have no peers among the oriental

nations. And this is true simply because the Phœnicians were the great

progressive and commercial people of antiquity.[a]

SEA TRADE

It requires no great sagacity to develop the causes by which the

Phœnicians became a commercial and seafaring people. They were in

a manner constrained to it by their situation; for the commodities

of interior Asia becoming accumulated in vast quantities upon their

coasts, seemed to demand a further transport. It would, nevertheless,

be an error to assume this as the first and only impulse to their

navigation, which most likely had the same origin here that it

generally had among commercial nations; it sprung from piracy. The

seeming advantages which this affords are too near and too striking to

be overlooked by uncivilised nations; while the benefits to be derived

from a peaceable and regular commerce are too distant to come at

first within the scope of their ideas. It was thus that the piratical

excursions of the Normans gave the first impulse to the navigation

of the western countries of Europe. But among nations who are not,

like the African nest of pirates, held back by despotism and other

unfavourable circumstances, good gradually grows out from this original

evil. A trifling advance, too, in civilisation soon teaches mankind

how greatly the benefits of trade surpass those of plunder; and as the

latter diminishes, the former increases.

This is exactly the state in which the navigation of the Phœnicians

is first presented to our notice, in the time of Homer--the earliest

period at which we catch an authentic glance at it from any definite

accounts.

The Phœnicians at this period visited the Greek islands and the coasts

of the continents as robbers, or merchants, according as circumstances

offered. They came with trinkets, beads, and baubles, which they sold

at a high price to the inexperienced and unwary Greeks; and they thus

gained opportunities of kidnapping their boys and girls, whom they

turned to good account in the Asiatic slave markets, or who were

redeemed at heavy ransoms by their parents and countrymen. A most

faithful and lively picture of the state of society in these respects

is drawn by the Greek bard himself, in the narrative which he makes

Eumæus relate of his birth and early adventures.

This kind of intercourse, however, could not last beyond the infancy

of Grecian civilisation. As this advanced, and that people grew

formidable upon the seas, and Athenian and Ionian squadrons covered the

Mediterranean, it must of itself have assumed another shape, as piracy

would no longer be tolerated. But notwithstanding this, the connection

between Phœnicia and Greece, in the flourishing period of the latter,

seems not to have continued so strong as might naturally have been

expected. There is no trace of an active intercourse between Tyre and

Athens, or Corinth; there is no vestige of commercial treaties, such as

frequently were closed between Carthage and Rome. Commercial jealousy,

common to both nations, in some measure accounts for this phenomenon.

(How much less has the intercourse between England and France always

been than it might have been, considering the situation and magnitude

of the two kingdoms!) I trust, however, that the following observations

will be deemed satisfactory upon this subject.

_First._ The principal source of trade among all great seafaring

nations must ever be directed toward their colonies. It is only there

that mutual exchange of commodities can be effected upon an extensive

scale; all other sales are by retail, or in small quantities. The

truth, which the experience of the greatest maritime states of modern

times confirms beyond a doubt, was felt both by Phœnicians and Greeks:

hence the chief commerce of both nations was confined to their colonies.

_Secondly._ The Greeks could the more easily abstain from purchasing of

the Phœnicians as they could import nearly all the wares they required

from their own colonies in Asia Minor, which maintained the same

intercourse with the countries of inner Asia as Tyre and Sidon; and

obtained and exported in a great degree the same Asiatic merchandise.

_Thirdly._ During the time of their greatest splendour, that is, from

the commencement of the Persian wars, the Greeks were not only the

rivals of the Phœnicians, but their declared political enemies. The

hatred of the Phœnicians toward the Greeks is shown in nothing clearer

than in their ready willingness to lend their fleets to the Persians;

and in the active share they took in the Persian expeditions against

the whole of Greece, or against the separate states. How, then, can it

be expected, that under such circumstances a very lively or regular

commerce could have existed between them?

The Phœnicians, however, still possessed the advantage of furnishing

the Greeks with certain articles of the most costly description, in

great demand, which they could not obtain from their own colonies, and

the Phœnicians alone could supply. To these belong especially, perfumes

and spices, which they imported from Arabia, and which were absolutely

necessary to the Greeks in their sacrifices to the gods. They also

supplied them with the manufactures of Tyre: its purple garments, its

rich apparel, its jewels, trinkets, and other ornaments, which could

be obtained nowhere else of such fine workmanship, or so decidedly in

accordance with the prevailing fashion.

The same causes which limited the commerce of the Phœnicians with

Greece tended also to diminish it with its colonies on the coast

of Asia Minor and in Sicily. History has preserved us no express

information upon this particular; but to the causes already cited

there remains to be added the fact, that in proportion as the trade

of the Phœnicians decreased in the western Mediterranean, that of

the Carthaginians increased, till at length they possessed it almost

exclusively.

When the first Phœnicians visited Spain, it is said they found silver

there in such abundance, that they not only freighted their ships with

it to the water’s edge, but made their common utensils, anchors not

excepted, of this metal. Thus laden, they returned back to their native

country, which lost no time in taking possession of this ancient Peru,

and founding colonies there, whose name and situation we have already

described.

When the Phœnicians first settled here, artificial mine works were

quite unnecessary. The silver ore lay exposed to view, and they

had only to make a slight incision to obtain it in abundance. The

inhabitants themselves were so little acquainted with its value, that

their commonest implements were composed of this metal. The demands

of the Phœnicians, and their avidity to possess it, first taught them

its worth; and it is probable that the arrival and settlement among

them of these strangers, who could supply them with so many useful

articles, in exchange for that upon which they set such little store,

was to them a source of gratification. But when the stock they had in

hand was exhausted, and the insatiable foreigners saw it necessary to

open mines, the lot of the poor Iberians became truly pitiable. That

the Spanish mines were worked by slaves is clear from Diodorus, who

describes their wretched fate; and even though his statement may refer

to the time of the Romans, there can be but little doubt that the

same practice had long previously existed. Whether the natives were

compelled to this labour we know not positively; but they scarcely

could have escaped it altogether, though the extensive traffic of the

Phœnicians in slaves would have rendered it easy for them to introduce

sufficient hands from abroad. Even if only employed as free labourers,

their lot was sufficiently hard. That, however, the mines in Spain were

not worked merely by digging, is clear from Diodorus, whose relation

of itself proves that shafts were opened, and the subterraneous water

forced out by machines; even if the interesting allusion to mine

works in the Book of Job should not be admitted as referring to the

Phœnicians.

The mine works of the genuine Phœnicians seem to have been confined to

the present Andalusia. According to Strabo, the oldest were situated

upon the mountain in which the Bætis or Guadalquivir takes its rise,

upon the south part of the Sierra Morena, which, on the borders of

Andalusia and Murcia, bore the name of Sierra Segura. They did not

extend beyond this previous to the time of the Carthaginians, who

entered upon the conquest of Spain with much more energy and power.

[Illustration: GROUP OF PHŒNICIAN STONE FIGURES]

For the rest, silver was certainly the principal, but could scarcely

be the only object obtained. Gold, lead, and iron were discovered; and

besides these, tin mines were opened by the Phœnicians on the northern

coast of Spain, beyond Lusitania. All these metals are spoken of by the

prophet Ezekiel as the produce of the Spanish mines. “Spain (Tarshish)

[or Tartessus] traded with thee, because of the multitude of thy goods;

silver, iron, tin, and lead, it gave thee in exchange for thy wares.”

