CHAPTER XIV--POLITICAL HISTORY

1. Phoenicia, before the establishment of the hegemony of Tyre.

Separate autonomy of the Phoenician cities--No marked

predominance of any one or more of them during the Egyptian

period, B.C. 1600-1350--A certain pre-eminence subsequently

acquired by Aradus and Sidon--Sidonian territorial

ascendancy--Great proficiency of Sidon in the arts--Sidon’s

war with the Philistines--Her early colonies--Her advances

in navigation--Her general commercial honesty--Occasional

kidnapping--Stories of Io and Eumæus--Internal government--

Relations with the Israelites.

When the Phoenician immigrants, in scattered bands, and at longer or

shorter intervals, arrived upon the Syrian coast, and finding it empty

occupied it, or wrested it from its earlier possessors, there was a

decided absence from among them of any single governing or controlling

authority; a marked tendency to assert and maintain separate rule

and jurisdiction. Sidon, the Arkite, the Arvadite, the Zemarite, are

separately enumerated in the book of Genesis;[0141] and the Hebrews have

not even any one name under which to comprise the commercial people

settled upon their coast line,[0142] until we come to Gospel times,

when the Greeks have brought the term “Syro-Phoenician” into use.[0143]

Elsewhere we hear of “them of Sidon,” “them of Tyre,”[0144] “the

Giblites,”[0145] “the men of Arvad,”[0146] “the Arkites,” “the Sinites,”

“the Zemarites,”[0147] “the inhabitants of Accho, of Achzib, and

Aphek,”[0148] but never of the whole maritime population north of

Philistia under any single ethnic appellation. And the reason seems to

be, that the Phoenicians, even more than the Greeks, affected a city

autonomy. Each little band of immigrants, as soon as it had pushed its

way into the sheltered tract between the mountains and the sea, settled

itself upon some attractive spot, constructed habitations, and having

surrounded its habitations with walls, claimed to be--and found none to

dispute the claim--a distinct political entity. The conformation of the

land, so broken up into isolated regions by strong spurs from Lebanon

and Bargylus, lent additional support to the separatist spirit, and

the absence in the early times of any pressure of danger from without

permitted its free indulgence without entailing any serious penalty. It

is difficult to say at what time the first settlements took place; but

during the period of Egyptian supremacy over Western Asia, under the

eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties (ab. B.C. 1600-1350), we seem to

find the Phoenicians in possession of the coast tract, and their cities

severally in the enjoyment of independence and upon a quasi-equality.

Tyre, Sidon, Gebal, Aradus, Simyra, Sarepta, Berytus, and perhaps Arka,

appear in the inscriptions of Thothmes III,[0149] and in the “Travels of

a Mohar,”[1410] without an indication of the pre-eminence, much less

the supremacy, of any one of them. The towns pursued their courses

independently one of another, submitting to the Egyptians when hard

pressed, but always ready to reassert themselves, and never joining, so

far as appears, in any league or confederation, by which their separate

autonomy might have been endangered. During this period no city springs

to any remarkable height of greatness or prosperity; material progress

is, no doubt, being made by the nation; but it is not very marked, and

it does not excite any particular attention.

But with the decline of the Egyptian power, which sets in after the

death of the second Rameses, a change takes place. External pressure

being removed, ambitions begin to develop themselves. In the north

Aradus (Arvad), in the south Sidon, proceed to exercise a sort of

hegemony over several neighbouring states. Sidon becomes known as

“Great Zidon.”[1411] Not content with her maritime ascendancy, which was

already pushing her into special notice, she aspired to a land dominion,

and threw out offshoots from the main seat of her power as far as Laish,

on the head-waters of the Jordan.[1412] It was her support, probably,

which enabled the inhabitants of such comparatively weak cities as Accho

and Achzib and Aphek to resist the invasion of the Hebrews, and maintain

themselves, despite all attempts made to reduce them.[1413] At the same

time she gradually extended her influence over the coast towns in her

neighbourhood, as Sarepta, Heldun, perhaps Berytus, Ecdippa, and Accho.

The period which succeeds that of Egyptian preponderance in Western

Asia may be distinguished as that of Sidonian ascendancy, or of such

ascendancy slightly modified by an Aradian hegemony in the north over

the settlements intervening between Mount Casius and the northern roots

of Lebanon.[1414] During this period Sidon came to the front, alike in

arts, in arms, and in navigation. Her vessels were found by the earliest

Greek navigators in all parts of the Mediterranean into which they

themselves ventured, and were known to push themselves into regions

where no Greek dared to follow them. Under her fostering care Phoenician

colonisation had spread over the whole of the Western Mediterranean,

over the Ægean, and into the Propontis. She had engaged in war with

the powerful nation of the Philistines, and, though worsted in the

encounter, had obtained a reputation for audacity. By her wonderful

progress in the arts, her citizens had acquired the epithet of

{poludaidaloi},[1415] and had come to be recognised generally as the

foremost artificers of the world in almost every branch of industry.

Sidonian metal-work was particularly in repute. When Achilles at the

funeral of Patroclus desired to offer as a prize to the fastest runner

the most beautiful bowl that was to be found in all the world, he

naturally chose one which had been deftly made by highly-skilled

Sidonians, and which Phoenician sailors had conveyed in one of their

hollow barks across the cloud-shadowed sea.[1416] When Menelaus proposed

to present Telemachus, the son of his old comrade Odysseus, with

what was at once the most beautiful and the most valuable of all his

possessions, he selected a silver bowl with a golden rim, which in

former days he had himself received as a present from Phædimus, the

Sidonian king.[1417] The sailors who stole Eumæus from Ortygia, and

carried him across the sea to Ithica, obtained their prize by coming to

his father’s palace, and bringing with them, among other wares,

. . . a necklace of fine gold to sell,

With bright electron linked right wondrously and well.[1418]

Sidon’s pre-eminence in the manufacture, the dyeing, and the embroidery

of textile fabrics was at the same time equally unquestionable. Hecuba,

being advised to offer to Athêné, on behalf of her favourite son,

the best and loveliest of all the royal robes which her well-stored

dress-chamber could furnish--

She to her fragrant wardrobe bent her way,

Where her rich veils in beauteous order lay;

Webs by Sidonian virgins finely wrought,

From Sidon’s woofs by youthful Paris brought,

When o’er the boundless main the adulterer led

Fair Helen from her home and nuptial bed;

From these she chose the fullest, fairest far,

With broidery bright, and blazing as a star.[1419]

Already, it would seem, the precious shell-fish, on which Phoenicia’s

commerce so largely rested in later times, had been discovered; and it

was the dazzling hue of the robe which constituted its especial value.

Sidon was ultimately eclipsed by Tyre in the productions of the loom;

and the unrivalled dye has come down to us, and will go down to all

future ages, as “_Tyrian_ purple;” but we may well believe that in this,

as in most other matters on which prosperity and success depended,

Tyre did but follow in the steps of her elder sister Sidon, perfecting

possibly the manufacture which had been Sidon’s discovery in the early

ages. According to Scylax of Cadyanda, Dor was a Sidonian colony.[1420]

Geographically it belonged rather to Philistia than to Phoenicia; but

its possession of large stores of the purple fish caused its sudden

seizure and rapid fortification at a very remote date, probably by the

Phoenicians of Sidon.[1421] It is quite possible that this aggression

may have provoked that terrible war to which reference has already been

made, between the Philistines under the hegemony of Ascalon and the

first of the Phoenician cities. Ascalon attacked the Sidonians by land,

blockaded the offending town, and after a time compelled a surrender;

but the defenders had a ready retreat by sea, and, when they could

no longer hold out against their assailants, took ship, and removed

themselves to Tyre, which at the time was probably a dependency.[1422]

In navigation also and colonisation Sidon took the lead. According to

some, she was the actual founder of Aradus, which was said to have

owed its origin to a body of Sidonian exiles, who there settled

themselves.[1423] Not much reliance, however, can be placed on this

tradition, which first appears in a writer of the Augustan age. With

more confidence we may ascribe to Sidon the foundation of Citium in

Cyprus, the colonisation of the islands in the Ægean, and of those

Phoenician settlements in North Africa which were anterior to the

founding of Carthage. It has even been supposed that the Sidonians were

the first to make a settlement at Carthage itself,[1424] and that the

Tyrian occupation under Dido was a recolonisation of an already occupied

site. Anyhow, Sidon was the first to explore the central Mediterranean,

and establish commercial relations with the barbarous tribes of the

mid-African coast, Cabyles, Berbers, Shuloukhs, Tauriks, and others. She

is thought to claim on a coin to be the mother-city of Melita, or Malta,

as well as of Citium and Berytus;[1425] and, if this claim be allowed,

we can scarcely doubt that she was also the first to plant colonies in

Sicily. Further than this, it would seem, Sidonian enterprise did not

penetrate. It was left for Tyre to discover the wealth of Southern

Spain, to penetrate beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and to affront the

perils of the open ocean.

But, within the sphere indicated, Sidonian rovers traversed all parts of

the Great Sea, penetrated into every gulf, became familiar sights to the

inhabitants of every shore. From timid sailing along the coast by

day, chiefly in the summer season, when winds whispered gently,

and atmospheric signs indicated that fair weather had set in, they

progressed by degrees to long voyages, continued both by night and

day,[1426] from promontory to promontory, or from island to island,

sometimes even across a long stretch of open sea, altogether out of

sight of land, and carried on at every season of the year except some

few of special danger. To Sidon is especially ascribed the introduction

of the practice of sailing by night,[1427] which shortened the duration

of voyages by almost one-half, and doubled the number of trips that a

vessel could accomplish in the course of a year. For night sailing the

arts of astronomy and computation had to be studied;[1428] the aspect of

the heavens at different seasons had to be known; and among the shifting

constellations some fixed point had to be found by which it would be

safe to steer. The last star in the tail of the Little Bear--the polar

star of our own navigation books--was fixed upon by the Phoenicians,

probably by the Sidonians, for this purpose,[1429] and was practically

employed as the best index of the true north from a remote period. The

rate of a ship’s speed was, somehow or other, estimated; and though

it was long before charts were made, or the set of currents taken into

account, yet voyages were for the most part accomplished with very

tolerable accuracy and safety. An ample commerce grew up under Sidonian

auspices. After the vernal equinox was over a fleet of white-winged

ships sped forth from the many harbours of the Syrian coast, well laden

with a variety of wares--Phoenician, Assyrian, Egyptian[1430]--and made

for the coasts and islands of the Levant, the Ægean, the Propontis, the

Adriatic, the mid-Mediterranean, where they exchanged the cargoes which

they had brought with them for the best products of the lands whereto

they had come. Generally, a few weeks, or at most a month or two, would

complete the transfer the of commodities, and the ships which left

Sidon in April or May would return about June or July, unload, and make

themselves ready for a second voyage. But sometimes, it appears, the

return cargo was not so readily procured, and vessels had to remain in

the foreign port, or roadstead, for the space of a whole year.[1431]

The behaviour of the traders must, on the whole, have been such as won

the respect of the nations and tribes wherewith they traded. Otherwise,

the markets would soon have been closed against them, and, in lieu of

the peaceful commerce which the Phoenicians always affected, would have

sprung up along the shores of the Mediterranean a general feeling of

distrust and suspicion, which would have led on to hostile encounters,

surprises, massacres, and then reprisals. The entire history of

Phoenician commerce shows that such a condition of things never existed.

The traders and their customers were bound together by the bonds of

self-interest, and, except in rare instances, dealt by each other fairly

and honestly. Still, there were occasions when, under the stress of

temptation, fair-dealing was lost sight of, and immediate prospect of

gain was allowed to lead to the commission of acts destructive of all

feeling of security, subversive of commercial morals, and calculated to

effect a rupture of commercial relations, which it may often have taken

a long term of years to re-establish. Herodotus tells us that, at a date

considerably anterior to the Trojan war, when the ascendancy over the

other Phoenician cities must certainly have belonged to Sidon, an affair

of this kind took place on the coast of Argolis, which was long felt

by the Greeks as an injury and an outrage. A Phoenician vessel made the

coast near Argos, and the crew, having effected a landing, proceeded to

expose their merchandise for sale along the shore, and to traffic with

the natives, who were very willing to make purchases, and in the course

of five or six days bought up almost the entire cargo. At length, just

as the traders were thinking of re-embarking and sailing away, there

came down to the shore from the capital a number of Argive ladies,

including among them a princess, Io, the daughter of Inachus, the Argive

king. Hereupon, the trafficking and the bargaining recommenced; goods

were produced suited to the taste of the new customers; and each strove

to obtain what she desired most at the least cost. But suddenly, as they

were all intent upon their purchases, and were crowding round the stern

of the ship, the Phoenicians, with a general shout, rushed upon

them. Many--the greater part, we are told--made their escape; but

the princess, and a certain number of her companions, were seized and

carried on board. The traders quickly put to sea, and hoisting their

sails, hurried away to Egypt.[1432]

Another instance of kidnapping, accomplished by art rather than by

force, is related to us by Homer.[1433] Eumæus, the swineherd of

Ulysses, was the son of a king, dwelling towards the west, in an island

off the Sicilian coast. A Phoenician woman, herself kidnapped from Sidon

by piratical Taphians, had the task of nursing and tending him assigned

to her, and discharged it faithfully until a great temptation befell

her. A Sidonian merchant-ship visited the island, laden with rich store

of precious wares, and proceeded to open a trade with the inhabitants,

in the course of which one of the sailors seduced the Phoenician nurse,

and suggested that when the vessel left, she should allow herself to be

carried off in it. The woman, whose parents were still alive at Sidon,

came into the scheme, and being apprised of the date of the ship’s

departure, stole away from the palace unobserved, taking with her three

golden goblets, and also her master’s child, the boy of whom she had

charge. It was evening, and all having been prepared beforehand, the

nurse and child were hastily smuggled on board, the sails were hoisted,

and the ship was soon under weigh. The wretched woman died ere the

voyage was over, but the boy survived, and was carried by the traders to

Ithaca, and there sold for a good sum to Laërtes.

It is not suggested that these narratives, in the form in which they

have come down to us, are historically true. There may never have been

an “Io, daughter of Inachus,” or an “Eumæus, son of Ctesius Ormenides,”

or an island, “Syria called by name, over against Ortygia,” or even a

Ulysses or a Laërtes. But the tales could never have grown up, have been

invented, or have gained acceptance, unless the practice of kidnapping,

on which they are based, had been known to be one in which the

Phoenicians of the time indulged, at any rate occasionally. We must

allow this blot on the Sidonian escutcheon, and can only plead, in

extenuation of their offence, first, the imperfect morality of the

age, and secondly, the fact that such deviations from the line of

fair-dealing and honesty on the part of the Sidonian traders must have

been of rare occurrence, or the flourishing and lucrative trade, which

was the basis of all the glory and prosperity of the people, could not

possibly have been established. Successful commerce must rest upon the

foundation of mutual confidence; and mutual confidence is impossible

unless the rules of fair dealing are observed on both sides, if not

invariably, yet, at any rate, so generally that the infraction of

them is not contemplated on either side as anything but the remotest

contingency.

Of the internal government of Sidon during this period no details have

come down to us. Undoubtedly, like all the Phoenician cities in the

early times,[1434] she had her own kings; and we may presume, from

the almost universal practice in ancient times, and especially in the

East,[1435] that the monarchy was hereditary. The main duties of the

king were to lead out the people to battle in time of war, and to

administer justice in time of peace.[1436] The kings were in part

supported, in part held in check, by a powerful aristocracy--an

aristocracy which, we may conjecture, had wealth, rather than birth, as

its basis. It does not appear that any political authority was possessed

by the priesthood, nor that the priesthood was a caste, as in India, and

(according to some writers) in Egypt. The priestly office was certainly

not attached by any general custom to the person of the kings, though

kings might be priests, and were so occasionally.[1437]

We do not distinctly hear of Sidon has having been engaged in any

war during the period of her ascendancy, excepting that with the

Philistines. Still as “the Zidonians” are mentioned among the nations

which “oppressed Israel” in the time of the Judges,[1438] we must

conclude that differences arose between them and their southern

neighbours in some portion of this period, and that, war having broken

out between them, the advantage rested with Sidon. The record of

“Judges” is incomplete, and does not enable us even to fix the date of

the Sidonian “oppression.” We can only say that it was anterior to the

judgeship of Jephthah, and was followed, like the other “oppressions,”

by a “deliverance.”

The war with the Philistines brought the period of Sidonian ascendancy

to an end, and introduces us to the second period of Phoenician history,

or that of the hegemony of Tyre. The supposed date of the change is B.C.

1252.[1439]

2. Phoenicia under the hegemony of Tyre (B.C. 1252-877)

Influx of the Sidonian population raises Tyre to the first

place among the cities (about B.C. 1252)--First notable

result, the colonisation of Gades (B.C. 1130)--Other

colonies of about this period--Extension of Phoenician

commerce--Tyre ruled by kings--Abi-Baal--Hiram--Hiram’s

dealings with Solomon--His improvement of his own capital--

His opinion of “the land of Cabul”--His joint trade with the

Israelites--His war with Utica--Successors of Hiram--Time of

disturbance--Reign of Ithobal--of Badezor--of Matgen--of

Pygmalion--Founding of Carthage--First contact of Phoenicia

with Assyria--Submission of Phoenicia, B.C. 877.

