VI. THE STORY OF CARTHAGE…

VI. THE STORY OF CARTHAGE

The city of Carthage was the culmination in history of the commerce, ambition, and military prowess of the Phœnician people. It was a city which never quite reached the first rank, yet always threatened to seize the supremacy. As a collaborator with the Persians in the great invasion of Greece, Carthage sent her forces against Sicily, only to meet an equal discomfiture. Later she wrought the great city of Rome to frenzies of terror, or hatred. Carthage appears constantly throughout Grecian and Roman history, but it seems well to place here a brief and consecutive story of her career as a city. The picturesque legends of the foundation will be found in Appendix A. The date to be accepted by historians was long uncertain, but seems now to be fixed at 818 B.C. Utica and Gades (now Cadiz) were founded earlier than Carthage, but the feverish ambition of the city of Dido soon told.[a]

Carthage so greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, as to acquire a sort of federal pre-eminence over all the Phœnician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumetum, and Leptis--all original Phœnician foundations, and enjoying probably even as dependents of Carthage a certain qualified autonomy--besides a great number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed population called Liby-Phœnicians. Three hundred such towns--a dependent territory covering half the space between the Lesser and the Greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile--a city said to contain 700,000 inhabitants, active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous--and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain,--all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.

[Sidenote: [813-600 B.C.]]

But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth century B.C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a foundation legend decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elissa, daughter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus [or Sicharbas] priest of Hercules [Melkarth] in that city--is said to have been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Hercules; a considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamours of her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Sichæus; a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new colour by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city: and it has been imagined with some probability that she is identical with Astarte, the divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally established, as Gades and Tarsus were founded under those of Hercules--the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns. Phœnician religion and worship were diffused along with the Phœnician colonies throughout the larger portion of the Mediterranean.

The Phocæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages westward established the colony of Massalia (as early as 600 B.C.), were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the Carthaginians--the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly known. In Greek authors the denomination Phœnicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians as well as the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is meant. But it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gades, and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa and without the Straits of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians. Many of the other Phœnician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seem to have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthage even at the period of her highest glory sent Theori with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Hercules; the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries before, when the Persian empire was in its age of growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Cambyses with their fleet in its plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably preserved their colony from subjugation.[b]

THE SITE AND EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE

The point of land still called Capo Cartagine, which projects from the eastern side of the Gulf of Tunis, near the entrance of the Goletta, was in ancient times more nearly a peninsula than it is now, and corresponds exactly with the description given by Thucydides of the sites selected for the purposes of commerce by the Phœnicians. Its height, which is still nearly five hundred feet above the sea, afforded a good lookout; and as a shelter for ships the qualities of the bay are familiar from the description of Virgil, Æn. 1, 160. It was in this way that all the principal colonies of Phœnicia arose, and in this sense Carthage may have owed its origin to the times when Sidon was predominant among the Phœnician cities. But its rapid rise to power was due to a colony from Tyre about the end of the ninth century B.C. The circumstances which led to the migration of Dido belong to the special history of that city. The colony first established itself on the hill called by the Greeks Byrsa, still recognised in the elevated ground which bears the name of St. Louis. It is now only about one hundred and ninety feet above the level of the sea; but its height above the neighbouring ground, on which its strength depended, has no doubt been diminished by the accumulation of ruins around its base. The name, which, from its resemblance to the Greek word for hide, gave rise to the story of Dido’s purchase of as much land as a hide would cover, is Phœnician, and denotes a fortress. Like the Cadmea at Thebes, which it resembled in name, it was the place of arms of the original settlers, the magalia of the civil population being gathered around the base, and gradually forming the New City, the signification of the name Carthage, by which both parts collectively are known, as Neapolis (Naples) has absorbed its older neighbour, Palæpolis. The work of excavating for themselves a dock, in which Virgil represents them as engaged at the arrival of Æneas, would soon follow their settlement; for, though they came with arms in their hands, they came rather as merchants than as warriors, and their first accessions of population were from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who flocked to them for the purpose of trade. It was probably in the same place, on the southern side of the peninsula, where we now see the remains of two basins, designed to hold the war navy of Carthage, in the day of its power. They have become a salt marsh; but under the Byzantine emperors, and after the Mohammedan conquest, they retained their ancient use.

We have much cause to regret the diffidence or vanity which made Sallust decline to speak of Carthage, because he had not space to do justice to such a theme. In the wreck which has taken place of ancient literature, even a few lines from his pen would have given us information which we now seek in vain. Its history naturally divides itself into three periods: from its foundation to the year 480 B.C., when its wars in Sicily began; from the year 480 to 265 when its wars with Rome began; and finally, from 265 to 146, when it was destroyed. We are entirely destitute of any continuous history for the first of these periods. The primary cause of its rapid increase is no doubt to be found in the fertility of the soil, and the fortunate selection of its site, midway between the seats of art and civilisation in Asia and the rich countries in the southwest of Europe,--within an easy distance also of the coasts of southern Italy and the islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. The richest portion of the traffic with these western regions, that with the south of Spain, was kept to itself by Phœnicia, during the time of its ascendency; but as a compensation for its exclusion from the mines of Tartessus, Carthage enjoyed ready access to the interior of Africa, by the caravans, in which the nomadic tribes conveyed the salt and the dates with which the north of Africa abounds, across the Sahara to the countries on the Niger, and brought back thence gold-dust, precious stones, and slaves. They had traffic with the natives of Ethiopia by a different channel. They had visited and colonised the western coast of Africa, as low down as Arguin, and dealt with the natives by dumb barter, receiving gold-dust from them in exchange for their own wares.

[Sidenote: [600-520 B.C.]]

As the Carthaginian fleet was defeated in 600 B.C. by the force of a single Greek city, Phocæa, its naval power was at that time not very great. Sixty years later they came again into conflict off Corsica with less advantage to the Phocæans, now expelled from their home by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. A great change had taken place in Asiatic history. Soon after the first conflict of these powers, Tyre underwent a siege by Nebuchadrezzar, in which, whether captured or not, it suffered so severely that it was never able to regain its former ascendency; and from this time we may date the entire independence of Carthage, and its succession to that dominion in the West which had hitherto belonged to Tyre. This increase of power is connected with the name of Hanno; not the same who commanded the expedition to the western coast of Africa, but of a generation earlier, and living about the middle of the sixth century B.C. According to Dio Chrysostom, “he made the Carthaginians to be Libyans instead of Tyrians, and to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia, and to acquire much wealth, and many emporia and harbours and triremes, and an extensive dominion both by land and sea.” These words plainly imply, that in the time, and by means of the measures of Hanno, Carthage, from being a dependency of Tyre, became a substantive state, having its seat in Africa; and that a great extension of its wealth and its power, both by sea and land, took place at the same time and under the same auspices. In an historian, we should have inferred from the phrase “that he had caused the Carthaginians to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia,” that he had been the leader of a large emigration from Tyre, to which this increase was owing; in a rhetorician it appears to mean nothing more than the preceding clause, namely, that before his time Carthage had been virtually a portion of Phœnicia, but henceforth was an independent African power. That such was the effect of the decline of Tyre after the siege by Nebuchadrezzar is certain; and even if no large part of its population migrated at once, during the siege and after it, the decay of its prosperity and the loss of its independence would naturally attract them towards Carthage, which was already powerful and able to protect itself. Such an increase, coupled with the decline of the Tyrian power throughout the western Mediterranean, would account for the sudden start which Carthage appears to have made in the sixth century B.C. The military talents of Mago, who lived between the middle and end of this century, contributed to the same result. He organised their military forces, and prepared the way for the extensive wars which the Carthaginians carried on in Sicily.

[Sidenote: [480 B.C.]]

Cambyses, after the conquest of Egypt, wished to have attacked Carthage, the submission of Cyrene and Barca having brought his frontier into contact with theirs; but the Phœnicians, who must have furnished the fleet for this purpose, refused to engage in hostilities against their own colony. Darius solicited the aid of Carthage in his projected invasion of the Greeks, but without success. When Xerxes renewed his father’s undertaking, he entered into a treaty with the Carthaginians, in virtue of which, in the same year in which he crossed the Hellespont, they poured a large army into Sicily, gathered from Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, as well as all their African territories. The battle of Himera was as fatal to the plans of Carthage as Salamis and Platæa to those of Xerxes; but Sicily continued for a long time to be the scene of struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks, till both were absorbed in the growing empire of Rome.[c]

MOMMSEN’S ACCOUNT OF CARTHAGE

The Semitic race stands amongst and yet apart from the peoples of the old classical world. The base of the former is the East, of the latter the Mediterranean; and as war and migration advanced the frontiers and threw the races amongst one another, a deep sense of dissimilarity still divided and yet divides the Indo-Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelitish, and Arabian nations. This is also true of that Semitic people which more than any other has extended itself westward; namely, the Phœnician or Punic race. Their first home is the narrow strip of coast between Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, which is called the plain--that is Canaan. This is the only name which the nation applied to itself--in Christian times the Libyan peasant still called himself a Canaanite; but to the Hellenes Canaan was the “Purple Country,” or the “Land of the Red Men,” Phœnicia, and in the same way the Italians were accustomed, as we are ourselves, to call the Canaanites Phœnicians.

The country is well adapted to agriculture; but above all the excellent harbours and the abundance of wood and metals are favourable to trade, which here, where the superabundance of the eastern continent stretches far into the Mediterranean Sea with its numerous islands and harbours, may have first started in all its importance to man. What courage, sagacity, and enthusiasm can contribute, the Phœnicians called into play to unite the East and West and give full development to commerce and what it involves, as navigation, manufacture, colonisation. At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The region of their commerce extends from Sierra Leone and Cornwall as far as the Malabar coast; through their hands pass the gold and pearls of the East, the Tyrian purple, slaves, ivory, lion and panther skins from the interior of Africa, Arabian incense, the linen of Egypt, clay pottery and wines from Greece, Cyprian copper, Spanish silver, English tin, the iron of Elba.

In contrast to the Indo-Germanic aptitude for political organisation, the Phœnicians, like all Aramaic nations, lacked the inspiring idea of self-governing freedom. In the best days of Sidon and Tyre, Phœnicia was the eternal apple of discord of the powers which ruled on the Nile and the Euphrates, and was subject now to the Assyrians, now to the Egyptians. With half their force the Hellenic cities would have made themselves independent; but the sharp-sighted men of Sidon calculated that the barring of the caravan routes towards the East or of the Egyptian harbours would be more costly than the heaviest tribute, and consequently they paid their taxes punctually to Nineveh or Memphis, as the case might be, and when nothing else would serve, even fought the kings’ battles with their ships.

And as at home the Phœnician placidly endured the oppression of their masters, so abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful ways of a commercial policy for one of conquest. Their colonies are factories; to them it was of more importance to take their wares from the natives and bring others to them than to acquire broad lands in distant countries and accomplish there the slow and difficult work of colonisation. They even avoided war with their competitors; almost without resistance they allowed themselves to be driven out of Egypt, Greece, Italy, and in the great sea fights which were fought in early days for the dominion of the western Mediterranean, at Alalia and Cyme it was the Etruscans, not the Phœnicians, who bore the brunt of the battle against the Greeks. If, on occasion, competition could not be avoided, the matter was compromised as well as might be; no attempt was ever made by the Phœnicians to conquer Cære or Massalia.

Still less, of course, were the Phœnicians inclined to wars of aggression. The sole instance in ancient times of their taking the offensive on the battle-field, was in the Sicilian expedition of the African Phœnicians, which ended with the defeat of Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (480), and then it was only as obedient subjects of the great king and in order to avoid taking a share in the campaign against the eastern Hellenes, that they took the field against the Hellenes of the west, as their Syrian kinsmen, in the same year, had to submit to joining with the Persians in the battle of Salamis.

This was not cowardice; the navigation of unknown waters in armed vessels demands brave hearts, and the Phœnicians have often shown that such were to be found among them. Still less was it the want of persistence and individuality in the sense of nationality; rather have the Aramæans, with an obstinacy to which no Indo-Germanic people ever attained, and which to us of the West appears as either more or less than human, defended their nationality against all the seductions of Greek civilisation, as well as against all the coercive force of both eastern and western despots, alike with the weapons of the spirit and with their blood. It is the want of a political sense which, though co-existing with the liveliest racial feeling and the most faithful adherence to the mother-city, still characterises the essential nature of the Phœnicians. Freedom had no attractions for them, nor did they possess any lust of rule; “they dwelt careless,” says the Book of Judges, “after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure,” and in possession of riches.

Amongst all the Phœnician settlements none throve more quickly nor more securely than those which the Tyrians and Sidonians had founded on the south coast of Spain and in the north of Africa, in regions where neither the arm of the great king, nor the dangerous rivalry of the Grecian sailors had reached, but where the natives stood face to face with the foreigners as the Indians to the Europeans in America.

Amongst the numerous and flourishing cities on these shores one was pre-eminent, the “New City” of Karthada, or, as the westerns called it, Karchedon, or Carthage. Though not the earliest settlement of the Phœnicians in this region, and perhaps originally a city standing under the protection of the neighbouring Utica, the oldest Phœnician city in Libya, she soon outstripped her neighbour and even the mother-country, owing to the incomparable advantages of her position and the eager activity of her inhabitants. She stood not far from the (former) estuary of the Bagradas (Mejerda) which flows through the richest grain-bearing district of North Africa on a fertile elevation of the soil, which is even now set with villas and covered with olive and orange groves, and which sinking gently towards the plain ends on the sea side in a promontory encircled by the waves. Situated near the centre of the Gulf of Tunis, the greatest haven of North Africa, where that beautiful stretch of water offers the best anchorage for large ships and the most excellent springs gush close to the shore, this place is so peculiarly favourable to agriculture and commerce and the connection between the two, that not only did the Tyrian settlement there become the first commercial city of the Phœnicians, but in Roman times also, Carthage, though scarcely restored, became the third city in the empire, and even to-day under no very favourable conditions a flourishing town of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants still exists. The agricultural, mercantile, and industrial prosperity of a city in such a position and with such inhabitants explains itself; but we need some answer to the question as to how this settlement developed a political power such as no other Phœnician city possessed.

[Sidenote: [450 B.C.]]

Before the stream of Hellenic migration which was pouring itself westward in unrestrained flood, which had already thrust the Phœnicians from Greece itself and from Italy, and was preparing to do the like in Sicily, Spain, and even Libya, the Phœnicians were compelled to make some kind of stand if they did not wish to be utterly annihilated. Here, where they had to do with Greek merchants and not with the Great King, it was not enough for them to submit in order to be allowed to carry on their trade and industry in the old fashion, in return for the payment of a tax. Cyrene and Massalia had already been founded; already the whole east of Sicily was in the hands of the Greeks; it was high time for the Phœnicians to make resistance in earnest. The Carthaginians assumed the task; in long and obstinate wars they set a bound to the encroachment of the Cyrenæans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself west of the desert of Tripoli. Moreover, the Phœnician settlements in the west of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks with Carthaginian help, and gladly and voluntarily added themselves to the dependants of the powerful kindred city. These important successes, which belong to the second century of the town, and which saved the southwestern portion of the Mediterranean to the Phœnicians, of themselves gave the city which had won them the hegemony of the nation and at the same time an altered political position. Carthage was no longer a mere merchant city; she aimed at the supremacy over Lydia and over a portion of the Mediterranean Sea because she was compelled to do so.

It was probably the after effect of these foreign successes which first induced the Carthaginians to pass from the position of tenants and occupants by concession to that of actual owners and conquerors. In the 300th year of Rome the Carthaginians seem to have first freed themselves from the payment of ground-rent, which they had hitherto been obliged to deliver to the natives. Thus it became possible to cultivate the soil on a large scale for themselves. Even as landowners, the Phœnicians had always relied on making use of their capital and on cultivating the fields to a great extent, by means of slaves or hired workmen; thus a great part of the Jews were employed in this fashion for a daily wage by the Tyrian merchant princes. The Carthaginians could now exploit the rich Libyan soil to an unlimited extent through a system analogous to that of the planters of the present day. Chained slaves tilled the ground--we find that individual citizens possessed as many as twenty thousand of them. More than this. The agricultural towns in the neighbourhood were forcibly subdued, and the free Libyan peasants transformed into fellahs, who paid their masters a tribute of the fourth part of the produce, and were subject to a regular system of recruiting in order that Carthage might have an army of its own. Feuds with the wandering shepherd tribes (νομαδες) on the frontiers were constant; but a chain of fortified military posts secured the pacified districts and these tribes were slowly pushed back into the deserts and mountains, or compelled to recognise the Carthaginian supremacy, pay tribute, and furnish troops.

Besides this the dominion of Carthage was finally extended over the rest of the Phœnicians in Africa, the so-called Liby-Phœnicians. These consisted partly of the smaller bands of settlers which had been led from Carthage to places along the whole northern and part of the northwestern coast of Africa, and cannot have been without importance, since at one time thirty thousand such colonists were settled on the Atlantic shore alone; and partly of ancient Phœnician settlements, which were especially numerous on the coast of the modern province of Constantine and of the Beylik of Tunis, and included, for example, Hippo, later called Regius (Bonah), Adrumetum (Susa), the lesser Leptis (south of Susa),--the second city of the African Phœnicians,--Thapsus, and greater Leptis (near Tripoli). How it came about that all these towns placed themselves under the command of Carthage, and whether they did so voluntarily to shelter themselves from the attacks of the Cyrenæans and Numidians or under compulsion, cannot now be discovered; it is certain that they were described in official documents as subjects of the Carthaginians, were obliged to pull down their walls and had to pay taxes and render military service to Carthage.

Thus the Tyrian factory had become the capital of a powerful North African empire, which reached from the desert of Tripoli as far as the Atlantic sea, and though it is true that in the western half (Morocco and Algiers) it contented itself with a somewhat nominal occupation of the coast, on the other hand in the wealthier East it ruled over the modern districts of Constantine and Tunis, as well as over the interior and was continually advancing its southern frontiers; the Carthaginians, as an ancient author significantly remarks, had changed from Tyrians into Libyans.

The period in which this transformation of Carthage into the capital city of Libya took place is all the more difficult to determine since the change was doubtless effected by degrees. The author just referred to mentions Hanno as the reformer of the nation; if this is the same man who lived in the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as the perfecter of the new system, which was presumably worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries of the city of Rome.

Side by side with the rise of Carthage went the decline of the great Phœnician cities in the mother-country, of Sidon and especially of Tyre, whose prosperity was ruined partly as the result of internal commotions, partly by pressure from without, in particular the sieges by Shalmaneser in the first century of Rome, by Nebuchadrezzar in the second, and by Alexander in the third. The noble families and the ancient commercial houses of Tyre removed for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city and brought thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. When the Phœnicians came into touch with Rome, Carthage was emphatically the first Canaanite city as Rome was the first Latin community.

But the dominion over Libya was only one-half of the Carthaginian power; their maritime and colonial supremacy had, at the same time, developed not less formidable proportions. In Spain the chief seat of the Phœnicians was the ancient Tyrian settlement in Gades (Cadiz); west and east of the latter they also possessed a chain of factories, and in the interior the territory of the silver mines, so that they occupied the modern Andalusia and Granada, at least their coasts. Ebusus and the Balearic Isles the Carthaginians had themselves colonised at an early period, partly for the sake of the fisheries, partly as advance posts against the Massaliots with whom, from this base, they carried on an eager war. Similarly by the end of the second century of Rome the Carthaginians had established themselves in Sardinia, which they exploited in exactly the same way as Libya.

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

In Sicily, finally, it is true that the roads from Messana and the eastern and larger half of the island had early fallen into the hands of the Greeks; but by help of the Carthaginians the Phœnicians maintained themselves, some in the smaller islands in the neighbourhood, the Ægates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra, of which the colony in Malta was especially flourishing; some on the western and northwestern coasts of Sicily, where, from Motya, and later from Lilybæum, they kept up relations with Africa and from Panormus and Solœis with Sardinia. The interior of the island remained in possession of the native Elymi, Sicani, and Sicels.

All these settlements and possessions were considerable enough in themselves; but they were of still greater importance as the pillars of the Carthaginian dominion of the sea. By the possession of the south of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the west of Sicily and Melita, in union with the prevention of Hellenic colonisation on the eastern Spanish coast, as well as on Corsica and in the neighbourhood of the Syrtis, the lords of the North African coast closed their seas against the foreigner and monopolised the western waters. The Phœnicians had indeed to share the Tyrrhenian and Gallic seas with other nations; but this might be tolerated so long as the Etruscans and Greeks counterbalanced each other there, and with the former as the less dangerous rival, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks.