The trade in salt fish has already been mentioned as a branch of the

earliest commerce of Spain.

The commerce of the Phœnicians in their Spanish settlements was carried

on in the same manner as they usually carried it on elsewhere; the

only method indeed by which it can be carried on among uncivilised

nations--namely, by barter. It is not only so described in the passage

above quoted from the prophet Ezekiel, but the same is confirmed by

Diodorus. They brought, on their side, Tyrian wares--probably linen,

the usual clothing of Spain; perhaps, also, trinkets and toys, and such

articles of finery as are eagerly coveted by barbarians. In exchange

for these they obtained the above-mentioned natural productions;

and silver, not as money, but as merchandise, and upon which their

profit must have been doubled, if the conjecture, not destitute of

probability, be true, that they bartered it in the southern countries

for gold.

It would appear from Diodorus as if their settlements in both the

countries of Sicily and Carthage were founded with no other object,

than for the convenience of their intercourse with Spain; and so far

as Sicily alone is concerned, he seems to be right. In the long

voyage from their native shores to that distant country, a harbour,

to which they might run in, in case of storms or other accidents, was

indispensably necessary. And although they established here a trade, by

barter, with the natives, and thus managed to obtain the rich produce

of the island for themselves, it is probable that the Greeks, who were

always extending their possessions, soon deprived them of all, except

the original object of their settlement.

The case was different, however, with regard to Africa. If we merely

look at the long line of commercial establishments formed upon this

coast, it will be difficult to believe them all intended solely for the

preservation of a communion with Spain. It is not denied but that such

may have been the origin of the earliest settlements, as for example

that of Utica; but when these cities began to flourish, and drew to

themselves the trade of inner Africa, there can be no doubt but the

Phœnicians took a part in it, and obtained the commodities of this

quarter of the globe, though in the first instance, only at second hand.

Having thus shown the direction and extent of the trade and navigation

of the Phœnicians toward the west, let us now bend our course

eastwards, and trace their progress upon the two great southwestern

gulfs of Asia, the Arabian and Persian. In these, it has already been

stated, they had partly settled, and thus gained secure harbours from

which to set forth on their still more distant enterprises.

It must, however, be at once perceived, that their navigation here

could not have a like undisturbed continuance with that of the

Mediterranean. As the proper dominions of the Phœnicians never

stretched so far as to either of these gulfs, it depended upon their

political relations how far they could make use of the harbours they

possessed there. For even though the way might be open to their

caravans, the dominant nations of inner Asia might not be always

willing to allow foreign colonies on their coasts.

Ophir was the general name for the rich countries of the south, lying

on the African, Arabian, and Indian coasts, as far as at that time

known. From these the Phœnicians had already obtained vast treasures

by caravans; but they now opened a maritime communication with them,

in order to lighten the expense of transport, and to procure their

merchandise at the best hand. The name of Ophir was common even in

the time of Moses, and was then applied to those southern countries

only known by common report. It was therefore now spoken of as a

well-known name and country; and it may be fairly presumed, that when

the Phœnicians entered upon this new line of trade, they only took

possession of a previously well-established system; since it was a

regular, settled navigation, and not a voyage of discovery. From its

taking three years to perform, it would appear to have been directed to

a distant region; but if we consider the half-yearly monsoons, and that

the vessels visited the coasts of Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Malabar

coast of India; and also that the expression, “in the third year,” may

admit of an interpretation that would much abridge the total duration,

the distance will not appear so great. The commodities which they

imported were ivory, precious stones, ebony, and gold, to which may be

added apes and peacocks; all satisfactorily proving that they visited

the countries just mentioned; especially Ethiopia, and probably India.

The voyages of the Phœnicians thus far had a fixed and regular course;

but besides these, they were in the habit of fitting out expeditions

for the purpose of discovery, which often led the way to an enlargement

of their commerce; though they sometimes had no result beyond the

extension of their geographical knowledge. Chance has preserved us

some particulars respecting a few of these enterprises, through their

having been fortunately quoted by Herodotus; but how much more may have

been undertaken, and successfully performed, by a people who, no doubt,

like Great Britain and Portugal, had its Cook and its Vasco de Gama!

In one of these voyages toward the Hellespont, which they undertook at

a very early period, to explore Europe, they discovered the isle of

Thasos, opposite the Thracian coast, and were amply repaid for their

pains by its productive gold mines, which they worked with wonderful

labour and skill, as we learn from Herodotus, who saw them, till they

were driven from the island by the Greeks.

The same writer has given us an account of a still more wonderful

voyage which this people undertook and successfully performed; this was

nothing less than the circumnavigation of Africa. We shall here place

before the reader the remarkable narrative, as given by the historian

himself.

“That Africa is clearly surrounded by the sea, except where it borders

on Asia, Neku II, king of the Egyptians, was the first we know of to

demonstrate. That prince, having finished his excavations for the canal

leading out of the Nile into the Arabian Gulf, despatched certain

natives of Phœnicia on shipboard, with orders to sail back through

the Pillars of Hercules into the North (Mediterranean) Sea, and so to

return into Egypt. The Phœnicians, consequently, having departed out of

the Erythræan Sea, proceeded on their voyage in the Southern Sea: when

it was autumn they would push ashore, and sowing the land, whatever

might be the part of Libya they had reached, await there till the

harvest time: having reaped their corn, they continued their voyage;

thus, after the lapse of two years, and passing through the Pillars of

Hercules in the third, they came back into Egypt, and stated, what is

not credible to me, but may be so, perhaps, to others, namely, that in

their circumnavigation of Libya, they had the sun on the right hand

(that is, on the north).”

But leaving these distant voyages of discovery out of the question,

the extent to which this enterprising people carried their regular

navigation is truly wonderful. Though voyages across the open seas have

been the consequence of our acquaintance with the New World beyond

the Atlantic; yet their hardy and adventurous spirit led them to find

a substitute for it in stretching from coast to coast into the most

distant regions. The long series of centuries during which they were

exclusively the masters of the seas, gave them sufficient time to make

this gradual progress, which perhaps was the more regular and certain

in proportion to the time it occupied. The Phœnicians carried the

nautical art to the highest point of perfection at that time required,

or of which it was then capable; and gave a much wider scope to their

enterprises and discoveries than either the Venetians or Genoese during

the Middle Ages. Their numerous fleets were scattered over the Indian

and Atlantic Oceans, and the Tyrian pennant waved at the same time on

the coasts of Britain and on the shores of Ceylon.[c]

MANUFACTURES AND LAND TRADE OF THE PHŒNICIANS

The merchandise exported by the Phœnicians consisted partly of the

produce of their own industry and skill; but in a much greater extent

of the wares which they received, or imported themselves, from the

countries of Asia with which they maintained an intercourse. The raw

materials, which their art and labour fashioned, must have been drawn

from abroad, as their own little territory could have supplied but a

very small portion of what was necessary to satisfy the demands of

their numerous and large customers scattered all over the world. The

whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel refers to this subject,

and in particular to the land trade of Tyre, now threatened with ruin

by the military expeditions of Nebuchadrezzar. The sketch of the Hebrew

poet affords us an interesting picture of the great international

commerce of inner Asia, which enlarges our narrow ideas of ancient

trade by showing us that it connected nearly all the countries of the

known world.