Tyre was noted as a “strong city” as early as the time of Joshua,[1440]

and was probably inferior only to Sidon, or to Sidon and Aradus, during

the period of Sidonian ascendancy. It is mentioned in the “Travels of

a Mohar” (about B.C. 1350) as “a port, richer in fish than in

sands.”[1441] The tradition was, that it acquired its predominance and

pre-eminence from the accession of the Sidonian population, which

fled thither by sea, when no longer able to resist the forces of

Ascalon.[1442] We do not find it, however, attaining to any great

distinction or notoriety, until more than a century later, when it

distinguishes itself by the colonisation of Gades (about B.C. 1130),

beyond the Pillars of Hercules, on the shores of the Atlantic. We may

perhaps deduce from this fact, that the concentration of energy caused

by the removal to Tyre of the best elements in the population of

Sidon gave a stimulus to enterprise, and caused longer voyages to be

undertaken, and greater dangers to be affronted by the daring seamen

of the Syrian coast than had ever been ventured on before. The Tyrian

seamen were, perhaps, of a tougher fibre than the Sidonian, and the

change of hegemony is certainly accompanied by a greater display of

energy, a more adventurous spirit, a wider colonisation, and a more

wonderful commercial success, than characterise the preceding period of

Sidonian leadership and influence.

The settlements planted by Tyre in the first burst of her colonising

energy seem to have been, besides Gades, Thasos, Abdera, and Pronectus

towards the north, Malaca, Sexti, Carteia, Belon, and a second Abdera in

Spain, together with Caralis in Sardinia,[1443] Tingis and Lixus on

the West African coast, and in North Africa Hadrumetum and the lesser

Leptis.[1444] Her aim was to throw the meshes of her commerce wider than

Sidon had ever done, and so to sweep into her net a more abundant booty.

It was Tyre which especially affected “long voyages,”[1445] and induced

her colonists of Gades to explore the shores outside the Pillars of

Hercules, northwards as far as Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, southwards

to the Fortunate Islands, and north-eastwards into the Baltic. It is, no

doubt, uncertain at what date these explorations were effected, and some

of them may belong to the _later_ hegemony of Tyre, ab. B.C. 600;

but the forward movement of the twelfth century seems to have been

distinctly Tyrian, and to have been one of the results of the new

position in which she was placed by the sudden collapse of her elder

sister, Sidon.

According to some,[1446] Tyre, during the early period of her supremacy,

was under the government of _shôphetim_, or “judges;” but the general

usage of the Phoenician cities makes against this supposition. Philo in

his “Origines of Phoenicia” speaks constantly of kings,[1447] but never

of judges. We hear of a king, Abd-Baal, at Berytus[1448] about B.C.

1300. Sidonian kings are mentioned in connection with the myth of

Europa.[1449] The cities founded by the Phoenicians in Cyprus are

always under monarchical rule.[1450] Tyre itself, when its history first

presents itself to us in any detail, is governed by a king.[1451] All

that can be urged on the other side is, that we know of no Tyrian king

by name until about B.C. 1050; and that, if there had been earlier

kings, it might have been expected that some record of them would have

come down to us. But to argue thus is to ignore the extreme scantiness

and casual character of the notices which have reached us bearing upon

the early Phoenician history. No writer has left us any continuous

history of Phoenicia, even in the barest outline.[1452] Native

monumental annals are entirely wanting. We depend for the early

times upon the accident of Jewish monarchs having come into contact

occasionally with Phoenician ones, and on Jewish writers having noted

the occasions in Jewish histories. Scripture and Josephus alone furnish

our materials for the period now under consideration, and the materials

are scanty, fragmentary, and sadly wanting in completeness.

It is towards the middle of the eleventh century B.C. that these

materials become available. About the time when David was acclaimed as

king by the tribe of Judah at Hebron, a Phoenician prince mounted the

throne of Tyre, by name Abibalus, or Abi-Baal.[1453] We do not know the

length of his reign; but, while the son of Jesse was still in the full

vigour of life, Abi-Baal was succeeded on the Tyrian throne by his son,

Hiram or Hirôm, a prince of great energy, of varied tastes, and of an

unusually broad and liberal turn of mind. Hiram, casting his eye over

the condition of the states and kingdoms which were his neighbours,

seems to have discerned in Judah and David a power and a ruler

whose friendship it was desirable to cultivate with a view to the

establishment of very close relations. Accordingly, it was not long

after the Jewish monarch’s capture of the Jebusite stronghold on Mount

Zion that the Tyrian prince sent messengers to him to Jerusalem, with

a present of “timber of cedars,” and a number of carpenters, and

stone-hewers, well skilled in the art of building.[1454] David accepted

their services, and a goodly palace soon arose on some part of the

Eastern hill, of which cedar from Lebanon was the chief material,[1455]

and of which Hiram’s workmen were the constructors. At a later date

David set himself to collect abundant and choice materials for the

magnificent Temple which Solomon his son was divinely commissioned to

build on Mount Moriah to Jehovah; and here again “the Zidonians and

they of Tyre,” or the subjects of Hiram, “brought much cedar wood to

David.”[1456] The friendship continued firm to the close of David’s

reign;[1457] and when Solomon succeeded his father as king of Israel

and lord of the whole tract between the middle Euphrates and Egypt, the

bonds were drawn yet closer, and an alliance concluded which placed the

two powers on terms of the very greatest intimacy. Hiram had no sooner

heard of Solomon’s accession than he sent an embassy to congratulate

him;[1458] and Solomon took advantage of the opening which presented

itself to announce his intention of building the Temple which his father

had designed, and to request Hiram’s aid in the completion of the work.

Copies of letters which passed between the two monarchs were preserved

both in the Tyrian and the Jewish archives, and the Tyrian versions are

said to have been still extant in the public record office of the city

in the first century of the Christian era.[1459] These documents ran as

follows:--

“Solomon to King Hiram [sends greeting]:--Know that my father David

was desirous of building a temple to God, but was prevented by his wars

and his continual expeditions; for he did not rest from subduing his

adversaries, until he had made every one of them tributary to him. And

now I for my part return thanks to God for the present time of peace,

and having rest thereby I purpose to build the house; for God declared

to my father that it should be built by me. Wherefore I beseech thee to

send some of thy servants with my servants to Mount Lebanon, to cut

wood there, for none among us can skill to hew timber like unto the

Sidonians. And I will pay the wood-cutters their hire at whatsoever rate

thou shalt determine.”

“King Hiram to King Solomon [sends greeting]:--Needs must I praise

God, that hath given thee to sit upon thy father’s throne, seeing that

thou art a wise man, and possessed of every virtue. And I, rejoicing

at these things, will do all that thou hast desired of me. I will by my

servants cut thee in abundance timber of cedar and timber of cypress,

and will bring them down to the sea, and command my servants to

construct of them a float, or raft, and navigate it to whatever point

of thy coast thou mayest wish, and there discharge them; after which thy

servants can carry them to Jerusalem. But be it thy care to provide me

in return with a supply of food, whereof we are in want as inhabiting an

island.”[1460]

The result was an arrangement by which the Tyrian monarch furnished

his brother king with timber of various kinds, chiefly cedar, cut in

Lebanon, and also with a certain number of trained artificers, workers

in metal, carpenters, and masons, while the Israelite monarch on his

part made a return in corn, wine, and oil, supplying Tyre, while the

contract lasted, with 20,000 cors of wheat, the same quantity of barley,

20,000 baths of wine, and the same number of oil, annually.[1461]

Phoenicia always needed to import supplies of food for its abundant

population,[1462] and having an inexhaustible store of timber in

Lebanon, was glad to find a market for it so near. Thus the arrangement

suited both parties. The hillsides of Galilee and the broad and fertile

plains of Esdraelon and Sharon produced a superabundance of wheat and

barley, whereof the inhabitants had to dispose in some quarter or other,

and the highlands of Sumeria and Judæa bore oil and wine far beyond

the wants of those who cultivated them. What Phoenicia lacked in these

respects from the scantiness of its cultivable soil, Palestine was able

and eager to supply; while to Phoenicia it was a boon to obtain, not

only a market for her timber, but also employment for her surplus

population, which under ordinary circumstances was always requiring

to be carried off to distant lands, from the difficulty of supporting

itself at home.

A still greater advantage was it to the rude Judæans to get the

assistance of their civilised and artistic neighbours in the design and

execution, both of the Temple itself and of all those accessories,

which in ancient times a sacred edifice on a large scale was regarded

as requiring. The Phoenicians, and especially the Tyrians, had long

possessed, both in their home and foreign settlements, temples of some

pretension, and Hiram had recently been engaged in beautifying and

adorning, perhaps in rebuilding, some of these venerable edifices at

Tyre.[1463] A Phoenician architectural style had thus been formed, and

Hiram’s architects and artificers would be familiar with constructive

principles and ornamental details, as well as with industrial processes,

which are very unlikely to have been known at the time to the Hebrews.

The wood for the Jewish Temple was roughly cut, and the stones quarried,

by Israelite workmen;[1464] but all the delicate work, whether in the

one material or the other, was performed by the servants of Hiram.

Stone-cutters from Gebal (Byblus) shaped and smoothed the “great stones,

costly stones” employed in the substructions of the “house;”[1465]

Tyrian carpenters planed and polished the cedar planks used for the

walls, and covered them with representations of cherubs and palms and

gourds and opening flowers.[1466] The metallurgists of Sidon probably

supplied the cherubic figures in the inner sanctuary,[1467] as well as

the castings for the doors,[1468] and the bulk of the sacred vessels.

The vail which separated between the “Holy Place” and the Holy of

Holies--a marvellous fabric of blue, and purple, and crimson, and white,

with cherubim wrought thereon[1469]--owed its beauty probably to Tyrian

dyers and Tyrian workers in embroidery. The master-workman lent by the

Tyrian monarch to superintend the entire work--an extraordinary and

almost universal genius--“skilful to work in gold and in silver, in

brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber; in purple, in blue, in fine

linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving”[1470]--who

bore the same name with the king,[1471] was the son of an Israelite

mother, but boasted a Tyrian father,[1472] and was doubtless born and

bred up at Tyre. Under his special direction were cast in the valley of

the Jordan, between Succoth and Zarthan,[1473] those wonderful pillars,

known as Jachin and Boaz, which have already been described, and which

seem to have had their counterparts in the sacred edifices both of

Phoenicia and Cyprus.[1474] To him also is specially ascribed the

“molten sea,” standing on twelve oxen,[1475] which was perhaps the most

artistic of all the objects placed within the Temple circuit, as are

also the lavers upon wheels,[1476] which, if less striking as works of

art, were even more curious.

The partnership established between the two kingdoms in connection with

the building and furnishing of the Jewish Temple, which lasted for seven

years,[1477] was further continued for thirteen more[1478] in connection

with the construction of Solomon’s palace. This palace, like an Assyrian

one, consisted of several distinct edifices. “The chief was a long hall

which, like the Temple, was encased in cedar; whence probably its name,

‘The House of the Forest of Lebanon.’ In front of it ran a pillared

portico. Between this portico and the palace itself was a cedar porch,

sometimes called the Tower of David. In this tower, apparently hung over

the walls outside, were a thousand golden shields, which gave to the

whole place the name of the Armoury. With a splendour that outshone any

like fortress, the tower with these golden targets glittered far off

in the sunshine like the tall neck, as it was thought, of a beautiful

bride, decked out, after the manner of the East, with strings of golden

coins. This porch was the gem and centre of the whole empire; and was

so much thought of that a smaller likeness to it was erected in another

part of the precinct for the queen. Within the porch itself was to be

seen the king in state. On a throne of ivory, brought from Africa or

India, the throne of many an Arabian legend, the kings of Judah were

solemnly seated on the day of their accession. From its lofty seat, and

under that high gateway, Solomon and his successors after him delivered

their solemn judgments. That ‘porch’ or ‘gate of justice’ still kept

alive the likeness of the old patriarchal custom of sitting in judgment

at the gate; exactly as the ‘Gate of Justice’ still recalls it to us at

Granada, and the Sublime Porte--‘the Lofty Gate’--at Constantinople. He

sate on the back of a golden bull, its head turned over its shoulder,

probably the ox or bull of Ephraim; under his feet, on each side of the

steps, were six golden lions, probably the lions of Judah. This was ‘the

seat of Judgment.’ This was ‘the throne of the House of David.’”[1479]

We have dwelt the longer upon these matters because it is from the

lengthy and elaborate descriptions which the Hebrew writers give of

these Phoenician constructions at Jerusalem that we must form our

conceptions, not only of the state of Phoenician art in Hiram’s time,

but also of the works wherewith he adorned his own capital. He came to

the throne at the age of nineteen,[1480] on the decease of his father,

and immediately set to work to improve, enlarge, and beautify the city,

which in his time claimed the headship of, at any rate, all Southern

Phoenicia. He found Tyre a city built on two islands, separated the one

from the other by a narrow channel, and so cramped for room that the

inhabitants had no open square, or public place, on which they could

meet, and were closely packed in overcrowded dwellings.[1481] The

primary necessity was to increase the area of the place; and this Hiram

effected, first, by filling up the channel between the two islands with

stone and rubbish, and so gaining a space for new buildings, and then by

constructing huge moles or embankments towards the east, and towards

the south, where the sea was shallowest, and thus turning what had been

water into land. In this way he so enlarged the town that he was able

to lay out a “wide space” (Eurychôrus)[1482] as a public square, which,

like the Piazza di San Marco at Venice, became the great resort of the

inhabitants for business and pleasure. Having thus provided for utility

and convenience, he next proceeded to embellishment and ornamentation.

The old temples did not seem to him worthy of the renovated capital;

he therefore pulled them down and built new ones in their place. In the

most central part of the city[1483] he erected a fane for the worship

of Melkarth and Ashtoreth, probably retaining the old site, but

constructing an entirely new building--the building which Herodotus

visited,[1484] and in which Alexander insisted on sacrificing.[1485]

Towards the south-west,[1486] on what had been a separate islet,

he raised a temple to Baal, and adorned it with a lofty pillar of

gold,[1487] or at any rate plated with gold. Whether he built himself a

new palace is not related; but as the royal residence of later times was

situated on the southern shore,[1488] which was one of Hiram’s additions

to his capital, it is perhaps most probable that the construction of

this new palace was due to him. The chief material which he used in his

buildings was, as in Jerusalem, cedar. The substructions alone were of

stone. They were probably not on so grand a scale as those of the Jewish

Temple, since the wealth of Hiram, sovereign of a petty kingdom, must

have fallen very far short of Solomon’s, ruler of an extensive empire.

At the close of the twenty years during which Hiram had assisted Solomon

in his buildings, the Israelite monarch deemed it right to make his

Tyrian brother some additional compensation beyond the corn, and wine,

and oil with which, according to his contract, he had annually supplied

him. Accordingly, he voluntarily ceded to him a district of Galilee

containing twenty cities, a portion of the old inheritance of

Asher,[1489] conveniently near to Accho, of which Hiram was probably

lord, and not very remote from Tyre. The tract appears to have been

that where the modern Kabûl now stands, which is a rocky and bare

highland,[1490]--part of the outlying roots of Lebanon--overlooking the

rich plain of Akka or Accho, and presenting a striking contrast to its

fertility. Hiram, on the completion of the cession, “came out from Tyre

to see the cities which Solomon had given him,” and was disappointed

with the gift. “What cities are these,” he said, “which thou hast given

me, my brother? And he called them the land of Cabul”--“rubbish” or

“offscourings”--to mark his disappointment.[1491]

But this passing grievance was not allowed in any way to overshadow, or

interfere with, the friendly alliance and “entente cordiale” (to use a

modern phrase) which existed between the two nations. Solomon, according

to one authority,[1492] paid a visit to Tyre, and gratified his host by

worshipping in a Sidonian temple. According to another,[1493] Hiram

gave him in marriage, as a secondary wife, one of his own daughters--a

marriage perhaps alluded to by the writer of Kings when he tells us that

“King Solomon loved many strange women together with the daughter of

Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, _Zidonians_, and

Hittites.”[1494] The closest commercial relations were established

between the two countries, and the hope of them was probably one of

the strongest reasons which attracted both parties to the alliance. The

Tyrians, on their part, possessed abundant ships; their sailors had full

“knowledge of the sea,”[1495] and the trade of the Mediterranean was

almost wholly in their hands. Solomon, on his side, being master of the

port of Ezion-Geber on the Red Sea, had access to the lucrative traffic

with Eastern Africa, Arabia, and perhaps India, which had hitherto been

confined to the Egyptians and the Arabs. He had also, by his land power,

a command of the trade routes along the Coele-Syrian valley, by Aleppo,

and by Tadmor, which enabled him effectually either to help or to hinder

the Phoenician land traffic. Thus either side had something to gain from

the other, and a close commercial union might be safely counted on to

work for the mutual advantage of both. Such a union, therefore, took

place. Hiram admitted Solomon to a participation in his western traffic;

and the two kings maintained a conjoint “navy of Tarshish,”[1496] which,

trading with Spain and the West coast of Africa, brought to Phoenicia

and Palestine “once in three years” many precious and rare commodities,

the chief of them being “gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and

peacocks.” Spain would yield the gold and the silver, for the Tagus

brought down gold,[1497] and the Spanish silver-mines were the richest

in the world.[1498] Africa would furnish in abundance the ivory and the

apes; for elephants were numerous in Mauritania,[1499] and on the west

coast,[14100] in ancient times; and the gorilla[14101] and the Barbary

ape are well-known African products. Africa may also have produced the

“peacocks,” if _tukkiyim_ are really “peacocks,” though they are

not found there at the present day. Or the _tukkiyim_ may have been

Guinea-fowl--a bird of the same class with the peacock.

