and at last broke in, with sword and fire, to storm the strongholds, which disappeared as if by enchantment before their arms. This process, if it may thus be styled, of acquaintance, information, and destruction, was the great result of the Persian dominion; great, because in the successive shocks of change and passion on either side, the columns of the heathen temple were weakened for their approaching downfall. 62

62 See the wonderful Chapter XLV. of the Prophet Isaiah.

CHAPTER V.

PHOENICIA.

"In dem Epos des Weltverkehrs über die Meere beginnen die Phönizier." Erinn. Staatsk. des Alt., II.

"It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar.- MILL, Pol. Econ., Book III.

ch. 17.

2

THE Phoenicians were among the nations whom Cyrus subdued; but the days of their activity began before and continued after their submission to the Persian conqueror. For nearly seven centuries they dwelt by "the sea and the coasts of Jordan,"3 remarkable as a people, above all others, for the commerce which attracted them to distant lands and various races of men. The country they inhabited was narrow and mountainous. It thrust them out into the waters which rolled upon its shores, and forced them, as it were, to live by enterprise and remote adventure. Their ships, catching the breezes of the Mediterranean, sailed to all the neighbouring

1 About A. C. 550. Herod., Heeren remarks, their forest-covered III. 91. mountains furnished the ready ineans. See his Researches, etc., Vol. II. sect. 1. Compare the Odyssey, XV. 415:

2 A. C. 1000-300. They were subdued, however, by Nebuchadnezzar about three centuries before the latter date.

3 Numbers, XIII. 29.

4 For the building of which, as

coasts, and even ventured to try the ocean winds and visit the habitations of barbarians, from whom they sought the ores and natural productions which had been denied them in their own homes. In return, the Phoenicians appear to have scattered the seeds of the arts and the sciences they had themselves obtained, among the people with whom their intercourse connected them; and though it would be far too much to ascribe to their pursuits, that they had been undertaken, or even supported, by a desire to increase the civilization of the ancient world, the voice of Ezekiel the Prophet is still repeating to Tyre, "Thou filledst many people; thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy merchandise."6

The spread of civilization amongst other nations, and the growth of wealth amongst themselves, were not accomplished by the Phoenicians as simple navigators. Wherever they sailed, in the times of their early and active labors, they left behind them some of their own number to assist them in their purposes of gain and to acquire new resources for themselves. Though a scanty nation upon the borders of the great empires which rose and fell like tempest-waves around them, they had their own visions of dominion. They would have cast their net over the world by trade and settlements; and when they themselves

5 One of their gifts was writing; another, arithmetic. They contributed greatly to the improvement of weights and measures. Goguet, Origine des Lois, etc., Ep. I. liv. VOL. I.

13

4, art. 1. See 1 Kings, VII. 13 et seq., for the works with which Hiram of Tyre adorned the temple at Jerusalem.

6 Ezekiel, XXVII. 33.

submitted to the conquerors who came against them, their colonies stood aloof, firm in the faith and the occupations of the mother land. The names of these colonies belong to geography rather than to history, because little besides is known about them; but the fact of their establishment is a part of the history of the people who founded them in the midst of the destruction which the warlike career of other nations entailed upon the neighbouring lands.

These works of the Phoenicians could not have been done under any despotism. The moment a race distinguishes itself for industry and enterprise, it is in some way free. The Phoenicians did not live upon the sea, breathing its bracing air, in vain. They could not lay the plans of commerce, much less embark upon their execution, without sufficient liberty to promote the energies on which adventures of the sort, in those times especially, depended. Their voyages, it is true, might be generally prosecuted by mercenary seamen, so that the class of merchants, strictly speaking, was comparatively small; yet the glory which the latter gained, unlike that of arms

7 Besides their settlements on the shores and in the islands of the Mediterranean, the Phoenicians occupied Cadiz, and sailed thence, perhaps, to Madeira and the Canaries, perhaps to Britain and the Baltic Sea. They also pushed their expeditions to the East, and some writers have claimed for them the credit of circumnavigating Africa and reaching America beyond the ocean. See Cantu, Hist. Univ., Ch. XXV. at the end.

"L'histoire de la colonisation des pays situés sur les côtes de la Méditerranée pourrait tout aussi bien s'appeler l'histoire de la civilisation du genre humain." Sismondi, Études sur l'Écon. Polit., Douzième Essai.

8Thou wast replenished," said Ezekiel (XXVII. 25) unto Tyre, "and made very glorious in the midst of thy seas."

or mysteries, would be diffused amongst the entire people, in encouraging their industry as much as in compelling their submission. If it were so, the Phonicians are the first real people of whom any idea has yet presented itself in our inquiry amongst the races of the South and the East beyond their land.

The progress represented by the name of Phoenicia is not in government, nor in law, nor in faith, so much as in occupation. The first adventurers who crossed the seas came back to become the dignitaries amongst their countrymen; others, following their example, rose to equal rank; and until commerce had become an ordinary employment, already too extended to bring in sudden wealth or lead to new discovery, the successful navigator was sure to become the eminent citizen at home, or the powerful colonist on stranger shores. Afterwards, when the individual found it more difficult to rise, because it was then more unusual to make great gains, he was still secure of being employed, and in most instances of being rewarded for his toil; though, in supposing this to be the case, we must exclude the lower classes, whose services were probably exacted without consideration or requital. It was a middle class, to use a modern phrase not altogether applicable to an ancient people, that grew up in Phoenicia beneath the expanding influences of activity and civilization; it was the same class that obtained the authority which we find established at a later period of their history.

Sidon, the first-born, as it was proudly styled, and