Previous to the investigation of this branch of foreign commerce of

the Phœnicians, let us take a glance at the productions of their own

skill and industry, which were, even in the remotest antiquity, so

generally celebrated. Among the inventions of the Phœnicians their dyes

indisputably hold the highest rank. The beautifully coloured garments

of Sidon were celebrated in the Homeric period; and the Tyrian purple

formed one of the most general and principal articles of luxury in

antiquity. It is altogether incorrect to consider this purple as one

particular colour. The expression seemed rather to have signified among

the ancients, the whole class of dyes manufactured from an animal

substance; namely, the juice of shellfish. It thus formed a distinct

species of dye, differing from the second, the vegetable dye, which was

composed of various vegetables. Now the first species comprised not

merely one, but a great number and variety of colours; not only purple,

but also light and dark purple, and almost every shade between.

Purple dyes were by no means exclusively confined to the Phœnicians;

but by their great industry and skill, and from the excellent quality

of the shells on their shore, they were enabled to bring it to a higher

degree of perfection, and to maintain the superiority. Scarlet and

violet purples, in particular, were nowhere dyed so well as in Tyre;

garments of this colour, therefore, were in the greatest request among

the great, and the prevailing fashion in the higher ranks of society.

This furnishes us at once with a reason for the unbounded extent to

which this branch of industry was carried by the Phœnicians.

Dyeing cannot exist without weaving; and it follows, that as the

dyeing among the Phœnicians was done in the wool, the stuffs which

they exported must have been the product of their own industry. The

principal manufactories of this sort were, in earlier times, at Sidon:

Homer repeatedly praises its raiment. At a later period, however, they

were common in the other Phœnician cities, and especially in Tyre. It

is much to be regretted that history, which so celebrates the garments

and woollens of this city, has preserved us no direct information

respecting them.

Another product of Phœnician skill was glass; of this they were the

inventors, and long enjoyed the exclusive manufacture. The sand used

for this purpose was found in the southern districts of the country,

near the little river Belus, which rose at the foot of Mount Carmel.

The glass manufactories continued, according to Pliny, during a long

succession of centuries; their principal seats were at Sidon and the

neighbouring Sarepta. From the small number of them, the use of glass

would seem to have been much less general in antiquity than among

us; while the mildness of the climate in all southern countries, as

well as all over the East, rendered any other stoppage of the windows

unnecessary, except that of curtains or blinds. Goblets of the precious

metals or stones were preferred as drinking vessels.

Under this head of Phœnician industry, too, may be ranged ornaments of

dress, implements, utensils, baubles, and gewgaws, which they produced.

The nature of their trade, which for a long time was confined to a

traffic by barter with rude, uncultivated nations, among whom such

commodities have always a quick and certain sale, must at a very early

period have turned their attention to this branch of industry.

The foreign commerce which the Phœnicians carried on with the nations

of the interior of Asia may be divided into three branches, according

to its three principal directions. The first of these comprises the

southern trade, or the Arabian-East-Indian and the Egyptian; the

second, the eastern, or the Assyrian-Babylonian; and the third, that of

the north, or the Armenian-Caucasian. It is evident, from the various

particulars mentioned by the Hebrew poets, as well as by profane

writers, that the first of these three branches of commerce was the

most important. We call it the Arabian-East-Indian, not because we

here assume it as proved that the Phœnicians themselves journeyed over

Arabia to India, but because they procured in Arabia the merchandise

of the East Indies, for which it was at that time the great market.

With regard to Arabia itself, however, they kept up an intercourse with

every part of it, as well its eastern coast as that bordering on the

Arabian sea.

[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN VASE

(In the Louvre Museum)]

Spices, gold, and precious stones are expressly enumerated among the

natural productions of Happy Arabia. Gold mines, it is true, are no

longer to be found there, but the assurances of antiquity respecting

them are so general and explicit that it is impossible reasonably to

doubt that Yemen once abounded in gold. Precious stones were found

in the mountains of the province of Hadramaut; such at least as were

considered precious by the ancients; namely, onyxes, rubies, agates,

etc. But in addition to these native productions of Happy Arabia, other

wares are mentioned as Arabian, certainly not the proper produce of

this country, but either Ethiopian or Indian. To the former belongs

cinnamon, or canella; and to the latter, ivory and ebony. Besides

these, cardamom, nard, and other spices, used in odoriferous waters and

unguents, are expressly enumerated by Theophrastus as coming from India.

The commerce of the Phœnicians, however, was not confined merely to

southern Arabia, but stretched along the eastern coast on the Persian

Gulf: “The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the

merchandise of thy hand: they brought thee for a present horns of

ivory and ebony.” Dedan is one of the Baharein Islands, in the Persian

Gulf, but if these words of the prophet prove an intercourse between

Phœnicia and the Persian Gulf, they also prove not less indisputably

the connection in which the Phœnicians stood with India. The large

countries to which the Phœnician trade extended beyond Dedan could

be no other than India; if this is not sufficiently proved by the

situation, it is beyond a doubt by the commodities mentioned. Ivory and

ebony could only have been procured in Dedan from India, for there were

no elephants in Arabia.

Arabia was then the great seat of the Phœnician land trade. With this

was interwoven a connection with the rich countries of the south,

Ethiopia and India. Notwithstanding the vast deserts of sand, which

protected Arabia from the attacks of foreign conquerors, the merchant’s

desire of gain was not damped, but surmounted every difficulty.

Caravans, composed of various tribes, penetrated through its wastes

in every direction, even to its southern and eastern coasts; here

they traded, either directly or indirectly, with the Phœnicians,

whose seaports became at last the great staples of their valuable

merchandise, whence it was shipped off, and spread over the West at an

immense profit to these merchants.

This commerce must have been the more lucrative, as it was, according

to the very clear statement of Ezekiel, altogether carried on by

barter. It is everywhere spoken of as an exchange of merchandise

against merchandise, and even the precious metals are only considered

as such. What an immense profit the Phœnician merchant must have made

of his Spanish silver mines, by exchanging their produce for gold in

Yemen, where this metal was so abundant! What a profit he must have had

on other wares, which the Arabians in a manner were obliged to take of

him, and in which he had no competitor!

The intercourse with Arabia must have been greatly facilitated by

the similarity of the languages of the two nations. These were only

dialects of the same language; and though differences might occur, yet

there scarcely could have been any difficulty in making each other

understood. What an advantage to the Phœnician merchant, to be able,

in the mutual intercourse with these distant regions, to make use

of his native tongue, instead of being at the mercy of treacherous

interpreters! This advantage alone would have sufficed to secure him

the exclusive commerce of Arabia, even if the situation of the country

had not made it almost impossible for any foreign nation to compete

with him.

The commerce of the Phœnicians with Egypt must be considered as a

second branch of their southern land trade. Their intercourse with this

nation was one of the earliest they formed, as Herodotus expressly

assures us that the exportation of Assyrian and Egyptian wares was

the first business they carried on. And when it is remembered that

Egypt at all times enjoyed the principal land trade of Africa, it

would indeed seem surprising if no intercourse had subsisted between

two such great neighbouring commercial nations. Still more positive

information, however, respecting its existence is given by Ezekiel,

who, in his picture of Tyrian commerce, forgets not that with Egypt,

but even enumerates the wares which Tyre obtained from the banks of

the Nile. “Fine linen with embroidered work from Egypt was that which

thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of

Elishah was that which covered thee.” Weaving was one of the principal

occupations of the Egyptians, and cotton was a native of their soil.

