Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/844

808 PHOENICIA More serious was the new advance of the Assyrians under Ashurnac.irpal (< 870), when this prince took tribute from the lords of Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Mahallat, Maiz, Kaiz, the West land, and the island Aradus. A king of Aradus was one of the allies of Rammanidri of Damascus whom Shalman- eser III. smote at Karkar in 854 ; thereafter the Assyrian took tribute of Tyre in 842 and 839, and in the latter year also from Byblus. Again in 803 Rammanniraru boasted of exacting tribute from Tyre and Sidon, but thereafter there was a respite until Tiglath Pileser II., the real founder of the Assyrian empire, to whom Tyre paid tribute in 741, and again along with Byblus in 738. In Tiglath Pileser s Philistine campaign of 734 Byblus and Aradus paid tribute, but a heavy contribution had to be exacted from Metten of Tyre by an Assyrian captain. For the history of Elu- keus, who reigned in Tyre under the name of Pylas l (c. 728-692), we have a fragment of Menander. He sub dued a revolt of the Cittsei in Cyprus, but thereafter was attacked by Shalmaneser IV., 2 to whom Sidon, Ace, Paloe- tyrus, and many other cities submitted, revolting from Tyre. A new kingdom was thus formed under a king [El lull, whose name makes it likely that he was a relative of the Tyrian prince, and who presently appears on the monu ments as lord of Great Sidon (the same name as in Josh. xix. 28), Lesser Sidon ( = Paketyrus ?), and other cities. But insular Tyre did not yield, and Shalmaneser had to make a second expedition against it, for which the jealous particularism of the other Phoenician cities supplied the ships. With much inferior forces the Tyrians gained a naval victory and the king drew off. But the blockade was continued, and seems to have ended after five years in a capitulation. This siege probably began about the same time with that of Samaria, and may be dated 724-720. About 715 Ionian sea-rovers attacked Tyre and were re pulsed by Sargon (Schrader, K.A.T., p. 169), an affair in which we may find the historical basis of such legends as that in the Cyclic Cypria, that Sidon was taken by Priam s son Alexander. [Ejluli did not prove a faithful subject ; Sennacherib attacked him, and he had to flee to Cyprus, Ithobal being set in his place (701). Among the Phoeni cian kings who appeared to do homage to Sennacherib a prince of Tyre does not appear. One sees from all this how barbarous and ill-consolidated the Assyrian power in the west was ; after the retreat of Sennacherib it was even for a time seriously threatened by the Ethiopian dynasty which then held Egypt ; and this may explain the revolt of Abdirnilkut, king of Sidon, which was visited by Esar- haddon with the destruction of the city, the captivity of part of the inhabitants, and the execution of the rebel king (680 B.C., Menant, p. 241 sy.). Further unsuccessful revolts of Tyre (Baal I. being king, 662 or later) and of Aradus are recorded in the reign of Ashurbanlpal ; but at last the war of this monarch with his brother seems to have enabled Phoenicia to throw off the yoke without a contest (c. 650). The Assyrians had proved their inability to create any thing ; but their talent for destruction was brilliantly ex hibited in Phoenicia, and the downfall of Tyre was occa sioned, if not caused, by their intervention in the west. For what Justin (xviii. 3, 6 sq.) relates of the Tyrians, that they were so reduced in number by protracted war with the Persians that, though they were at last victorious, their slaves were able to overpower and slay them to a man, all save Straton, whom a faithful servant saved, and whom the slaves chose, on account of his wisdom, to be king and founder of a new dynasty (Abdastarte III.), is only to be understood by reading Assyrians for Per- 1 So Codd. Samb. Big. The name may be Pil-eser. 2 The best MSS. Paris, 1421, and Oxou. offer (according to a private communication of Professor Niese) traces pointing to the read sians. 3 The catastrophe must have occurred soon after the events already noticed ; and in the same period falls the decay of the colonial power of Tyre, which we cannot follow in detail, though we can recognize some of its symptoms. After reaching the Mediterranean the Assyrians estab lished themselves in Cyprus (709) ; in the Greek islands farther west the Phoenicians had before this time been gradually displaced by the Dorian migration, which, how ever, must not be taken to be a single movement eastward in the llth century, but a long course of colonizing ex peditions, starting from Argos and continued for genera tions, about which Ave can only say that the whole was over by the middle of the 8th century. Thasus, the most northern settlement in the yEgean, was already deserted by the Phoenicians when the father of the poet Archilochus led a Parian colony thither in 708. But the loss of the more western colonies seems to have been contemporary with the fall of Tyrian independence. About 701 Isaiah looks for a revolt of Tartessus (xxiii. 10), and the first Greek visitor, the Samian Cohens (639), found no trace of Phoenician competition remaining there (Herod., iv. 152). These circumstances seem to justify us in under standing what the contemporary poet Anacreon (fr. 8) says of the hundred and fifty years reign of Arganthonius over Tartessus as really applying to the duration of the king dom ; and as he died in 545 the kingdom will date from 695. In Sicily the Phoenicians began to be pushed back from the time of the founding of Gela (690) ; and Himera (648) and Selinus (628) mark the limits of Greek advance towards the region on the north-west coast, which the Phoenicians continued to hold. In 654 the Carthaginians occupied the island Ebusus, on the sea-way to Spain (Diod., v. 16), a step obviously directed to save what could still be saved. Soon after this, when Psammetichus opened Egypt to foreigners (650), the Greeks, whose mental superiority made them vastly more dangerous rivals than the Assyrians, supplanted the Phoenicians in their lucrative Egyptian trade ; it is noteworthy that Egypt is passed over in silence in Ezekiel s full list of the trading connexions of Tyre. In the last crisis of the dying power of Assyria the Egyptians for a short time laid their hand on Phoenicia, but after the battle of Carchemish (605) the Chaldieans took their place. Apries made an attempt to displace the Chaldaeans, took Sidon by storm, gained over the other cities, and defeated the king of Tyre, who com manded the Phoenician and Cyprian fleet (Herod., ii. 161 ; Diod., i. 68). The party hostile to Chaldsea now took the rule all through Phoenicia. The new king of Tyre, Ithobal II., was on the same side (589), and after the fall of Jerusalem Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the great merchant-city, which was still rich and strong enough to hold out for thirteen years (587-S74). 4 Ezekiel says that Nebuchadnezzar and his host had no reward for their heavy service against Tyre, and the presumption is that the city capitulated on favourable terms, for IthobaPs reign ends with the close of the siege, and the royal family is subsequently found in Babylon, obviously as cards that might on occasion be played against the actual princes of Tyre. 5 The king appointed by Nebuchadnezzar was Baal II. (574-564), on whose death a republic was formed under a single suffet. This form of government lasted a year, and then after three months interregnum under the high priest Abbar there were for six years 3 There was no Straton, king of Tyre, between 587 and 480 ; a war between Tyrians and Persians between 480 and 390 is nowhere heard of, and is highly improbable, and Straton, from what we leani of his descendants, cannot have reigned later than this. 4 See the Tyrian sources in Jos., Aj)., i. 21, compared with Ezek. xx vi. 1 sq., xxix. 17 sq. 5 See Winer s " Pfingstprogramm " : De Nebuc. exp. Tyr. ad Ez. xxvi. -xxviii. (Leipsic, 1848).