In return, Solomon opened to Hiram the route to the East by way of the

Red Sea. Solomon, doubtless by the assistance of shipwrights furnished

to him from Tyre, “made a navy of ships at Ezion-Geber, which is beside

Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom,”[14102] and the

sailors of the two nations conjointly manned the ships, and performed

the voyage to Ophir, whence they brought gold, and “great plenty of

almug-trees,” and precious stones.[14103] The position of Ophir has been

much disputed, but the balance of argument is in favour of the theory

which places it in Arabia, on the south-eastern coast, a little outside

the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb.[14104] It is possible that the fleet did

not confine itself to trade with Ophir, but, once launched on the Indian

Ocean, proceeded along the Atlantic coast to the Persian Gulf and the

peninsula of Hindustan. Or Ophir may have been an Arab emporium for the

Indian trade, and the merchants of Syria may have found there the

Indian commodities, and the Indian woods,[14105] which they seem to have

brought back with them to their own country. A most lucrative traffic

was certainly established by the united efforts of the two kings; and if

the lion’s share of the profit fell to Solomon and the Hebrews,[14106]

still the Phoenicians and Hiram must have participated to some

considerable extent in the gains made, or the arrangement would not have

continued.

It is thought that Hiram was engaged in one war of some importance.

Menander tells us, according to the present text of Josephus,[14107]

that the “Tityi” revolted from him, and refused any longer to pay him

tribute, whereupon he made an expedition against them, and succeeded

in compelling them to submit to his authority. As the “Tityi” are

an unknown people, conjecture has been busy in suggesting other

names,[14108] and critics are now of the opinion that the original word

used by Menander was not “Tityi,” but “Itykæi.” The “Itykæi” are the

people of Utica: and, if this emendation be accepted,[14109] we must

regard Hiram as having had to crush a most important and dangerous

rebellion. Utica, previously to the foundation of Carthage, was by far

the most important of all the mid-African colonies, and her successful

revolt would probably have meant to Tyre the loss of the greater

portion, if not the whole, of those valuable settlements. A rival to her

power would have sprung up in the West, which would have crippled her

commerce in that quarter, and checked her colonising energy. She would

have suffered thus early more than she did four hundred years later by

the great development of the power of Carthage; would have lost a large

portion of her prestige; and have entered on the period of her decline

when she had but lately obtained a commanding position. Hiram’s energy

diverted these evils: he did not choose that his kingdom should be

dismembered, if he could anyhow help it; and, offering a firm and

strenuous opposition to the revolt, he succeeded in crushing it, and

maintaining the unity of the empire.

The brilliant reign of Hiram, which covered the space of forty-three

years, was not followed, like that of Solomon, by any immediate

troubles, either foreign or domestic. He had given his people, either at

home or abroad, constant employment; he had consulted their convenience

in the enlargement of his capital; he had enriched them, and gratified

their love of adventure, by his commercial enterprises; he had

maintained their prestige by rivetting their yoke upon a subject state;

he had probably pleased them by the temples and other public buildings

with which he had adorned and beautified their city. Accordingly, he

went down to the grave in peace; and not only so, but left his dynasty

firmly established in power. His son, Baal-azar or Baleazar, who was

thirty-six years of age, succeeded him, and held the throne for seven

years, when he died a natural death.[14110] Abd-Ashtoreth (Abdastartus),

the fourth monarch of the house, then ascended the throne, at the age of

twenty, and reigned for nine years before any troubles broke out. Then,

however, a time of disturbance supervened. Four of his foster-brothers

conspired against Abd-Ashtoreth, and murdered him. The eldest of them

seized the throne, and maintained himself upon it for twelve years, when

Astartus, perhaps a son of Baal-azar, became king, and restored the line

of Hiram. He, too, like his predecessor, reigned twelve years, when his

brother, Aserymus, succeeded him. Aserymus, after ruling for nine years,

was murdered by another brother, Pheles, who, in his turn, succumbed

to a conspiracy headed by the High Priest, Eth-baal, or Ithobal.[14111]

Thus, while the period immediately following the death of Hiram was one

of tranquillity, that which supervened on the death of Abd-Astartus,

Hiram’s grandson, was disturbed and unsettled. Three monarchs met with

violent deaths within the space of thirty-four years, and the reigning

house was, at least, thrice changed during the same interval.

At length with Ithobal a more tranquil time was reached. Ithobal, or

Eth-baal, was not only king, but also High Priest of Ashtoreth, and thus

united the highest sacerdotal with the highest civil authority. He was a

man of decision and energy, a worthy successor of Hiram, gifted like him

with wide-reaching views, and ambitious of distinction. One of his first

acts was to ally himself with Ahab, King of Israel, by giving him his

daughter, Jezebel, in marriage,[14112] thus strengthening his land

dominion, and renewing the old relations of friendship with the Hebrew

people. Another act of vigour assigned to him is the foundation of

Botrys, on the Syrian coast, north of Gebal, perhaps a defensive

movement against Assyria.[14113] Still more enterprising was his renewal

of the African colonisation by his foundation of Aüza in Numidia,[14114]

which became a city of some importance. Ithobal’s reign lasted, we are

told, thirty-two years. He was sixty-eight years of age at his death,

and was succeeded by his son, who is called Badezor, probably a

corruption of Balezor, or Baal-azar[14115]--the name given by Hiram

to his son and successor. Of Badezor we know nothing, except that

he reigned six years, and was succeeded by his son Matgen, perhaps

Mattan,[14116] a youth of twenty-three.

With Matgen, or Mattan, whichever be the true form of the name, the

internal history of Tyre becomes interesting. It appears that two

parties already existed in the state, one aristocratic, and the other

popular.[14117] Mattan, fearing the ascendancy of the popular party,

married his daughter, Elisa, whom he intended for his successor, to her

uncle and his own brother, Sicharbas, who was High Priest of Melkarth,

and therefore possessed of considerable authority in his own person.

Having effected this marriage, and nominated Elisa to succeed him,

Mattan died at the early age of thirty-two, after a reign of only

nine years.[14118] Besides his daughter, he had left behind him a son,

Pygmalion, who, at his decease, was but eight or nine years old. This

child the democratic party contrived to get under their influence,

proclaimed him king, young as he was, and placed him upon the throne.

Elisa and her husband retired into private life, and lived in peace for

seven years, but Pygmalion, being then grown to manhood, was not

content to leave them any longer unmolested. He murdered Sicharbas, and

endeavoured to seize his riches. But the ex-Queen contrived to frustrate

his design, and having possessed herself of a fleet of ships, and

taken on board the greater number of the nobles, sailed away, with her

husband’s wealth untouched, to Cyprus first, and then to Africa.[14119]

Here, by agreement with the inhabitants, a site was obtained, and

the famous settlement founded, which became known to the Greeks as

“Karchêdon,” and to the Romans as “Carthago,” or Carthage. Josephus

places this event in the hundred and forty-fourth year after the

building of the Temple of Solomon,[14120] or about B.C. 860. This date,

however, is far from certain.

It appears to have been in the reign of Ithobal that the first contact

took place between Phoenicia and Assyria. About B.C. 885, a powerful

and warlike monarch, by name Asshur-nazir-pal, mounted the throne of

Nineveh, and shortly engaged in a series of wars towards the south, the

east, the north, and the north-west.[14121] In the last-named direction

he crossed the Euphrates at Carchemish (Jerablus), and, having overrun

the country between that river and the Orontes, he proceeded to pass

this latter stream also, and to carry his arms into the rich tract which

lay between the Orontes and the Mediterranean. “It was a tract,” says

M. Maspero,[14122] “opulent and thickly populated, at once full of

industries and commercial; the metals, both precious and ordinary, gold,

silver, copper, tin (?), iron, were abundant; traffic with Phoenicia

supplied it with the purple dye, and with linen stuffs, with ebony and

with sandal-wood. Asshur-nazir-pal’s attack seems to have surprised

the chief of the Hittites in a time of profound peace. Sangar, King of

Carchemish, allowed the passage of the Euphrates to take place without

disputing it, and opened to the Assyrians the gates of his capital.

Lubarna, king of Kunulua, alarmed at the power of the enemy, and

dreading the issue of a battle, came to terms with him, consenting to

make over to him twenty talents of gold, a talent of silver, two hundred

talents of tin, a hundred of iron, 2,000 oxen, 10,000 sheep, a thousand

garments of wool or linen, together with furniture, arms, and slaves

beyond all count. The country of Lukhuti resisted, and suffered the

natural consequences--all the cities were sacked, and the prisoners

crucified. After this exploit, Asshur-nazir-pal occupied both the slopes

of Mount Lebanon, and then descended to the shores of the Mediterranean.

Phoenicia did not await his arrival to do him homage: the kings of Tyre,

Sidon, Gebal, and Arvad, ‘which is in the midst of the sea,’ sent him

presents. The Assyrians employed their time in cutting down cedar trees

in Lebanon and Amanus, together with pines and cypresses, which they

transported to Nineveh to be used in the construction of a temple to

Ishtar.”

The period of the Assyrian subjection, which commenced with this

attack on the part of Asshur-nazir-pal, will be the subject of the next

section. It only remains here briefly to recapitulate the salient points

of Phoenician history under Tyre’s first supremacy. In the first place,

it was a time of increased daring and enterprise, in which colonies were

planted upon the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, and trade extended to

the remote south, the more remote north, and the still more remote

north-east, to the Fortunate Islands, the Cassiterides, and probably the

Baltic. Secondly, it was a time when the colonies on the North African

coast were reinforced, strengthened, and increased in number; when

the Phoenician yoke was rivetted on that vast projection into the

Mediterranean which divides that sea into two halves, and goes far to

give the power possessing it entire command of the Mediterranean waters.

Thirdly, it was a time of extended commerce with the East, perhaps the

only time when Phoenician merchant vessels were free to share in the

trade of the Red Sea, to adventure themselves in the Indian Ocean,

and to explore the distant coasts of Eastern Africa, Southern Arabia,

Beloochistan, India and Ceylon. Fourthly, it was a time of artistic

vigour and development, when Tyre herself assumed that aspect of

splendour and magnificence which thenceforth characterised her until her

destruction by Alexander, and when she so abounded in æsthetic energy

and genius that she could afford to take the direction of an art

movement in a neighbouring country, and to plant her ideas on that

conspicuous hill which for more than a thousand years drew the eyes of

men almost more than any other city of the East, and was only destroyed

because she was felt by Rome to be a rival that she could not venture to

spare. Finally, it was a time when internal dissensions, long existing,

came to a head, and the state lost, through a sudden desertion, a

considerable portion of its strength, which was transferred to a distant

continent, and there steadily, if not rapidly, developed itself into

a power, not antagonistic indeed, but still, by the necessity of its

position, a rival power--a new commercial star, before which all other

stars, whatever their brightness had been, paled and waned--a new factor

in the polity of nations, whereof account had of necessity to be taken;

a new trade-centre, which could not but supersede to a great extent all

former trade-centres, and which, however unwillingly, as it rose, and

advanced, and prospered, tended to dim, obscure, and eclipse the glories

of its mother-city.

3. Phoenicia during the period of its subjection to Assyria (B.C.

877-635)

Phoenicia conquered by the Assyrians (about B.C. 877)--

Peaceful relations established (about B.C. 839)--Time of

quiet and prosperity--Harsh measures of Tiglath-pileser II.

(about B.C. 740)--Revolt of Simyra--Revolt of Tyre under

Elulæus--Wars of Elulæus with Shalmaneser IV. and with

Sennacherib--Reign of Abdi-Milkut--His war with Esarhaddon--

Accession of Baal--His relations with Esarhaddon and Asshur-

bani-pal--Revolt and reduction of Arvad, Hosah, and Accho--

Summary.

The first contact of Phoenicia with Assyria took place, as above

observed, in the reign of Asshur-nazir-pal, about the year B.C. 877. The

principal cities, on the approach of the great conquering monarch,

with his multitudinous array of chariots, his clouds of horse, and his

innumerable host of foot soldiers, made haste to submit themselves,

sought to propitiate the invader by rich gifts, and accepted what

they hoped might prove a nominal subjection. Arvad, which, as the most

northern, was the most directly threatened, Gebal, Sidon, and even the

comparatively remote Tyre, sent their several embassies, made their

offerings, and became, in name at any rate, Assyrian dependencies. But

the real subjection of this country was not effected at this time,

nor without a struggle. Asshur-nazir-pal’s yoke lay lightly upon his

vassals, and during the remainder of his long reign--from B.C. 877 to

B.C. 860--he seems to have desisted from military expeditions,[14123]

and to have exerted no pressure on the countries situated west of

the Euphrates. It was not until the reign of his son and successor,

Shalmaneser II., that the real conquest of Syria and Phoenicia was

taken in hand, and pressed to a successful issue by a long series

of hard-fought campaigns and bloody battles. From his sixth to his

twenty-first year Shamaneser carried on an almost continuous war in

Syria,[14124] where his adversaries were the monarchs of Damascus and

Hamath, and “the twelve kings beside the sea, above and below,”[14125]

one of whom is expressly declared to have been “Mattan-Baal of

Arvad.”[14126] It was not until the year B.C. 839 that this struggle

was terminated by the submission of the monarchs engaged in it to their

great adversary, and the firm establishment of a system of “tribute

and taxes.”[14127] The Phoenician towns agreed to pay annually to the

Assyrian monarch a certain fixed sum in the precious metals, and further

to make him presents from time to time of the best products of their

country. Among these are mentioned “skins of buffaloes, horns of

buffaloes, clothing of wool and linen, violet wool, purple wool, strong

wood, wood for weapons, skins of sheep, fleeces of shining purple, and

birds of heaven.”[14128]

The relations of Phoenicia towards the Assyrian monarchy continued to

be absolutely peaceful for above a century. The cities retained their

native monarchs, their laws and institutions, their religion, and their

entire internal administration. So long as they paid the fixed tribute,

they appear not to have been interfered with in any way. It would seem

that their trade prospered. Assyria had under her control the greater

portion of those commercial routes across the continent of Asia,[14129]

which it was of the highest importance to Phoenicia to have open

and free from peril. Her caravans could traverse them with increased

security, now that they were safeguarded by a power whereof she was a

dependency. She may even have obtained through Assyria access to regions

which had been previously closed to her, as Media, and perhaps Persia.

At any rate Tyre seems to have been as flourishing in the later times

of the Assyrian dominion as at almost any other period. Isaiah, in

denouncing woe upon her, towards the close of the dominion, shows us

what she had been under it:--

Be silent (he says), ye inhabitants of the island,

Which the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have

replenished.

The corn of the Nile, on the broad waters,

The harvest of the River, has been her revenue:

She has been the mart of nations . . .

She was a joyful city,

Her antiquity was of ancient days . . .

She was a city that dispensed crowns;

Her merchants were princes,

And her traffickers the honourable of the earth.[14130]

A change in the friendly feelings of the Phoenician cities towards

Assyria first began after the rise of the Second or Lower Assyrian

Empire, which was founded, about B.C. 745, by Tiglath-pileser II.[14131]

Tiglath-pileser, after a time of quiescence and decay, raised up Assyria

to be once more a great conquering power, and energetically applied

himself to the consolidation and unification of the empire. It was

the Assyrian system, as it was the Roman, to absorb nations by slow

degrees--to begin by offering protection and asking in return a moderate

tribute; then to draw the bonds more close, to make fresh demands and

enforce them; finally, to pick a quarrel, effect a conquest, and absorb

the country, leaving it no vestige of independence. Tiglath-pileser

began this process of absorption in Northern Syria about the year B.C.

740. He rearranged the population in the various towns, taking from

some and giving to others,[14132] adding also in most cases an Assyrian

element, appointing Assyrian governors,[14133] and requiring of the

inhabitants “the performance of service like the Assyrians.”[14134]

Among the places thus treated between the years B.C. 740 and B.C. 738,

we find the Phoenician cities of Zimirra, or Simyra, and Arqa, or Arka.

Zimirra was in the plain between the sea and Mount Bargylus, not very

far from the island of Aradus, whereof it was a dependency. Arqa was

further to the south, beyond the Eleutherus, and belonged properly to

Tripolis, if Tripolis had as yet been founded, or else to Botrys. Both

of them were readily accessible from the Orontes valley along the

course of the Eleutherus, and, being weak, could offer no resistance.

Tiglath-pileser carried out his plans, rearranged the populations, and

placed the cities under Assyrian governors responsible to himself. There

was no immediate outbreak; but the injury rankled. Within twenty years

Zimirra joined a revolt, to which Hamath, Arpad, Damascus, and Samaria

were likewise parties, and made a desperate attempt to shake off the

Assyrian yoke.[14135] The attempt failed, the revolt was crushed, and

Zimirra is heard of no more in history.

But this was not the worst. The harsh treatment of Simyra and Arka,

without complaint made or offence given, after a full century of patient

and quiet submission, aroused a feeling of alarm and indignation among

the Phoenician cities generally, which could not fail to see in what

had befallen their sisters a foreshadowing of the fate that they had to

expect one day themselves. Beginning with the weakest cities, Assyria

would naturally go on to absorb those which were stronger, and Tyre

herself, the “anointed cherub,”[14136] could look for no greater favour

than, like Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, to be devoured last.

Luliya, or Elulæus, the king of Tyre at the time,[14137] endeavoured

to escape this calamity by gathering to himself a strength which would

enable him to defy attack. He contrived to establish his dominion over

almost the whole of Southern Phoenicia--over Sidon, Accho, Ecdippa,

Sarepta, Hosah, Bitsette, Mahalliba, &c.[14138]--and at the same time

over the distant Cyprus,[14139] where the Cittæans, or people of Citium,

held command of the island. After a time the Cittæans revolted from him,

probably stirred up by the Assyrians. But Elulæus, without delay, led

an expedition into Cyprus, and speedily put down the rebellion. Hereupon

the Assyrian king of the time, Shalmaneser IV., the successor and

probably the son of Tiglath-pileser II., led a great expedition into the

west about B.C. 727, and “overran all Syria and Phoenicia.”[14140] But

he was unable to make any considerable impression. Tyre and Aradus were

safe upon their islands; Sidon and the other cities upon the mainland,

were protected by strong and lofty walls. After a single campaign, the

Great King found it necessary to offer terms of peace, which proved

acceptable, and the belligerents parted towards the close of the year,

without any serious loss or gain on either side.[14141]

It seemed necessary to adopt some different course of action.

