The History of Antiquity Volume Ii Part 3

Ephorus says that Cadmus carried off Harmonia while sailing past Samothrace, and hence in that island search was still made for Harmonia at the festivals.[83] Herodotus informs us that Cadmus of Tyre, the son of Agenor, in his search for Europa, landed on the island of Thera, which was then called Callisto, and there left behind some Phenicians, either because the land pleased him or for some other reason. These Phenicians inhabited the island for eight generations before Theras landed there from Lacedaemon. The rest went to the island of Thasos and there built a temple to Heracles, which he had himself seen, and the city of Thasos. This took place five generations before Heracles the son of Amphitryon was born. After that Cadmus came to the land now called Boeotia, and the Phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and taught the h.e.l.lenes many things, among others the use of writing, "which as it seems to me the h.e.l.lenes did not possess before. They learnt this writing, as it was used by the Phenicians; in the course of time the form of the letters changed with the language. From these Phenicians the Ionians, among whom they dwelt, learnt the letters, altered their form a little, and extended their use. As was right, they called them Phenician letters, since the Phenicians had brought them into Greece. I have myself seen inscriptions in Cadmeian letters (_i.e._ from the time of Cadmus) in the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Thebes."[84] According to the narrative of h.e.l.lanicus, Cadmus received an oracle, bidding him follow the cow which bore on her back the sign of the full moon, and found a city where she lay down. Cadmus carried out the command, and when the cow lay down wearied, where Thebes now stands, Cadmus built there the Cadmeia (the citadel of Thebes).[85] According to the statement of Pherecydes Cadmus also built the city of Thebes.[86]

With Hecataeus of Miletus Cadmus pa.s.ses as the discoverer of letters; according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the art of mining.[87]

The direction of the Phenician settlements, which proceeds in the aegean sea from S.E. to N.W., cannot be mistaken in these legends. First Rhodes, then the Cyclades, then the islands on the Thracian coast, Samothrace and Thasos, were colonised; and at length, on the strait of Euboea, the mainland of h.e.l.las was trodden by the Phenicians, who are said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence over the h.e.l.lenes. The legend of Cadmus goes far back among the Greeks.

In the Homeric poems the inhabitants of Thebes are "Cadmeians." The Thebaid praised "the divine wisdom of Cadmus;" in the poems of Hesiod he leads home Harmonia, "the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite," and Pindar describes how the Muses sang for "the divine Cadmus, the wealthiest of mortals, when in seven-gated Thebes he led the ox-eyed Harmonia to the bridal-bed."[88] Agenor, the father of Cadmus, is a name which the Greeks have given to the Baal of the Phenicians.[89] Cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a G.o.d and a G.o.ddess,--who celebrates the first marriage at which the G.o.ds a.s.semble, bring gifts and sing,--whose wife was wors.h.i.+pped as the protecting G.o.ddess of Thebes,[90]--whose daughters, Ino, Leucothea and Semele, are divine creatures, whom Zeus leads to the Elysian fields,[91]--can only be a G.o.d. He seeks the lost Europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. We know the moon-G.o.ddess of the Phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned Astarte, who wears a cow's head, the G.o.ddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. "The great temple of Astarte at Sidon," so we find in the book of the Syrian G.o.ddess, "belongs, as the Sidonians say, to Astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of Europa, the sister of Cadmus." The meaning of the word Europa has been discussed previously (I. 371). Cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-G.o.ddess, who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy marriage, is the Baal Melkarth of the Phenicians. The death-bringing Istar-Astarte is changed into Bilit-Ashera, into the fruit-giving G.o.ddess;[92] the gloomy Europa changes into Harmonia, the G.o.ddess of union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants deadly gifts. It is the myth of Melkarth and Astarte which the Greeks present to us in the story of Cadmus; with this myth they have connected the foundation of the Phenician settlements in Rhodes, Thera, Samothrace, Thasos and Boeotia; they have changed it into the foundation of these colonies. The name Cadmus means the man of the East; to the Hebrews the Arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as Beni Kedem, _i.e._ sons of the East.[93] To the Greeks the Phenicians were men of the East, just as to the English of the thirteenth century the merchants of Lubeck were Easterlings. The citadel of Thebes, which the men of the East built, preserved the name of Cadmus the son of the East, and kept it alive among the Greeks.

What we can gather from Grecian legend is confirmed by some statements of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the Phenicians.

Thucydides informs us that the Phenicians colonised most of the islands of the aegean.[94] Diodorus has already told us with regard to Rhodes that in the temples of this island were Phenician works of art and inscriptions, and that in Rhodes the sun-G.o.d and the seven children which he begot there were wors.h.i.+pped. In the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the Phenicians; the sun-G.o.d at their head is the Baal of the Phenicians (I.