Embroideries of cotton, and with cotton, were common in Egypt, and

considered as masterpieces of art; corn, the other great product

of Egypt, was only procured from that country upon extraordinary

occasions; as Palestine and Syria furnished it of an excellent quality.

It is proved, however, that it was brought thence, in cases of

emergency, by the caravan journey of the sons of Jacob into Egypt.

One of the principal articles exported by the Phœnicians to Egypt was

wine, which this country did not at that time produce. Twice a year

large cargoes of this were shipped from Phœnicia and Greece. The second

great branch of the Phœnician land trade spread towards the east.

It includes the commerce with Syria and Palestine, with Babylon and

Assyria, and with the countries of Eastern Asia.

Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians. Their own mountainous

territory was but little adapted for agriculture, while Palestine

produced corn in such abundance, as to be able to supply them

plentifully with this first necessary of life. The corn of Judea was

the best known. It excelled even that of Egypt. It was not, therefore,

merely the proximity of the country which led the Phœnicians to prefer

this market. Palestine also supplied them with wine and oil. The fact

that Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians explains, too, in

the clearest manner, the good understanding and lasting peace that

prevailed between these two nations. It is a striking feature in the

Jewish history, that with all other nations around them they lived in

a state of almost continual warfare; and that under David and Solomon

they even became conquerors, and subdued considerable countries; and

yet with their nearest neighbours, the Phœnicians, they never engaged

in hostilities.

Syria proper, also, supplied its various productions, according to

the nature of the different parts of the country--whether adapted for

agriculture, the cultivation of the vine, or merely to the nomad life

and the breeding of cattle. The wool of the wilderness was one of the

wares supplied by the pastoral tribes, who wandered with their flocks

as well over the Syrian as over the Arabian deserts.

A moment’s reflection upon Tyrian manufacture of woven goods and their

dyes will enable the reader at once to perceive the great importance

of this branch of commerce. It converted the very wilderness, so far

as they were concerned, into an opulent country, which afforded them

the finest and most precious raw materials for their most important

manufactures. This circumstance, too, was a means of cementing and

preserving a good understanding between them and these nomad tribes; a

matter of no inconsiderable consequence to the Phœnicians, as it was

through them that the rich produce of the southern regions came into

their hands.

The great point, however, to which the trade of the Phœnicians was

directed in the east, was Babylon. That a very active commerce was

carried on with this flourishing city, even before it forcibly obtained

the dominion of Asia and subjected Phœnicia itself, no one can doubt,

who is acquainted with the situation and manners of the two nations;

and yet, however astonishing it may seem, we have less information

respecting this very important branch of trade than upon almost every

other. Still we have the positive testimony of Herodotus, that it was

one of the most ancient. It probably happened, that it was frequently

interrupted by the great revolutions of interior Asia, in which Babylon

itself often necessarily participated; it must, however, soon have

revived, when the trade of Babylon itself again began to flourish. In

proportion, however, as the silence of history upon this interesting

subject is remarkable, the conjecture is strengthened, that the trading

route between Babylon and Tyre lay through a long uninterrupted desert;

the natural consequence of which would be, that, even supposing it not

purposely concealed, this commerce would have become but little known.

But even in this desert itself are found vestiges which seem to denote

its course and magnitude: the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec are probably

links of the commercial chain which connected Tyre and Babylon.

The third, and least branch of Phœnician land trade, was with the

countries of the north. No Greek writer, that I am acquainted with,

has left the least information respecting it. Ezekiel mentions Tubal,

Meshech, and Togarmah. There can be no doubt that Tubal and Meshech

denoted the regions lying between the Black and Caspian Seas; the

abode of the Tibareni and Moschi, and probably also the Cappadocians.

With regard to Togarmah, conjecture runs very strongly in favour of

its being Armenia. The probability of the truth of these conjectures

is much augmented by the fact, that the wares enumerated are exactly

such as these regions produce. Cappadocia, together with the Caucasian

districts, from the very earliest times, was the chief seat of the

slave trade, and always continued so in the ancient world. The mines of

these regions, however, were probably a still greater attraction; and

one which their whole history shows they could not withstand.

Armenia, finally, is also recognised by its wares. It is described as

a land abounding in horses; and in this respect, as well as in the

distinction which the prophet makes between those of an inferior and a

more esteemed breed, no country of Asia agrees so well as Armenia.

It is evident that this northern trade also was not carried on with

money, but by barter. It was not necessary here, however, to have

recourse to caravans, for the way lay through inhabited and civilised

countries.[b]

SILVER AND GOLD IN ANTIQUITY AS MONEY

In the study of the chief commodities of Phœnician commerce, and

especially of those which are interesting by reason of the historical

influence they exercised on culture, we will first consider the

precious metals. For silver and gold stand first and foremost in their

great influence upon trade, and for their incalculable effects upon

ancient culture.

The desire to obtain these precious metals from their sources, drove

the Phœnicians to the most distant lands, gave rise to their boldest

commercial undertakings, led their ships into unknown seas, suggested

their voyages of discovery, and made them establish colonies in the

farthest countries. According to ancient historians, the silver and

gold of distant lands were the source of their wealth and prosperity

in the world. Being the first to traffic with silver, they laid the

foundation of an organised trade for their country, which was not

furnished by nature with sufficient commercial commodities to trade

with other lands. For what had Phœnicia to offer the far richer and

earlier cultivated countries of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, or what

could it give in equivalent exchange for the rich wares of India, if it

had not had the precious metals which were quite or partially wanting

in these countries?

In olden days silver ranked higher than gold, and it was used for fully

a thousand years as an object of trade, before we find a trace of gold

being used for the same purpose.

The use of silver as money was limited in olden times to the Semitic

world and certainly to Phœnicia and the neighbouring countries. For

whilst the oldest records of the Eastern world, such as Homer and the

Zend writings, mention other objects of barter, no trace is found of

silver being used for that purpose, whereas at an earlier date than

that to which these writings can lay claim, we find the Phœnicians

using money as the basis of their commercial intercourse with other

countries.

The Mosaic Law, particularly in its oldest and best authenticated part,

leads to the conclusion that silver money was common even at the time

of the formation of the Israelite state. The ancient laws which treat

of sentences of punishment, often state the amount of the expiatory sum

of silver. Human beings were valued at their worth in money according

to their age or rank (Leviticus xxvii.); houses, lands, and corn and

victuals were all estimated according to their value in silver money.

The thief, the man who hurts his neighbour, the foolish shepherd and

the man who robs a lover of his maid, had to expiate their sins by a

proportionate payment. And so also with “the holy things of the Lord”:

the sacrifice of a ram was accompanied by a payment of shekels of

silver; the first-born of the Israelites were redeemed from the Levites

for five shekels apiece by the poll; when the people were numbered, a

payment of half a shekel for every man was exacted; and the advice of a

seer was paid for in silver money.

The use of precious metals as objects of exchange does not extend

farther eastward than the Semitic dominion. In the Zend writings, we

find no trace of a currency; an ox is mentioned as payment (_pecunia_),

and in the Law of Zoroaster we find an ox exacted as punishment.

