We hear in Solomon’s days of plenty of silver, that the vessels of his house were made of pure gold, for silver was “nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon” (1 Kings x. 21), or that he “made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones” (1 Kings x. 27). These are evidently hyperbolical expressions, but they would hardly have been used if a certain change had not taken place in its valuation.
However it may be, an extraordinary amount of silver found its way into Western Asia at a very early period; and the farther one goes back in the history of Phœnicia and its vicinity, the greater the wealth of these countries in precious metals is seen to be; and hence the explanation of the part played there by gold and silver since the seventh century.
The great wealth in gold and silver in Western Asia is shown in the accounts given of the treasures which fell into the hands of the conquering Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, and the Hebrews in the times of David and Solomon. These treasures did not come from mines, at least we know of none in Western Asia, but they were gained partly from the conquered countries as tributes and booty, and partly from trade which was mainly directed to the capitals of the conquering kingdoms. The record of the wealth of the Assyrian kings far exceeds the almost fabulous accounts of the amount of silver found in Persia by the Macedonian conqueror.
THE SLAVE TRADE OF PHŒNICIA
But the most important branch of Phœnician commerce was the slave trade. Many thousands of these unfortunate beings were employed in the numerous manufacturies and industries of the Phœnician cities, and nearly all the rowers on the great war-ships and trading vessels of this maritime nation were slaves. It is said that sixty thousand slaves manned the three hundred Phœnician ships which joined the Persian navy. In addition, vast numbers of slaves were sent to the colonies for mining and industrial purposes. Hence it can be seen that the demands of the Phœnician markets alone, for slaves, must have been enormous. But the Phœnicians were not content to supply the home market. They searched the world for slaves; and the Phœnician slave dealer was known in every great city of ancient times. Indeed, so numerous became the slave merchants, that the Bible speaks of a thousand of them gathering at one time and place, to attend a slave market, as a not unusual occurrence. Human beings were the most important articles of merchandise in the olden times.
The slave trade is as ancient as is trade itself. Slaves figure in the religious stories of the Assyrians, the Lydians, and Phœnicians; and there are traders mentioned in the Biblical accounts of the old fathers of Israel, and in the poems and myths of the Homeric period. Phœnician seafarers, who sold their wares on distant shores, took the opportunity of kidnapping boys and girls to sell them elsewhere at a high price. The account of Eumæus in the Odyssey will be recollected; Io, and also the chorus of maidens in Euripides’ Helena, were represented as having been brought by Phœnician merchants to Egypt. The traders by land also dealt in human wares. We know how Joseph was sold for twenty shekels to the travelling Midianite merchants.
With the establishment of a regular commercial intercourse between cities and nations, the kidnapping of human beings ceased to be practised by reputable Phœnician merchants; but avaricious men still secretly sent out ships for the purpose of capturing human wares. These spoilers haunted the coasts and harbours of Phœnicia, Asia Minor, and Syria; and either exacted a high ransom from the relatives of their captives, or sold them in the public slave markets.
During the most prosperous period of the slave trade we find the Phœnician slave dealers everywhere, even on the fields of battle, where they followed the fortunes of war as peddlers and purveyors. The booty which fell into the hands of the soldiers was at once purchased by these traffickers, and the little children and women, whose transport would have been difficult, were sold to them at a very low price, or exchanged for wine or some other commodity valued by the soldiers.
In this double capacity as purveyors and slave dealers the Phœnicians appear in the Old Testament account of the armies which attacked the Jews. After the raid, led by the Philistines against the Jews about 845 B.C. (Joel iii. 3), the prophet said: “They have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they might drink,” and the same prophet, when mentioning the slave trade of the Syrians and Sidonians, writes: “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off.”
The greater number of Phœnician slaves came from the neighbouring countries of Palestine and Syria; and this not only because of the nearness of these countries to Phœnicia, but also because of the political condition of their inhabitants. In a great part of Syria and Palestine the old populations had been enslaved by the races invading these countries. As the Canaanites had to submit to the Jews and Hebrews in the south, so the Syrians had to bow to the Canaanites in the north, where they were not only in force on the seacoast, but had become the ruling race far into the interior. A great number of the Jewish inhabitants in the district of the Phœnician maritime cities had the same fate, and, according to many accounts, they were driven into slavery. Hence the inherited enmity between the Phœnicians and the Syrians, and more especially between the Jews and every neighbouring race. The intermingling of so many different neighbouring small states caused continuous wars, which were often waged solely for the purpose of obtaining slaves and gaining wealth by the sale of them. Moreover, slavery was not a despised condition amongst races, accustomed to it from the earliest times, whose gods like Sandon, Marna, Semiramis, and Astarte, whose forefathers like Jacob and Joseph, and whose heroes like Samson had been slaves, or servants. Thus it was quite a common custom in Palestine for parents to sell their children as slaves, or for persons willingly to enter slavery. The Greeks and Romans, therefore, long regarded the Syrians and Jews as born to slavery, as the Europeans once considered the negroes.