The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson

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СКАЧАТЬ chose one which had been deftly made by highly-skilled Sidonians, and which Phoenician sailors had conveyed in one of their hollow barks across the cloud-shadowed sea.1416 When Menelaus proposed to present Telemachus, the son of his old comrade Odysseus, with what was at once the most beautiful and the most valuable of all his possessions, he selected a silver bowl with a golden rim, which in former days he had himself received as a present from Phædimus, the Sidonian king.1417 The sailors who stole Eumæus from Ortygia, and carried him across the sea to Ithica, obtained their prize by coming to his father’s palace, and bringing with them, among other wares,

. . . a necklace of fine gold to sell, With bright electron linked right wondrously and well.1418

      Sidon’s pre-eminence in the manufacture, the dyeing, and the embroidery of textile fabrics was at the same time equally unquestionable. Hecuba, being advised to offer to Athêné, on behalf of her favourite son, the best and loveliest of all the royal robes which her well-stored dress-chamber could furnish—

She to her fragrant wardrobe bent her way, Where her rich veils in beauteous order lay; Webs by Sidonian virgins finely wrought, From Sidon’s woofs by youthful Paris brought, When o’er the boundless main the adulterer led Fair Helen from her home and nuptial bed; From these she chose the fullest, fairest far, With broidery bright, and blazing as a star.1419

Already, it would seem, the precious shell-fish, on which Phoenicia’s commerce so largely rested in later times, had been discovered; and it was the dazzling hue of the robe which constituted its especial value. Sidon was ultimately eclipsed by Tyre in the productions of the loom; and the unrivalled dye has come down to us, and will go down to all future ages, as “Tyrian purple;” but we may well believe that in this, as in most other matters on which prosperity and success depended, Tyre did but follow in the steps of her elder sister Sidon, perfecting possibly the manufacture which had been Sidon’s discovery in the early ages. According to Scylax of Cadyanda, Dor was a Sidonian colony.1420 Geographically it belonged rather to Philistia than to Phoenicia; but its possession of large stores of the purple fish caused its sudden seizure and rapid fortification at a very remote date, probably by the Phoenicians of Sidon.1421 It is quite possible that this aggression may have provoked that terrible war to which reference has already been made, between the Philistines under the hegemony of Ascalon and the first of the Phoenician cities. Ascalon attacked the Sidonians by land, blockaded the offending town, and after a time compelled a surrender; but the defenders had a ready retreat by sea, and, when they could no longer hold out against their assailants, took ship, and removed themselves to Tyre, which at the time was probably a dependency.1422

In navigation also and colonisation Sidon took the lead. According to some, she was the actual founder of Aradus, which was said to have owed its origin to a body of Sidonian exiles, who there settled themselves.1423 Not much reliance, however, can be placed on this tradition, which first appears in a writer of the Augustan age. With more confidence we may ascribe to Sidon the foundation of Citium in Cyprus, the colonisation of the islands in the Ægean, and of those Phoenician settlements in North Africa which were anterior to the founding of Carthage. It has even been supposed that the Sidonians were the first to make a settlement at Carthage itself,1424 and that the Tyrian occupation under Dido was a recolonisation of an already occupied site. Anyhow, Sidon was the first to explore the central Mediterranean, and establish commercial relations with the barbarous tribes of the mid-African coast, Cabyles, Berbers, Shuloukhs, Tauriks, and others. She is thought to claim on a coin to be the mother-city of Melita, or Malta, as well as of Citium and Berytus;1425 and, if this claim be allowed, we can scarcely doubt that she was also the first to plant colonies in Sicily. Further than this, it would seem, Sidonian enterprise did not penetrate. It was left for Tyre to discover the wealth of Southern Spain, to penetrate beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, and to affront the perils of the open ocean.

But, within the sphere indicated, Sidonian rovers traversed all parts of the Great Sea, penetrated into every gulf, became familiar sights to the inhabitants of every shore. From timid sailing along the coast by day, chiefly in the summer season, when winds whispered gently, and atmospheric signs indicated that fair weather had set in, they progressed by degrees to long voyages, continued both by night and day,1426 from promontory to promontory, or from island to island, sometimes even across a long stretch of open sea, altogether out of sight of land, and carried on at every season of the year except some few of special danger. To Sidon is especially ascribed the introduction of the practice of sailing by night,1427 which shortened the duration of voyages by almost one-half, and doubled the number of trips that a vessel could accomplish in the course of a year. For night sailing the arts of astronomy and computation had to be studied;1428 the aspect of the heavens at different seasons had to be known; and among the shifting constellations some fixed point had to be found by which it would be safe to steer. The last star in the tail of the Little Bear—the polar star of our own navigation books—was fixed upon by the Phoenicians, probably by the Sidonians, for this purpose,1429 and was practically employed as the best index of the true north from a remote period. The rate of a ship’s speed was, somehow or other, estimated; and though it was long before charts were made, or the set of currents taken into account, yet voyages were for the most part accomplished with very tolerable accuracy and safety. An ample commerce grew up under Sidonian auspices. After the vernal equinox was over a fleet of white-winged ships sped forth from the many harbours of the Syrian coast, well laden with a variety of wares—Phoenician, Assyrian, Egyptian1430—and made for the coasts and islands of the Levant, the Ægean, the Propontis, the Adriatic, the mid-Mediterranean, where they exchanged the cargoes which they had brought with them for the best products of the lands whereto they had come. Generally, a few weeks, or at most a month or two, would complete the transfer the of commodities, and the ships which left Sidon in April or May would return about June or July, unload, and make themselves ready for a second voyage. But sometimes, it appears, the return cargo was not so readily procured, and vessels had to remain in the foreign port, or roadstead, for the space of a whole year.1431

The behaviour of the traders must, on the whole, have been such as won the respect of the nations and tribes wherewith they traded. Otherwise, the markets would soon have been closed against them, and, in lieu of the peaceful commerce which the Phoenicians always affected, would have sprung up along the shores of the Mediterranean a general feeling of distrust and suspicion, which would have led on to hostile encounters, surprises, massacres, and then reprisals. The entire history of Phoenician commerce shows that such a condition of things never existed. The traders and their customers were bound together by the bonds of self-interest, and, except in rare instances, dealt by each other fairly and honestly. Still, there were occasions when, under the stress of temptation, fair-dealing was lost sight of, and immediate prospect of gain was allowed to lead to the commission of acts destructive of all feeling of security, subversive of commercial morals, and calculated to effect a rupture of commercial relations, which it may often have taken a long term of years to re-establish. Herodotus tells us that, at a date considerably anterior to the Trojan war, when the ascendancy over the other Phoenician cities must certainly have belonged СКАЧАТЬ