Shalmaneser had discovered during his abortive campaign that there were

discords and jealousies among the various Phoenician cities; that none

of them submitted without repugnance to the authority of Tyre, and that

Sidon especially had an ancient ground of quarrel with her more powerful

sister, and always cherished the hope of recovering her original

supremacy. He had seen also that the greater number of the Phoenician

towns, if he chose to press upon them with the full force of his immense

military organisation, lay at his mercy. He had only to invest each

city on the land side, to occupy its territory, to burn its villas, to

destroy its irrigation works, to cut down its fruit trees, to interfere

with its water-supply, and in the last instance to press upon it, to

batter down its walls, to enter its streets, slaughter its population,

or drive it to take refuge in its ships,[14142] and he could become

absolute master of the whole Phoenician mainland. Only Tyre and Aradus

could escape him. But might not they also be brought into subjection

by the naval forces which their sister cities, once occupied, might be

compelled to furnish, and to man, or, at any rate, to assist in manning?

Might not the whole of Phoenicia be in this way absorbed into the

empire? The prospect was pleasing, and Shalmaneser set to work to

convert the vision into a reality. By his emissaries he stirred up the

spirit of disaffection among the Tyrian subject towns, and succeeded in

separating from Tyre, and drawing over to his own side, not only

Sidon and Acre and their dependencies, but even the city of Palæ-Tyrus

itself,[14143] or the great town which had grown up opposite the island

Tyre upon the mainland. The island Tyre seems to have been left without

support or ally, to fight her own battle singly. Shalmaneser called upon

his new friends to furnish him with a fleet, and they readily responded

to the call, placing their ships at his disposal to the number of sixty,

and supplying him further with eight hundred skilled oarsmen, not a

sufficient number to dispense with Assyrian aid, but enough to furnish

a nucleus of able seamen for each vessel. The attack was then made.

The Assyro-Phoenician fleet sailed in a body from some port on the

continent, and made a demonstration against the Island City, which they

may perhaps have expected to frighten into a surrender. But the Tyrians

were in no way alarmed. They knew, probably, that their own countrymen

would not fight with very much zeal for their foreign masters, and they

despised, undoubtedly, the mixed crews, half skilled seamen, half tiros

and bunglers, which had been brought against them. Accordingly they

thought it sufficient to put to sea with just a dozen ships--one to

each five of the enemy, and making a sudden attack with these upon the

adverse fleet, they defeated it, dispersed it, and took five hundred

prisoners. Shalmaneser saw that he had again miscalculated; and,

despairing of any immediate success, drew off his ships and his troops,

and retired to his own country. He left behind him, however, on the

mainland opposite the island Tyre, a certain number of his soldiers,

with orders to prevent the Tyrians from obtaining, according to their

ordinary practice, supplies of water from the continent. Some were

stationed at the mouth of the river Leontes (the Litany), a little to

the north of Tyre, a perennial stream bringing down a large quantity

of water from Coele-Syria and Lebanon; others held possession of the

aqueducts on the south, built to convey the precious fluid across the

plain from the copious springs of Ras el Ain[14144] to the nearest point

of the coast opposite the city. The continental water supply was

thus effectually cut off; but the Tyrians were resolute, and made no

overtures to the enemy. For five years, we are told,[14145] they were

content to drink such water only as could be obtained in their own

island from wells sunk in the soil, which must have been brackish,

unwholesome, and disagreeable. At the end of that time a revolution

occurred at Nineveh. Shalmaneser lost his throne (B.C. 722), and a new

dynasty succeeding, amid troubles of various kinds, attention was drawn

away from Tyre to other quarters; and Elulæus was left in undisturbed

possession of his island city for nearly a quarter of a century.

It appears that, during this interval, Elulæus rebuilt the power which

Shalmaneser had shattered and brought low, repossessing himself

of Cyprus, or, at any rate, of some portion of it,[14146] and

re-establishing his authority over all those cities of the mainland

which had previously acknowledged subjection to him. These included

Sidon, Bit-sette, Sarepta, Mahalliba, Hosah, Achzib or Ecdippa, and

Accho (Acre). There is some ground for thinking that he transferred his

own residence to Sidon,[14147] perhaps for the purpose of keeping closer

watch upon the town which he most suspected of disaffection. The policy

of Sargon seems to have been to leave Phoenicia alone, and content

himself with drawing the tribute which the cities were quite willing to

pay in return for Assyrian protection. His reign lasted from B.C. 722 to

B.C. 705, and it was not until Sennacherib, his son and successor,

had been seated for four years upon the throne that a reversal of

this policy took place, and war _à outrance_ was declared against

the Phoenician king, who had ventured to brave, and had succeeded

in baffling, Assyria more than twenty years previously. Sennacherib

entertained grand designs of conquest in this quarter, and could not

allow the example of an unpunished and triumphant rebellion to be

flaunted in the eyes of a dozen other subject states, tempting them

to throw off their allegiance. He therefore, as soon as affairs in

Babylonia ceased to occupy him, marched the full force of the empire

towards the west, and proclaimed his intention of crushing the

Phoenician revolt, and punishing the audacious rebel who had so long

defied the might of Assyria. The army which he set in motion must

have numbered more than 200,000 men;[14148] its chariots were

numerous,[14149] its siege-train ample and well provided.[14150] Such

terror did it inspire among those against whom it was directed that

Elulæus was afraid even to await attack, and, while Sennacherib was

still on his march, took ship and removed himself to the distant island

of Cyprus,[14151] where alone he could feel safe from pursuit and

capture. But, though deserted by their sovereign, his towns seem to have

declined to submit themselves. No great battle was fought; but severally

they took arms and defended their walls. Sennacherib tells us that he

took one after another--“by the might of the soldiers of Asshur his

lord”[14152]--Great Sidon, Lesser Sidon, Bit-sette, Zarephath or

Sarepta, Mahalliba, Hosah, Achzib or Ecdippa, and Accho--“strong cities,

fortresses, walled and enclosed, Luliya’s castles.”[14153] He does not

claim, however, to have taken Tyre, and we may conclude that the Island

City escaped him. But he made himself master of the entire tract upon

the continent which had constituted Luliya’s kingdom, and secured its

obedience by placing over it a new king, in whom he had confidence, a

certain Tubaal[14154] (Tob-Baal), probably a Phoenician. At the same

time he rearranged the yearly tribute which the cities had to pay to

Assyria,[14155] probably augmenting it, as a punishment for the long

rebellion.

We hear nothing more of Phoenicia during the reign of Sennacherib,

except that, shortly after his conquest of the tract about Sidon, he

received tribute, not only from the king whom he had just set over that

town, but also from Uru-melek, king of Gebal (Byblus), and Abd-ilihit,

king of Arvad.[14156] The three towns represent, probably, the whole

of Phoenicia, Aradus at this time exercising dominion over the northern

tract, or that extending from Mount Casius to the Eleutherus, Gebal or

Byblus over the central tract from the Eleutherus to the Tamyras, and

Sidon, in the temporary eclipse of Tyre, ruling the southern tract from

the Tamyrus to Mount Carmel. It appears further,[14157] that at some

date between this tribute-giving (B.C. 701) and the death of Sennacherib

(B.C. 681) Tubaal must have been succeeded in the government of Sidon by

Abdi-Milkut, or Abd-Melkarth[14158] ({...}), but whether this change was

caused by a revolt, or took place in the ordinary course, Tubaal dying

and being succeeded by his son, is wholly uncertain.

All that we know is that Esarhaddon, on his accession, found

Abd-Melkarth in revolt against his authority. He had formed an alliance

with a certain Sanduarri, king of Kundi and Sizu,[14159] a prince of the

Lebanon, and had set up as independent monarch, probably during the

time of the civil way which was waged between Esarhaddon and two of

his brothers who disputed his succession after they had murdered his

father.[14160] As soon as this struggle was over, and the Assyrian

monarch found himself free to take his own course, he proceeded at once

(B.C. 680) against these two rebels. Both of them tried to escape him.

Abd-Melkarth, quitting his capital, fled away by sea, steering probably

either for Aradus or for Cyprus. Sanduarri took refuge in his mountain

fastnesses. But Esarhaddon was not to be baffled. He caused both chiefs

to be pursued and taken. “Abd-Melkarth,” he says,[14161] “who from the

face of my solders into the middle of the sea had fled, like a fish from

out of the sea, I caught, and cut off his head . . . Sanduarri, who took

Abd-Melkarth for his ally, and to his difficult mountains trusted, like

a bird from the midst of the mountains, I caught and cut off his head.”

Sidon was very severely punished. Esarhaddon boasts that he swept away

all its subject cities, uprooted its citadel and palace, and cast the

materials into the sea, at the same time destroying all its habitations.

The town was plundered, the treasures of the palace carried off, and

the greater portion of the population deported to Assyria. The blank was

filled up with “natives of the lands and seas of the East”--prisoners

taken in Esarhaddon’s war with Babylon and Elam, who, like the

Phoenicians themselves at a remote time, exchanged a residence on the

shores of the Persian Gulf for one on the distant Mediterranean. An

Assyrian general was placed as governor over the city, and its name

changed from Sidon to “Ir-Esarhaddon.”

It seems to have been in the course of the same year that Esarhaddon

held one of those courts, or _durbars_, in Syria, which all subject

monarchs were expected to attend, and whereat it was the custom that

they should pay homage to their suzerain. Hither flocked almost all the

neighbouring monarchs[14162]--Manasseh, king of Judah, Qavus-gabri,

king of Ammon, Zilli-bel, king of Gaza, Mitinti of Askelon, Ikasamsu of

Ekron, Ahimelek of Ashdod, together with twelve kings of the Cyprians,

and three Phoenician monarchs, Baal, king of Tyre, Milki-asaph, king of

Gebal, and Mattan-baal, king of Arvad. Tribute was paid, home rendered,

and after a short sojourn at the court, the subject-monarchs were

dismissed. The foremost position in Esarhaddon’s list is occupied by

“Baal, king of Tyre;” and this monarch appears to have been received

into exceptional favour. He had perhaps been selected by Esarhaddon to

rule Southern Phoenicia on the execution of Abd-Melkarth. At any rate,

he enjoyed for some time the absolute confidence and high esteem of his

suzerain. If we may venture to interpret a mutilated inscription,[14163]

he furnished Esarhaddon with a fleet, and manned it with his own

sailors. Certainly, he received from Esarhaddon a considerable extension

of his dominions. Not only was his authority over Accho recognised

and affirmed, but the coast tract south of Carmel, as far as Dor, the

important city Gebal, and the entire region of Lebanon, were placed

under his sovereignty.[14164] The date assigned to these events is

between B.C. 680 and B.C. 673. It was in this latter year that the

Assyrian monarch resolved on an invasion of Egypt. For fifty years the

two countries had been watching each other, counteracting each other’s

policy, lending support to each other’s enemies, coming into occasional

collision the one with the other, not, however, as principals, but as

partakers in other persons’ quarrels. Now, at length there was to be an

end of subterfuge and pretences. Esarhaddon, about B.C. 673, resolved to

attempt the conquest of Egypt. He “set his face to go to the country of

Magan and Milukha.”[14165] He let his intention be generally known. No

doubt he called on his subject allies for contingents of men, if not for

supplies of money. To Tyre he must naturally have looked for no niggard

or grudging support. What then must have been his disgust and rage at

finding that, at the critical moment, Tyre had gone over to the enemy?

Notwithstanding the favours heaped on him by his suzerain, “Baal, king

of Tyre, to Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia, his country entrusted, and the

yoke of Asshur threw off and made defiance.”[14166] Esarhaddon was too

strongly bent on his Egyptian expedition to be diverted from it by this

defection; but in the year B.C. 672, as he marched through Syria and

Palestine on his way to attack Tirhakah, he sent a detachment against

Tyre, with orders to his officers to repeat the tactics of Shalmaneser,

by occupying points of the coast opposite to the island Tyre, and

“cutting off the supplies of food and water.”[14167] Baal was by this

means greatly distressed, and it would seem that within a year or two

he made his submission, surrendering either to Esarhaddon or to his son

Asshur-bani-pal, in about the year of the latter’s accession (B.C. 668).

It is surprising to find that he was not deposed from his throne; but

as the circumstances seem to have been such as made it imperative on the

Assyrian king to condone minor offences in order to accomplish a great

enterprise--the restoration of the Assyrian dominion over the Nile

valley. Esarhaddon had effected the conquest of Egypt in about the

year B.C. 670, and had divided the country into twenty petty

principalities;[14168] but within a year his yoke had been thrown off,

his petty princes expelled, and Tirhakah reinstated as sole monarch over

the “Two Regions.”[14169] It was the determination of Asshur-bani-pal,

on becoming king, to strain every nerve and devote his utmost energy to

the re-conquest of the ancient kingdom, so lightly won and so lightly

lost by his father. Baal’s perfidy was thus forgiven or overlooked. A

great expedition was prepared. The kings of Phoenicia, Palestine, and

Cyprus were bidden once more to assemble, to bring their tribute, and

pay homage to their suzerain as he passed on his way at the head of his

forces towards the land of the Pharaohs. Baal came, and again holds

the post of honour;[14170] with him were the king of Judah--doubtless

Manasseh, but the name is lost--the kings of Edom, Moab, Gaza, Askelon,

Ekron, Gebal, Arvad, Paphos, Soli, Curium, Tamassus, Ammochosta, Lidini,

and Aphrodisias, with probably those also of Ammon, Ashdod, Idalium,

Citium, and Salamis.[14171] Each in turn prostrated himself at the foot

of the Great Monarch, paid homage, and made profession of fidelity.

Asshur-bani-pal then proceeded on his way, and the kings returned to

their several governments.

It is about four years after this, B.C. 664, that we find Baal attacked

and punished by the Assyrian monarch. The subjugation of Egypt had

been in the meantime, though not without difficulty, completed.

Asshur-bani-pal’s power extended from the range of Niphates to the First

Cataract. Whether during the course of the four years’ struggle, by

which the reconquest of Egypt was effected, the Tyrian prince had

given fresh offence to his suzerain, or whether it was the old offence,

condoned for a time but never forgiven, that was now avenged, is not

made clear by the Assyrian Inscriptions. Asshur-bani-pal simply tells us

that, in his third expedition, he proceeded against Baal, king of Tyre,

dwelling in the midst of the sea, _who his royal will disregarded, and

did not listen to the words of his lips_. “Towers round him,” he says,

“I raised, and over his people I strengthened the watch; on sea and

land his forts I took; his going out I stopped. Water and sea-water, to

preserve their lives, their mouths drank. By a strong blockade, which

removed not, I besieged them; their works I checked and opposed; to my

yoke I made them submissive. The daughter proceeding from his body, and

the daughters of his brothers, for concubines he brought to my presence.

Yahi-milki, his son, the glory of the country, of unsurpassed renown,

at once he sent forward, to make obeisance to me. His daughter, and the

daughters of his brothers, with their great dowries, I received. Favour

I granted him, and the son proceeding from his body, I restored, and

gave him back.”[14172] Thus Baal once more escaped the fate he must

have expected. Asshur-bani-pal, who was far from being of a clement

disposition, suffered himself to be appeased by the submission made,

restored Baal to his favour, and allowed him to retain possession of his

sovereignty.

Another Phoenician monarch also was, about the same time, threatened

and pardoned. This was Yakinlu, the king of Arvad, probably the son and

successor of Mattan-Baal, the contemporary of Esarhaddon.[14173] He

is accused of having been wanting in submission to Asshur-bani-pal’s

fathers;[14174] but we may regard it as probable that his real offence

was some failure in his duties towards Asshur-bani-pal himself. Either

he had openly rebelled, and declared himself independent, or he had

neglected to pay his tribute, or he had given recent offence in some

other way. The Phoenician island kings were always more neglectful of

their duties than others, since it was more difficult to punish them.

Assyria did not even now possess any regular fleet, and could only

punish a recalcitrant king of Arvad or Tyre by impressing into her

service the ships of some of the Phoenician coast-towns, as Sidon, or

Gebal, or Accho. These towns were not very zealous in such a service,

and probably did not maintain strong navies, having little use for them.

Thus Yakinlu may have expected that his neglect, whatever it was,

would be overlooked. But Asshur-bani-pal was jealous of his rights,

and careful not to allow any of them to lapse by disuse. He let his

displeasure be known at the court of Yakinlu, and very shortly received

an embassy of submission. Like Baal, Yakinlu sent a daughter to take

her place among the great king’s secondary wives, and with her he sent

a large sum of money, in the disguise of a dowry.[14175] The tokens of

subjection were accepted, and Yakinlu was allowed to continue king

of Arvad. When, not long afterwards, he died,[14176] and his ten sons

sought the court of Nineveh to prefer their claims to the succession,

they were received with favour. Azi-Baal, the eldest, was appointed

to the vacant kingdom, while his nine brothers were presented by

Asshur-bani-pal with “costly clothing, and rings.”[14177]

Two other revolts of two other Phoenician towns belong to a somewhat

later period. On his return from an expedition against Arabia, about

B.C. 645, Asshur-bani-pal found that Hosah, a small place in the

vicinity of Tyre,[14178] and Accho, famous as Acre in later times, had

risen in revolt against their Assyrian governors, refused their

tribute, and asserted independence.[14179] He at once besieged, and

soon captured, Hosah. The leaders of the rebellion he put to death; the

plunder of the town, including the images of its gods, and the bulk of

its population, he carried off into Assyria. The people of Accho, he

says, he “quieted.” It is a common practice of conquerors “to make a

solitude and call it peace.” Asshur-bani-pal appears to have punished

Accho, first by a wholesale massacre, and then by the deportation of all

its remaining inhabitants.

