The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 02

by Unknown

Translated for this work from his Geschichte der Phönizier.

The history of both the Egyptian and the Babylonian peoples is closely bound up with the territorial history of a limited tract of land, while with the Phœnicians it is quite otherwise. Their history is in a far less degree the history of their land. Among all civilised nations of antiquity, Phœnicia was the first that, maintaining its national individuality and its form of civilisation, learned to become independent of the clod of earth upon which this individuality had been developed. It was the first that, by means of emigration and the founding of settlements, gained sufficient space to attain to full historical importance.

Upon the determination of the balance of power of the old Orient, upon the political life of their neighbours, the petty states of this district in reality never exerted a positive influence. At the most, their existence and their policy of the moment helped in the decision of some questions of relatively small importance in the course of world-historic events. Would we be more interested in the history of Tyre and Sidon than in that of Gaza and Ashdod, if the first communication of the East with the West had not been opened chiefly by the Phœnicians; and if a Phœnician colony, Carthage, a most dangerous rival first to the Greek towns of Sicily, and afterward to the rising world-power of Rome, had not fought the bitter struggle for supremacy on the coast-lands of the western half of the Mediterranean—a struggle which, after a long past poor in feats of arms, immortalised the name of the Punic race? The fame that illuminates the figures of the generals Hamilcar and Hannibal is reflected on the history of the mother country.

It is no new thing in the history of races for a reorganisation of the national life of an active people to take place in its colonies and emigrant fragments. We may cite the foundation of the states of the Veragri, and of the Normans, and the rise of the United States of America out of the settlements of New England. But, as these examples show, this seldom comes to pass without the evidence of considerable sacrifice of national individuality. Generally such new political formations involve at the same time a more or less complete change of national character, a great portion of which is sacrificed in the adaptation to changed conditions of life; but few traces of such a change can be observed amid the Phœnicians in their colonial cities.

Moreover, we are only now, since excavations in Greece have brought to light considerable quantities of remains from pre-Homeric times, beginning to put a correct estimate upon the sum of fruitful suggestions and finished products which the Phœnician seafarers and traders together with their wares brought to the nations of the West, and above all to Greek art. In this way, the expansion of the Phœnicians exercised an enduring influence upon the whole course of the history of civilisation in all later times.

What fitted them to become, in this sense also, an historically important people was, besides the tenacity of will with which they pursued their aims, a high degree of intellectual receptivity, which enabled them to assimilate with ease the attainments of foreign culture; and also the adaptability and insight with which they could make themselves at home even in entirely foreign surroundings.

Of the favourableness, or unfavourableness of circumstances, they were no more independent than any other people on earth has been. It even appears that, in accordance with some law, they achieved results only when, in the course of their undertakings, they came in contact with nations whose civilisation was still in process of formation, or at least, during the period of contact, did not attain to any importance of its own.

But the skill with which they were able to turn just such circumstances to their own advantage, and to continue a national existence in the midst of such an environment (this highly developed capacity for adaptation was their peculiar inheritance) was something that at least would have been utterly impossible with the cultured races of the Nile and the Euphrates. It was chiefly due to the fact that, not national elements, but those which had been learned and borrowed from foreign races, predominated in Phœnician culture. This made culture a comfortable garment, took from it and its wearers the awkwardness that would have developed in case of a more independent origin, kept it free from many fast chains and immutable faults which come with a uniform national culture and an isolated history of development.

As the scene of the history of the Phœnicians varies in extent with the location of their settlements, Phœnicia is less a fixed geographical idea than a name, which would simply designate in general that portion of the Syrian coast, whose chief population was of Phœnician descent.

Accordingly, the origin of the name “Phœnicia” (Phoinike) which the Greeks gave to this stretch of coast, is to be found in the Greek name of the inhabitants: “Phoinix,” the plural “Phoinix” and not “Phoinikes” from the name of the country.