But after the downfall of the Etruscan power, which, as is usually the case in alliances entered into under stress of circumstances, Carthage had probably not exactly used all her strength to avert, and after the frustration of the schemes of Alcibiades, when Syracuse was indisputably the first Greek naval power, this system of balance could no longer be maintained. As the rulers of Syracuse began to aim at the dominion over Sicily and lower Italy, and over the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas, the Carthaginians had perforce to pursue an energetic policy. The first result of the long and obstinate struggle between them and their opponent, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367), a prince as powerful as he was infamous, was the annihilation or reduction to impotence of the central Sicilian states, in the interest of both parties, and the partition of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians. But each party constantly renewed the attempt to dislodge its rival. Four times the Carthaginians were masters of all Sicily, save Syracuse, and were baffled by its strong walls; almost as often the Syracusans under able leaders, such as the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, appeared to be almost as near success. But gradually the balance became more and more in favour of the Carthaginians. Meantime the struggle on the sea was already decided. Pyrrhus’ attempt to restore the Syracusan fleet was the last. When it had failed the ships of the Carthaginians ruled the whole western Mediterranean without a rival; and their attempts to occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum showed what they could do and what was their object. Side by side with this went the endeavour to gradually monopolise the maritime trade of these regions against both foreign countries and their own subjects; and it was not a Carthaginian practice to shrink forever from the violence required to further an object. A contemporary of the Punic war, Eratosthenes, the father of geography, testifies that any foreign sailor, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians on his way to Sardinia or the Straits of Gades, was thrown by them into the sea.

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

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the first Punic war, describes the Carthaginian government as having passed from a monarchy into an aristocracy or a democracy inclining towards oligarchy; for he calls it by both names. The conduct of business lay first of all with the council of Elders, which like the Spartan Gerusia consisted of two annually appointed kings and twenty-eight Gerontes, who also, as it appears, were elected year by year by the citizens. It was this council which to all intents and purposes carried on the business of the state; for example, it took the steps necessary for war, gave orders for levies and recruiting, appointed the general, and gave him a number of Gerontes as colleagues, from amongst whom the subordinate commanders were as a rule taken; to it the despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether a larger council stood side by side with this small one; in no case was it of much importance, nor does it appear that any special influence appertained to the kings; their chief function was that of supreme judges, as they are not unfrequently styled (suffets, prætores). The general’s power was greater; Isocrates, an elder contemporary of Aristotle, says that at home the Carthaginians obeyed an oligarchical government, but in the field a monarchical one, and so the office of the Carthaginian general is described by Roman authors as that of a dictator, although the Gerontes joined with him must have, practically at least, limited his power, as must also the regular account which was unknown to the Romans and which he had to render on laying down his office. Above the Gerusia and the officials stood the body of the hundred and four, or, more briefly, the hundred, or judges, the chief bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. This was not part of the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, took its rise in the aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements in that constitution. Owing to the system of purchasing offices and the small number of the members of the highest court, a single Carthaginian family, that of Hago, which was pre-eminently distinguished for its wealth and military glory, threatened to unite the administration in war and peace, with the charge of justice, in their own hands; this led, about the time of the decemvirs to a change in the constitution and the establishment of this new authority.

It appears that although the Carthaginian citizens were not expressly limited to a passive assistance at the discussion of questions concerning the state, as was the case in Sparta, yet practically their influence in such matters was very slight. At the elections to the Gerusia a system of open bribery prevailed; at the appointment of a general the people were indeed consulted, but probably only when in reality the appointment had already been made on the suggestion of the Gerusia; and in other matters the people were only referred to when the Gerusia thought good or could not agree. Popular tribunals were unknown in Carthage. The impotence of the citizens was probably an essential condition of their political organisation; the Carthaginian messes, which are mentioned in this connection and compared to the Spartan pheiditia, may have been fraternities conducted on an oligarchical basis. We even hear of a distinction between “citizens” and “manual workers,” which leads us to suppose a very degraded position for the latter, and perhaps no rights at all.

Regarded as a whole, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a government by capitalists, such as is conceivable in a citizen community without a well-to-do middle class, and consisting on the one hand of a crowd owning no property and living from hand to mouth, on the other of great merchants, estate owners and noble magistrates. Nor was Carthage without that infallible token of a corrupt city oligarchy: the system of enriching the impoverished masters at the cost of the subjects by sending them to the subordinate communities as treasurers and superintendents of forced labour. Aristotle describes this as the main cause of the tried stability of the Carthaginian constitution. Down to his time no revolution worth mentioning had been effected in Carthage, either from above or beneath; the crowd remained leaderless in consequence of the material advantages which the ruling oligarchy was in a position to offer to all ambitious or distressed members of the upper class, and were compensated by the crumbs which fell to them from the master’s table in the form of bribes at elections or in some other fashion.

Of course with such a government there could not fail to be a democratic opposition; yet even at the time of the first Punic war this was completely powerless. Later on, partly under the influence of the defeats suffered, their political influence is seen rapidly increasing, and far more rapidly than that of the similar and contemporary Roman party; the popular assembly began to give the final decision in political questions and broke the all-powerful influence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. A patriotic and reforming energy prevailed in the opposition; still we cannot overlook the fact that it rested on a corrupt and rotten foundation. The Carthaginian citizenhood, which well-informed Greeks have compared to the Alexandrian, was so corrupt that in this respect it deserved to be powerless, and it might well be asked what good could come from revolutions where, as in Carthage, the scamps were instrumental in making them.

From a financial standpoint Carthage maintained in all relations the first place among the cities of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phœnician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all Greek states, and her revenues are compared to those of the Great King. Polybius calls her the richest city in the world. The close relation between Phœnician agriculture and capital is characteristic. The idea of never acquiring more land than could be properly cultivated is quoted as a leading principle of Phœnician agriculture. The Carthaginians also made their profit out of the wealth of the country in horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, in which, according to the testimony of Polybius, Libya at that time surpassed all other countries on earth by reason of her nomad tribes.

As in the exploitation of the soil, so also in the exploitation of their subjects the Carthaginians were the instructors of the Romans; through them was poured into Carthage the ground-rent “of the best part of Europe” and of the fertile North-African districts, which in some regions, for instance in Byzakitis and on the lesser Syrtis, was superabundantly favoured. In Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, learning and art seem to have been generally dominated by Hellenic influence, but were not neglected; a considerable Phœnician literature existed, and at its conquest the city was found to contain valuable libraries and many treasures of art, though it is true that these had not been produced in Carthage but carried off from the Sicilian temples. But intellect also was here at the service of capital; even the general distribution of certain kinds of knowledge and in particular of an acquaintance with foreign languages, in which Carthage may at this period have stood almost on a line with imperial Rome, shows the thoroughly practical direction which was given to Hellenic culture in Carthage.

The superiority of Carthage is not expressed merely in the amount of her revenue; amongst all the important states of antiquity it is here alone that we find the economical principles of a later and more advanced period; we hear of foreign government loans, and in the money system we find, besides gold coins, a piece of money of a material in itself worthless, a thing elsewhere unknown to antiquity. In fact, if the state were a speculation, none would ever have fulfilled its task more brilliantly than Carthage.

WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE

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

For more than a century the feud between the powers of Carthage and Syracuse had ravaged the beautiful Sicilian island. The war was carried on on both sides partly by political propaganda, Carthage maintaining relations with the aristocratic-republican opposition party in Syracuse, and the Syracusan dynasties with the national parties in the Greek cities that paid tribute to Carthage, and partly by means of mercenary armies with the aid of which Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as the Phœnician generals, had fought their battles. As both sides used the same methods, the contest was carried on with a disregard for truth and honour unknown in the history of occidental peoples. The Syracusans were finally defeated. In 314, before the breaking out of the war, Carthage claimed only a third of the island, that lying west of Heracleia Minoa and Himera, and had recognised the hegemony of the Syracusans over several of the eastern states. The expulsion of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (276) left the greater part of the island, especially Acragas, in the possession of Carthage, only Tauromenium and the southeastern end remaining to Syracuse. About 283 a Campanian troop that had served under Agathocles, and had continued marauding on their own account since his death, had established themselves in Messana, the second largest city on the eastern coast, and seat of the anti-Syracusan party. They massacred or drove out the citizens, divided the women, children, and houses among themselves, and settling down to complete possession of the city soon became the third power in the island. The Carthaginians witnessed these proceedings by which the Syracusans received a powerful adversary as neighbour instead of a kindred or friendly people, without displeasure; with the support of Carthage the new-comers, or Mamertines (Sons of Mars), arranged themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely withdrawal of this king restored to the Carthaginians all their powder.

A young Syracusan officer Hiero, son of Hierocles, who had drawn attention to himself by reason of his close kinship to Pyrrhus and the bravery with which he had fought in the battles of that king, was appointed head of the Syracusan army (274). By his moderation and wise generalship he won the confidence of all his supporters, dismissing the mercenaries, reorganising the citizen-militia, and trying first as general, later as king, at the head of civic troops to restore the vanished power of Hellas. With the Carthaginians, who in conjunction with the Greeks had driven Pyrrhus from the island, the Syracusans were at that time at peace; their nearest enemy being the Mamertines, kinsmen of the hated mercenaries. In alliance with the Romans, who about this time sent their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium, Hiero turned towards Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero was made king of the Siceliotes (269), he succeeded in confining the Mamertines within the limits of their own city, and after the siege had lasted several years they were reduced to extremity--finding themselves unable longer to defend the city unaided against Hiero. A conditional surrender was impossible, the axe of the executioner that had been used upon the Rhegium Campanians was surely awaiting those of Messana in Syracuse, and their only hope of safety lay in delivering over the city either to the Carthaginians or the Romans, to both of whom the conquest of the important position must be of equal moment.

Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender to the Phœnicians or to the lords of Italy was doubtful; after long hesitation the majority of the Campanian citizens finally decided to give over possession of their fortress to the Romans. Rome was striving for the possession of Italy as Carthage was for that of Sicily; but the plans of neither power could proceed further at that time. Just here lay a reason for the wish of each that a neutral power should permanently establish itself on its frontier--Rome looking to Tarentum, Carthage to Syracuse and Messana. Failing this, each preferred to occupy the cities itself rather than let them fall into the hands of its rival.

[Sidenote: [264 B.C.]]

As Carthage had tried in Italy,--Rome being on the point of taking Rhegium and Tarentum,--to acquire these cities for herself, her purpose being frustrated by a mere accident, so Rome now saw in Sicily an opportunity of bringing Messana into her symmachy; should this design fail, the city could not hope to remain independent or turn Syracusan, she would be thrown into the arms of Phœnicia. Would it be justifiable to let an opportunity, that would certainly never return, escape, of taking possession of the natural bridge-head between Sicily and Italy and by securing it to themselves by a firm and, for very good reasons, reliable occupation; was it also justifiable to sacrifice, in renouncing all hopes of Messana, dominion over the last free passage between the eastern and western seas and Italy’s free trade? Other objections than those of sentiment and justice arose to the occupation of Messana. That it must lead to a war with Carthage was the least among them, Rome having nothing to fear from such a war, however serious it might be. It was far more important that she should, by the crossing of the sea, depart from the purely Italian and continental policy she had formerly pursued; so the system founded by the authors of Rome’s greatness was relinquished for another, the consequences of which no one could foresee. It was one of those moments when reflection and calculation cease, and faith in a personal star and that of the fatherland alone gives courage to grasp the hand that beckons out of the future, and follow wherever it may lead. Long and earnestly the Senate deliberated upon the offer of the councillors to send the legions to the assistance of the Mamertines, yet came to no decision. But among the citizens to whom the matter was finally referred, there was alive that consciousness of strength of a power that has come to greatness through its own efforts. The conquest of Italy gave to the Romans, as that of Macedonia had given to the Greeks, courage to blaze a new political path for themselves; support of the Mamertines was warranted by the power of protection claimed by Rome over various Italian states. The Italians from over seas were taken into the Italian confederation, and on the proposition of the citizens’ council it was decided to send them aid (264).

ROME AND CARTHAGE

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

Let us compare the powers of Rome and Carthage. Both were agricultural and commercial states with no other claim to greatness; the subordinate and eminently practical position held by the arts and sciences was in both virtually the same, the balance being perhaps a trifle in favour of Carthage. But in Carthage commercial industries led those of agriculture, while in Rome they occupied second place, so that at a time when the Carthaginian farmers were leaving their fields to become large slave and property owners the great mass of the Roman citizens were still at the plough. In Carthage was to be seen the opulence peculiar to great commercial centres, but Rome still displayed in her customs and police regulations old-fashioned strictness and economy.

When the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome they represented the parsimony of the Roman councillors as exceeding all accounts, alleging that a single silver service did duty for the entire council, and confronted its members anew in every house to which they were invited. In all else the systems of both states were alike, the judges of Carthage and the senators of Rome rendering decision according to the same code. The strict dependence in which the Carthaginian governing bodies held their officials, their orders to the citizens not to learn the Greek language and to hold no intercourse with any Greek save through the medium of an interpreter, reveal the same spirit as that that inspired the Roman laws, but in contrast to the cruel and stupid severity of these Carthaginian regulations, the Roman fines and censure laws appear mild and reasonable. The Roman Senate which opened its doors to the highest ability worthily represented the nation and had no reason to fear her or her officials. The Carthaginian Senate, on the contrary, represented only the aristocratic families and was held under the most jealous governmental control; an institution founded on mistrust above and below it could be sure neither of the support of the people nor of security from usurpation by officials. To their freedom from these defects may be ascribed the steadily onward course of Roman politics that never retreated a step because of disaster, and did not forfeit fortune’s favour through indolence or irresolution. Carthage on the other hand would frequently retire from the contest that one last rally might have won, and weary or unmindful of her great national undertakings would let the structure she had half erected tumble to the ground only to commence her work anew after a little time. Between the capable Roman official and the governing board existed a perfect understanding, whereas at Carthage these two classes were at constant war, the officials often being forced to take stand against their superiors and make common cause with their political opponents.

Both Carthage and Rome had dominion over people of many races besides their own. Rome admitted to citizenship district after district of these aliens, even leaving a legal way of entrance open to the Latins themselves; whereas Carthage shut herself off entirely from all her dependencies, extending to them not the slightest hope that she would ever admit them to such equality. Rome permitted the communities that were of kindred race to have a share in the spoils of war, and sought by specially favouring the rich and influential of tributary states to reconcile them to Roman dominion. Carthage not only kept for herself all the fruits of victory, but deprived tributary cities of their most useful privilege--free trade. Rome never entirely denied independence to even the weakest of her subject states, and never burdened them with heavy taxes; Carthage sent representatives far and wide and laid even the ancient Phœnician cities under exorbitant toll, treating their inhabitants little better than they would slaves. In the African-Carthaginian alliance there was thus not a single commonalty, with the exception of Utica, which did not aspire to bettering its political and material condition through the fall of Carthage, whereas in the Roman-Italian alliance there was not one which by rebelling against a rule that promoted its material welfare, without directly challenging the political opposition party, would not have lost more than it gained. When the Carthaginian statesmen thought to have linked to Carthage Phœnician dependencies by arousing their fear of a Libyan revolt, and the dominant states by the payment of oracle money to their temple, they were carrying mercantile practices over into a field where these did not belong. Experience showed that the Roman symmachy, despite the less solid front it opposed to Pyrrhus, held together like a wall of rock; while that of Carthage fell apart like a spider-web as soon as a hostile power set foot on the soil of Africa. This was evidenced at the landing of Agathocles and Regulus, and also in the war against the mercenaries, while the spirit that prevailed in Africa is shown by the fact that the Libyan women voluntarily sacrificed their jewels to the mercenaries to carry on the war against Carthage. In Sicily she appears to have acted with greater moderation, hence to have obtained better results. Her dependencies there were allowed relative freedom in their trade with other lands, using metal money exclusively from the first in their domestic commerce, and enjoying in every respect greater liberty of action than was accorded to Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into her hands, all this would have soon been changed; but no such thing occurred, and under the wise moderation of Carthaginian rule, favoured by the unfortunate disarray of the Sicilian Greeks, a distinctly Phœnician party arose in Sicily; Philinus of Acragas, for example, writing the history of the great war after the loss of the island to the Romans entirely from a Phœnician point of view. Still, on the whole, the Sicilians, as subjects and as Hellenes, must have borne an aversion to their Phœnician masters equal to that shown by the Tarentians and the Samnitians towards Rome.

The revenues of Carthage undoubtedly exceeded those of Rome, but this was offset by the greater likelihood of her sources of supply, tributes, and toll, running dry at the moment when she needed them most, and by the far greater expense entailed by her system of warfare. From a military point of view the resources of both states, though differing in kind, were fairly equal. At the conquest of Carthage her population (including women and children) numbered seven hundred thousand, and must have remained about the same up to the end of the fifth century of Rome. At this time Carthage could, in case of necessity, place a force of forty thousand hoplites in the field. But, desirable as it seemed to her that the great body of her citizens should be trained to military service, she could not bestow upon artisans and factory-workers the rugged physical strength of the countryman, nor could she overcome in the Phœnician his inborn aversion to the work of war. In the fifth century of Rome there fought in the Sicilian army a general’s guard or “sacred body” of twenty-five hundred Carthaginians; a century later with the exception of the officers there was to be found in all the Carthaginian forces, notably in her Spanish army, not a single Carthaginian. The main body of the Carthaginian army was formed of Libyans, this people furnishing recruits, who, in the hands of capable officers, developed into unequalled foot-soldiers and light cavalry-men. To these were added soldiers from all the dependent states of Libya and Spain, the celebrated sling-shooters of the Balearic Isles who seemed to have occupied a position between that of allied troops and mercenaries, and lastly the soldiery gathered in, in case of necessity, from other lands. Such a military force could be increased to almost any strength, and in courage, skill in handling weapons, and in the ability of its officers could compare favourably with that of the Romans. But when mercenaries had to be employed, a long time must elapse before it could be got in readiness, whereas the Roman militia could at any moment be sent into the field. There was further nothing to hold the Carthaginians together but the hope of gain and loyalty to the flag, in contrast to the Romans who were united by all the ties that bound them to the fatherland. To the Carthaginian officer of the usual type, the hired troops fighting under him, yes, even the Libyan peasants, were of no more account than are cannon balls in our day; hence shameful deeds were committed, as for example the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their commander Himilco, which had for result a serious Libyan revolt. The term “Punic faith” as used thereafter in connection with the Carthaginians came to be a standing reproach that injured them not a little. All in all, Carthage experienced every ill that fellah and mercenary armies can bring into a land, finding on more than one occasion that paid allies were more dangerous than sworn foes.

The faults of such a military system could not be overlooked by the Carthaginian rulers who were constantly trying to amend them; treasuries were kept filled and arsenals stocked that more mercenaries might be hired at any moment; and particular attention was given that branch of the service that corresponded in ancient times to our modern artillery--war-machines in the use of which Carthaginians were more expert than the Siceliotes, and elephants there having superseded the ancient war-chariots. But the chief bulwark of the nation, the navy, was the object of special pride and care. In the construction, as in the navigation of ships, the Carthaginians far surpassed the Greeks. In Carthage were built the first ships having three banks of oars, and the rigging of their sailing ships mostly quinqueremes rendered them as a rule swifter than those of the Greeks; the rowers, slaves belonging to the state, who never left the galleys, were admirably drilled, and the captains were skilled and fearless. In this respect Carthage was decidedly superior to Rome, who with her own few ships and those of allied Greece could not think of measuring forces on the open sea with a power that at that time ruled supreme over the western Mediterranean. If we summarise the knowledge gained by a close comparison of the resources of the two great powers, we find that at the beginning of their conflict they stood on very nearly equal ground. To this, however, we feel obliged to add that Carthage, though exerting all her powers of genius and wealth to provide herself with artificial means of offence and defence, could not yet make good her lack of native troops, or compensate the need of an independent alliance. That Rome could be endangered only in Italy, Carthage only in Libya, was not to be denied, and equally undeniable was it that Carthage could not long escape such a peril.[d]

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

The inevitable conflict between such neighbouring rivals as Rome and Carthage, came soon and lasted long. It brought forth great figures and impressive events on both sides.[9] In the first Punic war the Carthaginians, after the defeat of their fleet in the Ægates, lost their possessions in Sicily, and the groups of islands belonging to it, and were obliged to pledge themselves to the payment of thirty-two hundred talents. Immediately afterwards the bloody war, of more than four years’ duration (241-237), against the rebellious mercenaries broke out, in which the Libyan cities also took part, and in which Hamilcar’s generalship finally won the victory over the mutineers. In the meantime the Romans had taken possession of Sardinia, and the Carthaginians, who did not yet feel strong enough for a fresh war, had not only to relinquish formally the possession of that island, but also to pay an additional tribute of twelve hundred talents. Corsica was also snatched from them at the same time with Sardinia. After the suppression of the revolt Hamilcar crossed to Gades (Cadiz) with the army, to begin a war of conquest on the Pyrenæan peninsula. For nine years he fought successfully against the Spanish tribes, until in 229 he met death in battle. His son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who succeeded him, was able by peaceful means, rather than by war, to extend further the bounds of Carthaginian sovereignty. In 221, when Hasdrubal had fallen by the hand of a Gaul, the army chose Hamilcar’s famous son Hannibal commander-in-chief, a choice no one in Carthage dared oppose.

