The march upon Egypt implied and required the occupation of the Mediterranean seaboard. No armies of any considerable size have ever attempted to traverse the almost waterless desert which separates the Lower Euphrates valley from the delta of the Nile. Light corps d’armée have no doubt occasionally passed from Circesium by way of Tadmor to Damascus, and vice versâ;[14251] but the ordinary line of route pursued by conquerors follows the course of the Euphrates to Carchemish, then strikes across the chalky upland in the middle of which stands the city of Aleppo, and finally descends upon Egypt by way of the Orontes, the Coele-Syrian valley, and the plains of Sharon and Philistia.[14252] This was undoubtedly the line followed by Cambyses,[14253] and it necessarily brought him into contact with the Phoenicians. The contact was not an hostile one. It would have been madness on the part of the Phoenicians to have attempted any resistance to the vast host with which Cambyses, we may be sure, made his invasion, and it would have been folly on the part of Cambyses to employ force when he could better obtain his object by persuasion. It must have been a very special object with him to obtain the hearty co-operation of the Phoenician naval forces in the attack which he was meditating, since he would otherwise have had no fleet at all capable of coping with the fleet of Egypt. Neco had made Egypt a strong naval power;[14254] Apries had contented for naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean with Tyre;[14255] Amasis had made an expedition by sea against Cyprus, had crushed whatever resistance the Cyprians were able to offer, had permanently occupied the island,[14256] and added the Cyprian fleet to his own. Cambyses had as yet no ships, except such as he could procure from the Greek cities of Asia Minor, which were not likely to be very zealous in his service, since they had friends engaged upon the other side.[14257] Accordingly, the Persian monarch seems to have made friendly overtures to the Phoenician states, which were received with favour, and led to an arrangement satisfactory to both parties. Phoenicia surrendered the independence which it was impossible for her to maintain, and placed her fleet at the disposal of Persia.[14258] Persia spared her cities any occupation, imposed on her a light tribute, and allowed her that qualified independence which is implied in the retention of her native princes. From first to last under the Persian régime, Phoenician monarchs bear rule in the Phoenician cities,[14259] and command the contingents which the cities furnish to any combined Persian fleet.
The friendly arrangement concluded between Phoenicia and Persia was followed, very naturally, by a further accession to the Persian power. Cyprus, whose population was in great part Phoenician, had for centuries been connected politically in the closest manner with the Phoenician towns on the Asiatic mainland, especially with Tyre and Sidon. Her enslavement by Amasis must have been hateful to her, and she must have been only too glad to see an opportunity of shaking off the Egyptian yoke. Accordingly, no sooner did the Phoenicians of the mainland conclude the arrangement by which they became part and parcel of the Persian Empire than the Cyprians followed their example, and, revolting from Egypt, offered themselves of their own free will to Persia.[14260] Cambyses, it is needless to say, readily accepted them as his subjects.
The invasion of Egypt could now be taken in hand with every prospect of a successful issue. The march of the land army along the shore would be supported by a parallel movement on the part of a powerful fleet, which would carry its provisions and its water, explore the country in front, and give notice of the movements of the enemy, and of the place where they proposed to make a stand in force. When Egypt was reached the fleet would command all the navigable mouths of the Nile, would easily establish a blockade of all ports, and might even mount the Nile and take a part in the siege of Memphis. It would seem that all these services were rendered to the Persian monarch by the great fleet which he had collected, of which the Phoenician ships were recognised as the main strength. The rapid conquest of Egypt was in this way much facilitated, and Cambyses within a twelvemonth found himself in possession of the entire country within its recognised limits of the Mediterranean and “the tower of Syêné."[14261]
But the Great King was not satisfied with a single, albeit a magnificent, achievement. He had accomplished in one short campaign what it took the Assyrians ten years, and Nebuchadnezzar eighteen years, to effect. But he now set his heart on further conquests. “He designed,” says Herodotus,[14262] “three great expeditions. One was to be against the Carthaginians, another against the Ammonians, and a third against the long-lived Ethopians, who dwelt in that part of Lybia which borders upon the southern sea.” The expedition against the Carthaginians is the only one of the three which here concerns us: it was to be entrusted to the fleet. Instead of conducting, or sending, a land force along the seaboard of North Africa, which was probably known to be for the most part barren and waterless, Cambyses judged that it would be sufficient to dispatch his powerful navy against the Liby-Phoenician colony, which he supposed would submit or else be subjugated. But on broaching this plan to the leaders of the fleet he was met with a determined opposition. The Phoenicians positively refused to proceed against their own colonists. They urged that they were bound to the Carthaginians by most solemn oaths, and that it would be as wicked and unnatural for them to execute the king’s orders as for parents to destroy their own children.