357). And if Diodorus mentions Makar among the seven sons of the sun-G.o.d of Rhodes,--if according to others Rhodes, like Cyprus, was called Macaria,--Makar is a Greek form of the name Melkarth. We further learn that on the highest mountain summit in Rhodes, on Atabyris, Zeus was wors.h.i.+pped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was offered yearly to Cronos. In Atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the Semitic Tabor, _i.e._ the height. We found above that the Phenicians wors.h.i.+pped Baal under the form of a bull, and the Greeks are wont to denote Baal Moloch by the name of Cronos.[95] These forms of wors.h.i.+p continued to exist even when at a later time h.e.l.lenic immigrants had got the upper hand in Rhodes. It was the Dorians who here met with resistance from the Phenicians at Camirus and Ialysus; they got the upper hand, but admitted Phenician families into their midst,[96] and continued their sacred rites. Diodorus informs us that the Phenicians whom Cadmus had left behind on Rhodes had formed a mixed community with the Ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had performed the sacred duties.[97] Even at a later time Rhodes stood in close relation with Phoenicia, especially with the city of Aradus.[98]

Thus it happened that the colonies which the Rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in Sicily, Gela and Acragas, carried thither the wors.h.i.+p of Zeus Atarbyrius. Zeus Atarbyrius was the protecting deity of Acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. The coins of Gela also exhibit a bull.[99] Of the island of Thera, Herodotus told us that the Phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight generations, _i.e._ for more than 250 years according to his computation. Herodotus names the chief of the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind on Thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected there.[100] The descendants of these Phenicians were found here by the Greek settlers from Laconia. It is certain that even in the third century B.C. the island wors.h.i.+pped the hero Phoenix.[101] Of the island of Melos we learn that it was occupied by Phenicians of Byblus, and named by them after their mother city;[102] the island of Oliaros near Paros was, on the other hand, according to Heracleides Ponticus, occupied by the Sidonians.[103] Strabo informs us that Samothrace was previously called Melite (Malta); from its height (the island is a mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit reaches 5000 feet) it obtained the name of Samos, "for high places are called Sami;"[104] as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this meaning, like the name Melite, belongs to the Phenician language.

Ephorus has already told us (p. 56) that the Samothracians sought for Harmonia at their festivals; Diodorus represents Cadmus as celebrating the marriage with Harmonia on Samothrace as well as at Thebes, and we learn from Herodotus that the Cabiri, _i.e._ the great G.o.ds of the Phenicians, were wors.h.i.+pped on Samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from Roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great G.o.ds,"

_i.e._ to the Cabiri.[105] The islands of Imbros and Lemnos also wors.h.i.+pped the Cabiri; Lemnos especially wors.h.i.+pped Hephaestus, who had a leading place in this circle.[106] The island of Thasos is said, according to the statement of the Greeks, to have been called after a son of Phoenix, or Agenor, of the name of Thasos, who was consequently a brother of Cadmus. Herodotus saw on the island a temple which the Phenicians had built to Heracles, _i.e._ to Baal-Melkarth, and the mines which they had made on the coast opposite Samothrace; "they had overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."[107]

Herodotus also tells us that the temple of Aphrodite Urania on the island of Cythera off the coast of Laconia was founded by the Phenicians, and Pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred temple of Urania among the h.e.l.lenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the G.o.ddess in armour. Aphrodite Urania is with the Greeks the Syrian Aphrodite; if she was represented on Cythera in armour it is clear that she was wors.h.i.+pped there by the Phenicians as Astarte-Ashera, _i.e._ as the G.o.ddess of war and love.[108]

Not in the islands only, but on the coasts of h.e.l.las also, the Phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of wors.h.i.+p belonging to them. On the isthmus of Corinth Melicertes, _i.e._ Melkarth, was wors.h.i.+pped as a deity protecting navigation; Corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.[109] Aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of Acrocorinthus, was wors.h.i.+pped by prost.i.tution like the Ashera-Bilit of the Phenicians. In Attica also, in the deme of Athmonon, there was a shrine of the G.o.ddess of Cythera, which king Porphyrion, _i.e._ the purple man, the Phenician, is said to have founded there at a very ancient time "before king Actaeus."[110]

At Marathon, where Heracles was wors.h.i.+pped, and of whom the name represents the Phenician city Marathus, rose a fountain which had the name Makaria, _i.e._ Makar,[111] the name of Melkarth, which we have already met with in Cyprus and Rhodes, and shall meet with again. More plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in Hymettus at the village of Spata attest the ancient settlement of the Phenicians on the Attic coast. These are chambers dug deeply into the rock after the Phenician manner, with horizontal roofs after the oldest fas.h.i.+on of Phenician graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. The ornaments and works in gla.s.s, ivory, gold and bra.s.s discovered here, which are made after Babylonian and Egyptian models, can only have been brought by the Phenicians.[112] The citadel of Thebes, as has been said, retains the name of Cadmus; the poetry of the Greeks praised the mighty walls, the seven gates of Thebes. We know the number seven of the great Phenician G.o.ds; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the G.o.ds of the sun, the moon and the five planets;[113] and the Greeks have already admitted to us that they received the wearing of armour, the art of mining and masonry and finally their alphabet from Cadmus, _i.e._ from the Phenicians, the Cadmeans of Thebes.

In the Homeric poems Europa, the daughter of Phoenix, bears Minos to Zeus. The abode of Minos is the "great city" of Cnossus in Crete; he receives each nine years the revelations of his father Zeus; for his daughter Ariadne Daedalus adorns a dancing place at Cnossus. After his death Minos carries in the under world the golden sceptre, and by his decisions puts an end to the contentions of the shades.[114] His descendants rule in Crete.[115] Later accounts tell us that Zeus in the form of a bull carried off Europa from Phoenicia, and bore her over the sea to Crete. The wife of her son Minos, Pasiphae, then united with a bull which rose out of the sea, and brought forth the Minotaur, _i.e._ the Minos-bull, a man with a bull's head.[116] The son of Minos, Androgeos (earth-man) or Eurygyes (Broadland), was destroyed in Attica by the bull of Marathon, who consumed him in his flames.[117] To avenge the death of Androgeos Minos seized Megara, and blight and famine compelled the Athenians to send, in obedience to the command of Minos, seven boys and seven girls every ninth year to Crete, who were then sacrificed to the Minotaur.[118] Others narrate that Hephaestus had given Minos a man of bra.s.s, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to Minos.[119] When Daedalus retired before the wrath of Minos from Crete to Sicily, Minos equipped his s.h.i.+ps to bring him back; but he there found, according to Herodotus, a violent death.[120] The king of the Sicanians, so Diodorus tells us, gave him a friendly welcome, and caused a warm bath to be prepared, and then craftily suffocated him in it. The Cretans buried their king in a double grave; they laid the bones in a secret place, and built upon them a temple to Aphrodite, and as they could not return to Crete because the Cretans had burned their s.h.i.+ps, they founded the city Minoa in Sicily; but the tomb of Minos was shown in Crete also.[121]