In the years 221 and 220 Hannibal completed the conquest of Spain as far as the Ebro; in 219 he took Saguntum, in spite of an alliance existing between it and Rome. This was the cause of the second Punic war (218-201), in which the Carthaginians, under the spirited leadership of Hannibal, who made his way across the Pyrenees and the Alps even into Italy, at first achieved great successes, but at last were overcome by the inexhaustible military resources and the marvellous endurance of the Romans, who carried on the war in four places at once.

After the defeat at Zama (202) peace was granted in 201 to Rome’s humbled rival under the following hard conditions: surrender of all but ten ships of war and of all elephants, the payment of ten thousand talents, the indemnification of Massinissa, and the promise not to take up arms again without the consent of the Romans. By wise measures Hannibal sought gradually to uplift his oppressed fatherland; but in this way prejudiced the interests of the aristocracy, who before this had been unfavourable to him, and who, with the help of the Romans, exiled him from Carthage (195).

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

After that Carthage was ruined within by controversies between the aristocratic and the popular parties, and threatened from without by Massinissa who, set at the side of the Carthaginians by the Romans to watch them, and relying on his protectors, took from them one piece of their territory after another. The Romans, to be sure, from time to time sent commissioners to the spot, but only to give either no decision at all, or one unfavourable to the Carthaginians. Marcus Cato came there in 157 as one of these commissioners, and because the Carthaginians declined his offer to deliver an arbiter’s judgment (presumably an unfavourable one), he was from that time on extremely embittered against them, and consequently closed every speech in the senate with the words, “Censeo ceterum, Carthaginem esse delendam” (“Moreover, I think Carthage must be destroyed”).

When the Carthaginians at last, after the expulsion of the party of Massinissa (151) resisted the latter and were defeated, the Romans declared this a breach of peace, and in 149 sent the consuls, Manius, Manilius, and Lucius Marcius Censorinus, with eighty-four thousand men to Sicily. The Carthaginians begged for peace, but were required first to give three hundred children of the nobility as hostages, and to surrender all arms and munitions of war. When the Romans thereupon gave them the further command to abandon their city and settle again further inland, all classes and ranks united for the most desperate defence.

Thus began a last fearful conflict (third Punic war, 149-146), which ended with the conquest of Carthage by Publius Cornelius Scipio. Fire raged in the city seventeen days. A large portion of the inhabitants perished, the survivors were led into slavery. The city was razed to the ground, and the whole Carthaginian territory, with the exception of a few tracts that were given to the cities in alliance with the Romans, especially to Utica and Hippo, was made into the Roman province of Africa.

In 122, it was decided, on the proposal of Gaius Gracchus, to rebuild the city under the name of Junonia, and to plant there a colony of six thousand Roman citizens. However, the fall of Gracchus prevented the execution of the project. Julius Cæsar took it up again, but was not able to carry it out. The restoration did not begin, then, until under Augustus, who populated the city with three thousand Roman colonists and numerous natives from the vicinity.

The new city reached a high prosperity in the time of the empire, so that it took the second position, after Alexandria, among the cities of the empire outside of Rome. It was the seat of the Roman proconsul and of most of the other Roman officials, later also of a Christian bishop, and by reason of its favourable situation it soon became once more a rich seat of commerce, in which, however, there was no lack of schools of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and the other liberal arts.

LAST DAYS OF CARTHAGE

In 439 A.D. it was taken by the Vandals under Genseric, and was for almost a century the capital of the Vandal kingdom, until in 533 it was incorporated in the eastern Roman Empire by Justinian’s general, Belisarius. The latter restored the ruined fortifications, and called the city in honour of his emperor, Justiniana.[e]

The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house of Omayya; and the caliph Moawiya was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin; their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiya acquired a just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt. But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor Okbaben Nafi [Akbah]. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab, or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known cities of Bugia and Tangier define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which in a more prosperous age is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence.

[Sidenote: [697 A.D.]]

The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence. The province of Mauritania Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citronwood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert.

The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount Atlas, fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate, Islands. Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors of the oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The career though not the zeal of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee.” Yet this Mohammedan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene was dignified by an example of national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their scimitars, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa, Zuhair, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.

It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present decay, Kairawan still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south; its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain. The vegetable food of Kairawan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of thirty-six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Kairawan became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and Zuhair, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobair maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months, against the house of Omayyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity of his father.

The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdul-malik to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan, governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of war the interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and more fortunate; he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the mention of scaling ladders may justify the suspicion that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The prefect and patrician John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the Eastern Empire; they were joined by the ships and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of the Goths was obtained from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Kairawan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost; the zeal and resentment of the commander of the faithful prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of Dido and Cæsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the second capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles V had stationed in the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.[f]

FOOTNOTES

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

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VII. PHŒNICIAN COMMERCE

At all stages of its history Phœnicia was essentially a manufacturing and commercial rather than a warlike nation. Nevertheless, it took a more or less prominent part in the combats of the great nations for many centuries. There was only one period, namely, during the reign of Hiram, the contemporary of David and Solomon, about 950 B.C., when Phœnicia could aspire to anything like first rank among the nations. It was at most a community of scattered cities, each generally independent of the others, rather than a nation in the narrower sense. Nevertheless, such is the vitality of a nation whose prosperity is based on the pursuits of peace, that Phœnicia continued to hold a respectable place among the powers of the earth, for a longer period than almost any other of the minor nations of antiquity. Thus we find it reviving again and again, after being subjected by the foreign conquerors, until finally, even so late as 332 B.C., it was able to afford most powerful opposition to Alexander, and throughout this period, for at least a thousand years, the navy of the Phœnicians was celebrated as being, for the most of the time, a type of excellence, and the Phœnicians for this reason were coveted as allies, or hired as mercenaries by such great contending powers as the Greeks and the Persians. All in all, notwithstanding the comparatively minor place which is always assigned to the Phœnicians, in comparison with such great conquering powers as Egypt and Babylonia, there are many reasons for feeling that the great manufacturers and traders of antiquity were among the most admirable of the peoples whose history has been preserved.

The accounts of wars and conquests must necessarily always hold a foremost place in the records of the historian, at least in our day, but one should not hesitate to give a due measure of praise to a nation whose ideal was not self-aggrandisement through the destruction of other nations, but the building up of power through the far more useful channels of manufacture and commerce. Where other nations destroyed, the Phœnicians constructed. They took no high rank as inventors pure and simple, but they were acceptors of the inventions of other peoples, and as an educating influence they have no peers among the oriental nations. And this is true simply because the Phœnicians were the great progressive and commercial people of antiquity.[a]

SEA TRADE

It requires no great sagacity to develop the causes by which the Phœnicians became a commercial and seafaring people. They were in a manner constrained to it by their situation; for the commodities of interior Asia becoming accumulated in vast quantities upon their coasts, seemed to demand a further transport. It would, nevertheless, be an error to assume this as the first and only impulse to their navigation, which most likely had the same origin here that it generally had among commercial nations; it sprung from piracy. The seeming advantages which this affords are too near and too striking to be overlooked by uncivilised nations; while the benefits to be derived from a peaceable and regular commerce are too distant to come at first within the scope of their ideas. It was thus that the piratical excursions of the Normans gave the first impulse to the navigation of the western countries of Europe. But among nations who are not, like the African nest of pirates, held back by despotism and other unfavourable circumstances, good gradually grows out from this original evil. A trifling advance, too, in civilisation soon teaches mankind how greatly the benefits of trade surpass those of plunder; and as the latter diminishes, the former increases.

This is exactly the state in which the navigation of the Phœnicians is first presented to our notice, in the time of Homer--the earliest period at which we catch an authentic glance at it from any definite accounts.

The Phœnicians at this period visited the Greek islands and the coasts of the continents as robbers, or merchants, according as circumstances offered. They came with trinkets, beads, and baubles, which they sold at a high price to the inexperienced and unwary Greeks; and they thus gained opportunities of kidnapping their boys and girls, whom they turned to good account in the Asiatic slave markets, or who were redeemed at heavy ransoms by their parents and countrymen. A most faithful and lively picture of the state of society in these respects is drawn by the Greek bard himself, in the narrative which he makes Eumæus relate of his birth and early adventures.

This kind of intercourse, however, could not last beyond the infancy of Grecian civilisation. As this advanced, and that people grew formidable upon the seas, and Athenian and Ionian squadrons covered the Mediterranean, it must of itself have assumed another shape, as piracy would no longer be tolerated. But notwithstanding this, the connection between Phœnicia and Greece, in the flourishing period of the latter, seems not to have continued so strong as might naturally have been expected. There is no trace of an active intercourse between Tyre and Athens, or Corinth; there is no vestige of commercial treaties, such as frequently were closed between Carthage and Rome. Commercial jealousy, common to both nations, in some measure accounts for this phenomenon. (How much less has the intercourse between England and France always been than it might have been, considering the situation and magnitude of the two kingdoms!) I trust, however, that the following observations will be deemed satisfactory upon this subject.

First. The principal source of trade among all great seafaring nations must ever be directed toward their colonies. It is only there that mutual exchange of commodities can be effected upon an extensive scale; all other sales are by retail, or in small quantities. The truth, which the experience of the greatest maritime states of modern times confirms beyond a doubt, was felt both by Phœnicians and Greeks: hence the chief commerce of both nations was confined to their colonies.

Secondly. The Greeks could the more easily abstain from purchasing of the Phœnicians as they could import nearly all the wares they required from their own colonies in Asia Minor, which maintained the same intercourse with the countries of inner Asia as Tyre and Sidon; and obtained and exported in a great degree the same Asiatic merchandise.

Thirdly. During the time of their greatest splendour, that is, from the commencement of the Persian wars, the Greeks were not only the rivals of the Phœnicians, but their declared political enemies. The hatred of the Phœnicians toward the Greeks is shown in nothing clearer than in their ready willingness to lend their fleets to the Persians; and in the active share they took in the Persian expeditions against the whole of Greece, or against the separate states. How, then, can it be expected, that under such circumstances a very lively or regular commerce could have existed between them?

The Phœnicians, however, still possessed the advantage of furnishing the Greeks with certain articles of the most costly description, in great demand, which they could not obtain from their own colonies, and the Phœnicians alone could supply. To these belong especially, perfumes and spices, which they imported from Arabia, and which were absolutely necessary to the Greeks in their sacrifices to the gods. They also supplied them with the manufactures of Tyre: its purple garments, its rich apparel, its jewels, trinkets, and other ornaments, which could be obtained nowhere else of such fine workmanship, or so decidedly in accordance with the prevailing fashion.

The same causes which limited the commerce of the Phœnicians with Greece tended also to diminish it with its colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and in Sicily. History has preserved us no express information upon this particular; but to the causes already cited there remains to be added the fact, that in proportion as the trade of the Phœnicians decreased in the western Mediterranean, that of the Carthaginians increased, till at length they possessed it almost exclusively.

When the first Phœnicians visited Spain, it is said they found silver there in such abundance, that they not only freighted their ships with it to the water’s edge, but made their common utensils, anchors not excepted, of this metal. Thus laden, they returned back to their native country, which lost no time in taking possession of this ancient Peru, and founding colonies there, whose name and situation we have already described.

When the Phœnicians first settled here, artificial mine works were quite unnecessary. The silver ore lay exposed to view, and they had only to make a slight incision to obtain it in abundance. The inhabitants themselves were so little acquainted with its value, that their commonest implements were composed of this metal. The demands of the Phœnicians, and their avidity to possess it, first taught them its worth; and it is probable that the arrival and settlement among them of these strangers, who could supply them with so many useful articles, in exchange for that upon which they set such little store, was to them a source of gratification. But when the stock they had in hand was exhausted, and the insatiable foreigners saw it necessary to open mines, the lot of the poor Iberians became truly pitiable. That the Spanish mines were worked by slaves is clear from Diodorus, who describes their wretched fate; and even though his statement may refer to the time of the Romans, there can be but little doubt that the same practice had long previously existed. Whether the natives were compelled to this labour we know not positively; but they scarcely could have escaped it altogether, though the extensive traffic of the Phœnicians in slaves would have rendered it easy for them to introduce sufficient hands from abroad. Even if only employed as free labourers, their lot was sufficiently hard. That, however, the mines in Spain were not worked merely by digging, is clear from Diodorus, whose relation of itself proves that shafts were opened, and the subterraneous water forced out by machines; even if the interesting allusion to mine works in the Book of Job should not be admitted as referring to the Phœnicians.

The mine works of the genuine Phœnicians seem to have been confined to the present Andalusia. According to Strabo, the oldest were situated upon the mountain in which the Bætis or Guadalquivir takes its rise, upon the south part of the Sierra Morena, which, on the borders of Andalusia and Murcia, bore the name of Sierra Segura. They did not extend beyond this previous to the time of the Carthaginians, who entered upon the conquest of Spain with much more energy and power.

For the rest, silver was certainly the principal, but could scarcely be the only object obtained. Gold, lead, and iron were discovered; and besides these, tin mines were opened by the Phœnicians on the northern coast of Spain, beyond Lusitania. All these metals are spoken of by the prophet Ezekiel as the produce of the Spanish mines. “Spain (Tarshish) [or Tartessus] traded with thee, because of the multitude of thy goods; silver, iron, tin, and lead, it gave thee in exchange for thy wares.” The trade in salt fish has already been mentioned as a branch of the earliest commerce of Spain.

The commerce of the Phœnicians in their Spanish settlements was carried on in the same manner as they usually carried it on elsewhere; the only method indeed by which it can be carried on among uncivilised nations--namely, by barter. It is not only so described in the passage above quoted from the prophet Ezekiel, but the same is confirmed by Diodorus. They brought, on their side, Tyrian wares--probably linen, the usual clothing of Spain; perhaps, also, trinkets and toys, and such articles of finery as are eagerly coveted by barbarians. In exchange for these they obtained the above-mentioned natural productions; and silver, not as money, but as merchandise, and upon which their profit must have been doubled, if the conjecture, not destitute of probability, be true, that they bartered it in the southern countries for gold.

It would appear from Diodorus as if their settlements in both the countries of Sicily and Carthage were founded with no other object, than for the convenience of their intercourse with Spain; and so far as Sicily alone is concerned, he seems to be right. In the long voyage from their native shores to that distant country, a harbour, to which they might run in, in case of storms or other accidents, was indispensably necessary. And although they established here a trade, by barter, with the natives, and thus managed to obtain the rich produce of the island for themselves, it is probable that the Greeks, who were always extending their possessions, soon deprived them of all, except the original object of their settlement.

The case was different, however, with regard to Africa. If we merely look at the long line of commercial establishments formed upon this coast, it will be difficult to believe them all intended solely for the preservation of a communion with Spain. It is not denied but that such may have been the origin of the earliest settlements, as for example that of Utica; but when these cities began to flourish, and drew to themselves the trade of inner Africa, there can be no doubt but the Phœnicians took a part in it, and obtained the commodities of this quarter of the globe, though in the first instance, only at second hand.

Having thus shown the direction and extent of the trade and navigation of the Phœnicians toward the west, let us now bend our course eastwards, and trace their progress upon the two great southwestern gulfs of Asia, the Arabian and Persian. In these, it has already been stated, they had partly settled, and thus gained secure harbours from which to set forth on their still more distant enterprises.

It must, however, be at once perceived, that their navigation here could not have a like undisturbed continuance with that of the Mediterranean. As the proper dominions of the Phœnicians never stretched so far as to either of these gulfs, it depended upon their political relations how far they could make use of the harbours they possessed there. For even though the way might be open to their caravans, the dominant nations of inner Asia might not be always willing to allow foreign colonies on their coasts.

Ophir was the general name for the rich countries of the south, lying on the African, Arabian, and Indian coasts, as far as at that time known. From these the Phœnicians had already obtained vast treasures by caravans; but they now opened a maritime communication with them, in order to lighten the expense of transport, and to procure their merchandise at the best hand. The name of Ophir was common even in the time of Moses, and was then applied to those southern countries only known by common report. It was therefore now spoken of as a well-known name and country; and it may be fairly presumed, that when the Phœnicians entered upon this new line of trade, they only took possession of a previously well-established system; since it was a regular, settled navigation, and not a voyage of discovery. From its taking three years to perform, it would appear to have been directed to a distant region; but if we consider the half-yearly monsoons, and that the vessels visited the coasts of Arabia, Ethiopia, and the Malabar coast of India; and also that the expression, “in the third year,” may admit of an interpretation that would much abridge the total duration, the distance will not appear so great. The commodities which they imported were ivory, precious stones, ebony, and gold, to which may be added apes and peacocks; all satisfactorily proving that they visited the countries just mentioned; especially Ethiopia, and probably India.

The voyages of the Phœnicians thus far had a fixed and regular course; but besides these, they were in the habit of fitting out expeditions for the purpose of discovery, which often led the way to an enlargement of their commerce; though they sometimes had no result beyond the extension of their geographical knowledge. Chance has preserved us some particulars respecting a few of these enterprises, through their having been fortunately quoted by Herodotus; but how much more may have been undertaken, and successfully performed, by a people who, no doubt, like Great Britain and Portugal, had its Cook and its Vasco de Gama!

In one of these voyages toward the Hellespont, which they undertook at a very early period, to explore Europe, they discovered the isle of Thasos, opposite the Thracian coast, and were amply repaid for their pains by its productive gold mines, which they worked with wonderful labour and skill, as we learn from Herodotus, who saw them, till they were driven from the island by the Greeks.

The same writer has given us an account of a still more wonderful voyage which this people undertook and successfully performed; this was nothing less than the circumnavigation of Africa. We shall here place before the reader the remarkable narrative, as given by the historian himself.

“That Africa is clearly surrounded by the sea, except where it borders on Asia, Neku II, king of the Egyptians, was the first we know of to demonstrate. That prince, having finished his excavations for the canal leading out of the Nile into the Arabian Gulf, despatched certain natives of Phœnicia on shipboard, with orders to sail back through the Pillars of Hercules into the North (Mediterranean) Sea, and so to return into Egypt. The Phœnicians, consequently, having departed out of the Erythræan Sea, proceeded on their voyage in the Southern Sea: when it was autumn they would push ashore, and sowing the land, whatever might be the part of Libya they had reached, await there till the harvest time: having reaped their corn, they continued their voyage; thus, after the lapse of two years, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules in the third, they came back into Egypt, and stated, what is not credible to me, but may be so, perhaps, to others, namely, that in their circumnavigation of Libya, they had the sun on the right hand (that is, on the north).”

But leaving these distant voyages of discovery out of the question, the extent to which this enterprising people carried their regular navigation is truly wonderful. Though voyages across the open seas have been the consequence of our acquaintance with the New World beyond the Atlantic; yet their hardy and adventurous spirit led them to find a substitute for it in stretching from coast to coast into the most distant regions. The long series of centuries during which they were exclusively the masters of the seas, gave them sufficient time to make this gradual progress, which perhaps was the more regular and certain in proportion to the time it occupied. The Phœnicians carried the nautical art to the highest point of perfection at that time required, or of which it was then capable; and gave a much wider scope to their enterprises and discoveries than either the Venetians or Genoese during the Middle Ages. Their numerous fleets were scattered over the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, and the Tyrian pennant waved at the same time on the coasts of Britain and on the shores of Ceylon.[c]

MANUFACTURES AND LAND TRADE OF THE PHŒNICIANS

The merchandise exported by the Phœnicians consisted partly of the produce of their own industry and skill; but in a much greater extent of the wares which they received, or imported themselves, from the countries of Asia with which they maintained an intercourse. The raw materials, which their art and labour fashioned, must have been drawn from abroad, as their own little territory could have supplied but a very small portion of what was necessary to satisfy the demands of their numerous and large customers scattered all over the world. The whole of the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel refers to this subject, and in particular to the land trade of Tyre, now threatened with ruin by the military expeditions of Nebuchadrezzar. The sketch of the Hebrew poet affords us an interesting picture of the great international commerce of inner Asia, which enlarges our narrow ideas of ancient trade by showing us that it connected nearly all the countries of the known world.