It is evident from this continual series of revolts and rebellions that,

however mild had been the sway of Assyria over her Phoenician subjects

in the earlier times, it had by degrees become a hateful and a grinding

tyranny. Commercial states, bent upon the accumulation of wealth, do

not without grave cause take up arms and affront the perils of war, much

less do so when their common sense must tell them that success is

almost absolutely hopeless, and that failure will bring about their

destruction. The Assyrians were a hard race. Such tenderness as they

ever showed to any subject people was, we may be sure, in every case

dictated by policy. While their power was unsettled, while they feared

revolts, and were uncertain as to their consequences, their attitude

towards their dependents was conciliating. When they became fully

conscious of the immense preponderance of power which they wielded, and

of the inability of the petty states of Asia to combine against them in

any firm league, they grew careless and confident, reckless of giving

offence, ruder in their behaviour, more grasping in their exactions,

more domineering, more oppressive. Prudence should perhaps have

counselled the Phoenician cities to submit, to be yielding and pliant,

to cultivate the arts of the parasite and the flatterer; but the people

had still a rough honesty about them. It was against the grain to

flatter or submit themselves; constant voyages over wild seas in

fragile vessels kept up their manhood; constant encounters with pirates,

cannibals, and the rudest possible savages made them brave and daring;

exposure to storm, and cold, and heat braced their frames; the nautical

life developed and intensified in them a love of freedom. The Phoenician

of Assyrian times was not to be coaxed into accepting patiently the lot

of a slave. Suffer as he might by his revolts, they won him a certain

respect; it is likely that they warded off many an indignity, many an

outrage. The Assyrians knew that his endurance could not be reckoned on

beyond a certain point, and they knew that in his death-throes he was

dangerous. The Phoenicians probably suffered considerably less than the

other subject nations under Assyrian rule; and the maritime population,

which was the salt of the people, suffered least of all, since it was

scarcely ever brought into contact with its nominal rulers.

4. Phoenicia during its struggles with Babylon and Egypt (about B.C.

635-527)

Decline of Assyria--Scythic troubles--Fall of Nineveh--Union

of the Phoenician cities under Tyre--Invasion of Syria by

Neco--Battle of Megiddo--Submission of Phoenicia to Neco--

Tyrian colony at Memphis--Conquest of Phoenicia by

Nebuchadnezzar--Reign of Ithobal II. at Tyre--He revolts

from Nebuchadnezzar but is reduced to subjection--Decline of

Tyre--General weakness of Phoenicia under Babylon.

It is impossible to fix the year in which Phoenicia became independent

of Assyria. The last trace of Assyrian interference, in the way of

compulsion, with any of the towns belongs to B.C. 645, when she severely

punished Hosah and Accho. The latest sign of her continued domination

is found in B.C. 636, when the Assyrian governor of a Phoenician town,

Zimirra, appears in the list of Eponyms.[14180] It must have been very

soon after this that the empire became involved in those troubles

and difficulties which led on to its dissolution. According to

Herodotus,[14181] Cyaxares, king of Media, laid siege to Nineveh in B.C.

633, or very soon afterwards. His attack did not at once succeed; but it

was almost immediately followed by the irruption into South-western Asia

of Scythic hordes from beyond the Caucasus, which overran country after

country, destroying and ravaging at their pleasure.[14182] The reality

of this invasion is now generally admitted. “It was the earliest

recorded,” says a modern historian, “of those movements of the northern

populations, hid behind the long mountain barrier, which, under the name

of Himalaya, Caucasus, Taurus, Hæmus, and the Alps, has been reared by

nature between the civilised and uncivilised races of the old world.

Suddenly, above this boundary, appeared those strange, uncouth, fur-clad

forms, hardly to be distinguished from their horses and their waggons,

fierce as their own wolves or bears, sweeping towards the southern

regions, which seemed to them their natural prey. The successive

invasions of Parthians, Turks, Mongols in Asia, of Gauls, Goths,

Vandals, Huns in Europe, have, it is well said, ‘illustrated the law,

and made us familiar with its operations. But there was a time in

history before it had come into force, and when its very existence must

have been unsuspected. Even since it began to operate, it has so often

undergone prolonged suspension that the wisest may be excused if

they cease to bear it in mind, and are as much startled when a

fresh illustration of it occurs, as if the like had never happened

before.’[14183] No wonder that now, when the veil was for the first time

rent asunder, all the ancient monarchies of the South--Assyria, Babylon,

Media, Egypt, even Greece and Asia Minor--stood aghast at the spectacle

of these savage hordes rushing down on the seats of luxury and

power.”[14184] Assyria seems to have suffered from the attack almost as

much as any other country. The hordes probably swarmed down from

Media through the Zagros passes into the most fruitful portion of the

empire--the flat country between the mountains and the Tigris. Many of

the old cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, were besieged,

and perhaps taken, and their palaces wantonly burnt by the barbarous

invaders. The tide then swept on. Wandering from district to district,

plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed

over Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread

itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the

Egyptian king, Psamatik I. That monarch bribed the nomads to advance

no further,[14185] and from this time their power began to wane. Their

numbers must have been greatly thinned in the long course of battles,

sieges, and skirmishes wherein they were engaged year after year;

they suffered also through their excesses;[14186] and perhaps through

intestine dissensions. At last they recognised that their power was

broken. Many bands probably returned across the Caucasus into the Steppe

country. Others submitted and took service under the native rulers of

Asia.[14187] Great numbers were slain, and, except in a province of

Armenia, which thenceforward became known as Sacasêné,[14188]

and perhaps in one Syrian town, which acquired the name of

Scythopolis,[14189] the invaders left no permanent trace of their brief

but terrible inroad.

The shock of the Scythian irruption cannot but have greatly injured and

weakened Assyria. The whole country had been ravaged and depopulated;

the provinces had been plundered, many of the towns had been taken and

sacked, the palaces of the old kings had been burnt,[14190] and all

the riches that had not been hid away had been lost. Assyria, when the

Scythian wave had passed, was but the shadow of her former self. Her

_prestige_ was gone, her armed force must have been greatly diminished,

her hold upon the provinces, especially the more distant ones, greatly

weakened. Phoenicia is likely to have detached herself from Assyria at

latest during the time that the Scyths were dominant, which was probably

from about B.C. 630 to B.C. 610. When Assyrian protection was withdrawn

from Syria, as it must have been during this period, and when every

state and town had to look solely to itself for deliverance from a

barbarous and cruel enemy, the fiction of a nominal dependence on a

distant power could scarcely be maintained. Without any actual revolt,

the Phoenician cities became their own masters, and the speedy fall of

Assyria before the combined attack of the Medes and Babylonians,[14191]

after the Scythians had withdrawn, prevented for some time any

interference with their recovered independence.

A double danger, however, impended. On the one side Egypt, on the other

Babylon, might be confidently expected to lay claim to the debatable

land which nature had placed between the seats of the great Asiatic and

the great African power, and which in the past had almost always been

possessed by the one or the other of them. Egypt was the nearer of the

two, and probably seemed the most to be feared. She had recently fallen

under the power of an enterprising native monarch, who had already,

before the fall of Assyria, shown that he entertained ambitious designs

against the Palestinian towns, having begun attacks upon Ashdod

soon after he ascended the throne.[14192] Babylon was, comparatively

speaking, remote and had troublesome neighbours, who might be expected

to prevent her from undertaking distant expeditions. It was clearly the

true policy for Phoenicia to temporise, to enter into no engagements

with either Babylon or Egypt, to strengthen her defences, to bide her

time, and, so far as possible, to consolidate herself. Something like

a desire for consolidation would seem to have come over the people; and

Tyre, the leading city in all but the earliest times, appears to have

been recognised as the centre towards which other states must gravitate,

and to have risen to the occasion. If there ever was such a thing as a

confederation of all the Phoenician cities, it would seem to have been

at this period. Sidon forgot her ancient rivalry, and consented to

furnish the Tyrian fleet with mariners.[14193] Arvad gave not only

rowers to man the ships, but also men-at-arms to help in guarding the

walls.[14194] The “ancients of Gebal” lent their aid in the Tyrian

dockyards.[14195] The minor cities cannot have ventured to hold aloof.

Tyre, as the time approached for the contest which was to decide whether

Egypt or Babylon should be the great power of the East, appears to have

reached the height of her strength, wealth, and prosperity. It is now

that Ezekial says of her--“O Tyrus, thy heart is lifted up, and thou

hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the

seas--Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel, there is no secret that they

can hide from thee: from thy wisdom and with thine understanding hast

thou gotten thee riches, and hast gotten gold and silver into thy

treasures: by thy great wisdom and by thy traffick thou hast increased

thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches”[14196];

and again, “O thou that are situated at the entry of the sea, which art

the merchant of the peoples unto many isles, thus saith the Lord God,

Thou, O Tyre, hast said, I am perfect in beauty. Thy borders are in the

heart of the sea; thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made

all thy planks of fir-trees from Senir; they have taken from Lebanon

cedars to make masts for thee; of the oaks of Bashan have they made

thine oars; they have made thy benches of ivory, inlaid in boxwood, from

the isles of Kittim . . . The ships of Tarshish were thy caravans for

thy merchandise; and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in

the heart of the sea.”[14197]

The first to strike of the two great antagonists was Egypt. Psamatik I.,

who was advanced in years at the time of Assyria’s downfall,[14198] died

about B.C. 610, and was succeeded by a son still in the full vigour of

life, the brave and enterprising Neco. Neco, in B.C. 608, having made

all due preparations, led a great expedition into Palestine,[14199] with

the object of bringing under his dominion the entire tract between

the River of Egypt (Wady el Arish) and the Middle Euphrates. Already

possessed of Ashdod[14200] and perhaps also of Gaza[14201] and

Askelon,[14202] he held the keys of Syria, and could have no difficulty

in penetrating along the coast route, through the rich plain of Sharon,

to the first of the mountain barriers which are interposed between the

Nile and the Mesopotamian region. His famous fleet[14203] would support

him along the shore, at any rate as far Carmel; and Dor and Accho would

probably be seized, and made into depôts for his stores and provisions.

The powerful Egyptian monarch marching northward with his numerous

and well-disciplined army, partly composed of native troops, partly of

mercenaries from Asia Minor, Greeks and Carians, probably did not look

to meet with any opposition, till, somewhere in Northern Syria, he

should encounter the forces of Babylonia, which would of course be moved

westward to meet him. What then must have been his surprise when he

found the ridge connecting Carmel with the highland of Samaria occupied

by a strong body of troops, and his further progress barred by a foe who

had appeared to him too insignificant to be taken into account? Josiah,

the Jewish monarch of the time, grandson of Manasseh and great-grandson

of Hezekiah, who, in the unsettled state of Western Asia, had united

under his dominion the entire country of the twelve tribes,[14204] had

quitted Jerusalem, and thrown himself across the would-be conqueror’s

path in the strong and well-known position of Megiddo. Here, in remote

times, had the great Thothmes met and defeated the whole force of Syria

and Mesopotamia under the king of Kadesh;[14205] here had Deborah and

Barak, the son of Abinoam, utterly destroyed the mighty army of Jabin,

king of Canaan, under Sisera.[14206] Here now the gallant, if rash,

Judæan king elected to take his stand, moved either by a sense of

duty, because he regarded himself as a Babylonian feudatory, or simply

determined to defend the Holy Land against any heathen army that,

without permission, trespassed on it. In vain did Neco seek to induce

Josiah to retire and leave the way open, by assuring him that he had no

hostile intentions against Judæa, but was marching on Carchemish by the

Euphrates, there to contend with the Babylonians.[14207] The Jewish king

persisted in his rash enterprise, and Neco was forced to brush him from

his path. His seasoned and disciplined troops easily overcame the hasty

levies of Josiah; and Josiah himself fell in the battle.

We have no details with respect to the remainder of the expedition.

Neco, no doubt, pressed forward through Galilee and Coele-Syria towards

the Euphrates. Whether he had to fight any further battles we are not

informed. It is certain that he occupied Carchemish,[14208] and made it

his headquarters, but whether it submitted to him, or was besieged and

taken, is unknown. All Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine were overrun, and

became temporarily Egyptian possessions.[14209] But Phoenicia does not

appear to have been subdued by force. Tyrian prosperity continued, and

the terms on which Phoenicia stood towards Egypt during the remainder of

Neco’s reign were friendly. Phoenicians at Neco’s request accomplished

the circumnavigation of Africa;[14210] and we may suspect that it was

Neco who granted to Tyre the extraordinary favour of settling a colony

in the Egyptian capital, Memphis.[14211] Probably Phoenicia accepted

at the hands of Neco the same sort of position which she had at first

occupied under Assyria, a position, as already explained, satisfactory

to both parties.

But the glory and prosperity which Egypt had thus acquired were very

short-lived. Within three years Babylonia asserted herself. In B.C.

605, the crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, acting on behalf of his father,

Nabopolassar, who was aged and infirm,[14212] led the forces of Babylon

against the audacious Pharaoh, who had dared to affront the “King of

kings,” “the Lord of Sumir and Accad,” had taken him off his guard,

and deprived him of some of his fairest provinces. Babylonia, under

Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, was no unworthy successor of the mighty

power which for seven hundred years had held the supremacy of Western

Asia. Her citizens were as brave; her armies as well disciplined; her

rulers as bold, as sagacious, and as unsparing. Habakkuk’s description

of a Babylonian army belongs to about this date, and is probably drawn

from the life--“Lo, I raise up the Chaldæans, that bitter and hasty

nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess

the dwelling-places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful;

from them shall proceed judgment and captivity; their horses are swifter

than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their

horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from

far; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat. They shall come

all for violence; their faces shall sup as the east wind, and they shall

gather the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at kings, and

princes shall be a scorn unto them; they shall derive every stronghold;

for they shall heap dust, and take it.”[14213] Early in the year

B.C. 605 the host of Nebuchadnezzar appeared on the right bank of the

Euphrates, moving steadily along its reaches, and day by day approaching

nearer and nearer to the great fortress in and behind which lay the army

of Neco, well ordered with shield and buckler, its horses harnessed,

and its horsemen armed with spears that had been just furbished, and

protected by helmets and brigandines.[14214] One of the “decisive

battles of the world” was impending. If Egypt conquered, Oriental

civilisation would take the heavy immovable Egyptian type; change,

advance, progress would be hindered; sacerdotalism in religion,

conventionalism in art, pure unmitigated despotism in government would

generally prevail; all the throbbing life of Asia would receive a sudden

and violent check; Semitism would be thrust back; Aryanism, just pushing

itself to the front, would shrink away; the monotonous Egyptian tone of

thought and life would spread, like a lava stream, over the manifold

and varied forms of Asiatic culture; crushing them out, concealing them,

making them as though they had never been. The victory of Babylon, on

the other hand, would mean room for Semitism to develop itself, and for

Aryanism to follow in its wake; fresh stirs of population and of thought

in Asia; further advances in the arts; variety, freshness, growth; the

continuance of the varied lines of Oriental study and investigation

until such time as would enable Grecian intellect to take hold of them,

sift them, and assimilate whatever in them was true, valuable, and

capable of expansion.

We have no historical account of the great battle of Carchemish.

Jeremiah, however, beholds it in vision. He sees the Egyptians “dismayed

and turned away back--their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled

apace, and look not back, since fear is round about them.”[14215] He

sees the “swift flee away,” and the “mighty men” attempting to

“escape;” but they “stumble and fall toward the north by the river

Euphrates.”[14216] “For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day

of vengeance, that He may avenge Him of His adversaries; and the sword

devours, and it is satiate and made drunk with their blood, for the

Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river

Euphrates.”[14217] The “valiant men” are “swept away”--“many fall--yea,

one falls upon another, and they say, Arise and let us go again to

our own people, and to the land of our nativity from the oppressing

sword.”[14218] Nor do the mercenaries escape. “Her hired men are in the

midst of her, like fatted bullocks; for they also are turned back, and

are fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their

calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation.”[14219]

The defeat was, beyond a doubt, complete, overwhelming. The shock of

it was felt all over the Delta, at Memphis, and even at distant

Thebes.[14220] The hasty flight of the entire Egyptian host left the

whole country open to the invading army. “Like a whirlwind, like

a torrent, it swept on. The terrified inhabitants retired into

the fortified cities,”[14221] where for the time they were safe.

Nebuchadnezzar did not stop to commence any siege. He pursued Neco up

to the very frontier of Egypt, and would have continued his victorious

career into the Nile valley, had not important intelligence arrested his

steps. His aged father had died at Babylon while he was engaged in his

conquests, and his immediate return to the capital was necessary, if he

would avoid a disputed succession.[14222] Thus matters in Syria had to

be left in a confused and unsettled state, until such time as the Great

King could revisit the scene of his conquests, and place them upon some

definite and satisfactory footing.