[14263] It was a bold act to run counter to the will of a despotic monarch, especially of one so headstrong and impetuous as Cambyses. But the Phoenicians were firm, and the monarch yielded. “He did not like,” Herodotus says, “to force the war upon the Phoenicians, because they had surrendered themselves to the Persians, and because on the Phoenicians his entire sea-service depended.” He therefore allowed their opposition to prevail, and desisted from his proposed undertaking.[14264]
This acquiescence in their wishes on the part of the Great King, and his abstinence from any attempt at compulsion, would seem to have paved the way for that thoroughly good understanding between the suzerain power and her dependency which characterises the relations of the two for the next century and a half, with the single exception of one short interval. “The navy of Phoenicia became a regular and very important part of the public power"[14265] of the Persian state. Complete confidence was felt by their Persian masters in the fidelity, attachment, and hearty good-will of the Phoenician people. Exceptional favour was shown them. Not only were they allowed to maintain their native kings, their municipal administration, their national laws and religion, but they were granted exceptional honours and exceptional privileges and immunities. The Great King maintained a park and royal residence in some portion of Phoenicia,[14266] probably in the vicinity of Sidon,[14267] and no doubt allowed his faithful subjects to bask occasionally in the sunshine of his presence. When the internal organisation of the empire was taken in hand, and something approaching to a uniform system of government established for revenue purposes, though Phoenicia could not be excused from contributing to the taxation of the empire, yet the burden laid upon her seems to have been exceptionally light. United in a satrapy—the fifth—with Syria, Cyprus, and Palestine, and taxed according to her population rather than according to her wealth, she paid a share—probably not more than a third or a fourth—of 350 talents,[14268] or an annual contribution to the needs of the empire amounting to no less than 30,000l. Persia, moreover, encouraged Phoenicia to establish an internal organisation of her own, and, under her suzerainty, Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus were united by federal bonds, and had a common council, which met at Tripolis, probably of three hundred members.[14269] This council debated matters in which Phoenicia generally was interested, and, in times of disturbance, decided questions of peace and war.
The reign of Darius Hystaspis (B.C. 521-486), the successor of Cambyses upon the Persian throne, introduced several changes into the Persian governmental system which were of advantage to the Phoenicians. Darius united the most distant parts of his empire by postal routes, along which at moderate intervals were maintained post-houses, with relays of horses,[14270] primarily for the use of the government, but at the service of the traveller or private trader when not needed for business of state. Phoenician commerce must have been much helped by these arrangements, which facilitated rapid communication, gave security to lines of route which had been previously infested with robbers, and provided resting-places for the companies of merchants and traders, not unlike the caravanserai of modern Turkey and Persia.
Darius also established throughout his vast empire a uniform coinage, based apparently on that which had previously prevailed in Lydia. His “darics,” as they were called by the Greeks, were, in the first instance, gold coins of a rude type, a little heavier than our sovereigns, weighing between 123 and 124 grains troy.[14271] They bore the figure of an archer on the obverse, and on the reverse a very rough and primitive quadratum incusum. Darius must have coined them in vast abundance, since early in the reign of his successor a single individual of no great eminence had accumulated as many as 3,993,000 of them.[14272] Subsequently to the introduction of the gold darics, a silver coinage was issued, originally (we are told) in Egypt by a Persian satrap called Aryandes,[14273] but afterwards by the central government. The name of “daric” was extended to these coins also, which, however, were much larger and heavier than the gold coins, weighing as much as 235 grains, and corresponding to the Greek tetradrachm, and (nearly) to the Hebrew shekel. The establishment of this excellent circulating medium, and the wide extension which it almost immediately attained, must have given an enormous stimulus to trade, and have been found of the greatest convenience by the Phoenician merchants, who had no longer to carry with them the precious metal in bars or ingots, and to weigh their gold and silver in the balance in connection with every purchase that they made, but could effect both sales and purchases in the simple and commodious manner still in use among all civilised nations at the present day.