A bull-G.o.d carries the daughter of Phoenix over the sea to Crete and begets Minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with Pasiphae, _i.e._ the all-s.h.i.+ning, the Minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the Semites; Androgeos succ.u.mbs to the heat of the bull of Marathon, an iron man slays his victims by pressing them to his glowing breast. These legends of the Greeks are unmistakable evidence of the origin of the rites observed in Crete from the coast of Syria, of the settlement of Phenicians in Crete. The bull-G.o.d may be the Baal Samim or the Baal Moloch of the Phenicians; Europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-G.o.ddess of the Phenicians (p. 58); Pasiphae is only another name for the same G.o.ddess, the lady of the nightly sky, the starry heaven. We know that on occasions of blight human sacrifices were offered to Baal Moloch, the fiery, consuming, angry sun-G.o.d, and that these sacrifices were burnt. Ister, a writer of the third century B.C., tells us quite simply; In ancient times children were sacrificed to Cronos in Crete.[122] Before the harbour of Megara lay an island of the name of Minoa; at the time of the summer heat before the corn was ripe, the Athenians offered peace-offerings at the Thargelia, "in the place of human sacrifices,"[123] that the consuming sun might not kill the harvest. The name of the island and this custom, as well as the flames of the bull of Marathon, prove that beside the wors.h.i.+p of the Syrian G.o.ddess at Athmonon, and the wors.h.i.+p of Melkarth at Marathon, the wors.h.i.+p of Baal Moloch had penetrated as far as Megara and Attica.

Minos, the son of the sky-G.o.d, the husband of the moon-G.o.ddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a G.o.d; his proper name is Minotaur, a name taken from the form of the bull's image and the bull's head. When Baal Melkarth had found and overcome Astarte, after he had celebrated with her the holy marriage, he went to rest according to the Phenician myth in the waters of the western sea which he had warmed. The Phenicians were of opinion that the beams of the sun when sinking there in the far west had the most vigorous operation because of their greater proximity.[124] Minos goes to Sicily; there in a hot bath he ends his life, and over his resting-place rises the temple of Astarte-Ashera, with whom he celebrated his marriage in the west, and who by this marriage is changed from the G.o.ddess of war into the G.o.ddess of love.

The tombs of Minos in Crete, Sicily, and finally at Gades, of which the Greeks speak, are in the meaning of the Phenician myth merely resting-places of the G.o.d, who in the spring wakes from his slumber into new power. The Greeks made Minos, who continued to live in the under-world, a judge in the causes of the shades, and finally a judge of the souls themselves. On the southern coast of Sicily, at the mouth of the Halycus, lay the city which the Greeks called Minoa or Heraclea-Minoa after Minos. To the Phenicians it was known as Rus Melkarth (p. 78), a t.i.tle which proves beyond doubt that Minos was one of the names given by the Greeks to this G.o.d of the Phenicians.

The wors.h.i.+p of Baal Moloch, which the Phenicians brought to Crete and the sh.o.r.es of Megara and Attica, was not all that the Greeks personified in the form of Minos; they did not confine themselves to one side of the myth of Baal Melkarth. When Grecian colonists settled subsequently in Crete they found the cities of the Phenicians full of artistic capacity, and their life regulated by legal ordinances. Thus their legend could place the artist Daedalus, the discoverer and pattern of all art-industry, beside Minos, and refer to Minos the ordinances of the cities. Zeus himself had revealed these arrangements to him. At a later time the Greek cities of Crete traced their own inst.i.tutions back to Minos; here and there they may perhaps have followed a Phenician model, or they may have given out that such a model had been followed. Plato represents Minos as receiving the wise laws which he introduced into Crete from Zeus. With Aristotle also Minos is the founder of the Cretan laws.[125] In the circle of the Cabiri the sky-G.o.d Baal Samim was the protector and defender of law (I. 377).

Lastly, Minos is with the Greeks at once the representation and expression of the dominion which the Phenicians exercised in ancient times over the islands of the aegean sea, before the settlements of the Greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the s.h.i.+ps of the Greeks took the lead in these waters. In the age of the Heroes, so Herodotus tells us, Minos established the first naval empire; the Carians, who inhabited the islands, he made his subjects; they did not indeed pay tribute, but they had to man his s.h.i.+ps whenever necessary.[126] "The oldest king," says Thucydides, "of whom tradition tells us that he possessed a fleet was Minos. He ruled over the greatest part of the Greek sea and the Cyclades, which he colonised, driving out the Carians and making his sons lords of the islands."[127] Minos, as a king ruling by law, is then said to have put an end to piracy.

