CHAPTER III.
Phoenician Colonies and Commerce.
It is natural to consider Phœnicia's colonies in connection with her commerce, for while many nations have colonized regions remote for the purpose of extending their territory or perpetuating a faith, her outposts were opened solely for the benefit of trade. Phœnicia's colonies may be said to have been the outgrowth of her mercantile concerns, although in some instances, dissatisfaction with political conditions in the home city proved an additional incentive.
Probably the first foreign settlement was made in Egypt. Desiring to control routes of trade in the valley of the Nile, Tyrians obtained permission to settle in Memphis. This settlement could hardly be called a colony in the ordinary sense of the word, for the home city exercised no political control over those of its subjects dwelling in Egypt—nor did it seek to do so. Phœnicia excelled in trade—not government. With this station at Memphis, Tyre was able to obtain not only products of the valley but those also which were brought into Egypt from the south. Ivory, ebony, skins, ostrich feathers, grain, pottery, glass—these and other commodities here available were shipped away for consumption in Italy, Greece and Asia Minor. The Egyptians, so resentful of foreigners ordinarily, appear to have found the Phœnicians unobjectionable and of actual service to them. The little colony was allowed to maintain its own customs, and it is supposed that a temple sacred to Astoreth was erected here as early as 1250 B.C.
The islands west of Tyre were early peopled by Phœnicians, or, at least, contained Phœnician settlements. Timber suitable for ship-building was obtained in Cilicia, copper and precious stones in Cyprus, pine lumber and figs in Rhodes.
Utica, on the Gulf of Tunis, was an early colony on the African side of the Mediterranean. Coasting alone this shore, the sea-farers came to Spain, where they established important trading points. They penetrated as far west as the Cornwall mines, which supplied an inexhaustible amount of tin. The islands off the Cornish coast they called the "Cassiterides" or Tin Islands.
"Phœnician colonization—or colonization from Phœnicia Proper—was in all probability limited within the extremes of the Dardanelles to the north, Memphis to the south, and Gadeira and the Cassiterides to the west. It was less widely diffused than the Greek, and less generally spread over the coasts accessible to it. With a few exceptions, the colonies fall into three groups—first, those of the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, beginning with Cyprus and terminating with Cythera; secondly those of the Central Mediterranean, in North Africa, Sicily, and the adjacent islands; and thirdly, those of the Western Mediterranean, chiefly on the south coast of Spain, with perhaps a few on the opposite (African) shore. The other settlements, commonly called Phœnician on the eastern coast of Spain, in the Balearic Islands, in Corsica and Elba; and again those on the Western Africa coast, between the Straits of Gibraltar and the Cape de Verde, were Punic or Carthaginian, rather than Phœnician."[1]
Finally something must be said of Carthage, for while her palmy days as well as her decline, were closely related to Roman history, her beginnings were inseparable with the mother-country.