According to Biblical testimony precious metals were of no account with

the Medians and Parthians except for ornaments. India, even including

the gold countries of northern India, was either not cognisant of the

use of precious metals as payment, or only adopted such a use of them

in a very small way in intercourse with foreigners; and whereas the

taxes were levied in money in all the Persian provinces, the Indians

paid theirs in bars of gold.

In ancient Egypt, silver money was the common means of payment in her

intercourse with the Semites. The presentments upon ancient Egyptian

monuments, in which gold and silver earrings are weighed would not

prove this, but these presentments record the payment of taxes by

foreign people; and the classics and Holy Scripture give concurrent

testimony on their use of money. Reference is made to the laws of the

old Egyptian kings on the circulation of money, and false coinage.

When we find silver used as money by a people, it shows that it has

either a great trade, or that it has reached a rather advanced stage of

culture, and it mostly means both. Unworked rough silver pieces, like

the oldest money, could only be of value where there were merchants

who would take them in exchange for wares or where they understood

how to work it. The former was the case with the Hebrews and in the

neighbouring countries of Phœnicia, where it was almost exclusively in

the hands of those settled in the country, or of the Phœnicians who

resorted thither. But in Greece, where, in the Homeric period, the

art of working precious metals was not known and trade was in a very

backward state, advance had to be made in both directions before money

became current. This did not occur till the ninth century, when Greece

began to have important places of trade; and as commerce was at that

time almost entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, it led to the

introduction of their mode of trade in the country. The use of silver

money in Italy is of a later date still.

The localities of the use of silver as money in antiquity are thus

made patent. The Phœnicians traded with other countries than those

mentioned, for we know for certain that they went to the Balearic

Isles, Spain, Britain, and western and northern Africa. Therefore the

nearer a country lay to Phœnicia the earlier it adopted the use of

silver as money, and the farther away it lay from this central point of

ancient trade the later it was before silver appeared as a medium of

exchange in that country, as it was evidently dependent on the country

having commercial relations with the Phœnicians.

With regard to the origin of silver in antiquity, we must remark that

silver was far more seldom found than gold, and that a great deal of

that mentioned by the ancients was so mixed with gold that only an

eighth part was silver. The Biblical books, although referring to

several places where gold was found, only mention silver coming from

Tarshish, or Turditania, and that also brought to Canaan by the trade

with Ophir.

In Africa, from whence Western Asia procured her great quantities of

gold, the ancients found no silver. In the whole of Western Asia, the

seat of the Semitic races, there was no silver, and in Asia Minor

there was only a small quantity procured from the mines; and these

are the only silver mines mentioned in Asia in antiquity, beyond the

unimportant ones of Canaan and northern India. Moreover, in Europe,

with the exception of the silver country of Turditania, silver was

found only in very few places and in very small quantities.

Cyprus had some silver and gold mines, but it is very doubtful whether

it was also to be found in Crete; and albeit unimportant, there were

also gold and silver mines in Siphnus. Greece and the neighbouring

countries were very poor in silver until the Persian war, the places

where it was to be found, like the mines in Attica and probably the

silver mines of Epirus and Macedonia, being either not known, or being

worked by the Phœnicians; and it was the same with the mines of Thasos

and Thrace, which were more famous for their gold than their silver.

And beyond these places, if we except the Phœnician commercial district

of northern Europe, mention was only made of the silver of Sardinia and

Gaul, where the metal was only a late discovery, and of Britain.

Under these circumstances, the Biblical records which tell of Western

Asia’s treasures of silver coming from the Phœnician colony of Tarshish

are of great value to the history of ancient commerce. The Euphrates

is also mentioned in these records, and it is moreover shown that

being the centre of the commerce of antiquity, it was the depot for

the metals found in the western countries, and as the Phœnicians

monopolised the trade with Turditania for nearly a thousand years, they

brought the silver to the market of Asia.

The enormous amount of silver possessed by Western Asia even in remote

times, shows the great amount circulated by Phœnicia, as it was almost

exclusively obtained by trade with that country.

Although silver was more difficult to obtain than gold, and was mostly

first secured with gold in small quantities, it was used more than

gold. The Greeks generally reckoned that gold was worth the tenth part

of silver, and in Biblical books, in the seventh century B.C., there

are signs of a similar comparison; but in more remote times silver must

have ranked lower than gold, at least in Western Asia.

According to the Mosaic books, of the silver and golden gifts which

the twelve chiefs made to the sanctuary, the silver gifts were worth

twenty times as much as the golden, and it is therefore presumable, as

the ancients were accurate in their statements about hieratic matters,

that the old valuation of gold and silver was still then in vogue.

As, moreover, in more ancient times, a great deal of silver and a

comparatively small amount of gold was imported into Palestine, as gold

was used only for ornaments, and not as money, the above valuation is

not so astonishing.

We hear in Solomon’s days of plenty of silver, that the vessels of his

house were made of pure gold, for silver was “nothing accounted of in

the days of Solomon” (1 Kings x. 21), or that he “made silver to be in

Jerusalem as stones” (1 Kings x. 27). These are evidently hyperbolical

expressions, but they would hardly have been used if a certain change

had not taken place in its valuation.

However it may be, an extraordinary amount of silver found its way

into Western Asia at a very early period; and the farther one goes

back in the history of Phœnicia and its vicinity, the greater the

wealth of these countries in precious metals is seen to be; and hence

the explanation of the part played there by gold and silver since the

seventh century.

The great wealth in gold and silver in Western Asia is shown in the

accounts given of the treasures which fell into the hands of the

conquering Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the Hebrews in

the times of David and Solomon. These treasures did not come from

mines, at least we know of none in Western Asia, but they were gained

partly from the conquered countries as tributes and booty, and partly

from trade which was mainly directed to the capitals of the conquering

kingdoms. The record of the wealth of the Assyrian kings far exceeds

the almost fabulous accounts of the amount of silver found in Persia by

the Macedonian conqueror.

THE SLAVE TRADE OF PHŒNICIA

But the most important branch of Phœnician commerce was the slave

trade. Many thousands of these unfortunate beings were employed in the

numerous manufacturies and industries of the Phœnician cities, and

nearly all the rowers on the great war-ships and trading vessels of

this maritime nation were slaves. It is said that sixty thousand slaves

manned the three hundred Phœnician ships which joined the Persian navy.

In addition, vast numbers of slaves were sent to the colonies for

mining and industrial purposes. Hence it can be seen that the demands

of the Phœnician markets alone, for slaves, must have been enormous.

But the Phœnicians were not content to supply the home market. They

searched the world for slaves; and the Phœnician slave dealer was

known in every great city of ancient times. Indeed, so numerous became

the slave merchants, that the Bible speaks of a thousand of them

gathering at one time and place, to attend a slave market, as a not

unusual occurrence. Human beings were the most important articles of

merchandise in the olden times.

The slave trade is as ancient as is trade itself. Slaves figure in the

religious stories of the Assyrians, the Lydians, and Phœnicians; and

there are traders mentioned in the Biblical accounts of the old fathers

of Israel, and in the poems and myths of the Homeric period. Phœnician

seafarers, who sold their wares on distant shores, took the opportunity

of kidnapping boys and girls to sell them elsewhere at a high price.

The account of Eumæus in the _Odyssey_ will be recollected; Io, and

also the chorus of maidens in Euripides’ _Helena_, were represented as

having been brought by Phœnician merchants to Egypt. The traders by

land also dealt in human wares. We know how Joseph was sold for twenty

shekels to the travelling Midianite merchants.