On the whole, the campaign had, apparently, the effect of drawing closer

the links which united Phoenicia with Egypt.[14223] Babylon had shown

herself a fierce and formidable enemy, but had disgusted men more than

she had terrified them. It was clear enough that she would be a

hard mistress, a second and crueller Assyria. There was thus, on

Nebuchadnezzar’s departure, a general gravitation of the Syrian and

Palestinian states towards Egypt, since they saw in her the only

possible protector against Babylon, and dreaded her less than they did

the “bitter and hasty nation.”[14224] Neco, no doubt, encouraged the

movement which tended at once to strengthen himself and weaken his

antagonist; and the result was that, in the course of a few years,

both Judæa and Phoenicia revolted from Nebuchadnezzar, and declared

themselves independent. Phoenicia was still under the hegemony of

Tyre, and Tyre had at its head an enterprising prince, a second

Ithobal,[14225] who had developed its resources to the uttermost, and

was warmly supported by the other cities.[14226] His revolt appears

to have taken place in the year B.C. 598, the seventh year of

Nebuchadnezzar.[14227] Nebuchadnezzar at once marched against him in

person. The sieges of Tyre, Sidon, and Jerusalem were formed. Jerusalem

submitted almost immediately.[14228] Sidon was taken after losing half

her defenders by pestilence;[14229] but Tyre continued to resist for the

long space of thirteen years.[14230] The continental city was probably

taken first. Against this Nebuchadnezzar could freely employ his

whole force--his “horses, his chariots, his companies, and his much

people”--he could bring moveable forts close up to the walls, and cast

up banks against them, and batter them with his engines, or undermine

them with spade and mattock. When a breach was effected, he could pour

his horse into the streets, and ride down all opposition. It is

the capture of the continental city which Ezekiel describes when he

says:[14231] “Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with

horses and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much

people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field; and he

shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift

up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy

walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. By reason of

the abundance of his horses, their dust shall cover thee; thy walls

shall shake at the noise of the horseman, and of the wheels and of the

chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city

wherein is made a breach. With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread

down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy

strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. And they shall make a

spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise; and they shall

break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall

lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.”

But the island city did not escape. When continental Phoenicia was

reduced, it was easy to impress a fleet from maritime towns; to man

it, in part with Phoenicians, in part with Babylonians, no mean

sailors,[14232] and then to establish a blockade of the isle. Tyre may

more than once have crippled and dispersed the blockading squadron; but

by a moderate expenditure fresh fleets could be supplied, while Tyre,

cut off from Lebanon, would find it difficult to increase or renew

her navy. There has been much question whether the island city was

ultimately captured by Nebuchadnezzar or no; but even writers who take

the negative view[14233] admit that it must have submitted and owned the

suzerainty of its assailant. The date of the submission was B.C. 585.

Thus Tyre, in B.C. 585, “fell from her high estate.” Ezekiel’s

prophecies were fulfilled. Ithobal II., the “prince of Tyrus” of those

prophecies,[14234] whose “head had been lifted up,” and who had said in

his heart, “I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the

waters,” who deemed himself “wiser than Daniel,” and thought that no

secret was hid from him, was “brought down to the pit,” “cast to the

ground,” “brought to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them

that beheld him.”[14235] Tyre herself was “broken in the midst of the

seas.”[14236] A blight fell upon her. For many years, Sidon, rather than

Tyre, became once more the leading city of Phoenicia, was regarded as

pre-eminent in naval skill,[14237] and is placed before Tyre when

the two are mentioned together.[14238] Internal convulsion, moreover,

followed upon external decline. Within ten years of the death of

Ithobal, the monarchy came to an end by a revolution,[14239] which

substituted for Kings Suffetes or Shophetim, “judges,” officers of an

inferior status, whose tenure of office was not very assured. Ecnibal,

the son of Baslach, the first judge, held the position for no more than

two months; Chelbes, the son of Abdæus, who followed him, ruled for ten

months; Abbarus, a high priest, probably of Melkarth, for three months.

Then, apparently to weaken the office, it was shared between two, as at

Carthage, and Mytgon (perhaps Mattan), together with Ger-ashtoreth,

the son of Abd-elim, judged Tyre for six years. But the partisans of

monarchy were now recovering strength; and the reign of a king, Balator,

was intruded at some point in the course of the six years’ judgeship.

Judges were then abolished by a popular movement, and kings of the old

stock restored. The Tyrians sent to Babylon for a certain Merbal,

who must have been either a refugee or a hostage at the court of

Neriglissar. He was allowed to return to Tyre, and, being confirmed

in the sovereignty, reigned four years. His brother, Eirom, or Hiram,

succeeded him, and was still upon the throne when the Empire of Babylon

came to an end by the victory of Cyrus over Nabonidus (B.C. 538).

Phoenicia under the Babylonian rule was exceptionally weak. She had to

submit to attacks from Egypt under Apries, which fell probably in the

reign of Baal over Tyre, about B.C. 565. She had also to submit to the

loss of Cyprus under Amasis,[14240] probably about B.C. 540, or a little

earlier, when the power of Babylon was rapidly declining. She had been,

from first to last, an unwilling tributary of the Great Empire on the

Lower Euphrates, and was perhaps not sorry to see that empire go down

before the rising power of Persia. Under the circumstances she would

view any chance as likely to advance her interests, and times of

disturbance and unsettlement gave her the best chance of obtaining a

temporary independence. From B.C. 538 to B.C. 528 or 527 she seems to

have enjoyed one of these rare intervals of autonomy. Egypt, content

with having annexed Cyprus, did not trouble her; Persia, engaged in wars

in the far East,[14241] made as yet no claim to her allegiance. In peace

and tranquillity she pursued her commercial career, covered the seas

with her merchant vessels, and the land-routes of trade with her

caravans, repaired the damages inflicted by Nebuchadnezzar on her

cities; maintained, if she did not even increase, her naval strength,

and waited patiently to see what course events would take now that

Babylon was destroyed, and a new and hitherto unknown power was about to

assume the first position among the nations of the earth.

5. Phoenicia under the Persians (B.C. 528-333)

Phoenicia not claimed by Cyrus--Submits willingly to

Cambyses--Takes part in his invasion of Egypt--Refuses to

proceed against Carthage--Exceptional privileges enjoyed by

the Phoenicians under the Persians--Government system of

Darius advantageous to them--Their conduct in the Ionian

revolt--In the expeditions of Mardonius and Datis--In the

great expedition of Xerxes--Interruption of the friendly

relations between Phoenicia and Persia--Renewal of amity--

Services rendered to Persia between B.C. 465 and 392--

Amicable relations with Athens--Phoenicia joins in revolt of

Evagoras--Supports Tachos, king of Egypt--Declares herself

independent under Tennes--Conquered and treated with great

severity of Ochus--Sidonian dynasty of the Esmunazars.

The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus gave him, according to Oriental

notions generally, a claim to succeed to the inheritance of the entire

Babylonian empire; but the claim would remain dormant until it was

enforced. The straggling character of the territory, which was shaped

like a Greek {L}, ascending from Babylon along the course of the

Euphrates to the Armenian mountains, and then descending along the

line of the Mediterranean coast as far as Gaza or Raphia, rendered the

enforcement of the claim a work of difficulty, more especially in the

remote West, which was distant fifteen hundred miles from Persia Proper,

and more than a thousand miles from Babylon. Cyrus, moreover, was

prevented, first by wars in his immediate neighbourhood,[14242] and

later on by a danger upon his north-eastern frontier,[14243] from taking

the steps usually taken by a conqueror to establish his dominion in a

newly-annexed region, and thus he neither occupied Syria with troops,

nor placed it under the administration of Persian governors. The only

step which, so far as we know, he took, implying that his authority

reached so far, was the commission which he gave to Zerubbabel and the

other chiefs of the Jewish nation to proceed from Babylonia to Judæa,

and re-establish themselves, if they could, on the site of the destroyed

Jerusalem.[14244] The return from the Captivity which followed was in

some sense the occupation of a portion of the extreme West by a Persian

garrison, and may be viewed as a step intended to be “preparatory

towards obtaining possession of the entire sea-coast;”[14245] but it

appears to have been an isolated movement, effected without active

Persian support, and one whereby the neighbouring countries were only

slightly affected.

That Phoenicia retained her independence until the reign of Cambyses is

distinctly implied, if not actually asserted, by Herodotus.[14246] She

saw without any displeasure the re-establishment in her neighbourhood

of a nation with which her intercourse had always been friendly, and

sometimes close and cordial. Tyre and Sidon vied with each other in

their readiness to supply the returned exiles with the timber which they

needed for the rebuilding of their temple and city; and once more, as

in the days of Solomon, the Jewish axes were heard amid the groves of

Lebanon, and the magnificent cedars of that favoured region were cut

down, conveyed to the coast, and made into floats or rafts, which

Phoenician mariners transported by sea to Joppa, the nearest seaport

to Jerusalem.[14247] In return, the Jews willingly rendered to the

Phoenicians such an amount of corn, wine, and oil as was equivalent in

value to the timber received from them,[14248] and thus the relations

between the two peoples were replaced on a footing which recalled the

time of their closest friendship, nearly five hundred years previously.

On the death of Cyrus, and the accession of his son Cambyses, B.C. 529,

the tranquillity which South-western Asia had enjoyed since the time

of the wars of Nebuchadnezzar came to an end. Cyrus had, it is said,

designed an expedition against Egypt,[14249] as necessary to round off

his conquests, and Cambyses naturally inherited his father’s projects.

He had no sooner mounted the throne than he commenced preparations for

an attack upon the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs, which, under the

dynasty of the Psamatiks, had risen to something of its early greatness,

and had been especially wealthy and prosperous under the usurper

Amasis.[14250] It was impossible to allow an independent and rival

monarchy so close upon his borders, and equally impossible to shrink

from an enterprise which had been carried to a successful issue both by

Assyria and by Babylon. Persian prestige required the subjugation

and absorption of a country which, though belonging geographically

to Africa, was politically and commercially an integral part of

that Western Asia over which Persia claimed a complete and absolute

supremacy.

The march upon Egypt implied and required the occupation of the

Mediterranean seaboard. No armies of any considerable size have ever

attempted to traverse the almost waterless desert which separates the

Lower Euphrates valley from the delta of the Nile. Light _corps d’armée_

have no doubt occasionally passed from Circesium by way of Tadmor

to Damascus, and _vice versâ_;[14251] but the ordinary line of route

pursued by conquerors follows the course of the Euphrates to Carchemish,

then strikes across the chalky upland in the middle of which stands the

city of Aleppo, and finally descends upon Egypt by way of the Orontes,

the Coele-Syrian valley, and the plains of Sharon and Philistia.[14252]

This was undoubtedly the line followed by Cambyses,[14253] and it

necessarily brought him into contact with the Phoenicians. The contact

was not an hostile one. It would have been madness on the part of the

Phoenicians to have attempted any resistance to the vast host with which

Cambyses, we may be sure, made his invasion, and it would have been

folly on the part of Cambyses to employ force when he could better

obtain his object by persuasion. It must have been a very special object

with him to obtain the hearty co-operation of the Phoenician naval

forces in the attack which he was meditating, since he would otherwise

have had no fleet at all capable of coping with the fleet of Egypt. Neco

had made Egypt a strong naval power;[14254] Apries had contented for

naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean with Tyre;[14255] Amasis

had made an expedition by sea against Cyprus, had crushed whatever

resistance the Cyprians were able to offer, had permanently occupied the

island,[14256] and added the Cyprian fleet to his own. Cambyses had as

yet no ships, except such as he could procure from the Greek cities of

Asia Minor, which were not likely to be very zealous in his service,

since they had friends engaged upon the other side.[14257] Accordingly,

the Persian monarch seems to have made friendly overtures to the

Phoenician states, which were received with favour, and led to an

arrangement satisfactory to both parties. Phoenicia surrendered the

independence which it was impossible for her to maintain, and placed

her fleet at the disposal of Persia.[14258] Persia spared her cities

any occupation, imposed on her a light tribute, and allowed her that

qualified independence which is implied in the retention of her native

princes. From first to last under the Persian _régime_, Phoenician

monarchs bear rule in the Phoenician cities,[14259] and command the

contingents which the cities furnish to any combined Persian fleet.

The friendly arrangement concluded between Phoenicia and Persia was

followed, very naturally, by a further accession to the Persian power.

Cyprus, whose population was in great part Phoenician, had for centuries

been connected politically in the closest manner with the Phoenician

towns on the Asiatic mainland, especially with Tyre and Sidon. Her

enslavement by Amasis must have been hateful to her, and she must have

been only too glad to see an opportunity of shaking off the Egyptian

yoke. Accordingly, no sooner did the Phoenicians of the mainland

conclude the arrangement by which they became part and parcel of the

Persian Empire than the Cyprians followed their example, and, revolting

from Egypt, offered themselves of their own free will to Persia.[14260]

Cambyses, it is needless to say, readily accepted them as his subjects.

The invasion of Egypt could now be taken in hand with every prospect of

a successful issue. The march of the land army along the shore would be

supported by a parallel movement on the part of a powerful fleet, which

would carry its provisions and its water, explore the country in front,

and give notice of the movements of the enemy, and of the place where

they proposed to make a stand in force. When Egypt was reached the

fleet would command all the navigable mouths of the Nile, would easily

establish a blockade of all ports, and might even mount the Nile and

take a part in the siege of Memphis. It would seem that all these

services were rendered to the Persian monarch by the great fleet which

he had collected, of which the Phoenician ships were recognised as

the main strength. The rapid conquest of Egypt was in this way much

facilitated, and Cambyses within a twelvemonth found himself in

possession of the entire country within its recognised limits of the

Mediterranean and “the tower of Syêné.”[14261]

But the Great King was not satisfied with a single, albeit a

magnificent, achievement. He had accomplished in one short campaign what

it took the Assyrians ten years, and Nebuchadnezzar eighteen years, to

effect. But he now set his heart on further conquests. “He designed,”

says Herodotus,[14262] “three great expeditions. One was to be against

the Carthaginians, another against the Ammonians, and a third against

the long-lived Ethopians, who dwelt in that part of Lybia which borders

upon the southern sea.” The expedition against the Carthaginians is the

only one of the three which here concerns us: it was to be entrusted

to the fleet. Instead of conducting, or sending, a land force along the

seaboard of North Africa, which was probably known to be for the most

part barren and waterless, Cambyses judged that it would be sufficient

to dispatch his powerful navy against the Liby-Phoenician colony, which

he supposed would submit or else be subjugated. But on broaching

this plan to the leaders of the fleet he was met with a determined

opposition. The Phoenicians positively refused to proceed against their

own colonists. They urged that they were bound to the Carthaginians by

most solemn oaths, and that it would be as wicked and unnatural for

them to execute the king’s orders as for parents to destroy their own

children.[14263] It was a bold act to run counter to the will of a

despotic monarch, especially of one so headstrong and impetuous as

Cambyses. But the Phoenicians were firm, and the monarch yielded. “He

did not like,” Herodotus says, “to force the war upon the Phoenicians,

because they had surrendered themselves to the Persians, and because on

the Phoenicians his entire sea-service depended.” He therefore

allowed their opposition to prevail, and desisted from his proposed

undertaking.[14264]

This acquiescence in their wishes on the part of the Great King, and his

abstinence from any attempt at compulsion, would seem to have paved the

way for that thoroughly good understanding between the suzerain power

and her dependency which characterises the relations of the two for

the next century and a half, with the single exception of one short

interval. “The navy of Phoenicia became a regular and very important

part of the public power”[14265] of the Persian state. Complete

confidence was felt by their Persian masters in the fidelity,

attachment, and hearty good-will of the Phoenician people. Exceptional

favour was shown them. Not only were they allowed to maintain their

native kings, their municipal administration, their national laws and

religion, but they were granted exceptional honours and exceptional

privileges and immunities. The Great King maintained a park and royal

residence in some portion of Phoenicia,[14266] probably in the vicinity

of Sidon,[14267] and no doubt allowed his faithful subjects to bask

occasionally in the sunshine of his presence. When the internal

organisation of the empire was taken in hand, and something approaching

to a uniform system of government established for revenue purposes,

though Phoenicia could not be excused from contributing to the

taxation of the empire, yet the burden laid upon her seems to have been

exceptionally light. United in a satrapy--the fifth--with Syria,

Cyprus, and Palestine, and taxed according to her population rather

than according to her wealth, she paid a share--probably not more than

a third or a fourth--of 350 talents,[14268] or an annual contribution

to the needs of the empire amounting to no less than 30,000l. Persia,

moreover, encouraged Phoenicia to establish an internal organisation of

her own, and, under her suzerainty, Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus were united

by federal bonds, and had a common council, which met at Tripolis,

probably of three hundred members.[14269] This council debated

matters in which Phoenicia generally was interested, and, in times of

disturbance, decided questions of peace and war.

The reign of Darius Hystaspis (B.C. 521-486), the successor of Cambyses

upon the Persian throne, introduced several changes into the Persian

governmental system which were of advantage to the Phoenicians. Darius

united the most distant parts of his empire by postal routes, along

which at moderate intervals were maintained post-houses, with relays

of horses,[14270] primarily for the use of the government, but at the

service of the traveller or private trader when not needed for business

of state. Phoenician commerce must have been much helped by these

arrangements, which facilitated rapid communication, gave security to

lines of route which had been previously infested with robbers, and

provided resting-places for the companies of merchants and traders, not

unlike the caravanserai of modern Turkey and Persia.

Darius also established throughout his vast empire a uniform coinage,

based apparently on that which had previously prevailed in Lydia.