Previous to the investigation of this branch of foreign commerce of the Phœnicians, let us take a glance at the productions of their own skill and industry, which were, even in the remotest antiquity, so generally celebrated. Among the inventions of the Phœnicians their dyes indisputably hold the highest rank. The beautifully coloured garments of Sidon were celebrated in the Homeric period; and the Tyrian purple formed one of the most general and principal articles of luxury in antiquity. It is altogether incorrect to consider this purple as one particular colour. The expression seemed rather to have signified among the ancients, the whole class of dyes manufactured from an animal substance; namely, the juice of shellfish. It thus formed a distinct species of dye, differing from the second, the vegetable dye, which was composed of various vegetables. Now the first species comprised not merely one, but a great number and variety of colours; not only purple, but also light and dark purple, and almost every shade between.

Purple dyes were by no means exclusively confined to the Phœnicians; but by their great industry and skill, and from the excellent quality of the shells on their shore, they were enabled to bring it to a higher degree of perfection, and to maintain the superiority. Scarlet and violet purples, in particular, were nowhere dyed so well as in Tyre; garments of this colour, therefore, were in the greatest request among the great, and the prevailing fashion in the higher ranks of society. This furnishes us at once with a reason for the unbounded extent to which this branch of industry was carried by the Phœnicians.

Dyeing cannot exist without weaving; and it follows, that as the dyeing among the Phœnicians was done in the wool, the stuffs which they exported must have been the product of their own industry. The principal manufactories of this sort were, in earlier times, at Sidon: Homer repeatedly praises its raiment. At a later period, however, they were common in the other Phœnician cities, and especially in Tyre. It is much to be regretted that history, which so celebrates the garments and woollens of this city, has preserved us no direct information respecting them.

Another product of Phœnician skill was glass; of this they were the inventors, and long enjoyed the exclusive manufacture. The sand used for this purpose was found in the southern districts of the country, near the little river Belus, which rose at the foot of Mount Carmel. The glass manufactories continued, according to Pliny, during a long succession of centuries; their principal seats were at Sidon and the neighbouring Sarepta. From the small number of them, the use of glass would seem to have been much less general in antiquity than among us; while the mildness of the climate in all southern countries, as well as all over the East, rendered any other stoppage of the windows unnecessary, except that of curtains or blinds. Goblets of the precious metals or stones were preferred as drinking vessels.

Under this head of Phœnician industry, too, may be ranged ornaments of dress, implements, utensils, baubles, and gewgaws, which they produced. The nature of their trade, which for a long time was confined to a traffic by barter with rude, uncultivated nations, among whom such commodities have always a quick and certain sale, must at a very early period have turned their attention to this branch of industry.

The foreign commerce which the Phœnicians carried on with the nations of the interior of Asia may be divided into three branches, according to its three principal directions. The first of these comprises the southern trade, or the Arabian-East-Indian and the Egyptian; the second, the eastern, or the Assyrian-Babylonian; and the third, that of the north, or the Armenian-Caucasian. It is evident, from the various particulars mentioned by the Hebrew poets, as well as by profane writers, that the first of these three branches of commerce was the most important. We call it the Arabian-East-Indian, not because we here assume it as proved that the Phœnicians themselves journeyed over Arabia to India, but because they procured in Arabia the merchandise of the East Indies, for which it was at that time the great market. With regard to Arabia itself, however, they kept up an intercourse with every part of it, as well its eastern coast as that bordering on the Arabian sea.

Spices, gold, and precious stones are expressly enumerated among the natural productions of Happy Arabia. Gold mines, it is true, are no longer to be found there, but the assurances of antiquity respecting them are so general and explicit that it is impossible reasonably to doubt that Yemen once abounded in gold. Precious stones were found in the mountains of the province of Hadramaut; such at least as were considered precious by the ancients; namely, onyxes, rubies, agates, etc. But in addition to these native productions of Happy Arabia, other wares are mentioned as Arabian, certainly not the proper produce of this country, but either Ethiopian or Indian. To the former belongs cinnamon, or canella; and to the latter, ivory and ebony. Besides these, cardamom, nard, and other spices, used in odoriferous waters and unguents, are expressly enumerated by Theophrastus as coming from India.

The commerce of the Phœnicians, however, was not confined merely to southern Arabia, but stretched along the eastern coast on the Persian Gulf: “The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thy hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony.” Dedan is one of the Baharein Islands, in the Persian Gulf, but if these words of the prophet prove an intercourse between Phœnicia and the Persian Gulf, they also prove not less indisputably the connection in which the Phœnicians stood with India. The large countries to which the Phœnician trade extended beyond Dedan could be no other than India; if this is not sufficiently proved by the situation, it is beyond a doubt by the commodities mentioned. Ivory and ebony could only have been procured in Dedan from India, for there were no elephants in Arabia.

Arabia was then the great seat of the Phœnician land trade. With this was interwoven a connection with the rich countries of the south, Ethiopia and India. Notwithstanding the vast deserts of sand, which protected Arabia from the attacks of foreign conquerors, the merchant’s desire of gain was not damped, but surmounted every difficulty. Caravans, composed of various tribes, penetrated through its wastes in every direction, even to its southern and eastern coasts; here they traded, either directly or indirectly, with the Phœnicians, whose seaports became at last the great staples of their valuable merchandise, whence it was shipped off, and spread over the West at an immense profit to these merchants.

This commerce must have been the more lucrative, as it was, according to the very clear statement of Ezekiel, altogether carried on by barter. It is everywhere spoken of as an exchange of merchandise against merchandise, and even the precious metals are only considered as such. What an immense profit the Phœnician merchant must have made of his Spanish silver mines, by exchanging their produce for gold in Yemen, where this metal was so abundant! What a profit he must have had on other wares, which the Arabians in a manner were obliged to take of him, and in which he had no competitor!

The intercourse with Arabia must have been greatly facilitated by the similarity of the languages of the two nations. These were only dialects of the same language; and though differences might occur, yet there scarcely could have been any difficulty in making each other understood. What an advantage to the Phœnician merchant, to be able, in the mutual intercourse with these distant regions, to make use of his native tongue, instead of being at the mercy of treacherous interpreters! This advantage alone would have sufficed to secure him the exclusive commerce of Arabia, even if the situation of the country had not made it almost impossible for any foreign nation to compete with him.

The commerce of the Phœnicians with Egypt must be considered as a second branch of their southern land trade. Their intercourse with this nation was one of the earliest they formed, as Herodotus expressly assures us that the exportation of Assyrian and Egyptian wares was the first business they carried on. And when it is remembered that Egypt at all times enjoyed the principal land trade of Africa, it would indeed seem surprising if no intercourse had subsisted between two such great neighbouring commercial nations. Still more positive information, however, respecting its existence is given by Ezekiel, who, in his picture of Tyrian commerce, forgets not that with Egypt, but even enumerates the wares which Tyre obtained from the banks of the Nile. “Fine linen with embroidered work from Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail; blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which covered thee.” Weaving was one of the principal occupations of the Egyptians, and cotton was a native of their soil. Embroideries of cotton, and with cotton, were common in Egypt, and considered as masterpieces of art; corn, the other great product of Egypt, was only procured from that country upon extraordinary occasions; as Palestine and Syria furnished it of an excellent quality. It is proved, however, that it was brought thence, in cases of emergency, by the caravan journey of the sons of Jacob into Egypt.

One of the principal articles exported by the Phœnicians to Egypt was wine, which this country did not at that time produce. Twice a year large cargoes of this were shipped from Phœnicia and Greece. The second great branch of the Phœnician land trade spread towards the east. It includes the commerce with Syria and Palestine, with Babylon and Assyria, and with the countries of Eastern Asia.

Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians. Their own mountainous territory was but little adapted for agriculture, while Palestine produced corn in such abundance, as to be able to supply them plentifully with this first necessary of life. The corn of Judea was the best known. It excelled even that of Egypt. It was not, therefore, merely the proximity of the country which led the Phœnicians to prefer this market. Palestine also supplied them with wine and oil. The fact that Palestine was the granary of the Phœnicians explains, too, in the clearest manner, the good understanding and lasting peace that prevailed between these two nations. It is a striking feature in the Jewish history, that with all other nations around them they lived in a state of almost continual warfare; and that under David and Solomon they even became conquerors, and subdued considerable countries; and yet with their nearest neighbours, the Phœnicians, they never engaged in hostilities.

Syria proper, also, supplied its various productions, according to the nature of the different parts of the country--whether adapted for agriculture, the cultivation of the vine, or merely to the nomad life and the breeding of cattle. The wool of the wilderness was one of the wares supplied by the pastoral tribes, who wandered with their flocks as well over the Syrian as over the Arabian deserts.

A moment’s reflection upon Tyrian manufacture of woven goods and their dyes will enable the reader at once to perceive the great importance of this branch of commerce. It converted the very wilderness, so far as they were concerned, into an opulent country, which afforded them the finest and most precious raw materials for their most important manufactures. This circumstance, too, was a means of cementing and preserving a good understanding between them and these nomad tribes; a matter of no inconsiderable consequence to the Phœnicians, as it was through them that the rich produce of the southern regions came into their hands.

The great point, however, to which the trade of the Phœnicians was directed in the east, was Babylon. That a very active commerce was carried on with this flourishing city, even before it forcibly obtained the dominion of Asia and subjected Phœnicia itself, no one can doubt, who is acquainted with the situation and manners of the two nations; and yet, however astonishing it may seem, we have less information respecting this very important branch of trade than upon almost every other. Still we have the positive testimony of Herodotus, that it was one of the most ancient. It probably happened, that it was frequently interrupted by the great revolutions of interior Asia, in which Babylon itself often necessarily participated; it must, however, soon have revived, when the trade of Babylon itself again began to flourish. In proportion, however, as the silence of history upon this interesting subject is remarkable, the conjecture is strengthened, that the trading route between Babylon and Tyre lay through a long uninterrupted desert; the natural consequence of which would be, that, even supposing it not purposely concealed, this commerce would have become but little known. But even in this desert itself are found vestiges which seem to denote its course and magnitude: the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec are probably links of the commercial chain which connected Tyre and Babylon.

The third, and least branch of Phœnician land trade, was with the countries of the north. No Greek writer, that I am acquainted with, has left the least information respecting it. Ezekiel mentions Tubal, Meshech, and Togarmah. There can be no doubt that Tubal and Meshech denoted the regions lying between the Black and Caspian Seas; the abode of the Tibareni and Moschi, and probably also the Cappadocians. With regard to Togarmah, conjecture runs very strongly in favour of its being Armenia. The probability of the truth of these conjectures is much augmented by the fact, that the wares enumerated are exactly such as these regions produce. Cappadocia, together with the Caucasian districts, from the very earliest times, was the chief seat of the slave trade, and always continued so in the ancient world. The mines of these regions, however, were probably a still greater attraction; and one which their whole history shows they could not withstand.

Armenia, finally, is also recognised by its wares. It is described as a land abounding in horses; and in this respect, as well as in the distinction which the prophet makes between those of an inferior and a more esteemed breed, no country of Asia agrees so well as Armenia.

It is evident that this northern trade also was not carried on with money, but by barter. It was not necessary here, however, to have recourse to caravans, for the way lay through inhabited and civilised countries.[b]

SILVER AND GOLD IN ANTIQUITY AS MONEY

In the study of the chief commodities of Phœnician commerce, and especially of those which are interesting by reason of the historical influence they exercised on culture, we will first consider the precious metals. For silver and gold stand first and foremost in their great influence upon trade, and for their incalculable effects upon ancient culture.

The desire to obtain these precious metals from their sources, drove the Phœnicians to the most distant lands, gave rise to their boldest commercial undertakings, led their ships into unknown seas, suggested their voyages of discovery, and made them establish colonies in the farthest countries. According to ancient historians, the silver and gold of distant lands were the source of their wealth and prosperity in the world. Being the first to traffic with silver, they laid the foundation of an organised trade for their country, which was not furnished by nature with sufficient commercial commodities to trade with other lands. For what had Phœnicia to offer the far richer and earlier cultivated countries of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, or what could it give in equivalent exchange for the rich wares of India, if it had not had the precious metals which were quite or partially wanting in these countries?

In olden days silver ranked higher than gold, and it was used for fully a thousand years as an object of trade, before we find a trace of gold being used for the same purpose.

The use of silver as money was limited in olden times to the Semitic world and certainly to Phœnicia and the neighbouring countries. For whilst the oldest records of the Eastern world, such as Homer and the Zend writings, mention other objects of barter, no trace is found of silver being used for that purpose, whereas at an earlier date than that to which these writings can lay claim, we find the Phœnicians using money as the basis of their commercial intercourse with other countries.

The Mosaic Law, particularly in its oldest and best authenticated part, leads to the conclusion that silver money was common even at the time of the formation of the Israelite state. The ancient laws which treat of sentences of punishment, often state the amount of the expiatory sum of silver. Human beings were valued at their worth in money according to their age or rank (Leviticus xxvii.); houses, lands, and corn and victuals were all estimated according to their value in silver money. The thief, the man who hurts his neighbour, the foolish shepherd and the man who robs a lover of his maid, had to expiate their sins by a proportionate payment. And so also with “the holy things of the Lord”: the sacrifice of a ram was accompanied by a payment of shekels of silver; the first-born of the Israelites were redeemed from the Levites for five shekels apiece by the poll; when the people were numbered, a payment of half a shekel for every man was exacted; and the advice of a seer was paid for in silver money.

The use of precious metals as objects of exchange does not extend farther eastward than the Semitic dominion. In the Zend writings, we find no trace of a currency; an ox is mentioned as payment (pecunia), and in the Law of Zoroaster we find an ox exacted as punishment. According to Biblical testimony precious metals were of no account with the Medians and Parthians except for ornaments. India, even including the gold countries of northern India, was either not cognisant of the use of precious metals as payment, or only adopted such a use of them in a very small way in intercourse with foreigners; and whereas the taxes were levied in money in all the Persian provinces, the Indians paid theirs in bars of gold.

In ancient Egypt, silver money was the common means of payment in her intercourse with the Semites. The presentments upon ancient Egyptian monuments, in which gold and silver earrings are weighed would not prove this, but these presentments record the payment of taxes by foreign people; and the classics and Holy Scripture give concurrent testimony on their use of money. Reference is made to the laws of the old Egyptian kings on the circulation of money, and false coinage.

When we find silver used as money by a people, it shows that it has either a great trade, or that it has reached a rather advanced stage of culture, and it mostly means both. Unworked rough silver pieces, like the oldest money, could only be of value where there were merchants who would take them in exchange for wares or where they understood how to work it. The former was the case with the Hebrews and in the neighbouring countries of Phœnicia, where it was almost exclusively in the hands of those settled in the country, or of the Phœnicians who resorted thither. But in Greece, where, in the Homeric period, the art of working precious metals was not known and trade was in a very backward state, advance had to be made in both directions before money became current. This did not occur till the ninth century, when Greece began to have important places of trade; and as commerce was at that time almost entirely in the hands of the Phœnicians, it led to the introduction of their mode of trade in the country. The use of silver money in Italy is of a later date still.

The localities of the use of silver as money in antiquity are thus made patent. The Phœnicians traded with other countries than those mentioned, for we know for certain that they went to the Balearic Isles, Spain, Britain, and western and northern Africa. Therefore the nearer a country lay to Phœnicia the earlier it adopted the use of silver as money, and the farther away it lay from this central point of ancient trade the later it was before silver appeared as a medium of exchange in that country, as it was evidently dependent on the country having commercial relations with the Phœnicians.

With regard to the origin of silver in antiquity, we must remark that silver was far more seldom found than gold, and that a great deal of that mentioned by the ancients was so mixed with gold that only an eighth part was silver. The Biblical books, although referring to several places where gold was found, only mention silver coming from Tarshish, or Turditania, and that also brought to Canaan by the trade with Ophir.

In Africa, from whence Western Asia procured her great quantities of gold, the ancients found no silver. In the whole of Western Asia, the seat of the Semitic races, there was no silver, and in Asia Minor there was only a small quantity procured from the mines; and these are the only silver mines mentioned in Asia in antiquity, beyond the unimportant ones of Canaan and northern India. Moreover, in Europe, with the exception of the silver country of Turditania, silver was found only in very few places and in very small quantities.

Cyprus had some silver and gold mines, but it is very doubtful whether it was also to be found in Crete; and albeit unimportant, there were also gold and silver mines in Siphnus. Greece and the neighbouring countries were very poor in silver until the Persian war, the places where it was to be found, like the mines in Attica and probably the silver mines of Epirus and Macedonia, being either not known, or being worked by the Phœnicians; and it was the same with the mines of Thasos and Thrace, which were more famous for their gold than their silver. And beyond these places, if we except the Phœnician commercial district of northern Europe, mention was only made of the silver of Sardinia and Gaul, where the metal was only a late discovery, and of Britain.

Under these circumstances, the Biblical records which tell of Western Asia’s treasures of silver coming from the Phœnician colony of Tarshish are of great value to the history of ancient commerce. The Euphrates is also mentioned in these records, and it is moreover shown that being the centre of the commerce of antiquity, it was the depot for the metals found in the western countries, and as the Phœnicians monopolised the trade with Turditania for nearly a thousand years, they brought the silver to the market of Asia.

The enormous amount of silver possessed by Western Asia even in remote times, shows the great amount circulated by Phœnicia, as it was almost exclusively obtained by trade with that country.

Although silver was more difficult to obtain than gold, and was mostly first secured with gold in small quantities, it was used more than gold. The Greeks generally reckoned that gold was worth the tenth part of silver, and in Biblical books, in the seventh century B.C., there are signs of a similar comparison; but in more remote times silver must have ranked lower than gold, at least in Western Asia.

According to the Mosaic books, of the silver and golden gifts which the twelve chiefs made to the sanctuary, the silver gifts were worth twenty times as much as the golden, and it is therefore presumable, as the ancients were accurate in their statements about hieratic matters, that the old valuation of gold and silver was still then in vogue. As, moreover, in more ancient times, a great deal of silver and a comparatively small amount of gold was imported into Palestine, as gold was used only for ornaments, and not as money, the above valuation is not so astonishing.

We hear in Solomon’s days of plenty of silver, that the vessels of his house were made of pure gold, for silver was “nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon” (1 Kings x. 21), or that he “made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones” (1 Kings x. 27). These are evidently hyperbolical expressions, but they would hardly have been used if a certain change had not taken place in its valuation.

However it may be, an extraordinary amount of silver found its way into Western Asia at a very early period; and the farther one goes back in the history of Phœnicia and its vicinity, the greater the wealth of these countries in precious metals is seen to be; and hence the explanation of the part played there by gold and silver since the seventh century.

The great wealth in gold and silver in Western Asia is shown in the accounts given of the treasures which fell into the hands of the conquering Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the Hebrews in the times of David and Solomon. These treasures did not come from mines, at least we know of none in Western Asia, but they were gained partly from the conquered countries as tributes and booty, and partly from trade which was mainly directed to the capitals of the conquering kingdoms. The record of the wealth of the Assyrian kings far exceeds the almost fabulous accounts of the amount of silver found in Persia by the Macedonian conqueror.

THE SLAVE TRADE OF PHŒNICIA

But the most important branch of Phœnician commerce was the slave trade. Many thousands of these unfortunate beings were employed in the numerous manufacturies and industries of the Phœnician cities, and nearly all the rowers on the great war-ships and trading vessels of this maritime nation were slaves. It is said that sixty thousand slaves manned the three hundred Phœnician ships which joined the Persian navy. In addition, vast numbers of slaves were sent to the colonies for mining and industrial purposes. Hence it can be seen that the demands of the Phœnician markets alone, for slaves, must have been enormous. But the Phœnicians were not content to supply the home market. They searched the world for slaves; and the Phœnician slave dealer was known in every great city of ancient times. Indeed, so numerous became the slave merchants, that the Bible speaks of a thousand of them gathering at one time and place, to attend a slave market, as a not unusual occurrence. Human beings were the most important articles of merchandise in the olden times.