The Phenicians could not certainly have left out of sight the largest of the islands, which forms the boundary of the aegean sea; and the traditions of the Greeks can hardly go wrong if they make this island the centre of the naval supremacy of Minos, _i.e._ of the supremacy of the Phenicians over the Cyclades. Crete must have been the mainstay of their activity in the aegean, just as Thebes was the point on the mainland where they planted the firmest foot. The t.i.tle Minoa seems to lie at the base of the name of Minos, a t.i.tle borne not only by the island off Megara and the city in Sicily, but also by two cities in Crete (one on the promontory of Drepanum, the other in the region of Lyctus), by some islands near Crete, a city in Amorgus, and a city in Siphnus. The name Minoa (from _navah_) could mean dwelling; it is certain evidence of a Phenician settlement. But the Phenicians have left traces of their existence in Crete beside the names Minos and Minoa and the forms of wors.h.i.+p denoted by them. Coins of the Cretan cities Gortys and Phaestus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. Near the Cretan city of Cydonia the Jarda.n.u.s, _i.e._ the Jordan, falls into the sea; the name of the city Labana goes back to the Phenician word _libanon_, i.e. "white." Cnossus, the abode of Minos in Homer and Herodotus,[128] was previously named Kairatus; _Karath_ in Phenician means city. Ita.n.u.s, in Crete (_Ethanath_ in the Semitic form), is expressly stated to be a foundation of the Phenicians.[129]

With regard to the state of civilisation reached by Syria before the year 1500 B.C., we may draw some conclusions from the fact that not merely did the civilisation of Egypt influence the shepherds of Semitic race who ruled over Egypt at that period, but that Semitic manners and customs left behind traces in Egypt (I. 128). Hence we may a.s.sume that the Syrians carried their wine and their oil to the Nile at the time when their kinsmen ruled there (1950-1650 B.C.). The civilisation of Syria appears more clearly from the tributes imposed by Tuthmosis III.

on Syria, which are here and there ill.u.s.trated by the pictures accompanying the inscriptions of this Pharaoh. The burdens imposed on the Syrians consist not only of corn, wine, oil and horses; not only of gold, silver and iron, but also of arms and works of art, among which the pictures allow us to recognise carefully-decorated vessels. On the other hand, it is clear from the fact that the Babylonian weights and measures were in use in Syria at this time (I. 304) that the Syrians before this period were in lively intercourse with the land of the Euphrates, that even before the sixteenth century B.C. caravans must have traversed the Syrian deserts in every direction, and even then the Syrians must have exchanged the products of their land for Babylonian stuffs and the frankincense which the Arabians on their part carried to Babylon. The dependence of Syria on Egypt under the Tuthmosis and Amenophis can only have augmented the intercourse of the Syrians with the land of the Nile. Afterwards Sethos I. (1440-1400) caused wood to be felled on Lebanon; it must have been the places on the coast under Lebanon which carried to Egypt in their s.h.i.+ps, along with the wine and oil of the coast and the interior, the wood so necessary there for building and exchanged it for the fabrics of Egypt. Wood for building could not be conveyed on the backs of camels, and the way by sea from the Phenician towns to the mouths of the Nile was far easier and less dangerous than the road by land over rocky heights and through sandy deserts. Hence, as early as the fifteenth century B.C., we may regard the Phenician cities as the central points of a trade branching east and west, which must have been augmented by the fact that they conveyed not only products of the Syrian land to the Euphrates and the Nile, but could also carry the goods which they obtained in exchange in Egypt to Babylonia, and what they obtained beyond the Euphrates to Egypt. At the same time the fabrics of Babylon and Egypt roused them to emulation, and called forth an industry among the Phenicians which we see producing woven stuffs, vessels of clay and metal, ornaments and weapons, and becoming pre-eminent in the colouring of stuffs with the liquor of the purple-fish, which are found on the Phenician coasts. This industry required above all things metals, of which Babylonia and Egypt were no less in need, and when the purple-fish of their own coasts were no longer sufficient for their extensive dyeing, colouring-matter had to be obtained. Large quant.i.ties of these fish produced a proportionately small amount of the dye. Copper-ore was found in Cyprus, gold in the island of Thasos, and purple-fish on the coasts of h.e.l.las. When the fall of the kingdom of the Hitt.i.tes and the overthrow of the Amorite princes in the south of Canaan augmented the numbers of the population on the coast, these cities were no longer content to obtain those possessions of the islands by merely landing and making exchanges with the inhabitants. Intercourse with semi-barbarous tribes must be protected by the sword. Good harbours were needed where the s.h.i.+ps could be sheltered from storm and bad weather, where the crews could find safety from the natives, rest and fresh stores of water and provisions. Thus arose protecting forts on the distant islands and coasts, which received the s.h.i.+ps of the native land. Under the protection of these intercourse could be carried on with the natives, and they were points of support for the collection of the fish and the sinking of mines.

In order to obtain the raw material necessary for their industry no less than to carry off the surplus of population, the Phenicians were brought to colonise Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Thera, Melos, Oliarus, Samothrace, Imbros, Lemnos and Thasos. In the bays of Laconia and Argos, in the straits of Euboea,[130] purple-fish were found in extraordinary quant.i.ties. The Phenicians settled in the island of Cythera in the bay of Laconia, which, as Aristotle says, was once called Porphyrussa from its purple-fish,[131] and there erected that ancient temple to the oriental Aphrodite, Aphrodite in armour, just as in Attica in the deme of Athmonon they founded the temple of the Syrian Aphrodite and excavated the tombs on Hymettus.[132] Midway between the straits of Euboea and the bay of Corinth, which abounded with purple-fish, rose the strong fortress of the Cadmeia, and on Acrocorinthus the shrine of Ashera.

