Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/64

44 HISTOKV OF ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. from the mouth of the Rhone, and founded Massilia. In 548 the Khodians and Cnidians made the same attempt, and, landing on the north-east of the peninsula, founded Rhoda, now Rosas. But it was by the Phocxans that these explorations were most energetically carried out. It seems probable that the story told by Herodotus of the sudden affection for his foreign visitors that seized the king of Tartessos, 1 whom he calls Arganthonios, must date from the period of inaction forced upon Tyre by the blockades of Nebuchadnezzar. The Greeks perhaps were less greedy and more easy to get on with than their Syrian rivals, while fortune smiled here on their rising ambition as she did everywhere else. In Sicily the three cities still left to the Pruenicians were already threatened. From one end of the Mediterranean to the other every Phoenician colony and every Phoenician merchant began to turn beseeching glances towards Carthage ; if Carthage refused to take up the broken policy of Tyre the whole fabric of Phoenician commerce was threatened with rapid extinction. Carthage re- sponded to the appeal and proved herself equal to the work that had to be done. She understood that the times had changed. As long as the Tyrians and Sidonians were confronted on every coast by nothing but savage and scanty populations, it was easy enough to insure the safety of their settlements. But the world had be- come peopled ; the indigenous tribes had learnt the use of bronze and iron ; finally a civilization, that of the Greeks, was to be encountered on every shore, was developing rapidly, and had already surpassed that of the Phoenicians in all matters of art and thought. A new situation called for new modes of action. Carthage did not hesitate a moment. She was not content with a defensive programme, by which she would have lost ground from year to year ; she chose the aggressive. The time of monopolies was past, but by her energetic action she secured for three centuries more a privileged situation over the whole western basin of the Mediterranean. " A great expedition was sent to Spain which relieved the coast cities, reconquered the valley of the Betis, and resumed those mineral districts whose possession was of such capital importance. A large number of Liby-Phcenicians were transported into the country and there established as colonists, to keep the native 1 HKRODOTUS, i. 163.