The slave trade is as ancient as is trade itself. Slaves figure in the religious stories of the Assyrians, the Lydians, and Phœnicians; and there are traders mentioned in the Biblical accounts of the old fathers of Israel, and in the poems and myths of the Homeric period. Phœnician seafarers, who sold their wares on distant shores, took the opportunity of kidnapping boys and girls to sell them elsewhere at a high price. The account of Eumæus in the Odyssey will be recollected; Io, and also the chorus of maidens in Euripides’ Helena, were represented as having been brought by Phœnician merchants to Egypt. The traders by land also dealt in human wares. We know how Joseph was sold for twenty shekels to the travelling Midianite merchants.

With the establishment of a regular commercial intercourse between cities and nations, the kidnapping of human beings ceased to be practised by reputable Phœnician merchants; but avaricious men still secretly sent out ships for the purpose of capturing human wares. These spoilers haunted the coasts and harbours of Phœnicia, Asia Minor, and Syria; and either exacted a high ransom from the relatives of their captives, or sold them in the public slave markets.

During the most prosperous period of the slave trade we find the Phœnician slave dealers everywhere, even on the fields of battle, where they followed the fortunes of war as peddlers and purveyors. The booty which fell into the hands of the soldiers was at once purchased by these traffickers, and the little children and women, whose transport would have been difficult, were sold to them at a very low price, or exchanged for wine or some other commodity valued by the soldiers.

In this double capacity as purveyors and slave dealers the Phœnicians appear in the Old Testament account of the armies which attacked the Jews. After the raid, led by the Philistines against the Jews about 845 B.C. (Joel iii. 3), the prophet said: “They have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they might drink,” and the same prophet, when mentioning the slave trade of the Syrians and Sidonians, writes: “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off.”

The greater number of Phœnician slaves came from the neighbouring countries of Palestine and Syria; and this not only because of the nearness of these countries to Phœnicia, but also because of the political condition of their inhabitants. In a great part of Syria and Palestine the old populations had been enslaved by the races invading these countries. As the Canaanites had to submit to the Jews and Hebrews in the south, so the Syrians had to bow to the Canaanites in the north, where they were not only in force on the seacoast, but had become the ruling race far into the interior. A great number of the Jewish inhabitants in the district of the Phœnician maritime cities had the same fate, and, according to many accounts, they were driven into slavery. Hence the inherited enmity between the Phœnicians and the Syrians, and more especially between the Jews and every neighbouring race. The intermingling of so many different neighbouring small states caused continuous wars, which were often waged solely for the purpose of obtaining slaves and gaining wealth by the sale of them. Moreover, slavery was not a despised condition amongst races, accustomed to it from the earliest times, whose gods like Sandon, Marna, Semiramis, and Astarte, whose forefathers like Jacob and Joseph, and whose heroes like Samson had been slaves, or servants. Thus it was quite a common custom in Palestine for parents to sell their children as slaves, or for persons willingly to enter slavery. The Greeks and Romans, therefore, long regarded the Syrians and Jews as born to slavery, as the Europeans once considered the negroes.

The Syrians seem to have been very popular as slaves, but being rather a delicate race, not accustomed to hard work, they distinguished themselves in their devotion to their masters, and their deftness in handiwork, hence their value as house and body slaves. They were also excellent bakers and cooks, and gardeners, for horticulture was unequalled in Syria, and in these respects they were in great demand in western Asia, Europe, and Africa. The women slaves from Syria were equally popular,--pretty, musical, and song-loving,--the Syrians acted as ladies’ maids and hairdressers, and we find them taken to Greece and Italy as dancers, and flute and zither players, where they were a profitable investment to their owners.

Hebrew slaves were a most important branch of the trade, although there is no express mention of it. In the time of the judges when the northern Jewish races were subjugated by the Phœnicians, and when they were at times at the mercy of the Philistines’ raids in the prosecution of their slave trade, the traffic assumed great proportions, and continued until the reigns of Solomon and David, when the political and commercial relations of the Phœnicians and Israelites were put on a proper footing, and a treaty was made forbidding the Phœnicians to take Hebrew slaves out of the country. But after the decline of the David and Solomon kingdom, and the consequent change of the political and commercial relations of both countries, we find complaints of the Phœnicians breaking the old contract and transporting Hebrew slaves both eastward and westward. The Assyrian wars subsequently led to the Hebrews being taken as slaves into both neighbouring and distant countries.

In the Maccabæan wars, we find Phœnician slave dealers crowding the battle-fields, where they bought the Jews at a low price. This period and that following the wars of Pompey in Syria and Judea were the palmy days of Phœnicia’s slave trade. Delos was the great seat of this trade, as it was then the chief resort of Phœnician merchants. Thousands of slaves were imported and sold there on the same day, and the great Dispersion of the Jews in the West dates from this time, which consisted less of merchants than of liberated slaves. But the Phœnician trade in Jewish slaves went on till the latest times, when we find Phœnician merchants in the much frequented slave market at the Terebinth of Hebron buying four Jews for a measure of barley after the war of Hadrian in Judea.

The beautiful women and boys of Greece had from early times been introduced into the East as slaves. In Homeric times they commanded a higher price than any other commodity, and they were brought by Phœnician pirates as prisoners of war to Egypt and Palestine.

The prices at which slaves were bought were uncommonly low, whereas the prices at which they were resold were very high. The greatest profits were made by the slave dealers, who were often pirates, and frequently gained large sums in ransom money for wealthy or princely captives. In Pontus, which was the chief depot for most of these slaves, Lucullus tells us that a slave could be bought for 4 drachmæ, which in English money would be about 17_s._ 8_d._ ($4.25). When the slave dealers had an opportunity of buying prisoners of war on battle-fields, or when soldiers put up for sale their booty of women and children, the prices were equally low. The Punic soldiers were sold by the Romans for 3 thalers 18 gr. In Amos we read of the needy being sold for a pair of shoes. In Isaiah lii. 3, reference is made to the Jews being “sold for nought.” The price given by the Phœnicians for slaves was high in comparison with that of other countries; and even those mentioned in the Mosaic Law are rather lower than the Phœnician market prices of the time. Female children from 1 month to 5 years were estimated at 3 shekels, a male child of the same age 5 shekels. The price rose from 5 to 20 years of age; boys and youths were estimated at 20 shekels, girls were worth half as much. The highest price was between 20 and 60 years of age; for men 50 shekels, for women 30. At the fourth stage of 60 years and over, the price went down with men three-fourths, i.e., to 15 shekels, and with women to two-thirds, or to 10 shekels.

Compared with the modern prices of slaves, those of antiquity were far lower; but the prices demanded in modern times by the slave dealers of Central Africa, which were from 10 to 20 per cent. lower than on the coast, were about the same as those of antiquity. Two or three generations ago, on the Lake Chad a ten-year slave boy cost about 15 shillings, and a girl of the same age about 21 shillings, prices which correspond closely to those given by slave dealers in antiquity, and to the valuation of slaves as recorded in the Mosaic Law.[c]

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VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION

Egypt and Babylonia were doubtless the greatest nations of remote antiquity, but Phœnicia was in some respects more wonderful than either. Here was a people occupying a tiny strip on the coast of the Mediterranean, its total population aggregated in a few scattered cities, yet, actuated by a common impulse, reaching out east and west, north and south, to the very limits of the known world, and weaving with its trading ships and caravans a web of unity between all the civilised nations of the eastern hemisphere.

Phœnicia itself was at most something like one hundred and fifty miles in length, and in width it varied from literally a few yards to at most thirty-five miles. But the territories that paid tribute through the merchants and explorers whose home was in this tiny centre, were as widely separated as India on the one hand, and the Atlantic islands off the west coast of Africa on the other.

The Phœnician explorers sailed far out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which for every other nation of antiquity represented the westernmost limits of the known world. Northward the Phœnician commerce stopped only with the confines of civilisation, and southward, on at least one occasion, the adventurous explorers went far beyond it, actually circumnavigating Africa--a feat which was not repeated by their successors for two thousand years.

This circumnavigation of Africa has been questioned, and, indeed, it must be admitted that it rests on rather scant evidence, as we have nothing for it but the authority of Herodotus. But it chanced that in the tale which Herodotus tells he unconsciously bears witness to the truth of the narrative, when he relates that the explorers claimed to have sailed into a region where they had the sun on their right; that is to say, to the north. Herodotus himself does not of course at all comprehend the meaning of this alleged phenomenon; he even asserts that he doubts the accuracy of this statement. Yet, as moderns view the matter, it is clear that this statement in itself is practically a demonstration that the explorers at least did go beyond the equator, and this being the fact, it seems not unreasonable to credit their claim to have made an entire circuit of the continent.

The Phœnicians were not conquerors except in a commercial sense; but, as the traders of the ancient world, they were the means of spreading civilisation to a degree unequalled by any other nation. In particular they colonised the Mediterranean; and they were credited, no doubt justly, by the Greeks with having introduced at least the elements of Egyptian and Babylonian culture to that nation. Their most famous feat in this direction was of course the introduction of the alphabet, which, as the traditions of the time relate, and as modern scholars are quite ready to believe, the Phœnician traders brought with them from the Orient.

THE PHŒNICIANS AND THE ALPHABET

As to the exact origin of this alphabet, modern scholars are still somewhat in doubt. The Greeks themselves ascribed its origin to the Egyptians, believing that the Phœnicians had adopted a modified alphabet from the hieroglyphics. There were others, however, among the ancients who ascribed the origin of the Phœnician alphabet not to Egypt, but to Babylonia, and curiously enough this discrepancy amongst ancient authorities is exactly matched by the discordant opinions of the scholarship of our own day. It is admitted on all hands that the Phœnicians did not themselves invent their alphabet. But whether the foundation upon which they built it was the hieroglyphic or hieratic script of the Egyptians, or the elaborate cuneiform syllabary of Mesopotamia, is not even now clearly established.

The theory of Egyptian origin found about the middle of the 19th century an able and strenuous advocate in the person of Viscount de Rougé, who elaborated the theory which specifically accounted, or attempted to account, for the different letters of the Phœnician alphabet as of Egyptian origin. He based his comparisons not upon the hieroglyphics, but on the modified forms of the hieratic script, believing with good reason that the Phœnicians obtained their alphabet at a very early date--perhaps something like 2000 B.C. He logically confined his analysis to an observation of the oldest specimens of the hieratic writings that were accessible, in particular using the Prisse Papyrus, which, as good fortune would have it, chanced to be written in a very clear, bold hand. This hieratic script, as is well known, follows the hieroglyphics themselves in using at once an alphabet, a syllabary, and a modified form of ideographs. It is one of the most curious facts in the history of human evolution that the Egyptians having advanced through the various stages of mental growth necessary to the evolution of an alphabet, should have retained the antique forms of picture writing and of syllabic representations of sounds after they had made the final analysis which gave them the actual alphabet, and that to the very last they should have used a jumble of the various forms of representation in all their writings. The feat of the Phœnicians, according to the theory of De Rougé, was to select from the Egyptian characters those that were purely, or almost purely, alphabetic in character, and recognising that these alone were sufficient, to reject all the rest. Simple as such a selection seems when viewed from the standpoint of later knowledge, it really must have required the imagination of the most brilliant genius to effect it.

The theory of De Rougé was so ably supported through comparison of the most ancient known inscriptions of the Phœnicians with the hieratic alphabet of the Egyptians that it was almost at once accepted by a large number of scholars, and for many years was pretty generally regarded as having solved the old-time puzzle of the origin of the Phœnician alphabet. More recently, however, the theory of De Rougé has been called in question and the old theory of Pliny, which ascribed the origin of the alphabet to the Babylonian script rather than the Egyptian, has been revived by modern archæologists. Professor Deecke attempted to derive the Phœnician alphabet from the later Assyrian. This attempt, however, has been characterised as refuting itself in the very expression, for it can hardly be in question that the Phœnician alphabet was in use long before the later Assyrian came into existence. A more logical attempt, however, has been made to draw a comparison between the Phœnician and the ancient Accadian, which was the classical speech of Mesopotamia and the model on which the later Assyrian itself was based. This theory, first suggested perhaps by Professor Wuttke, found an able advocate in Dr. J. P. Peters, and more recently has been sanctioned by the high authority of Professor Hommel. Their opinions on the other hand have been ardently combated by the advocates of the theory of De Rougé, and the subject is as yet too obscure and the data are too few for a final decision.

Whether the Phœnicians went to Egypt or to Mesopotamia, however, for their model, it is at least admitted on all sides that among this people originated the alphabet which was transmitted to the Greeks, and through the Greeks to all modern European nations. This fact should of itself suffice to give the Phœnicians a foremost place among the nations of antiquity, in the estimation of the modern critic.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS; RELIGION

It is a curious fact that the nation to which all Europe owes its alphabet should have been the one which has left us the fewest written records of all of the great nations of antiquity. It is not at all in question that the Phœnicians first developed a purely alphabetical script and transmitted it to the Greeks, yet there are no written monuments of Phœnicia herself preserved to us that are as ancient by some five hundred years as the oldest records of Greece, that have been found in the ruins of her so-called Mycenæan period. Indeed, the oldest records of Phœnician life, at present known, do not come from the territory of Phœnicia proper, but from her colonies. This anomaly has been explained by saying that the Phœnicians were not essentially a monumental people. They were seemingly but little solicitous to preserve records of their national life, the reason being, no doubt, that such records among the early nations were almost solely actuated by the desire of a great conquering monarch to preserve the memory of his own fame. As Phœnicia had no great conquering monarchs, as her conquests were all peaceful ones, lacking the element of dramatic picturesqueness, there was no one who had a personal interest in engraving inscriptions to tell her story to posterity.

Even so great a feat as the invention of the alphabet was probably looked upon by the Phœnicians as more or less a natural development growing out of their contact with Egypt and Babylonia. And, indeed, it is not through the Phœnicians themselves, but through the Greeks, that we are informed of the fact that our alphabet is of Phœnician origin.

So far as one is able to picture the actual manners and customs of the Phœnicians, in the period of their greatest power, one must think of them essentially as a matter-of-fact manufacturing and commercial nation, living in a few relatively large cities, and sending out colonies from these cities whenever the growth of population made such extension seem necessary. Sidon and Tyre were alternately the cities of greatest influence, but neither one apparently was at any period a really great city as regards actual count of population. Tyre in particular had its most important part built upon a small island, which afforded it wonderful opportunities for defence, as such conquerors as Nebuchadrezzar and Alexander found to their cost.

But this island as explored by modern investigators has seemed to be so limited in size as to prohibit any thought that its population was ever large. And it at once becomes clear how necessary it was that colonies should be sent out from time to time, since the population of any prosperous country is constantly increasing. It has even been suggested that the main population of Tyre must, at any given period of its prosperity, have been necessarily absent from its island home on voyages of war or peace, since the restricted area of the island itself makes it difficult to account otherwise for the distribution of such a number of men as was necessary to the equipment of the Phœnician navies and trading fleets.

A nation of traders must necessarily have a high degree of intelligence of a practical kind, but it would seem that the culture of the Phœnicians did not greatly advance beyond this. Their religion was always apparently of a very crude oriental type, akin to that of the Babylonians and of the early Hebrews. In literature they apparently never ranked with these neighbouring nations. Indeed, if they produced at any time a literature of significance, all traces of it are now lost, except certain fragments of doubtful authenticity that have come to us through the Greeks; the most important of these being the alleged writings of Sanchoniathon, as translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and preserved, in part, by Eusebius.[a]

Such knowledge as we have of the religion of the Phœnicians is derived from the writings of foreign authors, Greek, Roman, and Hebrew, and from the disputed work of Sanchoniathon just referred to. With this doubtful exception, all native literature on the subject has perished. Nor does art step in, as in the case of Egypt and Babylonia, to atone in some measure for the loss; a few coins and idols found in Cyprus are all the help it gives us in forming an idea of how the Phœnicians conceived of their gods. [Renan discovered the remains of a temple of Adonis near Byblus.]

In the Phœnician cosmogony, the beginning of all things was a moving and limitless chaos of utter darkness. After the lapse of ages this agitated air became enamoured of its own first principles, and from this embrace was generated Mot, which some interpret mud, and others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. From this the universe came forth, first living creatures without sensation, then intelligent beings (Zophasemin or beholders of the Sun), in shape like an egg. From this, too, the sun, moon, and stars were evolved, and the heat and light generated clouds, wind, and rain. At the sound of the tempest creatures male and female awoke, intelligent, but feeble and timid in mind, worshipping the products of the earth. Next, of Kol-pia (Wind) and his wife Baau (Night) were born mortals, Æon and Protogonos, whose children, Genos and Genea, dwelt in the land of Phœnicia and worshipped the Sun, Beelsamin, Lord of Heaven.

Sanchoniathon’s history tells how three sons were born to Æon and Protogonos,--Light, Fire, and Flame. These begot a gigantic race, whose names were bestowed upon the mountains, and of them sprang Memrumus and Hypsouranius (unless the latter name be merely the Greek version of the former). Hypsouranius fixed his dwelling in the island of Tyre, and by him and his race the various arts of mankind were invented.

Of the gods we are told that the progenitors of the race were Eliun and his wife Beruth, who dwelt near Byblus, the oldest city in Phœnicia. Ouranos (Heaven) son of Eliun, wedded his sister Ghe (Earth), and by her had four sons and three daughters. Cronos, the eldest son, deposed and ultimately slew his father, and it is he who assigned to the various other deities their offices and places of abode in Phœnicia.

The Phœnician religion was of a distinctively national type. The active and passive forces of nature were symbolised by male and female deities, as in Egypt, but the Phœnician gods were more definitely associated with the heavenly bodies than the Egyptian. It is doubtful whether Osiris and Isis were primarily identified with the Sun and Moon, but such was unquestionably the case with the Baal and Ashtoreth of Phœnicia. According to Sanchoniathon, the proper title of Baal was Beelsemin, Lord of the Heavens, or Sun. He was the principal Phœnician divinity, and thus his name came to be equivalent to Supreme God, and is more frequently used in this sense than with reference to his original character of Sun-god. In this sense, too, it was applied to other gods locally regarded as supreme, Melkarth, for example, is the Baal of Tyre; and it is therefore difficult to distinguish the character and attributes of Baal, Bel, or Belus from those of Cronos, Ouranos, and Moloch, who were likewise identified with the Sun. In the course of time, the later character so far prevailed over the earlier that the Sun became the object of a separate worship; a process to which we find analogies in the religions of Egypt and Greece. Baal was also identified with the planet Saturn, which presided over the rest, and was therefore their lord or Baal.

The name of Ashtoreth or Astarte does not appear in early Greek writers, to them the principal goddess of the Phœnicians is Aphrodite or Venus Urania (the Celestial). It is said to be Phœnician, but we can gather from it no hint of the primary physical or cosmical character of the goddess who bore it. She was identified with the Moon, as distinguished from the Sun, and with Air and Water, as opposed to Fire. Herodotus says that the oldest seat of her worship was at Askalon, and identifies her with the Babylonian Mylitta and the Alitta or Alilat of Arabian tribes.

The worship of Mylitta at Babylon was accompanied by wanton rites, but these do not seem to have been associated at first with the character of Urania or Astarte, and in the Scriptures the religion of the Phœnicians is reprobated rather for its cruelty than for its licentiousness. It was from the worship of the goddess Mylitta, at Babylon, that the corruption of morals spread to the worship of Venus in Syria, Phœnicia, and Cyprus, tainting it with an impurity which formed no part of it originally.

The worship of Venus must have been established in Cyprus long before the Greeks began to colonise the island, though it owed its great development, in part at least, to their plastic imagination. Here, too, the license which characterised the worship of Mylitta prevailed, and the ports of the island became celebrated for the number and beauty of their courtesans. Large bodies of hierodulæ, at once prostitutes and ministers of the goddess, were attached to the temples of Venus in Asia, and afterward in Greece. The origin of this custom, evil as it was, must originally have been religious in character, for the daughters of noble Armenian families passed without reproach from the service of the goddess to marriage with their equals in rank. We find traces of the same customs in remote Phœnician settlements.