His “darics,” as they were called by the Greeks, were, in the first

instance, gold coins of a rude type, a little heavier than our

sovereigns, weighing between 123 and 124 grains troy.[14271] They bore

the figure of an archer on the obverse, and on the reverse a very rough

and primitive _quadratum incusum_. Darius must have coined them in vast

abundance, since early in the reign of his successor a single

individual of no great eminence had accumulated as many as 3,993,000

of them.[14272] Subsequently to the introduction of the gold darics,

a silver coinage was issued, originally (we are told) in Egypt by a

Persian satrap called Aryandes,[14273] but afterwards by the central

government. The name of “daric” was extended to these coins also, which,

however, were much larger and heavier than the gold coins, weighing

as much as 235 grains, and corresponding to the Greek tetradrachm,

and (nearly) to the Hebrew shekel. The establishment of this excellent

circulating medium, and the wide extension which it almost immediately

attained, must have given an enormous stimulus to trade, and have been

found of the greatest convenience by the Phoenician merchants, who had

no longer to carry with them the precious metal in bars or ingots, and

to weigh their gold and silver in the balance in connection with every

purchase that they made, but could effect both sales and purchases

in the simple and commodious manner still in use among all civilised

nations at the present day.

Under these circumstances we can well understand that the Phoenicians

were thoroughly satisfied with the position which they occupied under

the earlier Persian kings, and strove zealously to maintain and extend

the empire to which they owed so much. Their fidelity was put to a

crucial test after they had been subjects of Darius Hystaspis for a

little more than twenty years, and had had about fourteen or fifteen

years’ experience of the advantages of his governmental system.

Aristagoras of Miletus, finding himself in a position of difficulty, had

lighted up the flames of war in Asia Minor, and brought about a general

revolt of the Greeks in those parts against the Persian power--a revolt

which spread on from the Greeks to the native Asiatics, and in a short

time embraced, not only Ionia and Æolis, but Caria, Caunus, and

almost the whole of Cyprus.[14274] The bulk of the Cyprian cities were

Phoenician colonies, and the political connection between these cities

and Phoenicia was so close and of such ancient date that the Phoenicians

can scarcely have failed to be moved by their example and by their

danger. A wave of sympathy might have been expected to sweep across the

excitable people, and it would not have been surprising had they rushed

headlong into rebellion with the same impetuosity as their Cyprian

brethren. Had they done so the danger to Persia would have been very

great, and the course of the world’s history might perhaps have been

differently shaped. The junction of the Phoenician fleet with the navies

of Cyprus, Ionia, Caria, and Æolis would have transferred the

complete sovereignty of the Eastern Mediterranean to the side of the

rebels.[14275] The contagion of revolt would probably have spread. Lycia

and Cilicia, always eager for independence,[14276] would probably have

joined the malcontents; Pamphylia, which lay between them, would have

followed their example; the entire seaboard of Asia Minor and Syria

would have been lost; Egypt would, most likely, have seen in the

crisis her opportunity, and have avenged the cruelties and insults

of Cambyses[14277] by the massacre of her Persian garrison. Persia’s

prosperity would have received a sudden check, from which it might never

have recovered; Greece would have escaped the ordeal of the invasion of

Xerxes; and the character of the struggle between Europe and Asia would

have been completely altered.

But the view which the Phoenicians took of their duties, or of their

interests, led them to act differently. When the Persians, anxious to

recover Cyprus, applied to the Phoenician cities for a naval force, to

transport their army from Cilica to the island, and otherwise help them

in the war, their request was at once complied with. Ships were sent to

the Cilician coast without any delay;[14278] the Persian land force was

conveyed in safety across the strait and landed on the opposite shore;

the ships then rounded Cape St. Andreas and anchored in the bay

opposite Salamis, where the Ionian fleet was drawn up in defence of

the town.[14279] An engagement followed--the first, so far as we

know, between Phoenicians and Greeks--wholly to the advantage of the

latter.[14280] No complaint, however, is made of any lukewarmness, or

want of zeal, on the part of the Phoenicians, who seem to have been

beaten in fair fight by an enemy whom they had perhaps despised. Their

ill fortune did not lead to any very serious result, since the Persian

land force defeated the Cyprians, and thus Persia once more obtained

possession of the island.

A year or two later the Phoenicians recovered their lost laurels. In

B.C. 495 the Persians, having trampled out the flames of revolt in

Cyprus, Caria, and Caunus, resolved on a great effort to bring the war

to a close by attacking the Ionian Greeks in their own country, and

crushing the head and front of the rebellion, which was the great and

flourishing city of Miletus. Miletus lay on the southern shore of a

deep bay--the Sinus Latmicus--which penetrated the western coast of Asia

Minor in about Lat. 37º 30´, but which the deposits of the Mæander have

now filled up.[14281] North-west of the town, at the distance of about

a mile, was the small island of Ladé, now a mere hillock on the flat

alluvial plain. While the Persian land force advanced along the shore,

and invested Milestus on the side towards the continent, a combined

fleet of six hundred vessels[14282] proceeded to block the entrance to

the bay, and to threaten the doomed city from the sea. This fleet was

drawn from four only of the countries subject to Persia--viz. Phoenicia,

Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt--whereof Phoenicia, we are told, “showed the

greatest zeal,”[14283] and we may presume furnished by far the larger

number of ships. On their arrival in Milesian waters the captains found

a strong naval force collected to meet them, which rested upon the

island of Ladé, and guarded the approaches to the town. Miletus had

summoned to her aid the contingents of her various allies--Chios,

Lesbos, Samos, Teos, Priene, Erythræ, Phocæa, Myus--and had succeeded

in gathering together a fleet amounting to above three hundred and fifty

vessels.[14284] This time Phoenicia did not despise her foe. Before

engaging, every effort was made to sow discord and dissension among the

confederates, and induce the Greek captains to withdraw their squadrons,

or at any rate to remain neutral in the battle.[14285] Considerable

effect was produced by these machinations; and when at last the attack

was made, two of the principal of the Greek allies[14286] drew off, and

sailed homewards, leaving the rest of the confederates to their fate.

Yet, notwithstanding this defection, the battle was stoutly contested

by the ships which remained, especially those of the Chians,[14287] and

though a very decisive and complete victory was ultimately gained by the

Phoenicians and their allies, the cost of the victory was great. Persia

regained her naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean; Phoenicia

re-established her claim to be considered the great sea power of the

time; but she lost a large number of her best vessels and seamen, and

she was taught the lesson that, to cope with Greeks, she must have a

vast superiority of force upon her side--a superiority of not much less

than three to one.

Miletus soon fell after the victory of Ladé, and the Phoenician fleet

was then employed for some time in chastising the islanders who had

taken part in the revolt, and in reducing various towns upon the

European shores of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Bosphorus,

including Perinthus, Selymbria, and Byzantium.[14288] Miltiades, the

destined hero of Marathon, narrowly escaped capture at the hands of the

Phoenicians at this time, as he fled from his government in the Thracian

Chersonese to Athens. The vessel which bore him just escaped into the

harbour of Imbrus; but his son, Metiochus, who was on board a worse

sailer, was less fortunate. The Phoenicians captured him, and, learning

who he was, conveyed him to Darius at Susa, where he was well treated

and became a naturalised Persian.[14289]

After the Ionian revolt had been completely put down and avenged, the

states subject to Persia, and the Phoenicians among them, enjoyed a

brief period of repose. But soon the restless spirit which possessed

all the earlier Persian monarchs incited Darius to carry his warlike

enterprises into “fresh fields and pastures new.” From the eastern

coast of the Ægean Sea he looked out towards a land possessing every

attraction that soil or clime could offer, fertile, rich in minerals,

and with many excellent harbours, well watered, abounding in corn and

wine and oil, in wooded hillsides, and in productive plains. According

to Herodotus,[14290] he had already explored the strength and weakness

of the region by means of a commission of Persian nobles, who had

surveyed all the shores of Greece from the decks of Phoenician ships.

The result was that he coveted the possession of the land thus made

known to him, and came to a fixed resolution that he would add it to his

territories.

There were two modes by which Greece might be approached from Asia.

Bridges of boats could be thrown across the Bosphorus or the Hellespont,

mere salt rivers, scarcely more formidable than the streams of the

Euphrates and the Tigris. In this way Europe could be invaded in force,

and the army sent across the straits, could pursue its way along the

shore till it reached the rich plains of Thessaly, and from Thessaly

passed into Boetia, Attica, and the Peloponnese. Or a fleet, with a land

force on board, might proceed from Asia Minor across the Ægean, where

the numerous islands, scattered at short intervals, seemed to have been

arranged by nature as stepping-stones, whereby the adventurous denizens

of either continent might cross easily into the other; and a landing

might be suddenly effected near the very heart of Greece without a tenth

part of the trouble that must be taken if the other line of route were

pursued. In either case the attendance of a fleet would be necessary. If

the more circuitous route were pursued, a powerful squadron must attend

the march of the army along the shore, to convey its supplies; if the

direct route were preferred, a still larger fleet would be necessary for

the conveyance, not only of the supplies, but of the army itself. Darius

gave a trial to each of the two plans. In the year B.C. 492 he sent a

fleet and army under Mardonius by way of the Hellespont and the European

coast; but this expedition met with severe disasters, the fleet being

shattered by a storm off Mount Athos, and the land force greatly damaged

by a night attack on the part of the Thracians.[14291] Two years later

he dispatched the famous expedition under Datis and Artaphernes, which

took its course through the islands, and landed perhaps 200,000 men on

the plain of Marathon,[14292] but being there defeated by Miltiades,

returned hastily to Asia by the sea route. The fleets employed on both

these occasions were numerous,[14293] and appear to have been collected

from several of the Persian maritime states;[14294] the proportion which

the several contingents bore one to another is not stated, but there can

be little doubt that the Phoenicians contributed the greater number. We

have no details of the conduct of the Phoenicians on either occasion,

beyond a casual notice that in the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes

one of their vessels plundered the temple of Delium on the Boeotian

coast opposite Chalcis, carrying off from it an image of Apollo plated

with gold.[14295] The superstition of Datis deprived them of this

valuable booty; but we may safely conclude from the anecdote that, while

rendering service to Persia, the keen-witted mariners took care not to

neglect their own material interests.

In the third and greatest of the expeditions conducted by Persia against

Greece, the Phoenicians are found to have played a very important and

prominent part. Even before the expedition commenced, a call was made

upon them in connection with it for services of an unusual character.

The loss of the fleet of Mardonius off Mount Athos induced Xerxes to

determine on cutting a ship-canal through the isthmus which joins Athos

to the mainland; and his passion for great and striking achievements

caused him to project the construction of a double bridge of boats

across the Hellespont. Phoenician technical skill was invoked for the

furtherance of both objects. At Athos they worked in conjunction with

the maritime states generally, but showed an amount of engineering

knowledge far in advance of their fellow-labourers. The others attempted

to give perpendicular sides to their portions of the excavation, but

found the sides continually fall in, and so (as Herodotus observes) “had

double labour.”[14296] The Phoenicians alone knew that the sides must be

sloped at an angle, and, calculating the proper slope aright,

performed their share of the task without mishap. At the Hellespont the

Phoenicians had for co-partners the Egyptians only, and the two nations

appear to have displayed an equal ability.[14297] Cables were passed

from shore to shore, made taut by capstans and supported by an almost

continuous line of boats; planks were then laid upon the cables, and

covered with brushwood, while a thick layer of earth was placed upon the

top. A solid causeway was thus formed, which was guarded on either side

by bulwarks of such a height that the horses which crossed the bridge

could not see over them; and thus the cavalry and the sumpter beasts

passed from one continent to the other without a suspicion that they had

ever had anything but _terra firma_ under them. The structure served

its purpose, but was not found strong enough to defy even for a year the

forces of the winds and waves. Before the return of Xerxes, towards the

close of B.C. 480, the autumnal gales had broken it up; and the army

which accompanied him had to re-cross the strait in a number of separate

ships.[14298]

The fleet which Xerxes collected to accompany his land army and take

part in his great expedition amounted, it is said, to a total of 1207

vessels.[14299] Of these the Phoenician triremes were at once the most

numerous and the best. While Egypt furnished 200 ships, Cyprus 150,

Cilicia, Ionia, and the Hellespontine Greeks 100 each, and the other

maritime nations, all together, 257, Phoenicia singly contributed no

fewer than 300.[14300] The superiority of the Phoenician vessels was

sufficiently shown, first by the regatta at Abydos, which was won by

a Sidonian trireme;[14301] next, by the preference of Xerxes for

Phoenician over other vessels;[14302] and, thirdly, by the position

assigned them at Salamis, where care was taken to pit them against the

Athenians,[14303] who were recognised as superior at sea to all the

other Greeks. If the Phoenician prowess and naval skill did not succeed

in averting defeat from the Persians, we must ascribe it first to the

narrowness of the seas in which they had to engage the enemy; and,

secondly, to the still greater prowess and skill of their principal

antagonists, the Athenians, the Eginetans, and the Corinthians.

In the naval combats at Artemisium, the Egyptians, according to

Herodotus,[14304] were considered to have borne off the palm on the

Persian side; but Diodorus assigns that honour to the Sidonians.[14305]

At Salamis the brunt of the conflict fell on the Phoenician contingent,

which began the battle,[14306] and for some time forced the Athenian

squadron to beat a retreat, but was ultimately overpowered and forced

to take to flight, after suffering great losses. A large number of the

ships were sunk; several were taken by the Greeks; comparatively few

escaped from the battle without serious injury.[14307] Xerxes, however,

who from his silver-footed throne on Mount Ægaleos surveyed the

scene,[14308] but, amid the general turmoil and confusion, could ill

distinguish the conduct of the several contingents, enraged at the

loss of the battle, and regarding the Phoenicians as answerable for the

unhappy result, since they formed the nucleus and chief strength of the

fleet, laid the whole blame of the failure upon them, and, on some

of the captains appearing before him to excuse themselves, had them

beheaded upon the spot.[14309] At the same time he also threatened the

other Phoenician commanders with his vengeance, and so alarmed them

that, according to Diodorus,[14310] they quitted the fleet and sailed

away to Asia.

This harsh and unjust treatment seems to have led to an estrangement

between the Persians and the foremost of the naval nations subject to

them, which lasted for fifteen years. The Persians naturally distrusted

those whom they had injured, and were unwilling to call them in to their

aid. The Phoenicians probably brooded over their wrongs, and abstained

from volunteering an assistance which they were not asked to furnish.

The war between Persia and Greece continued, and was transferred from

Europe to Asia, but no Phoenicians are mentioned as taking part in it.

The Phoenician ships retired from Samos on the approach of the Greek

fleet under Leotychides.[14311] No Phoenicians fought at Mycale. None

are heard of as engaged at Sestos, or Byzantium, or Eïon, or Doriscus,

or even Phaselis. It was not until--in B.C. 465--the war passed from

the Ægean to the southern coast of Asia Minor, and their dependency,

Cyprus, was threatened, that the Phoenicians again appeared upon

the scene, and mustered in strength to the support of their Persian

suzerain.

The Persian fleet which fought at the Eurymedon is said to have

consisted of three hundred and forty vessels, drawn from the

three subject nations of the Phoenicians, the Cyprians, and the

Cilicians.[14312] It was under the command of Tithraustes, a son of

Xerxes. Cimon, who led the fleet of the Athenians and their allies,

attacked it with a force of 250 triremes, of which Athens had furnished

the greater number. The battle was contested with extreme obstinacy

on both sides; but at length the Athenians prevailed, and besides

destroying a large number of the enemy’s vessels, took as many as a

hundred with their crews on board. At the same time a land victory was

gained over the Persian troops. The double exploit was regarded as one

of the most glorious in the annals of Greece, and was commemorated at

Delos by a tablet with the following inscription:--[14313]

Since first the sea Europe from Asia severed,

\ And Mars to rage ‘mid humankind began,

Never was such a blow as this delivered

\ On land and sea at once by mortal man.

These heroes did to death a host of Medes

\ Near Cyprus, and then captured with their crews

\ Five score Phoenician vessels; at the news

All Asia groaned, hard hit by such brave deeds.

It is scarcely necessary to follow further in detail the services which

Phoenicia rendered to Persia as her submissive and attached ally. For

the space of about seventy-five years from the date of the engagement

at the Eurymedon (B.C. 465-390), the Phoenicians continued to hold the

first place among the Persian naval states, and to render their mistress

effective help in all her naval enterprises. They protected Cyprus

and Egypt from the Athenian attacks, bore their part in the war with

Amyrtæus and Inaros, and more than once inflicted severe blows upon the

Athenian navy.[14314] It was his command of a Phoenician fleet amounting

to nearly a hundred and fifty triremes which enabled Tissaphernes to

play so influential a part in Asia Minor during the later years of the

Peloponnesian war. It was the presence of their ships at Cnidus which,

in B.C. 394, turned the scale between Athens and Sparta, enabling

the Athenians to recover the naval supremacy which they had lost at

Ægos-Potami. It was the appearance of a Phoenician fleet in Greek

waters[14315] which, in the following year, gave an opportunity to the

Athenians to rebuild their “Long Walls,” alarmed Sparta for her own

safety, and extorted from her fears--in B.C. 387--the agreement known

as “the Peace of Antalcidas.” Persia owed to her Phoenician subjects

the glory of recovering complete possession of Asia Minor, and of being

accepted as a sort of final arbiter in the quarrels of the Grecian

states. From B.C. 465 to B.C. 392 Phoenicia served Persia with rare

fidelity, never hesitating to lend her aid, and never showing the least

inclination to revolt.

It was probably under these circumstances, when Athens owed the recovery

of her greatness in no small measure to the Phoenicians, that those

relations of friendship and intimacy were established between the two

peoples of which we have evidence in several inscriptions. Phoenicians

settled in Attica, particularly at Phalerum and the Piræus, and had

their own places of worship and interment. Six sepulchral inscriptions

have been found, either in Athens itself or at the Piræus,[14316] five

of them bilingual,[14317] which mark the interment in Attic soil of

persons whose nationality was Phoenician. They had monuments erected

over them, generally of some pretension, which must have obtained as

much respect as the native tombstones, since otherwise they could not

have endured to our day. There is also at the Piræus an altar,[14318]

which a Phoenician must have erected and dedicated to a Phoenician god,

whom he worshipped on Attic soil apparently without let or hindrance.