Herodotus and Thucydides told us above (p. 67) that the Carians inhabited the islands of the aegean sea. These were they whom Minos had made subject to his dominion. Beside this, we are informed more particularly that the Carians had possessed the island of Rhodes, which lay off their coast, and had dwelt on Chios and Samos (I. 571). What degree of civilisation was reached by the population of the islands of the aegean sea before the Phenicians came into relations with them may be inferred to some extent from the discoveries made in the island of Thera. In and beneath three layers of ashes and tufa caused by vast eruptions of the volcanos of this island have been discovered stone instruments, pottery of the most rudimentary kind, in part with the rudest indications of the human face and figure, and beside these weapons of copper and bra.s.s. In the upper layers of the tufa we find far better pottery decorated in the Phenician style. On Melos also, and in the tombs at Camirus in Rhodes, vessels of the same kind have been discovered; and, finally, in the highest of the layers at Thera are gold ornaments of the most various kinds, and ornaments of electron, _i.e._ of mixed gold and silver, all of a workmans.h.i.+p essentially non-h.e.l.lenic.

From these facts we may draw the conclusion that the s.h.i.+ps of the Phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in bra.s.s and copper, their pottery and ornaments; that the Carians of the islands, following these patterns, raised their own efforts to a higher stage, and that afterwards the Phenicians themselves settled in the islands and made themselves masters of them. Perhaps we may even go a step further. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on the Trojan coast, we find exactly the same primitive pottery, with the same indications of human forms, as in Thera, while in the refuse lying above this are idols and pottery adorned after Phenician patterns, which correspond exactly to the idols of Cyprus, as well as ornaments like those of Thera. Hence in this region also we may a.s.sume that the Phenicians gave the impulse and the example to the development of civilisation, and the more so as the name of the city of Adramyttion on the Trojan coast repeats the name of a Phenician foundation on the coast of North Africa (Adrames, Hadrumetum), and even Strabo ascribes the wors.h.i.+p of the Cabiri to some places on the Trojan coast.[133] Far more definite traces of the Phenician style and skill are in existence on the sh.o.r.e of the bay of Argos. The ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at Mycenae are hewn in the rocks after the manner of the Phenicians. As in the ancient burying-places of the Phenicians, a perpendicular shaft forms the entrance to the sepulchral chambers; the corpses are laid in them without coffins, as was the most ancient custom in Phoenicia. The masks of beaten gold-leaf which were found on the faces of five or six of the corpses buried here are evidence of a custom which the Phenicians borrowed from the gilded faces of Egyptian coffins.[134] The corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. There is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, bra.s.s and gla.s.s in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. The ornaments remind us of Babylonian and a.s.syrian patterns; the idols in burnt clay are in the Phenician style; the palm-leaves and palms, antelopes and leopards which frequently occur, point to regions of the East; the articles of amber and the ostrich egg can only have reached the bay of Argos in Phenician s.h.i.+ps. Still there are grave reasons for refusing to believe that the persons buried in this tomb are princes of the Phenicians. The numerous pieces of armour show that the dead who rest here were buried with their armour, which is not the traditional custom either with regard to the Phenicians or the h.e.l.lenes, but which Thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the Carians.[135] We learn, moreover, even from the Homeric poems, that the Carians loved gold ornaments, and further, that the Greeks improved their armour after the pattern of the Carians (I. 572). As we also find the double axe of the Carian G.o.d, the "Zeus Stratius" as the Greeks called him, the "axe-G.o.d,"

the Chars-El in the Carian language (I. 573), on some ornaments of the tombs of Mycenae, the supposition forces itself upon us that Carians from the western islands must have occupied the sh.o.r.e of the bay of Argos. In any case, the tombs of Mycenae, both from their position and their contents, announce to us that the people who excavated them and placed their dead in them were dependent on the style and skill of the Phenicians.

Can we fix the time at which the Phenicians first set foot on the islands of h.e.l.las? Herodotus tells us that Troy was taken in the third generation after the death of Minos.[136] If we put three full generations, according to the calculation of Herodotus, between the death of Minos and the conquest of Ilium, the first event took place 100 years before the second. Since, according to the data of Herodotus, the capture of Ilium falls in the year 1280 or 1260 B.C., Minos would have died in the year 1380 or 1360 B.C. The landing of the Phenicians on Thasos and the expedition of Cadmus from Phoenicia beyond the islands to Boeotia are placed by Herodotus five generations before Heracles, and Heracles is placed 900 years before his own time. If we reckon upwards from the year 450 or 430 B.C., Heracles lived about the year 1350 or 1330 B.C., and Cadmus five generations, _i.e._ 166-2/3 years, before this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 B.C.[137] On the island of Thera, Herodotus further remarks, the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, _i.e._ 266-2/3 years, before the Dorians came to the island.[138] Melos was also occupied by Dorians, who a.s.serted in 416 B.C. that their community had been in existence 700 years,[139] according to which statement the Dorians came to Melos in the year 1116 B.C. With this event the Phenician rule over the island came to an end. If we a.s.sume that Thera, which is close by Melos, was taken from the Phenicians by the Dorians at the same time as the latter island, the eight generations given by Herodotus for the settlements of the Phenicians on Thera would carry us back to the year 1382 B.C. (1116 + 266-2/3), a date which is certainly in agreement with his statement about the death of Minos, but contradicts the date given for Cadmus, who yet, according to the narrative of Herodotus, left behind the settlers on Thera and Thasos when he first sailed to Boeotia.