Cronos or Saturn is mentioned by Greek and Latin writers among the principal deities of Phœnicia and Carthage, but it is by no means certain which particular Phœnician god answered to the Cronos of the Greeks. The most characteristic circumstance we learn concerning him is that human sacrifices were made in his honour. “The Phœnician history of Sanchoniathon,” says Porphyry, “is full of instances in which that people, when suffering under great calamity … chose, by public vote, one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn.” In the fragmentary history preserved to us, we find no mention of such sacrifices, but in the siege under Alexander it was proposed to revive a custom obsolete for ages, and sacrifice a boy to Saturn. That such a practice prevailed in earlier times is certain; we trace it in the Phœnician colonies, and above all in Carthage. On the occasion of any extraordinary calamity an unusual number of victims was sacrificed, but human sacrifice was also part of the established ritual, and every year a youthful victim was chosen by lot.

Infants were burnt alive, and the most acceptable of all sacrifices was that of an only child. The image of Saturn was of brass, the outstretched hands were hollowed so as to receive the body of the child, which slid thence to a fiery receptacle below. Mothers brought their infants in their arms, and quieted them by caresses till the moment they were thrown into the flames, since any manifestation of reluctance would have rendered the sacrifice unacceptable to the god. Human sacrifices were not made to one god only, or to one answering to the Saturn of the Greeks and Romans; but since Saturn was reputed to have devoured his own children it was natural that they should call any god to whom infants were offered by his name. Wherever human sacrifices prevailed they assumed that Saturn was worshipped; but, although Chiun (mentioned by the prophet Amos) was undoubtedly the planet Saturn, it does not appear that infants were offered to him.

The gods hitherto mentioned belonged to Phœnicia as a whole, but Melkarth, “king of the city” was the tutelary god of Tyre, and by Tyrian colonies his worship was spread far and wide throughout the ancient world. Under the name of Melicertes he appears in Greek mythology as a Sea-god, and bears the synonym of “the wrestler,” an epithet of Hercules. The Egyptians worshipped Hercules as one of their great gods, but Herodotus found no trace to show that his worship had been brought from Egypt to Tyre.

We should expect to find among a seafaring people the worship of a god corresponding to the Greek Poseidon, but though several marine deities are mentioned by Sanchoniathon, very few traces of any such god appear in the public worship of Phœnicia. This may perhaps be explained by the circumstance that they brought their religious system with them to the shores of the Mediterranean. The mythology of Semitic nations appears to have contained no god to correspond with Neptune. The divinities who really presided over navigation among the Phœnicians were the Cabiri, the reputed sons of Vulcan, who were represented in the garb of smiths, and whose images were placed on the prows of Phœnician vessels.

If idolatry be defined as the worship of false gods the Phœnicians were idolaters, but they were not image-worshippers in the same sense as the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Their temples seem to have contained no representation of the deity, or at most, a rude symbol. What we know of their religion is merely external; to the more interesting question of what spiritual conceptions they attached to the names and attributes of their gods and the rites by which they were worshipped, we have no answer to give. The leading characteristic of the nation was practical activity, and the evidences of this were what foreigners saw and recorded. Our ignorance is the less to be regretted because the Phœnician religion had little influence in historic times on the beliefs of other nations or on the art and literature of the ancient world. Its genuine character survived at Carthage, and even after the fall of that colony it long retained its hold on such portions of northern Africa as had been subject to Carthaginian dominion.[b]

CULTURE; ART

That which gave the Phœnician culture of the period preceding the Egyptian supremacy its peculiar stamp, was the abundance of Babylonian elements, which had, however, been so thoroughly assimilated, that the civilisation of Phœnicia presented itself to the Egyptians as a perfected and independent one.

There was an astonishing number of cities and fortified places. Many branches of industry and a flourishing trade had increased the wealth of the inhabitants, and developed a considerable degree of luxury in their manners. At the same time, agriculture and stock-raising were extensively carried on. We know that the Egyptians imported great quantities of corn, wine, and oil from the land of Zahi, i.e., Syria and Phœnicia.

Babylonian and Assyrian influences cannot be distinguished in detail, but it seems probable that many of the borrowings in the field of religion came directly from Babylonia. The name of Astarte had already been given to the goddess worshipped in many places of Syria. The Phœnician priests may have had already the Babylonian robes in which they are later represented.

The religious art of Mesopotamia furnished the Phœnicians models for the representation of cherubs and other winged forms. This appears most plainly in the representation of the god Ilu, who is given not only a double pair of wings, but often, like some divinities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, a trailing caftan-like garment.

Moreover, it can readily be seen that the borrowing of the alphabet must have been preceded by long and numerous borrowings of a more material nature, and adaptations of arts.

The development of art in Syria was furthered by the great number of small states in the land. The love of display of all the petty princes increased the demand for jewels and costly vessels, especially for gold and silver work. The enormous profits of this trade were also doubtless an attraction to the Phœnicians.

In the articles of luxury that came to Egypt by way of tribute or of trade, the art and industry of the Nile Valley found much to learn. From them was obtained a greater supply of designs suitable for merely ornamental purposes, and also a hitherto unknown method of application for some ornaments. Thus, reliefs now and then contain full-faced figures of gods and men, and a greater preference for winged figures manifests itself. There are, in fact, but few fields in which the counter effect of unhindered intercourse with the inhabitants of Syria cannot be traced.

On the other hand, the peoples of Syria adopted much from the Egyptians and their civilisation. In Phœnicia, to be sure, this influence is not so plain as in the coast-land of Palestine, but it is none the less a certainty for all the succeeding periods. The Phœnician religion adopted the Egyptian gods Horus, Tehuti, Ptah, Bast, Hapi, and others. The Osiris myth gained considerable currency among the Phœnicians. In their attempts to determine the relations of the various gods the Phœnician priests may have followed Egyptian schemes; for both Phœnician and Egyptian theology establish eight divinities, or four pairs of gods, as world-forming powers under the rule of a chief god.

But the most important effect of the contact with Egypt is seen in the art, and particularly the religious art, of the Phœnicians. Much use is made of various signs and hieroglyphs, e.g., the full moon symbol, the hieroglyph for “life,” the serpent of Uræus, the hawk of Horus, the eye of Uzat. Scarabs, too, were quite extensively made.

Decorative patterns as well as sacred symbols were adopted by the Phœnicians from Egypt. The lotus flower and bud, and the nechef plant especially, came into vogue as designs for capitals.

Finally, it seems altogether probable that the Phœnicians in their intercourse both with Egypt and their neighbours in Syria borrowed not only forms, but methods in all fields of art and industry.

That an art which was bent principally upon assimilation and imitation was not able to attain any great consistency of development, nor feeling for unity of style, is not at all surprising. To find a language of form, in which Asiatic would combine with Egyptian to produce something new, was beyond its power; its mode of expression remains a kind of jargon, embellished with a little Greek, but which never stood higher than pigeon English among the idioms of the present. Where the Phœnician artist gives free play to the inventions of his own genius, he only produces creations that show a lack of genuine feeling for form, in no less degree than the rough and absurd mixture of totally different styles, of which he is so often guilty.

In their fame as inventors there is so much borrowed glory that it is questionable whether the founding of a single branch of industry is really to be ascribed to them. Their commercial capacity must be reckoned far higher than their creative ability, than all that they ever produced independently. A tenacious striving for enrichment by the gains of trade, which, full of a delight in undertaking, of shrewd determination and calculation, seeks its advantage without yielding to any difficulty or danger, is united with a mode of thought that bends circumstances to itself: that knows no consolidated national interests; that, in spite of the religious fears that pictured with horrors the fate of the soul of him who died abroad without ritualistic protection from the demon of the death hour, and in spite of a devoted attachment to the place of birth, is always ready to leave it as soon as it appears advantageous.[c]

THE PHŒNICIAN INFLUENCE ON HISTORY

If we sum up all that has been said to specify the place of the Phœnicians in the history of the world, we see that their position was more due to their circulation of the cultures of the eastern lands to western countries than to their own creations.

By their inventions and technical skill, activity, and industry they enriched and beautified the external life of the ancient people. By their courageous sea voyages, they extended the knowledge of the world and opened up new objects for discovery, and fresh fields for the spirit of enterprise. By their great intercourse and universal commerce, they introduced the products of distant cultured countries to the most backward races, and thus incited them to creations of their own. And if these advantages were of a material nature, and if the satisfaction of the desire for gain and profit were the aim and object of this selfish commercial people, they bore the seed of an advanced culture which elicited imitation which would not otherwise have been attempted.

The historical books of the Tyrians, mentioned by Josephus, with the exact account of the period, were not without influence on the Israelites and Greeks; and the tradition that the Phœnicians introduced the alphabet-writing to the European people, and were the founders of many religious forms and cult practices, and taught the sacred arts, shows that deeper elements of culture were fostered and circulated with the material benefits, and that trade and intercourse in their hands were active instruments for spiritual evolution, as their attention was not exclusively turned to the material, but also directed to spiritual advantages.

Through their colonies the Phœnicians became the creators of ordered state forms and legal institutions which put bounds and limitations to the common conditions of war. Activity was used for the welfare and salvation of mankind, and the arts of peace found a proper field for their beneficial development. This, however, is the sum of their influence. It would be appraising the Phœnicians too highly to regard them as the forerunners of the Greeks in religious wisdom, art, and poetry.

In religious doctrine they were more receptive than productive. They adopted most of the nature-symbolic divinities of the Babylonians, Egyptians, and other cultured races; and by mixing up different representations and symbols, they confused the ideas in a formless whole, and veiled them in mystic darkness. Instead of continuing through free speculation what is understood, or impressing an idiosyncratic national stamp on what was foreign, they reduced the fundamental elements to a complicated convolution of ideas devoid of clear forms or ethical foundation. As their life was so permeated with the mercantile spirit, they placed their divinities in direct relation with appearances of practical experience, and desecrated the deep doctrines by material significations, by lascivious use, and by cruel practices.

Given over to the sweet habits of life, they bemoaned in mourning services the instability and perishableness of all that is earthly, without seeking any faith in immortality or in the continuance of the soul beyond the borders of time. There are no traces or memorials of Phœnician poetry or literature.

Their cult, spoilt by unbridled or unnatural practices, was not of a character to express itself in holy inspiration and to give rise to religious hymns.

Their nature-gods, derived from the Tyrian Melkarth, were colourless symbolic figures, destitute of heroic deeds, or historical myths fitting for a popular epic. What room, indeed, was there for leisure and interest in poetry and heroic stories in a restless life of industry and trade?

But surely the Phœnicians did something great in building and sculpture? It is true that the temple of Jerusalem was built by Tyrian workmen, artists, and builders; that the temple buildings in Tyre, Aradus, Paphos, and Gades, in Carthage and Utica, excited the admiration of antiquity; that the buildings of King Hiram, the ruined temples in Malta and Gozo, the gigantic tombs and the circular “nurhage” in the Balearic Isles and in Sardinia, testify to architectural skill; but they are far inferior to those of the Egyptians, or of the cultured races of the Euphrates and Tigris. From what we gather from some descriptions, their temples were more noted for size and magnificence than for artistic taste.

Their materials were chiefly wood and metal, and from the description of the jewels, treasures, and ornaments of all kinds, which distinguished the fine buildings of the Phœnicians, we see that their fame was not due to the grand full forms of simple stone architecture, but to the rich ornamentation and brilliant variegation. The structure of the ships seems also to have been of the same character as the buildings. The Phœnician buildings cannot be compared with the Assyrian, which the recent excavations have brought to light; and much that was hitherto attributed to the Phœnicians is now found to be Ninevite art, and also in the West many remains of old Phœnician work are traced to the Etruscans.

Phœnician sculpture takes a still lower rank. The physical powers which work externally and internally in the creation and destruction of nature that they deified could not be represented in beautiful forms in art, like the ethical powers of the human heart with the Greeks. Their fetiches were demoniacal distortions, their images of gods were frightful, and the figures were overladen with symbols and attributes. The human form, the fundamental type of all organic art, found no free and natural expression, and the fantastic forms of animals and plants on their vessels were borrowed from the Assyrians and Babylonians. Pure form and natural beauty were quite wanting.[i]

“The stage of development,” says Gerhard, “of such artistic remains of the Phœnicians as are known to us, instead of putting them on a higher plane show that their fame in antiquity was due to their technical working of such materials, as iron, gold, ivory, glass, and purple; and to their usefulness as intermediaries which led to their being often called upon either to execute or to disseminate the higher art of interior Asia. They had a considerable influence upon Grecian art in early times, but at the time of its development, very little. The inartistic nature and the want of the plastic sense, peculiar to all Semitic races, was seen in the Phœnicians.”[m]

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

Indirectly America owes its discovery to Phœnicia; for her bold venturers into new oceans began that spirit of discovery for the advancement of trade which has given the art or the sport of discovering a solid basis. The Phœnicians founded the school of maritime exploration which the Portuguese revived centuries later, and the Spanish took up at the instigation of the Italian Columbus. So America owes a debt to the Phœnicians. Indeed, there have not been wanting those who claimed that the Phœnicians themselves actually found and colonised America. Of this more will be said in the volumes on America. Meanwhile there follows a stirring account of a voyage made by Hanno who, five or six centuries B.C., set forth on a governmental commission to enlarge the knowledge and the trade of Carthage, the chief colony of Phœnician origin. Hanno’s own account is given followed by a comment of Heeren’s.[a]

“THE VOYAGE OF HANNO, BEYOND THE PILLARS OF HERCULES, WHICH HE DEPOSITED IN THE TEMPLE OF SATURN”

“It was decreed by the Carthaginians, that Hanno should undertake a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and found Liby-Phœnician cities. He sailed accordingly with sixty ships of fifty oars each, and a body of men and women to the number of thirty thousand, and provisions and other necessaries.

“When we had passed the Pillars on our voyage, and had sailed beyond them for two days, we founded the first city which we named Thymiaterium. Below it lay an extensive plain. Proceeding thence towards the west, we came to Solœis, a promontory of Libya, a place thickly covered with trees, where we erected a temple to Neptune; and again proceeded for the space of half a day towards the east, until we arrived at a lake lying not far from the sea, and filled with abundance of large reeds. Here elephants, and a great number of other wild beasts, were feeding.

“Having passed the lake about a day’s sail, we founded cities near the sea, called Cariconticos, and Gytte, and Acra, and Melitta, and Arambys. Thence we came to the great river Lixus, which flows from Libya. On its banks the Lixitæ, a shepherd tribe, were feeding flocks, amongst whom we continued some time on friendly terms. Beyond the Lixitæ dwelt the inhospitable Ethiopians, who pasture a wild country intersected by large mountains, from which they say the river Lixus flows. In the neighbourhood of the mountains lived the Troglodytæ, men of various appearances, whom the Lixitæ described as swifter in running than horses.

“Having procured interpreters from them, we coasted along a desert country toward the south two days. Thence we proceeded towards the east the course of a day. Here we found in a recess of a certain bay, a small island, containing a circle of five stadia, where we settled a colony, and called it Cerne. We judged from our voyage that this place lay in a direct line with Carthage; for the length of our voyage from Carthage to the Pillars was equal to that from the Pillars to Cerne.

“We then came to a lake, which we reached by sailing up a large river called Chretes. This lake had three islands, larger than Cerne, from which proceeding a day’s sail we came to the extremity of the lake, that was overhung by large mountains, inhabited by savage men, clothed in skins of wild beasts, who drove us away by throwing stones, and hindered us from landing. Sailing thence we came to another river, that was large and broad, and full of crocodiles and river horses; whence returning back we came again to Cerne.

“Thence we sailed towards the south twelve days, coasting the shore, the whole of which is inhabited by Ethiopians, who would not wait our approach but fled from us. Their language was not intelligible even to the Lixitæ, who were with us. Towards the last day we approached some large mountains covered with trees, the wood of which was sweet-scented and variegated. Having sailed by these mountains for two days, we came to an immense opening of the sea; on each side of which, towards the continent, was a plain, from which we saw by night fire arising at intervals in all directions, either more or less.

“Having taken in water there, we sailed forwards five days near the land, until we came to a large bay, which our interpreters informed us was called the Western Horn. In this was a large island, and in the island a salt-water lake, and in this another island, where, when we had landed, we could discover nothing in the day-time except trees; but in the night we saw many fires burning, and heard the sound of pipes, cymbals, drums, and confused shouts. We were then afraid, and our diviners ordered us to abandon the island. Sailing quickly away thence we passed a country burning with fires and perfumes; and streams of fire supplied from it fell into the sea. The country was impassable on account of the heat. We sailed quickly thence, being much terrified; and passing on for four days, we discovered at night a country full of fire. In the middle was a lofty fire, larger than the rest, which seemed to touch the stars. When day came we discovered it to be a large hill, called the Chariot of the Gods. On the third day after our departure thence, having sailed by those streams of fire, we arrived at a bay called the Southern Horn; at the bottom of which lay an island like the former, having a lake, and in this lake another island, full of savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called Gorillæ. Though we pursued the men, we could not seize any of them; but all fled from us, escaping over the precipices, and defending themselves with stones. Three women were, however, taken; but they attacked their conductors with their teeth and hands, and could not be prevailed upon to accompany us. Having killed them, we flayed them, and brought their skins with us to Carthage. We did not sail farther on, our provisions failing us.”[b]

Heeren makes this observation on Hanno’s account of his voyage. “The opinions respecting the Periplus of Hanno differ very widely from one another, both as regards its authenticity and the circumstances attending it. I cannot, however, believe that any critic will, in the present day, doubt its authenticity in the whole, though they may its completeness. Its shortness has led many to suppose that it is only the abridgment of a larger work, and this opinion is favoured by Rennell, and seems confirmed by the passage in Pliny, Hist. Nat. II, 67, where he says: Hanno sailed from Gades round Africa to Arabia, and has given a description of the voyage. But another writer has already justly observed that Pliny had not himself read the Periplus, but depended on the uncertain testimony of another; and that the passage of Pomponius Mela, III, 9, clearly shows that Mela had read our Periplus. Gosselin, Recherches, I, 64. The Periplus was not, certainly, the description of a voyage, in our sense of the phrase, but a public memorial of the expedition, being an inscription posted up in one of the principal temples of Carthage.”[f]

HIMILCO’S VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

About the same time that Hanno was seafaring southward another Carthaginian, Himilco, was working his way northward from Gades or (Cadiz). He was less successful in his efforts, and complained that a dearth of wind and a superfluity of seaweed ruined his progress. The Roman poet, Rufus Festus Avienus, of the fourth century A.D., made use of Himilco’s information in his poetical geography, Ora Maritima, from which the following picture of the world is taken.

“Where the ocean presses in, and spreads wide the Mediterranean waters, lies the Atlantic bay; here stands Gadeira [Gades], of old called Tartessus [Tarsish]; here the Pillars of Hercules, Abyla, left of Libya and Calpe. Here rises the head of the promontory, in olden times named Œstrymnon [Cornwall], and below, the like-named bay and isles; wide they stretch and are rich in metals, tin, and lead.

“There a numerous race of men dwell, endowed with spirit, and no slight industry, busied all in the cares of trade alone. They navigate the sea on their barks, built not of pines and oak, but wondrous made of skins and leather. Two days’ long is the voyage thence to the Holy Island, once so called, which lies expanded on the sea, the dwelling of the Hibernian race: at hand lies the Isle of Albion. Of yore the trading voyages from Tartessus reached to the Œstrymnides [the Scilly Islands]; but the Carthaginians and their colonies near the Pillars of Hercules navigated on this sea, which Himilco, by his own account, was upon during four months; for here no wind wafted the bark, so motionless stood the indolent wave. Seaweed abounds in this sea, he says, and retards the vessel in her course, while the monsters of the deep swarm around. Far off is seen Geryon’s hold; here wide expands the Bay of Tartessus, and from the river thither is one day’s voyage; here lies the town of Gadeira, of yore called Tartessus; then, great and rich, now poor and fallen, where I saw naught great but Hercules’ festival.

“Geryon’s fort and temple overtops the sea; a line of rocks crowns the bay; near the second rock disembogues the river. Close by arises the Tartessus’ mount bedecked with wood. Next follows the island Erythea, ruled by the Carthaginians, for in early days the Carthaginians had there planted a colony. The arm of the sea, which divides it from the continent and from the fort, is but five stadia broad. The island is sacred to Marine Venus; it contains her temple and oracle.

“Beyond the Pillars, on Europe’s coast, Carthage’s people of yore possessed many towns and places. Their practice was to build flat-bottomed barks for the convenience of navigating shallows; but westward, as Himilco tells us, is open sea; no ship has yet ventured on this sea, where the windy gales do not waft her, and thick fogs rest on the waters. It is the ocean which far roars around the land--the unbounded sea. This the Carthaginian Himilco saw himself, and from the Punic records I have taken what I tell thee.”[l]

POMPONIUS MELA ON THE PHŒNICIANS

Pomponius Mela, a Roman citizen but a Spaniard by birth, was the author of the earliest Latin treatise on geography extant. His work is dated about the middle of the first century A.D., and his description of the Phœnicians shows with what deference they were eyed at that time. The translation used here is that of Arthur Golding, published in London in 1590.