With the establishment of a regular commercial intercourse between

cities and nations, the kidnapping of human beings ceased to be

practised by reputable Phœnician merchants; but avaricious men still

secretly sent out ships for the purpose of capturing human wares. These

spoilers haunted the coasts and harbours of Phœnicia, Asia Minor, and

Syria; and either exacted a high ransom from the relatives of their

captives, or sold them in the public slave markets.

During the most prosperous period of the slave trade we find the

Phœnician slave dealers everywhere, even on the fields of battle, where

they followed the fortunes of war as peddlers and purveyors. The booty

which fell into the hands of the soldiers was at once purchased by

these traffickers, and the little children and women, whose transport

would have been difficult, were sold to them at a very low price, or

exchanged for wine or some other commodity valued by the soldiers.

In this double capacity as purveyors and slave dealers the Phœnicians

appear in the Old Testament account of the armies which attacked the

Jews. After the raid, led by the Philistines against the Jews about

845 B.C. (Joel iii. 3), the prophet said: “They have cast lots for my

people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine

that they might drink,” and the same prophet, when mentioning the slave

trade of the Syrians and Sidonians, writes: “The children also of Judah

and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye

might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out

of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense

upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into

the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the

Sabeans, to a people far off.”

The greater number of Phœnician slaves came from the neighbouring

countries of Palestine and Syria; and this not only because of the

nearness of these countries to Phœnicia, but also because of the

political condition of their inhabitants. In a great part of Syria and

Palestine the old populations had been enslaved by the races invading

these countries. As the Canaanites had to submit to the Jews and

Hebrews in the south, so the Syrians had to bow to the Canaanites in

the north, where they were not only in force on the seacoast, but had

become the ruling race far into the interior. A great number of the

Jewish inhabitants in the district of the Phœnician maritime cities

had the same fate, and, according to many accounts, they were driven

into slavery. Hence the inherited enmity between the Phœnicians and the

Syrians, and more especially between the Jews and every neighbouring

race. The intermingling of so many different neighbouring small states

caused continuous wars, which were often waged solely for the purpose

of obtaining slaves and gaining wealth by the sale of them. Moreover,

slavery was not a despised condition amongst races, accustomed to it

from the earliest times, whose gods like Sandon, Marna, Semiramis, and

Astarte, whose forefathers like Jacob and Joseph, and whose heroes like

Samson had been slaves, or servants. Thus it was quite a common custom

in Palestine for parents to sell their children as slaves, or for

persons willingly to enter slavery. The Greeks and Romans, therefore,

long regarded the Syrians and Jews as born to slavery, as the Europeans

once considered the negroes.

The Syrians seem to have been very popular as slaves, but being rather

a delicate race, not accustomed to hard work, they distinguished

themselves in their devotion to their masters, and their deftness in

handiwork, hence their value as house and body slaves. They were

also excellent bakers and cooks, and gardeners, for horticulture was

unequalled in Syria, and in these respects they were in great demand

in western Asia, Europe, and Africa. The women slaves from Syria were

equally popular,--pretty, musical, and song-loving,--the Syrians acted

as ladies’ maids and hairdressers, and we find them taken to Greece

and Italy as dancers, and flute and zither players, where they were a

profitable investment to their owners.

Hebrew slaves were a most important branch of the trade, although

there is no express mention of it. In the time of the judges when the

northern Jewish races were subjugated by the Phœnicians, and when they

were at times at the mercy of the Philistines’ raids in the prosecution

of their slave trade, the traffic assumed great proportions, and

continued until the reigns of Solomon and David, when the political

and commercial relations of the Phœnicians and Israelites were put on

a proper footing, and a treaty was made forbidding the Phœnicians to

take Hebrew slaves out of the country. But after the decline of the

David and Solomon kingdom, and the consequent change of the political

and commercial relations of both countries, we find complaints of the

Phœnicians breaking the old contract and transporting Hebrew slaves

both eastward and westward. The Assyrian wars subsequently led to

the Hebrews being taken as slaves into both neighbouring and distant

countries.

In the Maccabæan wars, we find Phœnician slave dealers crowding the

battle-fields, where they bought the Jews at a low price. This period

and that following the wars of Pompey in Syria and Judea were the

palmy days of Phœnicia’s slave trade. Delos was the great seat of

this trade, as it was then the chief resort of Phœnician merchants.

Thousands of slaves were imported and sold there on the same day, and

the great Dispersion of the Jews in the West dates from this time,

which consisted less of merchants than of liberated slaves. But the

Phœnician trade in Jewish slaves went on till the latest times, when

we find Phœnician merchants in the much frequented slave market at the

Terebinth of Hebron buying four Jews for a measure of barley after the

war of Hadrian in Judea.

The beautiful women and boys of Greece had from early times been

introduced into the East as slaves. In Homeric times they commanded

a higher price than any other commodity, and they were brought by

Phœnician pirates as prisoners of war to Egypt and Palestine.

The prices at which slaves were bought were uncommonly low, whereas the

prices at which they were resold were very high. The greatest profits

were made by the slave dealers, who were often pirates, and frequently

gained large sums in ransom money for wealthy or princely captives. In

Pontus, which was the chief depot for most of these slaves, Lucullus

tells us that a slave could be bought for 4 drachmæ, which in English

money would be about 17_s._ 8_d._ ($4.25). When the slave dealers had

an opportunity of buying prisoners of war on battle-fields, or when

soldiers put up for sale their booty of women and children, the prices

were equally low. The Punic soldiers were sold by the Romans for 3

thalers 18 gr. In Amos we read of the needy being sold for a pair of

shoes. In Isaiah lii. 3, reference is made to the Jews being “sold

for nought.” The price given by the Phœnicians for slaves was high in

comparison with that of other countries; and even those mentioned in

the Mosaic Law are rather lower than the Phœnician market prices of

the time. Female children from 1 month to 5 years were estimated at 3

shekels, a male child of the same age 5 shekels. The price rose from 5

to 20 years of age; boys and youths were estimated at 20 shekels,

girls were worth half as much. The highest price was between 20 and 60

years of age; for men 50 shekels, for women 30. At the fourth stage of

60 years and over, the price went down with men three-fourths, _i.e._,

to 15 shekels, and with women to two-thirds, or to 10 shekels.

[Illustration: A PHŒNICIAN AND CYPRIOTE INSCRIPTION]

Compared with the modern prices of slaves, those of antiquity were far

lower; but the prices demanded in modern times by the slave dealers

of Central Africa, which were from 10 to 20 per cent. lower than on

the coast, were about the same as those of antiquity. Two or three

generations ago, on the Lake Chad a ten-year slave boy cost about 15

shillings, and a girl of the same age about 21 shillings, prices which

correspond closely to those given by slave dealers in antiquity, and to

the valuation of slaves as recorded in the Mosaic Law.[c]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF FROM CARTHAGE]

CHAPTER VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION

Egypt and Babylonia were doubtless the greatest nations of remote

antiquity, but Phœnicia was in some respects more wonderful than

either. Here was a people occupying a tiny strip on the coast of the

Mediterranean, its total population aggregated in a few scattered

cities, yet, actuated by a common impulse, reaching out east and west,

north and south, to the very limits of the known world, and weaving

with its trading ships and caravans a web of unity between all the

civilised nations of the eastern hemisphere.