Herodotus fixes dates according to generations and the genealogies of legend. The five generations which separated Cadmus from Heracles were for him, no doubt, Polydorus, Labdacus, Laius, Oedipus and Polynices; for the three generations between the death of Minos and the capture of Troy we find in Homer only two, Deucalion and Idomeneus.[140] But we can still find from Herodotus' calculations how far back the Greeks placed the beginning and the end of the empire of the Phenicians over their islands and coasts. Beyond this the chronographers do not give us any help. Eusebius and Hieronymus (Jerome) place the rape of Europa in the year 1429 or 1426 B.C.; the rule of Cadmus at Thebes in the year 1427 B.C. or 1319 (1316) B.C.; the settlement of the Phenicians on Thera, Melos, and Thasos in the year 1415 B.C.; the beginning of the rule of Minos in the year 1410 B.C., or, according to another computation, in the year 1251 B.C.[141]

We can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the Phenicians in the aegean sea. In the lower strata of the excavations at Hissarlik, on the coast of Troas, clay lentils have been found with Cyprian letters upon them.[142] Since the Greeks declared that they learnt their alphabet from the Phenicians and Cadmus, and since as a fact it is the alphabet of the Phenicians which lies at the root of the Greek, the Cyprian letters can only have been brought thither by Phenician s.h.i.+ps from Cyprus before the discovery of the Phenician letters, or from the islands off the Trojan coast occupied by the Phenicians, from Lemnos, Imbros and Samothrace; otherwise they must have come to the Troad at a later time by Cyprian s.h.i.+ps or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. Among the sons of j.a.pheth, the representative of the northern nations, Genesis mentions Javan, _i.e._ the Ionian, the Greek; and enumerates the sons of Javan: Elisha, Tars.h.i.+sh, Chittim, and Dodanim or Rodanim--the reading is uncertain.[143] It is a question whether the genealogical table in Genesis belongs to the first or second text of the Pentateuch, _i.e._ whether it was written down in the middle of the eleventh or of the tenth century B.C. In any case it follows that in the beginning of the eleventh or tenth century B.C. the name and nation of the Ionians was known not only in the harbour-cities of Phoenicia, but in the interior of Syria, and the inhabitants of the islands and of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean were reckoned in the stock of these Ionians.

Chittim is, as was remarked above, primarily the island of Cyprus; the Rodanim are the inhabitants of Rhodes (Dodanim would have to be referred to Dodona); Elisha is Elis in the Peloponnese, or the island of Sicily, if the name is not one given generally to western coasts and islands;[144] Tars.h.i.+sh is Tartessus, _i.e._ the region at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. If Ezekiel mentions the purple which the Phenicians bring from "the isles of Elishah,"[145] the islands and coasts of the aegean sea are plainly meant, on which the Phenicians collected the fish for their purple dye. This much is clear, that at least about the year 1000 B.C. not only the islands and coasts of the aegean were known in Syria, but even then the name of the distant land of Tars.h.i.+sh was current in Syria. We shall further see that as early as 1100 B.C.

Phenician s.h.i.+ps had pa.s.sed the straits of Gibraltar. Hence we may conclude that the Phenicians must have set foot on Cyprus about the year 1250 B.C., and on the islands and coasts of h.e.l.las about the year 1200 B.C.

Thucydides observes that in ancient times the Phenicians had occupied the promontories of Sicily and the small islands lying around Sicily, in order to carry on trade with the Sicels.[146] Diodorus Siculus tells us that when the Phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of Melite (Malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their s.h.i.+ps. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.[147] On the south-eastern promontory of Malta there was a temple of Heracles-Melkarth,[148] the foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given by the Phenician inscriptions found there. The island, like the mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought after in antiquity. On Gaulus also, a name mentioned on Phenician coins, are the remains of a Phenician temple. Between Sicily and the coast of Africa, where it approaches Sicily most nearly, lay the island of Cossyra, coins of which bear Phenician legends. Along with a dwarfish figure they present the name "island of the sons,"[149] _i.e._ no doubt, the children of the sun-G.o.d whom we met with in Rhodes. On the east coast of Sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with the mainland (now Isola degli Magnisi), the city of Thapsos, the name of which reveals its founders; _Tiphsach_ means coming over, here coming over to the mainland. In the same way the promontory of Pachynus (_pachun_ means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of Phoenicus are evidence of Phenician colonisation. On the south coast of Sicily, not far from the mouth of the Halycus, the Phenicians built that city which is known to the Greeks as Makara and Minoa, or Heracleaminoa; the coins of the city present in Phenician characters the name Rus-Melkart, _i.e._ "head (promontory) of Melkarth."[150] Off the west coast of Sicily the Phenicians occupied the small island of Motye.[151]