“Phœnicia is renowned for the Phœnicians a pollitique kinde of men, and both in feates of warre and peace peerlesse. They first inuented Letters and Letter matters and other artes also, as to goe to the sea with Shippes, to fight upon the water, to raigne over nations, to set up kingdomes, and to fight in order of battell. In it is Tyre, sometime an Ile, but nowe ioyned to the fyrme Lande, since the time that Alexander made workes about it to assault it. Further foorth, stand certaine small Villages, and the Cittie of Sidon, euen yet still wealthie, and in olde time the greatest of all the Cities oppon the Seacoast, before it was taken by the Persians.

“Between that and the foreland of Euprosopon (it may be interpreted fayre prospect), there are the Townes called Byblos and Botris, and beyonde them were three other, ech distaunt a furlong asunder, and therefore the place was of the number called Tripolis; then follow the Castle Simyra, and a Cittie not unrenowned, called Marathos. From thence the country being not crooked with the Sea, but lying foorth right side by side unto it, bendeth his shore into the maine Land, and receiveth a great Baie. About the which dwell ritch people, the cause whereof is the situation of the place, for that the Countrie being fertile, and furnished with many riuers able to beare shippes, serveth well for the easie erchaung and conueying in of all kinds of wares, both by Sea and Land. Within that Baye, is first the residue of Syria, which syrnamed Antioche, and on the shore thereof, stande the Cities Selucia, and Aradus.”[h]

APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS ON THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE BY DIDO

“The Phœnicians built Carthage in Africa fifty years before the sack of Troy. It was Founded by Xorus and Carchedon or as the Romans, and indeed the Carthaginians themselves, will have it, by a Tyrian Lady called Dido who (her Husband being privily murdered by Pygmaleon, Tyrant of Tyre, which was revealed to her in a Dream) conveyed aboard all the Treasure she could, and shipping herself with some Tyrians that fled from the Tyranny, came to Libya, to that place where now Carthage stands; and upon the people of that Countrie’s refusal to receive them, they demanded for their Habitation only so much Land as they could compass with an Ox-hide. This proposition seemed ridiculous to the Africans, and they thought it a shame to refuse strangers a thing of so small consequence, besides they could not imagine how any Habitation could be built in so small a patch of ground, and therefore that they might have the pleasure to discover the Phœnician subtlety, they granted their request.

“Whereupon the Tyrians, taking an Ox-hide, cut it round about, and made so fine a thong, that they therewith encompassed the place where they afterwards built the Citadel of Carthage, which from thence was called ‘Byrsa.’ [Byrsa in Greek signifies a Hide.]

“Soon after by little and little extending their limits, and becoming stronger than their neighbours, as they were more cunning, they caused ships to be built to traffick on the sea after the manner of the Phœnicians, by which means they built a city adjoining to their citadel. Their power thus encreasing they became masters of Libya, and the circumadjacent sea; and at last making War upon Sicily, Sardinia and all the Islands of the Sea, and even in Spain itself, they sent thither Colonies, till at length, from so small a beginning, they formed an Estate comparable in Power to that of the Greeks, and in Riches to that of the Persians.[e]”

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

I. LAND AND PEOPLE

[b] A. H. L. HEEREN, Historical Researches.

[c] R. PIETSCHMANN, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

[d] The Holy Bible.

[e] FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, Ἰουδαϊκη ἀρχαιολογία.

[f] HERODOTUS, Ἱστορίαι.

[g] JUSTIN, Historiarum Philippicarum libri XLIV (epitome of Trogus Pompeius).

[g] C. K. J. VON BUNSEN, Ægyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte.

[h] MENANDER OF EPHESUS, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

II. EARLY HISTORY AND INFLUENCES

[b] R. PIETSCHMANN, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

[c] O. MELTZER, Geschichte der Karthager.

[d] HERODOTUS, Ἱστορίαι.

[e] B. G. NIEBUHR, Lectures on Ancient History.

[f] The Holy Bible.

[g] MENANDER, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

III. THE PHŒNICIAN TIME OF POWER

[b] F. C. MOVERS, Die Phoenizier.

[c] MAX DUNCKER, Geschichte des Alterthums.

[d] R. PIETSCHMANN, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

[e] JOSEPHUS, Ἰουδαϊκη ἀρχαιολογία.

[f] The Holy Bible.

[g] HERODOTUS, Ἱστορίαι.

[h] MENANDER, Annals of Tyre (quoted in Josephus).

[i] DIUS, CHÆTUS, THEOPHILUS, EUPOLEMUS, Fragments.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IV. PHŒNICIA UNDER THE PERSIANS

[b] JOHN KENRICK, Phœnicia.

[c] HERODOTUS, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

[d] XENOPHON, Cyropædia (translated from the Greek by J. S. Watson and Henry Dale).

[e] DIODORUS SICULUS, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

[f] ARRIAN, History of Alexander’s Expedition (translated from the Greek by Mr. Rooke).

[g] QUINTUS CURTIUS, The Wars of Alexander (translated from the Latin by John Digby).

[h] ISOCRATES, Orations.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

V. PHŒNICIA UNDER THE GREEKS, THE ROMANS, AND THE SARACENS

[b] JOHN KENRICK, Phoenicia.

[c] DIODORUS SICULUS, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

[d] STRABO, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

[e] E. GIBBON, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[f] WILLIAM OF TYRE, Historia belli sacri.

[g] SANCHONIATHON (see Bibliography under Court de Gébelin).

[h] SAINT JEROME (HIERONYMUS), Commentarii in Iesaiam.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VI. THE STORY OF CARTHAGE

[b] GEORGE GROTE, History of Greece.

[c] JOHN KENRICK, Phoenicia.

[d] T. MOMMSEN, Römische Geschichte.

[e] MEYER’S Konversations-Lexikon.

[f] E. GIBBON, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

[g] THUCYDIDES, Συγγραφή.

[h] SALLUSTIUS, Bellum Jugurthinum.

[i] ERATOSTHENES, Γεωγραφικά.

[j] ISOCRATES, Orations.

[k] POLYBIUS, Καθολικὴ κοινὴ ἱστορία.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. PHŒNICIAN COMMERCE

[b] A. H. L. HEEREN, Historical Researches.

[c] F. C. MOVERS, Die Phoenizier.

[d] STRABO, The Geography of Strabo (translated from the Greek by J. Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

[e] DIODORUS SICULUS, The Historical Library (translated from the Greek by G. Booth).

[f] STRABO, Γεωγραφικά.

[g] HERODOTUS, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

[h] PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Historia Naturalis.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VIII. PHŒNICIAN CIVILISATION

[b] JOHN KENRICK, Phoenicia.

[c] R. PIETSCHMANN, Geschichte der Phoenizier.

[d] O. C. C. EMMANUEL DE ROUGÉ, Mémoire sur l’origine égyptienne de l’alphabet phénicien.

[e] W. DEECKE, Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift.

[f] H. WUTTKE, Geschichte der Schrift und des Schriftthums.

[g] J. P. PETERS, Nippur.

[h] F. HOMMEL, Geschichte Assyriens und Babyloniens.

[i] GEORG WEBER, Weltgeschichte.

[j] HERODOTUS, The History of Herodotus (translated from the Greek by William Beloe).

[k] PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Historia Naturalis.

[l] PHILO BYBLIUS (see Bibliography).

[m] EDUARD GERHARD, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder.

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

[b] HANNO, “The Periplus of Hanno.”

[c] JUSTIN, The History of the World (translated from the Latin by G. Turnbull).

[d] The Holy Bible.

[e] APPIANUS ALEXANDRINUS, The History of Appian of Alexandria (translated from the Greek by J. Dancer).

[f] A. H. L. HEEREN, Historical Researches.

[g] Himilco’s Voyage of Discovery. Preserved through the Ora Maritima of Rufus Festus Avienus.

[h] POMPONIUS MELA, The Rare and Singular Works of Pomponius Mela (translated from the Latin by Arthur Golding).

[i] ARISTOTLE, Politics.

[j] JAS. RENNELL, The Geographical System of Herodotus.

[k] P. F. J. GOSSELIN, Recherches sur la géographie systématique et positive des anciens.

[l] AVIENUS, Ora Maritima.

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PHŒNICIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY; WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

=Åkerblad=, J. D., Inscriptions Phœniciæ Oxoniensis nova Interpretatio, Parisiis, 1802; Notice sur deux inscriptions en caractères puniques, trouvées à Venise et sur les Varangues, Paris, 1804.--=Appianus=, Ῥωμαϊκὴ ιστορία, Leipsic, 1785, 3 vols. (Book 7 deals with the Hannibalic Wars, and contains matter of great value to the student of Carthaginian history, chiefly because it is based on lost authorities.)--=Aristotle=, Πολιτικφων, (ed. J. G. Schlossa), Lübeck, 1798.--=Arri=, Giannantonio, Lapide fenicia di Nora in Sardegna dichiarata (in Memorie della Reale Acad, di Torino, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 59-106); Lettre à Quatremère sur une inscription latino-phénicienne de Leptis (in Journ. Asiat., Ser. III, Vol. 2, pp. 142-176).--=Arrianus=, Ιστορίαι αναβάσεως Αλεξάνδρον, Lemgo, 1792-1811.--=Avienus=, R. F., Ora Maritima (a poem describing the shores of the Mediterranean from Marseilles to Cadiz, only a fragment of which is extant. The mention of Himilco’s voyage of discovery gives it pertinence in the present connection. Avienus lived in the 4th century A.D.).

* * * * *

=Babelon=, E., et =Lenormant=, F., Histoire ancienne de l’orient, Paris, 1881-1888, 6 vols, (see particularly Vol. VI.); Manuel d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1888; Carthage et l’archéologie punique en Tunisie (in Am. Journ. of Archæol., Vol. I, p. 173 et seq.). (The works of Lenormant all have a high degree of authority, and are noteworthy for their admirable style.)--=Baier=, J. J., Dissertatio historica de Phoenicibus eorum studiis et inventis, Jenæ, 1709.--=Ball=, C. J., The Origin of the Phœnician Alphabet (in Proceedings of the Soc. of Bibl. Arch., Vol. XV, pp. 392-408).--=Bargès=, J. J. L., Mémoire sur le sarcophage et l’inscription funéraire d’Eschmunazar, roi de Sidon, Paris, 1856; Mémoires sur trente-neuf nouvelles inscriptions puniques, Paris, 1852; Temple de Baal à Marseilles, ou grande inscription phénicienne découverte dans cette ville dans le courant de l’année 1845, Paris, 1847; Mémoire sur deux inscriptions puniques découvertes dans l’île du port Cothon à Carthage, Paris, 1849; Nouvelle interprétation de l’inscription phénicienne découverte par M. Mariette, dans le serapéum de Memphis (in Revue de l’orient, nouv. sér. III, p. 190); Observations sur les inscriptions phéniciennes du musée Napoléon III (in Journ. Asiat., Sér. VI, Vol. 2, 1863, pp. 161-195); Recherches archéologiques sur les colonies phéniciennes établies sur le littoral de la Celtoligurie, Paris, 1878. (Though somewhat antiquated, these works still possess a certain value for the student of palæography. The interest of the described inscriptions is largely due to the fact that the Phœnician alphabet is “the mother of all existing alphabets.”)--=Barthélémy= (l’Abbé), Réflexions sur quelques monuments Phéniciens et sur les alphabets qui en résultent (in Mémoires de littérature, tirés des registres de l’acad. royale des inscr., Vol. XXX, 1764, pp. 405-426).--=Baudissin=, W. W. F. von, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Leipsic, 1876-1878 (a very important contribution to the subject, based on original researches).--=Bellermann=, J. J. L., Phœniciæ linguæ vestigiorum in Melitensi specimen, Berolini, 1809; Versuch einer Erklärung der punischen Stellen im Pœnulus des Plautus, Berlin, 1808; Bemerkungen über die phönizischen und punischen Münzen, Berlin, 1812.--=Bérard=, Victor, Les Phéniciens et les poèmes homériques (in Revue de l’hist. des religions, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 173-228, 419-460, Paris, 1899).--=Berger=, P., La Phénicie pour faire suite à l’écriture et les inscriptions sémitiques, Paris, 1881 (Extrait de l’Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses); Rapport sur les inscriptions puniques récemment découvertes à Carthage, Paris, 1877 (Extract from Archives des missions scientifiques et lit., Ser. III, Vol. 4, p. 145); La Bible et les inscriptions (Leçon d’ouverture), Paris, 1890.--=Bertin=, G., On the Origin of the Phœnician Alphabet, (in Orientalia Antiqua, I, 1, 1882).--=Bertow=. Typographie de Tyr.--=Beulé=, Nachgrabungen in Karthago, Leipsic, 1863.--=Bible, The Holy= (authorised version), London, 1611.--=Bloch=, A., Phönic. Glossar, Berlin, 1891.--=Bockh=, Aug., Urkunde über das attische Seewesen, Berlin, 1840.--=Bonnemère=, L., L’influence orientale en Bretagne, (in Soc. d’anthropol. de Paris, Bulletins, Sér. IV, Vol. 10, pp. 389-397).--=Bourgade= (l’Abbé) F., Inscriptions Phéniciennes, Paris, 1852; Toison d’or de la langue Phénicienne, Paris, 1856.--=Bovet=, F., Egypt, Palestine, and Phœnicia--a Visit, London, 1882.--=Bredow=, G. G., Untersuchungen über einzelne Gegenstände der alten Geschichte, Altona, 1800.--=Brown=, R., Researches into the Origin of the Primitive Constellations of the Greeks, Phœnicians, and Babylonians, Oxford, 1900, 2 vols.--=Brugsch=, H., Geographische Inschriften altägyptischer Denkmäler, Leipsic, 1857-1860, 3 vols.--=Budd=, Th., From the Deluge to the Christian Era, Norwich, 1890.

* * * * *

=Cara=, Cav. Gaetano, Sulla genuità degli idoli sardo-fenicii esistenti nel museo archæol. della regia università di Cagliari, Cagliari, 1875.--=Carnena=, A. A., Report on the Phœnician and Roman Antiquities in the Group of the Islands of Malta, Malta, 1882.--=Cesnola=, General Louis Palma di: Cyprus, Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples; A Narrative of Researches and Excavations, London, 1877; Salaminia, Cyprus, etc., London, 1882.--=Chabas=, F., Études sur l’antiquité historique d’après les sources égyptiennes, Paris, 1873, 2nd ed.--=Church=, A. J., Carthage, the Empire of Africa, London, 1886.--=Clarke=, J. C. C., The Origin and Varieties of the Semitic Alphabet, Chicago, 1887.--=Clercq=, de: Notice sur une stèle Phénico-Hittite (in Acad. des inscr., Comptes rendus, 1901).--=Colonna Ceccaldi=, G., Monuments antiques de Cypre, Paris, 1882.--=Court de Gobelin=, Allégories orientales ou le fragment de Sanchoniathon, Paris, 1773. (The alleged Phœnician History of Sanchoniathon has come in for a large share of attention from students both of history and of literature. Fragments of what purported to be a translation of this work into Greek by Philo Byblius, who lived in the first century A.D., are preserved by Eusebius. It is in dispute whether such an author as Sanchoniathon really lived or whether the alleged translation was a forgery. Mention of the work will be found in other references of the present bibliography.)--=Crespin=, V., Catalogo illustrato della raccolta di antichita sarde del Signor Raimondo Chessa, Cagliari, 1868.--=Cumberland=, B. R., Sanchoniathon’s Phœnician History, with Eratosthenes’ continuation, London, 1720.--=Curtius=, Quintus, History of Alexander the Great, Venice, 1471.

* * * * *

=Davis=, N., Inscriptions in the Phœnician character, London, 1863; Carthage and Her Remains, London, 1861; Ruined Cities within Numidian and Carthaginian Territories, London, 1862.--=Deecke=, W., Der Ursprung der kyprischen Silbenschrift, Strassburg, 1877.--=Delattre=, R. P., Carthage et la Tunisie au point de vue archéologique, Tunis, 1883.--=Dérenbourg=, J. and H., Les inscriptions phéniciennes du temple de Seti à Abydos, publiées et traduites d’après une copie inédite de M. Sayce (in Revue d’assyriol. I, 3, pp. 81-101).--=Desjardins=, E., Géog., histr., et administr. de la Gaule romaine, Paris, 1878 (Punic Inscr.).--=Dietrich=, F. E. C., Zwei sidonische Inschriften: eine griechische aus christlicher Zeit und eine altphönikische Königsinschrift, Marburg, 1855.--=Diodorus Siculus=, βιβλιοθήκε ἰστορική, Amsterdam, 1746.--=Donop=, W. G. L. von: Das Magasanische Europa, Meiningen, 1819-1821, 3 vols.--=Doughty=, C. M., Travels in Arabia Deserta, Cambridge, 1888, 2 vols.--=Drummond=, Sir William, An Essay on a Punic Inscription found in the Island of Malta, London, 1810.--=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des Alterthums, Leipsic, 5th ed., 1878-1883, 7 vols.--=Dureau dela Malle=, A. J. C. A., Recherches sur la topographie de Carthage, avec des notes par M. Dusgate, Paris, 1835.--=Duvivier=, F. F., Les Inscriptions Phéniciennes, Puniques, Numidiques, expliquées par une méthode incontestable, Paris, 1846, and ed. g. Nauck, Leipsic, 1871.

* * * * *

=Euripides=, φοινισσαι, Florence, 1496.--=Eusebius=, Ευσεβιου περι της Θεοφανειας (edited by J. Migne), Paris, 1857.--=Euting=. J., Inschriftliche Mitteilungen (in Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenländ. Ges., Vol. XXIX, 1875); Sammlung der karthagischen Inschriften, herausg. mit Unterstützung der K. Academie d. Wissensch. zu Berlin, Strassburg, 1883; Phoenikische Inschriften aus Idalion, Strassburg, 1875; Nabatäische Inschriften aus Arabien, Berlin, 1885; Sinaitische Inschriften (in Verhdlg. d. Gesellschaft für Erdkunde), Berlin, 1886.--=Ewald=, G. H. A., Über das Phönikische der Inschriften und im Plautus (in Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vol. IV, pp. 400-418); Erklärung der grossen phönikischen Inschrift von Sidon und einer ägyptisch-aramäischen, mit den zuverlässigen Abbildern beider (in Abhdlg. der Ges. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, Vol. VII), Göttingen, 1856; Über die phönikischen Ansichten von der Weltschöpfung und den geschichtlichen Wert Sanchuniathons, Göttingen, 1857. (The author is known everywhere as one of the greatest interpreters of the traditions of the Hebrews; his opinions concerning this allied neighbouring people have, therefore, peculiar interest.)

* * * * *

=Fabricy=, G., De literaturæ Phœniciæ fontibus, Romæ, 1803.--=Falbe=, C. T., Recherches sur l’emplacement de Carthage suivies de renseignements sur plusieurs inscriptions puniques inédites, Paris, 1833.--=Fischer=, C., De Hannonis Carthaginiensis periplo, Leipsic, 1893.--=Fontane=, M., Histoire Universelle, Paris, 1883.--=Frankel=, Phöniz. Altertümer (in Monatschrift für Gesch. und Wissensch. d. Judenthums, Vol. V, 1856, p. 447 et seq.).