Phœnicia itself was at most something like one hundred and fifty miles

in length, and in width it varied from literally a few yards to at most

thirty-five miles. But the territories that paid tribute through the

merchants and explorers whose home was in this tiny centre, were as

widely separated as India on the one hand, and the Atlantic islands off

the west coast of Africa on the other.

The Phœnician explorers sailed far out beyond the Pillars of Hercules,

which for every other nation of antiquity represented the westernmost

limits of the known world. Northward the Phœnician commerce stopped

only with the confines of civilisation, and southward, on at least

one occasion, the adventurous explorers went far beyond it, actually

circumnavigating Africa--a feat which was not repeated by their

successors for two thousand years.

This circumnavigation of Africa has been questioned, and, indeed, it

must be admitted that it rests on rather scant evidence, as we have

nothing for it but the authority of Herodotus. But it chanced that in

the tale which Herodotus tells he unconsciously bears witness to the

truth of the narrative, when he relates that the explorers claimed to

have sailed into a region where they had the sun on their right; that

is to say, to the north. Herodotus himself does not of course at all

comprehend the meaning of this alleged phenomenon; he even asserts

that he doubts the accuracy of this statement. Yet, as moderns view

the matter, it is clear that this statement in itself is practically a

demonstration that the explorers at least did go beyond the equator,

and this being the fact, it seems not unreasonable to credit their

claim to have made an entire circuit of the continent.

The Phœnicians were not conquerors except in a commercial sense; but,

as the traders of the ancient world, they were the means of spreading

civilisation to a degree unequalled by any other nation. In particular

they colonised the Mediterranean; and they were credited, no doubt

justly, by the Greeks with having introduced at least the elements of

Egyptian and Babylonian culture to that nation. Their most famous

feat in this direction was of course the introduction of the alphabet,

which, as the traditions of the time relate, and as modern scholars are

quite ready to believe, the Phœnician traders brought with them from

the Orient.

THE PHŒNICIANS AND THE ALPHABET

As to the exact origin of this alphabet, modern scholars are still

somewhat in doubt. The Greeks themselves ascribed its origin to the

Egyptians, believing that the Phœnicians had adopted a modified

alphabet from the hieroglyphics. There were others, however, among

the ancients who ascribed the origin of the Phœnician alphabet not to

Egypt, but to Babylonia, and curiously enough this discrepancy amongst

ancient authorities is exactly matched by the discordant opinions of

the scholarship of our own day. It is admitted on all hands that the

Phœnicians did not themselves invent their alphabet. But whether the

foundation upon which they built it was the hieroglyphic or hieratic

script of the Egyptians, or the elaborate cuneiform syllabary of

Mesopotamia, is not even now clearly established.

The theory of Egyptian origin found about the middle of the 19th

century an able and strenuous advocate in the person of Viscount de

Rougé, who elaborated the theory which specifically accounted, or

attempted to account, for the different letters of the Phœnician

alphabet as of Egyptian origin. He based his comparisons not upon

the hieroglyphics, but on the modified forms of the hieratic script,

believing with good reason that the Phœnicians obtained their alphabet

at a very early date--perhaps something like 2000 B.C. He logically

confined his analysis to an observation of the oldest specimens of the

hieratic writings that were accessible, in particular using the Prisse

Papyrus, which, as good fortune would have it, chanced to be written

in a very clear, bold hand. This hieratic script, as is well known,

follows the hieroglyphics themselves in using at once an alphabet, a

syllabary, and a modified form of ideographs. It is one of the most

curious facts in the history of human evolution that the Egyptians

having advanced through the various stages of mental growth necessary

to the evolution of an alphabet, should have retained the antique

forms of picture writing and of syllabic representations of sounds

after they had made the final analysis which gave them the actual

alphabet, and that to the very last they should have used a jumble

of the various forms of representation in all their writings. The

feat of the Phœnicians, according to the theory of De Rougé, was to

select from the Egyptian characters those that were purely, or almost

purely, alphabetic in character, and recognising that these alone were

sufficient, to reject all the rest. Simple as such a selection seems

when viewed from the standpoint of later knowledge, it really must have

required the imagination of the most brilliant genius to effect it.

The theory of De Rougé was so ably supported through comparison of the

most ancient known inscriptions of the Phœnicians with the hieratic

alphabet of the Egyptians that it was almost at once accepted by a

large number of scholars, and for many years was pretty generally

regarded as having solved the old-time puzzle of the origin of the

Phœnician alphabet. More recently, however, the theory of De Rougé has

been called in question and the old theory of Pliny, which ascribed

the origin of the alphabet to the Babylonian script rather than the

Egyptian, has been revived by modern archæologists. Professor Deecke

attempted to derive the Phœnician alphabet from the later Assyrian.

This attempt, however, has been characterised as refuting itself in the

very expression, for it can hardly be in question that the Phœnician

alphabet was in use long before the later Assyrian came into existence.

A more logical attempt, however, has been made to draw a comparison

between the Phœnician and the ancient Accadian, which was the classical

speech of Mesopotamia and the model on which the later Assyrian itself

was based. This theory, first suggested perhaps by Professor Wuttke,

found an able advocate in Dr. J. P. Peters, and more recently has been

sanctioned by the high authority of Professor Hommel. Their opinions

on the other hand have been ardently combated by the advocates of the

theory of De Rougé, and the subject is as yet too obscure and the data

are too few for a final decision.

Whether the Phœnicians went to Egypt or to Mesopotamia, however, for

their model, it is at least admitted on all sides that among this

people originated the alphabet which was transmitted to the Greeks, and

through the Greeks to all modern European nations. This fact should

of itself suffice to give the Phœnicians a foremost place among the

nations of antiquity, in the estimation of the modern critic.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS; RELIGION

It is a curious fact that the nation to which all Europe owes its

alphabet should have been the one which has left us the fewest written

records of all of the great nations of antiquity. It is not at all in

question that the Phœnicians first developed a purely alphabetical

script and transmitted it to the Greeks, yet there are no written

monuments of Phœnicia herself preserved to us that are as ancient by

some five hundred years as the oldest records of Greece, that have

been found in the ruins of her so-called Mycenæan period. Indeed, the

oldest records of Phœnician life, at present known, do not come from

the territory of Phœnicia proper, but from her colonies. This anomaly

has been explained by saying that the Phœnicians were not essentially

a monumental people. They were seemingly but little solicitous to

preserve records of their national life, the reason being, no doubt,

that such records among the early nations were almost solely actuated

by the desire of a great conquering monarch to preserve the memory of

his own fame. As Phœnicia had no great conquering monarchs, as her

conquests were all peaceful ones, lacking the element of dramatic

picturesqueness, there was no one who had a personal interest in

engraving inscriptions to tell her story to posterity.

Even so great a feat as the invention of the alphabet was probably

looked upon by the Phœnicians as more or less a natural development

growing out of their contact with Egypt and Babylonia. And, indeed, it

is not through the Phœnicians themselves, but through the Greeks, that

we are informed of the fact that our alphabet is of Phœnician origin.

So far as one is able to picture the actual manners and customs of

the Phœnicians, in the period of their greatest power, one must think

of them essentially as a matter-of-fact manufacturing and commercial

nation, living in a few relatively large cities, and sending out

colonies from these cities whenever the growth of population made

such extension seem necessary. Sidon and Tyre were alternately the

cities of greatest influence, but neither one apparently was at any

period a really great city as regards actual count of population.