Under these circumstances we can well understand that the Phoenicians were thoroughly satisfied with the position which they occupied under the earlier Persian kings, and strove zealously to maintain and extend the empire to which they owed so much. Their fidelity was put to a crucial test after they had been subjects of Darius Hystaspis for a little more than twenty years, and had had about fourteen or fifteen years’ experience of the advantages of his governmental system. Aristagoras of Miletus, finding himself in a position of difficulty, had lighted up the flames of war in Asia Minor, and brought about a general revolt of the Greeks in those parts against the Persian power—a revolt which spread on from the Greeks to the native Asiatics, and in a short time embraced, not only Ionia and Æolis, but Caria, Caunus, and almost the whole of Cyprus.[14274] The bulk of the Cyprian cities were Phoenician colonies, and the political connection between these cities and Phoenicia was so close and of such ancient date that the Phoenicians can scarcely have failed to be moved by their example and by their danger. A wave of sympathy might have been expected to sweep across the excitable people, and it would not have been surprising had they rushed headlong into rebellion with the same impetuosity as their Cyprian brethren. Had they done so the danger to Persia would have been very great, and the course of the world’s history might perhaps have been differently shaped. The junction of the Phoenician fleet with the navies of Cyprus, Ionia, Caria, and Æolis would have transferred the complete sovereignty of the Eastern Mediterranean to the side of the rebels.[14275] The contagion of revolt would probably have spread. Lycia and Cilicia, always eager for independence,[14276] would probably have joined the malcontents; Pamphylia, which lay between them, would have followed their example; the entire seaboard of Asia Minor and Syria would have been lost; Egypt would, most likely, have seen in the crisis her opportunity, and have avenged the cruelties and insults of Cambyses[14277] by the massacre of her Persian garrison. Persia’s prosperity would have received a sudden check, from which it might never have recovered; Greece would have escaped the ordeal of the invasion of Xerxes; and the character of the struggle between Europe and Asia would have been completely altered.
But the view which the Phoenicians took of their duties, or of their interests, led them to act differently. When the Persians, anxious to recover Cyprus, applied to the Phoenician cities for a naval force, to transport their army from Cilica to the island, and otherwise help them in the war, their request was at once complied with. Ships were sent to the Cilician coast without any delay;[14278] the Persian land force was conveyed in safety across the strait and landed on the opposite shore; the ships then rounded Cape St. Andreas and anchored in the bay opposite Salamis, where the Ionian fleet was drawn up in defence of the town.[14279] An engagement followed—the first, so far as we know, between Phoenicians and Greeks—wholly to the advantage of the latter.[14280] No complaint, however, is made of any lukewarmness, or want of zeal, on the part of the Phoenicians, who seem to have been beaten in fair fight by an enemy whom they had perhaps despised. Their ill fortune did not lead to any very serious result, since the Persian land force defeated the Cyprians, and thus Persia once more obtained possession of the island.
A year or two later the Phoenicians recovered their lost laurels. In B.C. 495 the Persians, having trampled out the flames of revolt in Cyprus, Caria, and Caunus, resolved on a great effort to bring the war to a close by attacking the Ionian Greeks in their own country, and crushing the head and front of the rebellion, which was the great and flourishing city of Miletus. Miletus lay on the southern shore of a deep bay—the Sinus Latmicus—which penetrated the western coast of Asia Minor in about Lat. 37º 30´, but which the deposits of the Mæander have now filled up.[14281] North-west of the town, at the distance of about a mile, was the small island of Ladé, now a mere hillock on the flat alluvial plain. While the Persian land force advanced along the shore, and invested Milestus on the side towards the continent, a combined fleet of six hundred vessels[14282] proceeded to block the entrance to the bay, and to threaten the doomed city from the sea. This fleet was drawn from four only of the countries subject to Persia—viz. Phoenicia, Cilicia, Cyprus, and Egypt—whereof Phoenicia, we are told, “showed the greatest zeal,"[14283] and we may presume furnished by far the larger number of ships. On their arrival in Milesian waters the captains found a strong naval force collected to meet them, which rested upon the island of Ladé, and guarded the approaches to the town. Miletus had summoned to her aid the contingents of her various allies—Chios, Lesbos, Samos, Teos, Priene, Erythræ, Phocæa, Myus—and had succeeded in gathering together a fleet amounting to above three hundred and fifty vessels.[14284] This time Phoenicia did not despise her foe. Before engaging, every effort was made to sow discord and dissension among the confederates, and induce the Greek captains to withdraw their squadrons, or at any rate to remain neutral in the battle.[14285] Considerable effect was produced by these machinations; and when at last the attack was made, two of the principal of the Greek allies[14286] drew off, and sailed homewards, leaving the rest of the confederates to their fate. Yet, notwithstanding this defection, the battle was stoutly contested by the ships which remained, especially those of the Chians,[14287] and though a very decisive and complete victory was ultimately gained by the Phoenicians and their allies, the cost of the victory was great. Persia regained her naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean; Phoenicia re-established her claim to be considered the great sea power of the time; but she lost a large number of her best vessels and seamen, and she was taught the lesson that, to cope with Greeks, she must have a vast superiority of force upon her side—a superiority of not much less than three to one.