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=Gesenius=, F. H. W., Palæogr. Studien über phöniz. und punische Schrift, Leipsic, 1835; De inscriptione Phœnicio-Græca in Cyrenaica nuper reperta ad Carpocratianorum hæresin pertinente commentatio, Halæ, 1825; Scripturæ linguæque Phœniciæ monumenta quotquot supersunt edita et inedita, Leipsic, 1837. (Like all the works of this author, of great value for the student of Semitic philology. The last-named work comprises the first important collection of Phœnician inscriptions ever published.)--=Gilbert=, O., Rom und Karthago, Leipsic, 1876.--=Gibbon=, E., The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. by W. Smith), London, 1872, 8 vols.--=Gosselin=, R. F. J., Recherches sur la géographie systématique, Paris, 1790-1813, 4 vols.--=Graux=, C., Les fortifications de Carthage, Paris, 1878.--=Grote=, G., History of Greece, London, 1871, 10 vols.--=Grotefend=, G. F., Die Sanchuniathonische Streitfrage nach ungedruckten Briefen gewürdigt, Leipsic, 1836. (The position of Grotefend as an originator in the field of oriental philology gives peculiar interest to his views on the much-mooted question of the authenticity of the alleged writings of Sanchoniathon. Grotefend, it will be recalled, first gained a clew to the phonetic values of certain characters of the old Persian cuneiform writing, thus taking the first step toward the interpretation of the Assyrian and Babylonian records.)--=Guerin=, H. V., Inscription bilingue de Thugga (in Voyage archéol. dans la régence de Tunis, Paris, 1862).--=Gutschmid=, A. von, Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients, Leipsic, 1858; Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients, Leipsic, 1876; Kleine Schriften, edited by Rühl, Leipsic, 1889-1894, 5 vols. (The second volume of the last-named work contains the original version of the monumental article on Phœnicia contributed by the author to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.)

* * * * *

=Halévy=, J., Mélanges d’épigraphie et d’archéologie sémitiques, Paris, 1874; Mélanges de critique et d’histoire relatifs aux peuples sémitiques, Paris, 1883. (The opinion of one of the most original thinkers and greatest authorities among students of Semitic philology.)--=Hamaker=, H. A., Lettre à M. Raoul-Rochette sur une inscription en charactères phéniciens et grecs, récemment découverte à Cyrène, Leyden, 1825.--=Hamdy-Bey= et Th. =Reinach=, Une nécropole royale à Sidon, Paris, 1892.--=Hanno=, Ἀρριὰνοῦ περίπλους, κ. τ. λ., Ἅννωνος περίπλους Λιβίης κ. τ. λ., Basle, 1533.

(The remarkable document here cited tells us all that is known to posterity of the life of Hanno the explorer who lived probably in the fifth century, B.C. The document itself was found in the ruins of Carthage. As to whether it was written by Hanno himself we have no evidence, unless with Professor Rawlinson we feel that so direct and clean-cut an account must come from the hand of the man of action whose deed it records. Be that as it may, it is a most important historical document, as evidencing an early expression of that desire to reach out beyond the limits of the then known world, which almost two thousand years later was to culminate in the discoveries of Columbus.)

=Heeren=, A. H. L., Historical Researches, Oxford, 1834-1846, 5 vols. (The author is particularly happy in his treatment of Phœnician and Carthaginian civilisation.)--=Hegel=, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of History, London, 1857.--=Hengstenberg=, E. W., Commentatio de rebus Tyriorum, Berlini, 1832.--=Henzen=, G., Iscrizione Greco-fenicia d’Atene (in Annali dell’ instituto di corresp. arch. XXXIII, 1859, p. 321 et seq.).--=Herder=, G., Ælteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (in his Werke zur Theol.).--=Hérisson=, Comte d’, Relation d’une mission archéol. en Tunisie, Paris, 1881.--=Herodianus=, Ἡρωδιανοῦ τῆς μετὰ Μάρκον βασιλείας ἱστοριῶν βιβλία ὀκτώ, Leipsic, 1789-1805, 5 vols.--=Herodotus=, Historiæ, Strasburg, 1816, 5 vols.--=Hittell=, J. T., History of the Mental Growth of Mankind in Ancient Times, New York, 1893.--=Hitzig=, F., Zur ältesten Volks-und Mythengeschichte, Leipsic, 1845; Epigraphische Miscellen. (in Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morganländ. Ges. Vol. XII, 1858, p. 695).--=Hogg=, J., On Some Inscriptions from Cyprus, copied by Commander Leycester, R. N., London, 1862. (Reprint from Transactions of Royal Society of Literature.)--=Homer=, Ὀδυσσεία, Florence, 1488.--=Hommel=, F., Geschichte Assyriens und Babyloniens, Berlin, 1885. (Contains a tolerably full exposition of the author’s reasons for upholding the theory of the Babylonian--versus the Egyptian--origin of the Phœnician alphabet, a subject regarding which authorities are not agreed.)

* * * * *

=Jeremias=, J., Tyrus bis zur Zeit, Nebukadnezars, Leipsic, 1891.--=Josephus=, κατὰ Ἀπίωνος, Basle, 1544.--=Judas=, A. C., Étude démonstrative de la langue Phénicienne et de la langue Libyque, Paris, 1847; Essai sur la langue Phénicienne avec deux inscriptions puniques inédites, Paris, 1842; Nouvelles études sur une série d’inscriptions numidico-puniques, Paris, 1857.--=Justinus=, Historiarum Philippicarum Libri XLIV, Venice, 1470. (The account of the early history of the Phœnicians contained in the work of Trogus Pompeius--which Justin condensed--is believed to have been based on the lost “Book of Kings” of Timagenes, and to have been quite extensive. Justin’s remnant is very meagre, but is rendered relatively valuable by the paucity of other sources.)

* * * * *

=Kenrick=, J., Phœnicia, London, 1855. (A work which attempts to do for the Phœnicians what Wilkinson did for the Egyptians, and with a large measure of success. Still very valuable.)--=Kidder=, D. P., Tyre: Its Rise, Glory, and Desolation, with Notices of the Phœnicians Generally, New York, 1852.--=Kiepert=, H., Die geogr. Stellung der nördl. Länder in der phöniz.-hebr. Erdkunde (in Berl. Acad. d. Wiss. 1859, p. 191 et seq.).--=Kopp=, N. F., Palæographia critica, Mannheim, 1829 (see pp. 90-240, Inscr. Semiticæ); Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, Mannheim, 1819-1821, 2 vols.--=Kruse=, F., Ulrich Jasper Seetzen’s Reisen durch Syrien, Palästina, Phönizien, die Transjordanländer, Arabia, Petræa, und Unter-Ægypten, Berlin, 1854, 2 vols.

* * * * *

=Lajard=, F., Introduction à l’étude du culte public et des mystères de Mithra en orient et en occident, Paris, 1847.--=Lanci=, M., Osservazioni sul bassorelievo fenico-egizio che si conserva in Carpentrasso, Rom, 1825; La sacra scrittura illustrata con monumenti fenico-assirii ed egiziani, Rom, 1827; Paralipomeni alla illustrazione della sagra scrittura per monumenti assirii ed egiziani, Paris, 1845; Ragionamento di M. Lanci intorno a nuova stela fenicia discoperta in Malta, Rom, 1855.--=Landau=, W. von: Beiträge zur Altertumskunde des Orients. Part I: Belagerung von Tyros. Part II: Die phöniz. Inschr., Leipsic, 1899.--=Lang=, R. H., Cyprus: Its History, its Present Resources and Future Prospects, London, 1878.--=Lasalle=, Ch., Origin of Western Nations and Languages showing the Construction and Aim of Punic, etc., London, 1883.--=Layard=, A. H., Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853.--=Laval=, L. de, Voyage dans la péninsule arabique du Sinai et l’Egypte moyenne, Paris, 1855-1859.--=Ledrain=, M., Cours d’épigraphie sémitique et d’archéol. assyrienne, Paris, 1883; Notice sommaire des monuments phéniciens du musée du Louvre, Paris, 1888.--=Leemans=, C., Gedenksteenen met Phönicische, Karthagische, Numidische en Liby-Phönicische Opschriften, Leyden, 1842.--=Lenormant=, F., Le légende de Cadmus et les établissements phéniciens en Grèce, Paris, 1867.--=Lenthéric=, Ch., La Grèce et l’Orient en Provence, Paris, 1878.--=Lessert=, Pallu de: Les fastes de la Numidie, Constantine, 1888.--=Levy=, M. A., Phöniz. Studien, Breslau, 1856-1870, 4 parts; Phöniz. Wörterbuch, Breslau, 1864; Siegel und Gemmen mit aram., phöniz., althebr., himjar., nabatæischen und altsyrischen Inschr., Breslau, 1869.--=Lichtenstein=, A. A. H., Tentamen palæographiæ Assyrio-Persicæ, Helmstädt, 1803.--=Lidzbarski=, M., Handbuch der semitischen Epigraphik, Weimar, 1898, 2 vols.; Ephemeris, Giessen, 1900.--=Livy=, Titus, Historiarum Ab Urbe Condita libri, London, 1600.--=Longpérier=, A. de: Inscriptions phéniciennes de Carthage (in Journ. Asiat. Ser. VI, Vol. XIII, p. 343).--=Lortet=, L., La Syrie d’aujourd’hui, Paris, 1884.--=Luynes=, Duc de, Mémoire sur le sarcophage et l’inscription funéraire d’Esmunazar, roi de Sidon, Paris, 1856.

* * * * *

=Malte-Brun=, C., Geschichte der Erdkunde von den ältesten bis auf die neuesten Zeiten, Leipsic, 1816, 2 vols.--=Maltzan=, H. Freiherr von, Reise auf der Insel Sardinien. Nebst einem Anhang über die phöniz. Inschr. Sardiniens, Leipsic, 1869.--=Maspero=, G., Histoire ancienne de l’orient, Paris, 1886.--=Meier=, E., Erklärung phöniz. Sprachdenkmäler, die man auf Cypern, Malta und Sicilien gefunden, Tübingen, 1860.--=Mela=, Pomponius, De situ orbis libri III (in Dionysius Alex. et Pomp. Mela sit. orb. descr.), 1577, and the Rare and Singular Works, London, 1590.--=Meltzer=, O., Geschichte der Karthager, Berlin, 1879. (An admirably scientific study of the early history of Carthage, but only the first volume, bringing the story to 306, B.C., has appeared.)--=Meyer=, Ed., Geschichte des Altertums, Stuttgart, 1884-1902, 5 vols.; Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, Leipzig und Wien, 1894-1897, 17 vols.--=Michaeler=, K., Historisch-kritische Abhandlung von den Mysterien, Wien, 1796.--=Mommsen=, Theodor, Römische Geschichte, Berlin, 1853-1856--=Montesquieu=, Baron de, Esprit des lois, Paris, 1740.--=Montfaucon=, B. de, Palæografia Græca, Paris, 1708; L’antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, Paris, 1719.--=Movers=, F. C., Die Phönizier. Vol. I, Bonn, 1841; Vol. II in three parts, Berlin, 1849-1856; Phönizien (in Allg. Encyclop. von Ersch und Gruber, Ser. III, Vol. XXIV, pp. 319-443); Phönizische Texte erklärt, Breslau, 1845-1847, 2 vols.; Die punischen Texte im Poenulus des Plautus kritisch gewürdigt und erklärt, Breslau, 1845.

Franz Karl Movers was born at Koesfeld, Prussia, July 17th, 1806; died at Breslau September 28th, 1856. Professor Movers was essentially a man of one idea and one book; but the idea was a broad one, and the book an epoch-making one. Movers early in life seems to have selected the history of Phœnicia as the subject to which he would direct his great energy and scholarly attention. It was an almost virgin field. Beyond the vague traditions of the Greeks, comparatively little was known of that race which had played so great a part in spreading oriental culture throughout the western world. The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, because, unlike the Egyptians and the Babylonians, the Phœnicians had left very few monuments to tell posterity the story of their greatness. But Professor Movers followed up with the utmost assiduity such traces as were to be found, and while he did not live to complete his work, he gave the world a partial history of the Phœnicians which no subsequent investigator of their history can ever neglect. In the main his results have stood the tests of time, and even now Movers must be considered the foremost authority on Phœnician history.

=Müller=, F. H., Commentatio de rebus Semiticis, Berolini, 1831.--=Müller=, W. M., Ein Phönik. König (in Mitteil. d. Vorderasiat, Ges. 1896), Berlin, 1896.--=Munk=, S., L’inscription phénicienne de Marseilles, trad. et commentée, Paris, 1848.--=Münter=, F., Die Religion der Karthager, Copenhagen, 1816; Der Tempel der himmlischen Göttin zu Paphos, Copenhagen, 1824; Om en nyling blandt ruinerne of Karthago opdaget Punisk gravskrift, Copenhagen, 1824. (Works now having scarcely more than an antiquarian interest.)

* * * * *

=Oberhummer=, E., Phönizier in Arkadien, München, 1882.--=Ohnefalsch-Richter=, Max, Kypros, die Bibel und Homer. Beiträge zur Cultur-, Kunst-, und Religionsgeschichte des Orients im Altertume, Berlin, 1893, 2 vols.--=Olshausen=, J., Phöniz. Ortsnamen ausserhalb des semitischen Sprachgebietes (in Neues Rheinisches Museum, 1853, p. 321 et seq.).

* * * * *

=Papier=, A., et =Mélix=, Sur dix-huit inscriptions nouvelles communiquées à l’académie d’Hippone (in Bulletin de l’Acad. d’Hippone, 1886, no. 21, pp. 81-112).--=Pausanias=, Ἑλλάδος περιήγησις.--=Perrot=, G., and =Chipiez=, C., History of Art in Phœnicia, London, 1885, Vol. III of the Series.--=Peters=, J. P., The Babylonian Origin of the Phœnician Alphabet (in Proceedings of the Soc. of Bibl. Archæol., Vol. VI, p. 73, et seq.); Notes on Recent Theories of the Origin of the Alphabet (in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XXII, p. 177, New Haven, 1901); Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures, etc., New York and London, 1897, 2 vols.--=Philo Byblius=, Phœnician History in Muller’s Fragmenta Hist. Græc., Vol. III, Paris, 1841-1851. (This is the alleged translation of Sanchoniathon, already referred to. It is regarded as indisputable that the author drew upon native sources, and did not invent the legends he narrates, whether or not such an author as Sanchoniathon existed.)--=Philostratus=, Zürich, 1844.--=Pietschmann=, R., Geschichte der Phönizier, Berlin, 1889.

Professor Pietschmann’s book, written for the Oncken Series, is the most recent and the most authoritative work on the subject. It by no means supplants the great works of Movers and Kenrick, but it embodies the results of investigations that were not made when these works were written, and so condenses into relatively brief space practically all that is at present known regarding the Phœnicians.

=Pliny, the Younger=, Historiarum Mundi, London, 1826; History of the World, translated by P. Holland, London, 1601.--=Polybius=, Καθολικὴ κοινὴ ἱστορία. (Polybius, the personal friend of Scipio, was present at the destruction of Carthage in 146, B.C. He is the incomparable authority for the history of the Punic wars, but of his forty books, only the first five are intact. Of these there are several English translations.)--=Prutz=, H., Aus Phönizien: geographische Skizzen und historische Studien, Leipsic, 1876.

* * * * *

=Queipo=, Don V. Vasquez, Essai sur les systèmes métriques et monétaires des anciens peuples depuis les premiers temps historiques jusqu’à la fin du Khalifat d’Orient, Paris, 1859.

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=Rawlinson=, G., A Manual of Ancient History, Oxford, 1869; History of Phœnicia, London, 1889.--=Rawlinson=, H. C., Bilingual Readings--Cuneiform and Phœnician. Notes on some Tablets in the Brit. Mus. containing Bilingual Legends (Assyria and Phœnicia), (in Journal of the Royal Asiat. Soc., new Ser. I, pp. 187-247).--=Renan=, J. E., Mission de Phénicie, Paris, 1865-1874, 9 pts.; Catalogue des objets provenant de la mission de Phénicie, Paris, 1862; Histoire générale et système comparé des langues sémitiques, Paris, 1855.--=Rougé=, Vicomte Em. de: Mémoire sur l’origine égyptienne de l’alphabet phénicien, Paris, 1874. (The original memoir was communicated to the Academy some twenty years earlier, but was accidentally destroyed and hence was never published. The present paper gave currency to the views of the author, according to which the Phœnician alphabet is derived from the hieratic form of the Egyptian writing.)

* * * * *

=Saalschütz=, J. L., Zur Geschichte der Buchstabenschrift, in besonderer Beziehung auf Hebräer, Phönizier, Griechen und Ægypter, Königsberg, 1838.--=Saint-Martin=, Vivien de, Le Nord d’Afrique dans l’antiquité, Paris, 1863.--=Saulcy=, F. de, Mémoire sur une inscription phénicienne déterrée à Marseilles, Paris, 1847.--=Sayce=, A. H., Ancient Empires of the East, London, 1884; New Phœnician and Israelitic Inscriptions (in Babylonian and Oriental Record, Vol. I, p. 193, London, 1886-1887).--=Scholz=, P., Götzendienst und Zauberwesen, Regensburg, 1877.--=Schröder=, A., Conspectus chorog. insigniorum locorum et geographia veterum populorum delineatus, Sundiae, 1831.--=Schröder=, P., Die phöniz. Sprache, Halle, 1869; Über einige Fragmente phönikischer Inschriften aus Cypern (in Monatsber. d. Berl. Acad. d. Wiss. 1872, p. 330 et seq., Berlin, 1872); Phönizische Miscellen. (in Zeitschrift d. Deutschen Morgenländ. Ges., Vol. XXXIV, p. 675, Halle, 1880).--=Seere=, P., Les marines de guerre de l’antiquité et du moyen age, Paris, 1886.--=Smith=, R., Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, Cambridge, 1885.--=Smith=, R. B., Carthage and the Carthaginians, London, 1878.--=Socin=, A. and =Gutschmid=, A. von, Phœnicia (in Encycl. Brit., Vol. XVIII, Ninth ed.).--=Spiro=, F., Les inscriptions et les stèles votives de Carthage, Lausanne, 1895.--=Stade=, B., Erneute Prüfung des zwischen dem Phönizischen und Hebräischen bestehenden Verwandtschaftsgrades ein Beitrag zur morgenländ. Sprachkunde (in Morgenländ. Forschg. 1875, pp. 167-232, Leipsic, 1875).--=Stadthagen=, D., De quibusdam marmoribus Phœnicis præmisso specimine de Scripturæ alphabeticæ origine, Berlin, 1846.--=Strabo=, Geographica, Venice, 1516.

* * * * *

=Tatianus=, Oratio ad Græcos, edited by Worth, Oxford, 1700.--=Temple=, Sir G., Phœnician Tombstone found in Maghrawah in Tunis (in Transactions of the Roy. Asiat. Soc., Vol. III, p. 548).--=Tiele=, C. P., La Religion des Phéniciens (in Revue de l’histoire des religions, Vol. III, Paris, 1881).--=Tissot=, Géographie comparée de la province romaine d’Afrique, Paris, 1884-1888, 2 vols.--=Turner=, W. W., Remarks on the Phœnician Inscriptions of Sidon (in Journal of Am. Oriental Soc., 1862, p. 48 et seq., New Haven, 1862); The Sidon Inscriptions, with a Translation and Notes (in Journal of Am. Oriental Soc., 1856, p. 243 et seq., New Haven, 1856).

* * * * *

=Vassallo=, C., Dei monumenti antichi nel gruppo di Malta. Periodo Fenicio ed Egizio, Valetta, 1851.--=Vaux=, W. S. W., Inscriptions in the Phœnician Character, now deposited in the British Museum, discovered on the Site of Carthage, London, 1863.--=Vierthaler=, Philosoph. Gesch. der Menschen und Völker, Salzburg, 1787-1794, 4 vols.--=Vogüé=, M. de, Six inscriptions phéniciennes d’Idalion, Paris, 1875; Mélanges d’archéologie orientale, Paris, 1868.

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=Wachsmuth=, K., Stadt Athen im Alterthum, Leipsic, 1874-1890, 2 vols.--=Weber=, G., Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, Leipsic, 1857-1880, 15 vols.--=Weinrich=, De Phœnicum literatura, Meiningæ, 1714.--=Wellhausen=, J., Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, Berlin, 1884.--=Whitney=, W. D., On de Rougé’s Derivation of the Phœnician Alphabet from the Egyptian Characters (in Journ. of Am. Oriental Soc., Vol. X, p. 131).--=Williams=, H. S., The History of the Art of Writing, New York and London, 1902.--=Winckler=, H., Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipsic, 1893.--=Wuttke=, H., Geschichte der Schrift und des Schriftthums, Leipsic, 1872.

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=Xenophon=, Κύρου Ἀναβάσις, Oxford, 1735; Κυροπαιδεία, Florence, 1516.

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VI. THE HISTORY OF WESTERN ASIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ERNEST BABELON, MAX DUNCKER, PAUL KAROLIDES, EDUARD MEYER, PERROT AND CHIPIEZ, GEORGE RADET, A. H. SAYCE, A. SOCIN, CHARLES W. SUPER

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VI. WESTERN ASIA

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THE POSITION OF ASIA MINOR IN HISTORY 373

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE MINOR KINGDOMS OF WESTERN ASIA 380

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