On this coast of the larger island, on Mount Eryx, which rises steeply out of a bald table land (2000 feet above the sea), they founded the city of Eryx, and on the summit of the mount, 5000 feet high, they built a temple to the Syrian Aphrodite. In Diodorus it is Eryx the son of Aphrodite who builds this temple; aeneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."[152] Virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of Eryx, near to the stars, in honour of Venus Idalia, _i.e._ the G.o.ddess wors.h.i.+pped at Idalion (Idial) on Cyprus by the immigrants from the East, who, with him, are the companions of aeneas.[153] The courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the wors.h.i.+p, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the G.o.ddess herself was supposed to be seen[154]), even without the Phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of its Syrian origin. The mighty substructure of the building is still in existence. Daedalus is said to have built it for the king of the Sicanians (p. 64). Beside the Syrian G.o.ddess, the Phenicians also wors.h.i.+pped here the Syrian G.o.d Baal Melkarth. According to the account of Diodorus, Heracles overcame Eryx in wrestling, and so took his land from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.[155] The kings of Sparta traced their origin to Heracles. When Dorieus, the son of Anaxandridas, king of Sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that the crown had fallen to his brother Cleomenes, the oracle bade him retire to Eryx; the land of Eryx belonged to the Heraclids because their ancestor won it. The Carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this right; Dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.[156] On the north coast of Sicily, Panormus (Palermo) and Soloeis were the most important colonies of the Phenicians. Panormus, on coins of the Phenicians Machanath, _i.e._ the camp, wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.ddess of the s.e.xual pa.s.sion; Soloeis (_sela_, rock) wors.h.i.+pped Melkarth. In a hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho inquires whether she lingers in Cyprus or at Panormus.[157] Motye, Soloeis and Panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the Carthaginians in Sicily.[158]

On Sardinia also, as Diodorus tells us, the Phenicians planted many colonies.[159] The mountains of Sardinia contained iron, silver, and lead. According to the legend of the Greeks, Sardus, the son of Makeris, as the Libyans called Heracles, first came with Libyans to the island.

Then Heracles sent his brother's son Iolaus, together with his own sons, whom he had begotten in Attica, to Sardinia. As Heracles had been lord of the whole West, these regions belonged of right to Iolaus and his companions. Iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was afterwards known by the name of Iolaus; then he sent for Daedalus out of Sicily and erected large buildings, which, Diodorus adds, are still in existence; but in Sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in Agyrion, "where,"

as Diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly sacrifices are offered."[160] Makeris, the supposed father of Sardus, is, like Makar, a form of the name Melkarth. If Sardinia and the whole West as well as Eryx is said to have belonged to Heracles, if Heracles sends out his nearest relations to Sardinia, if the artist Daedalus is his companion here as he was the companion of Minos in Crete and Sicily, it becomes obvious that the temples of Baal Melkarth on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily lie at the base of these legends of the Greeks, that it was the Phenicians who brought the wors.h.i.+p of their G.o.d along with their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of the Sardinian mountains in copper. As we already ventured to suppose (I.

368), Iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of Baal.[161]

The legend of the Greeks makes Heracles, _i.e._ Baal Melkarth, lord of the whole West. As a fact, the colonies of the Phenicians went beyond Sardinia in this direction. Their first colonies on the north coast of Africa appear to have been planted where the sh.o.r.e runs out nearest Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.[162] In the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) Hippo is named beside Tyre and Citium as a daughter of Sidon. When a second Hippo was afterwards founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of Sardinia, at the mouth of the Ubus, the old Hippo got the name of "Ippoacheret," and among the Greeks "Hippon Zarytos," _i.e._ "the other Hippo."[163] Ityke (_atak_, settlement, Utica), on the mouth of the Bagradas (Medsherda), takes the next place after this Hippo, if indeed it was not founded before it. Aristotle tells us that the Phenicians stated that Ityke was built 287 years before Carthage,[164] and Pliny maintains that Ityke was founded 1178 years before his time.[165] As Carthage was founded in the year 846 B.C. (below, chap. 11), Ityke, according to Aristotle's statement, was built in the year 1133 B.C. With this the statement of Pliny agrees. He wrote in the years 52-77 A.D., and therefore he places the foundation of Ityke in the year 1126 or 1100 B.C.

About the same time, _i.e._ about the year 1100 B.C., the Phenicians had already reached much further to the west. In his Phenician history, Claudius Iolaus tells us that Archaleus (Arkal, Heracles[166]), the son of Phoenix, built Gadeira (Gades).[167] "From ancient times," such is the account of Diodorus, "the Phenicians carried on an uninterrupted navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in Africa, and not a few in Europe, in the regions lying to the west. And when their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which is called Ocea.n.u.s. First of all, on their pa.s.sage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of Europe a city which they called Gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place, chiefly a beautiful temple to Heracles, with splendid offerings according to the custom of the Phenicians. And as this temple was honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it was held in great reverence. When the Phenicians, in order to explore the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the sh.o.r.e of Libya, they were carried away far into the Ocea.n.u.s by a strong wind, and after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island opposite Libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be intended for the dwelling of the G.o.ds rather than men."[168] Strabo says, the Gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the Tyrians send a colony to the pillars of Heracles. When those who had been sent reached the straits of Mount Calpe they were of opinion that the promontories which enclosed the pa.s.sage, Calpe and the opposite headland of Abilyx in Libya,[169] were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of the travels of Heracles, which the oracle mentioned. So they landed on this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the Axitani (s.e.xi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there they turned back. Those sent out after them sailed through the straits, and cast anchor at an island sacred to Heracles, 1500 stades beyond the pillars, opposite the city of On.o.ba in Iberia; but as the sacrifices were again unfavourable they also again turned home. Finally, a third fleet landed on a little island 750 stades beyond Mount Calpe, close to the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the Baetis. Here, on the east side of the island, they built a temple to Heracles; on the opposite side of the island they built the city of Gadeira, and on the extreme western point the temple of Cronos. In the temple of Heracles there were two fountains and "two pillars of bra.s.s, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."[170] This foundation of Gades, which on the coins is called Gadir and Agadir, _i.e._ wall, fortification, the modern Cadiz, and without doubt the most ancient city in Europe which has preserved its name, is said to have taken place in the year 1100 B.C.[171] If Ityke was founded before 1100 B.C. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of Gades soon after that date. Hence the s.h.i.+ps of the Phenicians would have reached the ocean about the time when Tiglath Pilesar I. left the Tigris with his army, trod the north of Syria, and looked on the Mediterranean.

The marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a path for the waves of the Mediterranean to the boundless waters of the Atlantic Ocean might implant in the Phenician mariners who first pa.s.sed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the G.o.d set up to mark the end of the earth; in the endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in which their sun-G.o.d went to his rest. That Gades, on the sh.o.r.e of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the wors.h.i.+p of Melkarth, that the descent of the G.o.d into the western ocean (the supposed death of Heracles[172]) and the awakening of the G.o.d with the sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact which requires no explanation. The legends of the Hesperides, the daughters of the West, in whose garden Melkarth celebrates the holy marriage with Astarte (I. 371), of the islands of the blest in the western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant fertility and favoured climate of Madeira and the Canary islands.

The land off the coast of which Gades lay, the valley of the Guadalquivir, was named by the Phenicians Tarsis (Tars.h.i.+sh), and by the Greeks Tartessus. The genealogical table in Genesis places Tarsis among the sons of Javan. The prophet Ezekiel represents the s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to Tyre. "The s.h.i.+ps of Tars.h.i.+sh,"

so he says to the city of Tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."[173] The Sicilian Stesichorus of Himera expresses himself in more extravagant terms. He sang of the "fountains of Tartessus (the Guadalquivir) rooted in silver." The Greeks represent the Tartessus, the river which brought down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver mountain,[174] and according to Herodotus the first Greek s.h.i.+p, a merchantman of Samos, which was driven about the year 630 B.C. by a storm from the east to Tartessus, made a profit of 60 talents.[175]

Aristotle tells us that the first Phenicians who sailed to Tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the s.h.i.+ps could not carry the burden, so that the Phenicians left behind the tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new tackle of silver.[176] Poseidonius says that among that people it was not Hades, but Plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. Once the forests had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire, flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold and silver. On the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver, tin and white gold mixed with silver. This soil the rivers washed down with them. The women drew water from the river and poured it through sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the sieve.[177] Diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the forests on the Pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that many streams were formed of pure silver. To the native inhabitants the value of silver was so little known that the Phenicians obtained it in exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the silver to Asia and all other nations. The greed of the merchants went so far that when the s.h.i.+ps were laden, and there was still a large quant.i.ty of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. Strabo a.s.sures us that the land through which the Baetis flows was not surpa.s.sed in fertility and all the blessings of earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver, copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and excellence. The gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by was.h.i.+ng, as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. In the sands of gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and requiring very little purification. Stone salt was also found there, and there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent wool, of corn and wine. The coast of the sh.o.r.e beyond the pillars was covered with sh.e.l.l-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in fish (the tunnies and the Tartessian murena so much sought after in antiquity),[178] which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the beach. Corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were exported from this fortunate land.[179]

If the Phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon Cyprus and Rhodes, the islands of the aegean and the coasts of h.e.l.las, their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their trade lucrative. That subsequently in the twelfth century they also took into possession the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa by means of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and metals of the West was very lively and increasing in Syria and in Egypt, in a.s.syria and Babylonia. The market of these lands must have been very remunerative to the Phenicians in order to induce them to make their discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. If the Phenicians about the year 1100 B.C. were in a position to discover the straits of Gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised navigation for a long time. The horizon of the Greek mariner ended even in the ninth century in the waters of Sicily, and in the fifth century B.C. the voyage of a Greek s.h.i.+p from the Syrian coast to the pillars of Heracles occupied 80 days.[180] After the founding of Gades the Phenicians ruled over the whole length of the Mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. Their s.h.i.+ps crossed the long basin in every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. They showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation than the Babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the a.s.syrians in the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the Phenicians were building Gades; they were more venturesome and enduring on the water than their tribesmen the Arabians on the sandy sea of the desert. In the possession of the ancient civilisation of the East their mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the Thracians and h.e.l.lenes, the Sicels, the Libyans and Iberians which the Portuguese and the Spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of America.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] Robinson, "Palestine," 3, 710.

[64] Tac. "Hist." 5, 6.

[65] Renan, "Mission de Phenicie," p. 836.

[66] Vol. i. pp. 344, 345.

[67] Vol. i. p. 151.

[68] Vol. i. p. 153.

[69] Vol. i. p. 344.

[70] The legend runs, "From the Sidonians, Mother of Kamb, Ippo, Kith(?), Sor," Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 134.

[71] Isaiah xxiii. 1, 19; Jeremiah ii. 10; Ezekiel xxvii. 6; Joseph.

"Antiq." 1, 6, 1.

[72] Virgil, "aen." 1, 619, 620.

[73] Brandis, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1873, s. 645 ff.

[74] Herod. 7, 90.

[75] Stephan. Byz. [Greek: Amathous].

[76] "Odyss." 8, 362; Tac. "Annal." 2, 3; Pausan. 1, 14, 6; Pompon.

Mela, 2, 7.

[77] Vol. i. p. 359.