CHAPTER VIII
THE PHŒNICIANS
'89. The Land and the People.—Ancient Phœnicia embraced a little strip of broken seacoast lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the ranges of Mount Lebanon.[1] One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedars of Lebanon" hold a prominent place both in the history and in the poetry of the East.
Another celebrated product of the country was the Tyrian purple, which was obtained from several varieties of the murex, a species of shellfish, secured at first along the Phœnician coast, but later sought in distant waters, especially in the Grecian seas.
The Phoenicians were of Semitic race. Their ancestors lived in the neighborhood of the Persian Gulf. From their seats in that region they migrated westward, like the ancestors of the Hebrews, and reached the Mediterranean before the light of history had fallen upon its shores.
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Fig. 52.—Species of the Murex. (After Maspero)
90. Tyre and Sidon.—The various Phœnician cities never coalesced to form a true nation. They constituted merely a sort of league or confederacy, the petty states of which generally acknowledged the leadership of Tyre or of Sidon, the two chief cities. The place of supremacy in the confederation was at first held by Sidon, but later by Tyre.
- ↑ In the study of this chapter, the maps which will be found at pp. 78 and 154 should be used.
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