The starting-point, harbour, and emporium for the trade in the West and the voyages beyond the pillars of Melkarth in the Atlantic Ocean was Gades. Long after the naval power of the Phenicians and Carthage had perished, Gades remained a great, rich, and flourishing city of trade. Strabo describes it thus: "Situated on a small island not much more than a hundred stades in length, and scarce a stade in breadth, without any possessions on the mainland or the islands, this city sends out the most and largest ships, and seems to yield to no other city, except Rome, in the number of the inhabitants. But the greater part do not live in the city, but on ships."[549]
In the tenth century B.C. the navigation and trade of the Phenicians extended from the coasts of the Arabian Sea, from the Somali coast, and perhaps from the mouths of the Indus as far as the coast of Britain; from the coasts of Mauritania on the Atlantic to the Tigris, from Armenia to the Sabæans. Stretching out far in every direction, they had as yet suffered reverses in one region only, in the basin of the Ægean Sea. Their trade and intercourse was not indeed destroyed, but their mines, their colonies on the islands of this sea and the coasts of Hellas, were lost. Before Hiram ascended the throne of Tyre, the Phenicians, after teaching Babylonian weights and measures, the building of fortresses and walls, and mining to the Greeks, and bringing them their alphabet (p. 57), were compelled to retire before the increasing strength of the Greek cantons, not only from the coasts of Hellas, but also from the islands of the Ægean. The trade, however, with the Hellenes continued as before, in lively vigour, so far as the Homeric descriptions can be accepted as evidence. The most valuable possessions in the treasuries of the Greek princes are Sidonian works of art. Phenician ships often show themselves in Greek waters. When one of these merchantmen is anchored, the wares are set out in the ship, or under tents on the shore, or the Phenicians offer them for sale in the nearest place. A Phenician vessel laden with all kinds of ornaments lands on an island; after the Phenicians have sold many wares they offer to the queen a necklace of gold and amber, and at the same time they carry off her son, and sell him on another island. A Phenician freights a ship to Libya, and persuades a Greek to go with him as overseer of the lading: he intended to sell him there as a slave. Along with these notices in the Homeric poems on the trade of the Phenicians, an account has also come down to us from an Eastern source. The prophet Joel, who prophesied about the year 830 B.C., says, in regard to the invasion of the Philistines in Judah, which took place about the year 845 B.C., and brought them to the walls of Jerusalem (p. 252); Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of the land of the Philistines, have stolen the silver and gold of Jehovah, and carried the costly things into their temples; the sons of Judah and Jerusalem they sold to the sons of Javan (the Greeks), in order to remove them far from their land.[550]
For the colonies which the Phenicians had to give up on the Greek coasts and islands, they found a rich compensation in the strengthening and increase of their colonies on the west of the Mediterranean, on Sardinia, where they built Caralis (Cagliari) on the southern shore, on Corsica, on the north coast of Africa, where Carthage arose about the middle of the ninth century (p. 269), and on the shores of Iberia. But another loss which befell them in the East could not be made good so easily. After king Jehoshaphat's death (848 B.C.), even before the invasion of the Philistines, the kingdom of Judah, as we saw (p. 252), lost the sovereignty over the Edomites. Hence the harbour-city of Elath was lost to the Phenicians also, and the Ophir trade at an end, a century and a half after it began. Though 50 years later, when Judah under Amaziah and Uzziah had reconquered the Edomites, and Elath was rebuilt, this navigation, as it seems, was again set in motion, this restoration was of no long continuance. After the middle of the eighth century the Phenicians were finally limited for their trade with the Sabæans to the caravan routes through Arabia.