The god’s name is given as “Askum-Adar,” a form which does not elsewhere

recur, but which is thought to designate the god elsewhere called

Sakon, who corresponded to the Grecian Hermes.[14319] Moreover, there is

evidence of the Phoenicians having worshipped two other deities in their

Attic abodes, one a god who corresponded to the Greek Poseidon and the

Roman Neptune, the other the Babylonian and Assyrian Nergal. Among the

lost orations of Deniarchus was one delivered by that orator on the

occasion of the suit between the people of Phalerum and the

Phoenician inhabitants of the place with respect to the priesthood of

Poseidon;[14320] and a sepulchral monument at the Piræus was erected

to Asepta, daughter of Esmun-sillem, of Sidon, by Itten-bel, son of

Esmun-sibbeh, high priest of the god Nergal.[14321] It appears further

from the Greek inscription, edited by Böckh,[14322] that about this time

(B.C. 390-370) a decree was promulgated by the Council {bonle} of

Athens whereby the relation of Proxenia was established between

Strato (Abd-astartus), king of Sidon, and the Athenian people, and

all Sidonians sojourning in Attica were exempted from the tax usually

charged upon foreign settlers, from the obligation of the Choregia, and

from all other contributions to the state.

The power of Persia began about this time to decline, and the

Phoenicians seem to have wavered in their allegiance. In B.C. 406 or 405

Egypt shook off the Persian yoke, and established her independence under

a native sovereign.[14323] Soon afterwards, probably in B.C. 392 or 391,

Evagoras, a Cypriot Greek, who claimed descent from Teucer, inaugurated

a revolution at Salamis in Cyprus, where he slew the Phoenician monarch,

Abdemon, who held his throne under Persia, and, himself mounting the

throne, proceeded to reduce to subjection the whole island.[14324] Vast

efforts were made to crush him, but for ten years he defied the power

of Persia, and maintained himself as an independent monarch.[14325] Even

when finally he made his submission, it was under an express stipulation

that he should retain his royal dignity, and be simply bound to pay

his tribute regularly, and to render such obedience as subject kings

commonly paid to their suzerain.[14326]

In the course of his resistance to Persia, it is beyond question that

Evagoras received a certain amount of support from Phoenicia; but the

circumstances under which the support was given was doubtful. According

to Isocrates,[14327] he equipped a large fleet, and attacked the

Phoenicians on the mainland with so much vigour as even to take the

great city of Tyre by assault; but Diodorus says nothing of the attack,

and it is conjectured that the contagion of revolt, which certainly

affected, more or less, Cyprus, Cilicia, Caria, and some of the Syrian

Arabs,[14328] spread also thus early to Phoenicia, and that “the

surrender of Tyre was a voluntary defection.”[14329] In that case, we

must view Phoenicia, or at any rate a portion of it, as having detached

itself from Persia, about B.C. 390, sixty years before the final

break-up of the Empire.

But the disaffection of Phoenicia does not become open and patent until

about thirty years later. The decline of Persia had continued. In B.C.

375 an attempt to recover Egypt, for which a vast armament had been

collected under Pharnabazus and Iphicrates, completely failed.[14330]

Nine years afterwards, in B.C. 366, the revolt of the satraps began.

First Ariobarzanes, satrap of Phrygia, renounced his allegiance, and

defended himself with success against Autophradutes, satrap of Lydia,

and Mausolus, native king of Caria under Persia. Then Aspis, who held a

part of Cappadocia, revolted and maintained himself by the help of the

Pisidians, until he was overpowered by Datames. Next Datames himself,

satrap of the rest of Cappadocia, understanding that the mind of the

Persian king was poisoned against him, made a treaty with Ariobarzanes,

and assumed an independent attitude in his own province. Finally, in

B.C. 362, there seems to have been something like a general revolt

of the western provinces, in which the satraps of Mysia, Phrygia, and

Lydia, Mausolus prince of Caria, and the peoples of Lycia, Pisidia,

Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Syria participated.[14331] Then, if not earlier,

Phoenicia openly threw in her lot with the disaffected;[14332] refused

her tribute like the others, and joined her forces with theirs. Nor,

when the rebellion collapsed, did she at once return to her allegiance.

When Tachos, native king of Egypt, in B.C. 361, having secured the

services of Agesilaus and Chabrias, advanced boldly into Syria, with the

object of enlarging his own dominions at the expense of Persia, he was

received with favour by the Phoenicians, who were quite willing to form

a portion of his empire. But the rebellion of Nectanebo forced Tachos

to relinquish his projects,[14333] and the dominion over the Phoenician

cities seems to have reverted to Persia without any effort on her part.

In this condition matters remained till about the year B.C. 351,

when Sidon, feeling herself aggrieved by the conduct of the Persian

authorities at Tripolis,[14334] where the general assembly of the

Phoenicians held its meetings, boldly raised the standard of revolt

against Persia under Tennes, or Tabnit II., and induced the Phoenicians

generally to declare themselves independent. Alliance was at once formed

with the Egyptian king, Nekht-nebf, or Nectanebo II., who sent a body

of 4,000 Greek mercenaries, under Mentor the Rhodian, to the aid of

Tennes.[14335] Hostilities commenced by the Phoenicians expelling

or massacring the Persian garrisons, devastating the royal park or

paradise, and burning the stores of forage collected for the use of the

Persian cavalry.[14336] An attempt made by two satraps--Belesys of Syria

and Mazæus of Cilicia--to crush the revolt was completely defeated by

Tennes, with the aid of Mentor and his Greeks, who gained a

decisive victory over the satraps, and drove the Persians out of

Phoenicia.[14337] Cyprus then joined the rebels. The nine principal

cities made common cause, expelled the Persians, and declared themselves

free states, under their respective native kings.[14338] Ochus, the

Persian king, was at last roused to exert himself. Collecting an army

of 300,000 foot and 30,000 horse, supported by 300 triremes and 500

transports or provision-ships,[14339] he proceeded to the west in

person, determined to inflict condign punishment on the rebels, and

to recover to the empire, not only Cyprus and Phoenicia, but also the

long-lost Egypt.

Tennes, on his part, had done his best in the way of preparations for

defence. He had collected a fleet of above a hundred ships--triremes

and quinqueremes,[14340] the latter now heard of for the first time

in Asiatic warfare. He had strengthened the fortifications of Sidon,

surrounding the town with a triple ditch of great width and depth, and

considerably raising the height of the walls.[14341] He had hired Greek

mercenaries to the number of six thousand, raising thus the number

in his service to ten thousand in all, had armed and drilled the most

active and athletic of the citizens, and had collected vast stores of

provisions, armour, and weapons. But the advance of the Persian monarch

at the head of so large a force filled Tennes with dismay and

despair. Successful resistance was, he thought, impossible; and with a

selfishness and a cowardice that must ever make him rank among the most

infamous of men, he resolved, if possible, to purchase his own pardon

of the King by delivering to his vengeance the entire body of his

fellow-countrymen. Accordingly, after handing over to him a hundred of

the principal citizens, who were immediately transfixed with javelins,

he concerted measures with Mentor for receiving the Persians within

the walls. While the arrangements were proceeding, five hundred of the

remaining citizens issued forth from one of the gates of the town, with

boughs of supplication, as a deputation to implore the mercy of Ochus,

but only to suffer the same fate as their fellow-townsmen. The Persians

were then received within the walls; but the citizens, understanding

what their fate was to be, resolved to anticipate it. They had already

burnt their ships, to prevent any desertion. Now they shut themselves

up, with their wives and children, in their houses, and applying the

torch to their dwellings lighted up a general conflagration. More than

forty thousand persons perished in the flames. Ochus sold the ruins at

a high price to speculators, who calculated on reimbursing themselves

by the treasures which they might dig out from among the ashes. As for

Tennes, it is satisfactory to find that a just vengeance overtook him.

The treachery which he had employed towards others was shown also to

himself. Ochus, who had given him a solemn promise that he would spare

his life, no sooner found that there was nothing more to be gained by

letting him live, than he relentlessly put him to death.[14342]

No further resistance was made by the Phoenician cities. Ochus marched

on against Egypt and effected its reconquest.[14343] The Cyprian revolt

was put down by the Prince of Caria, Istricus.[14344] A calm, prelude to

the coming storm, settled down upon Persia; and Phoenicia participated

in the general tranquillity. The various communities, exhausted by

their recent efforts, and disappointed with the result, laid aside their

political aspirations, and fell back upon their commercial instincts.

Trade once more flourished. Sidon rose again from her ashes, and

recovered a certain amount of prosperity. She held the coast from

Leontopolis to Ornithonpolis, and possessed also the dependency of

Dor;[14345] but she had lost Sarepta to Tyre,[14346] which stepped into

the foremost place among the cities on her fall, and retained it until

destroyed by Alexander. The other towns which still continued to be of

some importance were Aradus, and Gebal or Byblus. These cities, like

Tyre and Sidon, retained their native kings,[14347] who ruled their

several states with little interference from the Persians. The line of

monarchs may be traced at Sidon for five generations, from the first

Esmunazar, who probably reigned about B.C. 460-440, through three

generations and four kings, to the second Strato, the contemporary of

Alexander.[14348] The first Esmunazar was succeeded by his son, Tabnit,

about B.C. 440. Tabnit married his sister, Am-Ashtoreth, priestess of

Ashtoreth, and had issue, two sons, Esmunazar II., whose tomb was found

near Sidon by M. de Vogüé in the year 1855, and Strato I. Esmunazar II.

is thought to have died about B.C. 400, and to have been succeeded by

his brother Strato, the Proxenus of Athens, who reigned till B.C. 361.

On Strato’s death, his son, the second Tabnit--known to the Greeks as

Tennes--mounted the throne, and reigned till B.C. 345, when he was put

to death by Ochus. A second Strato, the son of Tennes, then became king,

and retained his sovereignty till after the battle of Issus[14349] (B.C.

333).

6. Phoenicia in the time of Alexander the Great (B.C. 333-323)

Alexander’s invasion of Asia--Preparations made to resist

it, insufficient--What should have been done--Movements of

Memnon in B.C. 333--His death--Paralysis of the Persian

fleet--Attack on Phoenicia after Issus--Submission of all

the cities but Tyre--Siege of Tyre--Fall of the city--Cruel

treatment of the inhabitants.

The invasion of Asia by Alexander the Great, though it found the

Persians unready, was by no means of the nature of a surprise. The

design had been openly proclaimed by Philip in the year B.C. 338, when

he forced the Grecian States to appoint him generalissimo of their

armies, which he promised to lead to the conquest of the East.[14350]

Darius Codomannus had thus ample warning of what he had to expect,

and abundant opportunity to make the fullest preparations for defence.

During the years B.C. 338 and 337, while Philip was still alive, he did

do something towards organising defensive measures, collected troops

and ships, and tried to foment discontent and encourage anti-Macedonian

movements in Greece.[14351] But the death of Philip by the dagger of

Pausanias caused him most imprudently to relax his efforts, to consider

the danger past, and to suspend the operations, which he had commenced,

until he should see whether Alexander had either the will or the power

to carry into effect his father’s projects. The events of the years

B.C. 336 and 335, the successes of Alexander in Thrace, Illyria, and

Boeotia,[14352] woke him from his fool’s paradise to some sense of the

realities of the situation. In B.C. 335 the preparations for defence

were resumed. Orders were issued to the satraps of Phrygia and Lydia

to draw together their troops towards the north-western corner of Asia

Minor, and to take the offensive against the Macedonian force which had

crossed the straits before Philip’s death. The Persian garrisons in this

quarter were strongly reinforced with troops of a good quality, drawn

from the remoter provinces of the empire, as from Persia Proper, Media,

Hyrcania, and Bactria. Notice was given to the Phoenicians to prepare a

considerable fleet, and hold it in readiness for active service. Above

all, Memnon the Rhodian was given a command on the Asiatic seaboard, and

entrusted with a body of five thousand Greek mercenaries, which he was

empowered to use at his discretion.[14353]

But these steps, though in the right direction, were quite inadequate

under the circumstances. Everything that was possible should have been

done to prevent Alexander from crossing to Asia in force. The fleet

should not only have been commanded to hold itself in readiness,

but should have been brought up. Four hundred or five hundred

vessels,[14354] from Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt, Lycia, and Cilicia,

should have been moved into the northern Egean and the Propontis, and

have kept watch on every Grecian port. Alexander was unable to muster

for the transport of his army across the Straits a larger number than

160 triremes.[14355] Persia should have met them with a fleet three

times as large. Had Memnon been given from the first a free hand at sea,

instead of satrapial power on land, it is quite conceivable that

the invasion of Asia by Alexander might have proved as abortive an

enterprise as the contemplated invasion of England by Napoleon.

As it was, the fleet of Persia, composed mainly of Phoenician vessels,

did not appear in the northern Egean waters until some weeks after

Alexander had transported his grand army into Asia, and fought at

the Granicus, so that when it arrived it was of comparatively little

service. Too late even to save Miletus, it had to be a tame spectator

of the siege and capture of that important town.[14356] It was then

withdrawn to Halicarnassus, where its presence greatly helped the

defence, but not to the extent of wholly baffling the besiegers.

Halicarnassus fell, like Miletus, after a while, being entered from

the land side; but the fleet saved the troops, the stores, and the

inhabitants.[14357]

During the early part of the ensuing year, B.C. 333, while Alexander

was engaged in conquering the interior of Asia Minor, the Persian fleet

under Memnon at last took the aggressive, and, advancing northwards,

employed itself in establishing Persian influence over the whole of the

Egean, and especially in reducing the important islands of Chios and

Lesbos.[14358] Memnon was now in full command. Fortune smiled on

him; and it seemed more than probable that the war would be, at least

partially, transferred into Greece, where the Spartans only waited

for Memnon’s appearance to commence an anti-Macedonian movement. The

presence of a powerful fleet in Greek waters, and Memnon’s almost

unlimited command of Persian gold, might in a short time have raised

such a flame in Greece as to necessitate Alexander’s return in order to

extinguish it.[14359] The invasion of Asia might have been arrested in

mid course; Alexander might have proved as powerless as Agesilaus to

effect any great change in the relations of the two continents; but,

at the critical moment, the sudden and unexpected death of the Rhodian

chief cast all these hopes to the ground,[14360] and deprived Persia of

her last chance of baffling the invader.

Thus, first by mismanagement and then by an unhappy accident, the

Phoenicians were precluded from rendering Persia any effective service

in the time of her great necessity. Wiser than Napoleon, Alexander would

not contest the sovereignty of the seas with the great naval power of

the day, and he even, when he once felt himself strongly lodged in Asia,

disbanded his naval force,[14361] that so it might be impossible for

disaster at sea to tarnish his prestige. He was convinced that Asia

could be won by the land force which he had been permitted to disembark

on its shores, and probably anticipated the transfer of naval supremacy

which almost immediately followed on the victory of Issus. The complete

defeat of the great army of Codomannus, and its retirement on the

Euphrates,[14362] left the entire seaboard of Syria and Phoenicia open

to him. He resolved at once to take advantage of the opportunity, and to

detach from Persia the three countries of Phoenicia, Egypt, and Cyprus.

If he could transfer to himself the navies of these powers, his maritime

supremacy would be incontestable. He would render his communications

with Macedonia absolutely secure. He would have nothing to fear from

revolt or disturbance at home, however deeply he might plunge into the

Asiatic continent. If the worst happened to him in Asia, he would have

assured himself a safe return.

Accordingly, no sooner was the retreat of Darius upon the line of the

Euphrates, and his abandonment of Syria, ascertained, than Alexander,

after despatching a detachment of his army to Damascus, marched in

person into Phoenicia.[14363] The Phoenicians were placed between

two dangers. On the one hand, Alexander might ravage their territory,

capture and pillage their cities, massacre or sell for slaves the

greater portion of their citizens, and destroy their very existence as

a people; on the other hand, Darius held as hostages for their fidelity

the crews and captains of their triremes, which formed a portion of his

fleet, and had on board a large number of their chief men, and even

some of their kings.[14364] It was impossible, however, to temporise; a

choice had necessarily to be made; and when Alexander entered Phoenicia,

the cities, in almost every case, decided on submitting to him. First

Strato, the son of Ger-astartus, king of Aradus, who was serving on

board the Phoenician contingent to the Persian fleet, went out to meet

Alexander, and surrendered into his hands the four cities of Aradus,

Marathus, Sigon, and Mariamme.[14365] Then Byblus, whose king was also

absent with the fleet, opened its gates to the Macedonians.[14366] Next

Sidon, mindful of her recent wrongs, sent envoys to invite Alexander’s

approach, and joyfully embraced his cause.[14367] Even Tyre nominally

made submission, and declared itself ready to obey Alexander’s

commands;[14368] and the transfer of Phoenicia to the side of Alexander

might have been made without bloodshed, had the Macedonian monarch been

content to leave their island city, which was their true capital,

and their pride and glory, unmolested. But Alexander could not brook

anything that in any degree savoured of opposition to his will. When

therefore, on his expressing a wish to sacrifice to Melkarth in their

island town, the Tyrians declined to receive him within the walls, and

suggested that his pious design might be sufficiently accomplished by

his making his intended offering in Palæ-Tyrus, where there was a temple

of the same god, which was older (they said) and more venerable than

their own, Alexander’s pride was touched, and he became violently

enraged.[14369] Dismissing the envoys with angry threats, he at once

began preparations for an attack upon the town.