Tyre in particular had its most important part built upon a small

island, which afforded it wonderful opportunities for defence, as such

conquerors as Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander found to their cost.

But this island as explored by modern investigators has seemed to be

so limited in size as to prohibit any thought that its population was

ever large. And it at once becomes clear how necessary it was that

colonies should be sent out from time to time, since the population

of any prosperous country is constantly increasing. It has even been

suggested that the main population of Tyre must, at any given period of

its prosperity, have been necessarily absent from its island home on

voyages of war or peace, since the restricted area of the island itself

makes it difficult to account otherwise for the distribution of such a

number of men as was necessary to the equipment of the Phœnician navies

and trading fleets.

A nation of traders must necessarily have a high degree of intelligence

of a practical kind, but it would seem that the culture of the

Phœnicians did not greatly advance beyond this. Their religion was

always apparently of a very crude oriental type, akin to that of the

Babylonians and of the early Hebrews. In literature they apparently

never ranked with these neighbouring nations. Indeed, if they produced

at any time a literature of significance, all traces of it are now

lost, except certain fragments of doubtful authenticity that have come

to us through the Greeks; the most important of these being the alleged

writings of Sanchoniathon, as translated into Greek by Philo Byblius,

and preserved, in part, by Eusebius.[a]

Such knowledge as we have of the religion of the Phœnicians is derived

from the writings of foreign authors, Greek, Roman, and Hebrew, and

from the disputed work of Sanchoniathon just referred to. With this

doubtful exception, all native literature on the subject has perished.

Nor does art step in, as in the case of Egypt and Babylonia, to atone

in some measure for the loss; a few coins and idols found in Cyprus

are all the help it gives us in forming an idea of how the Phœnicians

conceived of their gods. [Renan discovered the remains of a temple of

Adonis near Byblus.]

In the Phœnician cosmogony, the beginning of all things was a moving

and limitless chaos of utter darkness. After the lapse of ages this

agitated air became enamoured of its own first principles, and from

this embrace was generated Mot, which some interpret mud, and others

the putrefaction of a watery mixture. From this the universe came

forth, first living creatures without sensation, then intelligent

beings (Zophasemin or beholders of the Sun), in shape like an egg. From

this, too, the sun, moon, and stars were evolved, and the heat and

light generated clouds, wind, and rain. At the sound of the tempest

creatures male and female awoke, intelligent, but feeble and timid in

mind, worshipping the products of the earth. Next, of Kol-pia (Wind)

and his wife Baau (Night) were born mortals, Æon and Protogonos, whose

children, Genos and Genea, dwelt in the land of Phœnicia and worshipped

the Sun, Beelsamin, Lord of Heaven.

Sanchoniathon’s history tells how three sons were born to Æon and

Protogonos,--Light, Fire, and Flame. These begot a gigantic race, whose

names were bestowed upon the mountains, and of them sprang Memrumus and

Hypsouranius (unless the latter name be merely the Greek version of the

former). Hypsouranius fixed his dwelling in the island of Tyre, and by

him and his race the various arts of mankind were invented.

Of the gods we are told that the progenitors of the race were Eliun and

his wife Beruth, who dwelt near Byblus, the oldest city in Phœnicia.

Ouranos (Heaven) son of Eliun, wedded his sister Ghe (Earth), and by

her had four sons and three daughters. Cronos, the eldest son, deposed

and ultimately slew his father, and it is he who assigned to the

various other deities their offices and places of abode in Phœnicia.

The Phœnician religion was of a distinctively national type. The

active and passive forces of nature were symbolised by male and female

deities, as in Egypt, but the Phœnician gods were more definitely

associated with the heavenly bodies than the Egyptian. It is doubtful

whether Osiris and Isis were primarily identified with the Sun and

Moon, but such was unquestionably the case with the Baal and Ashtoreth

of Phœnicia. According to Sanchoniathon, the proper title of Baal was

Beelsemin, Lord of the Heavens, or Sun. He was the principal Phœnician

divinity, and thus his name came to be equivalent to Supreme God,

and is more frequently used in this sense than with reference to his

original character of Sun-god. In this sense, too, it was applied to

other gods locally regarded as supreme, Melkarth, for example, is

the Baal of Tyre; and it is therefore difficult to distinguish the

character and attributes of Baal, Bel, or Belus from those of Cronos,

Ouranos, and Moloch, who were likewise identified with the Sun. In the

course of time, the later character so far prevailed over the earlier

that the Sun became the object of a separate worship; a process to

which we find analogies in the religions of Egypt and Greece. Baal was

also identified with the planet Saturn, which presided over the rest,

and was therefore their lord or Baal.

[Illustration: PHŒNICIAN PRIEST

(From a statuette in the Metropolitan Museum, New York)]

The name of Ashtoreth or Astarte does not appear in early Greek

writers, to them the principal goddess of the Phœnicians is Aphrodite

or Venus Urania (the Celestial). It is said to be Phœnician, but we can

gather from it no hint of the primary physical or cosmical character

of the goddess who bore it. She was identified with the Moon, as

distinguished from the Sun, and with Air and Water, as opposed to Fire.

Herodotus says that the oldest seat of her worship was at Askalon, and

identifies her with the Babylonian Mylitta and the Alitta or Alilat of

Arabian tribes.

The worship of Mylitta at Babylon was accompanied by wanton rites,

but these do not seem to have been associated at first with the

character of Urania or Astarte, and in the Scriptures the religion

of the Phœnicians is reprobated rather for its cruelty than for its

licentiousness. It was from the worship of the goddess Mylitta, at

Babylon, that the corruption of morals spread to the worship of Venus

in Syria, Phœnicia, and Cyprus, tainting it with an impurity which

formed no part of it originally.

The worship of Venus must have been established in Cyprus long before

the Greeks began to colonise the island, though it owed its great

development, in part at least, to their plastic imagination. Here, too,

the license which characterised the worship of Mylitta prevailed, and

the ports of the island became celebrated for the number and beauty

of their courtesans. Large bodies of _hierodulæ_, at once prostitutes

and ministers of the goddess, were attached to the temples of Venus

in Asia, and afterward in Greece. The origin of this custom, evil as

it was, must originally have been religious in character, for the

daughters of noble Armenian families passed without reproach from the

service of the goddess to marriage with their equals in rank. We find

traces of the same customs in remote Phœnician settlements.

Cronos or Saturn is mentioned by Greek and Latin writers among the

principal deities of Phœnicia and Carthage, but it is by no means

certain which particular Phœnician god answered to the Cronos of the

Greeks. The most characteristic circumstance we learn concerning him is

that human sacrifices were made in his honour. “The Phœnician history

of Sanchoniathon,” says Porphyry, “is full of instances in which that

people, when suffering under great calamity … chose, by public vote,

one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn.” In

the fragmentary history preserved to us, we find no mention of such

sacrifices, but in the siege under Alexander it was proposed to revive

a custom obsolete for ages, and sacrifice a boy to Saturn. That such

a practice prevailed in earlier times is certain; we trace it in the

Phœnician colonies, and above all in Carthage. On the occasion of any

extraordinary calamity an unusual number of victims was sacrificed, but

human sacrifice was also part of the established ritual, and every year

a youthful victim was chosen by lot.