A still more serious source of danger was the approach of the Assyrian power to the Syrian coast. In the course of the ninth century (from 876 B.C.), as has been remarked above, Assyrian armies repeatedly showed themselves in Syria, and their departure had repeatedly to be purchased by tribute. As this pressure increased, and the Assyrian rulers insisted on pushing forward the borders of their kingdom towards Syria as far as the shores of the Mediterranean, as the cities of the Phenicians became subject to a power the centre of which lay in the distant interior, the trade not to the East but to the West came into question, and it was doubtful whether the cities, when embodied in a great land-power, could retain Cyprus in subjection, and keep up the trade with Egypt, and the connection with their colonies in the West. The doubt became greater when, after the beginning of the eighth century B.C., a dangerous opposition rose in the Mediterranean, and a still more serious competition against the Phenicians. Not content with driving the Phenicians out of the Ægean Sea, with obtaining possession of the islands and the west coast of Asia Minor, the Hellenes spread farther and farther to the west. Already they had got Rhodes into their hands; they were already settled off the coast of Syria, on the island of Cyprus, among the ancient cities of the Phenicians. Still more vigorous was the growth of their settlements to the west of the Mediterranean. After founding Cyme (Cumae) on the coast of Lower Italy, they built in Sicily, after the middle of the eighth century, in quick succession, Naxus (738 B.C.), Syracuse (735 B.C.), Catana (730 B.C.), and Megara (728 B.C.), to which were quickly added Rhegium, Sybaris, Croton, and Tarentum in Lower Italy (720-708 B.C.). Were the cities of the Phenicians in Sicily, Rus Melkarth, Motye, Panormus, Soloeis, and Eryx (p. 79), in a position to hold the balance against these rivals and their navigation? The injurious effects of the competition of a rival power by sea for the trade of the Phenicians must have increased when, in the seventh century, the cities of the Greeks in Sicily increased in number, and Egypt was opened to them about the middle of this century; when, in the year 630 B.C., the first Greek city, Cyrene, rose on the shore of Africa, and about the same time the Greeks entered into direct trade connections with Tartessus; when at the close of this century a Greek city was built on the shore of the Ligystian Sea, at the mouth of the Rhone, and soon after the settlements of the Greeks in Sicily and in the west of the Mediterranean began to multiply. While in this manner the field of Phenician trade was limited by the constant advance of the Greeks, the mother-cities, from the same period, the middle of the eighth century, had to feel the whole weight of the development of Assyrian power. And when this pressure ceased, in the second half of the seventh century, it was followed by the still more burdensome oppression of the Babylonian empire.
Yet in spite of all hindrances and losses, a prophet of the Hebrews after the middle of the eighth century could say of Tyre, that "she built herself strongholds, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets."[551] And Ezekiel at the beginning of the sixth century describes the trade of Tyre in the following manner: "Thou who dwellest at the entrance of the sea, who art the trader of the nations to many islands! On mighty waters thy rowers carry thee; thy trade goes out over all seas; thou satisfiest many nations; thou hast enriched the kings of the earth by the multitude of thy goods and wares. Thou art become mighty in the midst of the sea. All ships of the sea and their sailors were in thee to purchase thy wares. Persians and Libyans and Lydians serve in thee; they are thy warriors; they hang shield and helmet on thy walls: thy own warriors stand round on the walls, and brave men are on all thy towers. Syria is thy merchant, because of the number of the wares of thy skill; they make thy fairs with emeralds, purple, and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and agate. Damascus is thy merchant in the multitude of the wares of thy making, in the wine of Helbon, and white wool. Judah and the land of Israel were thy merchants; they traded in thy market wheat and pastry and honey. They of the house of Togarmah (Armenia) traded in thy fairs with horses and mules. Haran, Canneh, and Asshur, and Childmad were thy merchants in costly robes, in blue cloths and embroidered work, and chests of cedar-wood full of damasks bound with cords, in thy place of merchandise. Dedan (the Dedanites[552]) is thy merchant in horse-cloths for riding. Wedan brings tissues to thy markets: forged iron, cassia, and calamus were brought to thy markets. Arabia and all the princes of Kedar are ready for thee with lambs, rams, and goats. The merchants of Sabæa and Ramah[553] traffic with thee; they occupied in thy fairs with the chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold. Javan (the Greeks), Tubal, and Mesech (the Tibarenes and Moschi) are thy merchants; they trade with silver, iron, tin, and lead. Many islands are at hand to thee for trade; they brought thee for payment horns of ivory and ebony. The ships of Tarshish are thy caravans in thy trade: so art thou replenished and mighty in the midst of the sea."[554]
FOOTNOTES:
[538] Supra, p. 187. Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 3, 244 ff.
[539] Movers, loc. cit. 2, 3, 265 ff.
[540] Vol. i. p. 538. Ezekiel xxvii. 14; xxxviii. 6.
[541] Helbig, "Annali del Inst. Arch." 1876, pp. 57, 117, 247 ff.