The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6)

THE NAVIGATION AND COLONIES OF THE PHENICIANS

At the time when Babylonia, on the banks of the Euphrates, flourished under the successors of Hammurabi in an ancient and peculiar civilisation, and Assyria was struggling upwards beside Babylonia on the banks of the Tigris, strengthening her military power in the Armenian mountains and the ranges of the Zagrus, and already beginning to try her strength in more distant campaigns, a Semitic tribe succeeded in rising into eminence in the West also, in winning and exerting a deep-reaching influence on distant and extensive lands. It was a district of the most moderate extent from which this influence proceeded, its dominion was of a different kind from that of the Babylonians and Assyrians; it grew up on an element which elsewhere appeared not a favourite with the Semites, and sought its points of support in settlements on distant islands and coasts. By this tribe the sea was actively traversed and with ever-increasing boldness; by circumspection, by skill, by tough endurance and brave ventures it succeeded in extending its dominion in ever-widening circles, and making the sea the instrument of its wealth and the bearer of its power.

On the coasts of Syria were settled the tribes of the Arvadites, Giblites and Sidonians (I. 344). Their land extended from the mouth of the Eleutherus (Nahr el Kebir) in the north to the promontory of Carmel in the south. A narrow strip of coast under Mount Lebanon, from 10 to 15 miles in breadth and some 150 miles in length, was all that they possessed. Richly watered by the streams sent down from Lebanon to the sea, the small plains formed round their mouths and separated by the spurs of the mountain ranges are of the most abundant fertility. The Eleutherus is followed to the south by the Adonis (Nahr el Ibrahim), and this by the Lycus (Nahr el Kelb); then follow the Tamyras (Nahr Damur), the Bostrenus (Nahr el Auli[63 - Robinson, "Palestine," 3, 710.]), the Belus (the Sihor Libnath of the Hebrews, now Nahr Naman), and lastly the Kishon. Above the shore rise hills clothed with date-palms, vines and olives; higher up on Lebanon splendid mountain pastures spread out, and above these we come to the vast forests (I. 338) which provide shade in the glowing heat, as Tacitus says,[64 - Tac. "Hist." 5, 6.] and to the bright snow-fields which crown the summit of Lebanon. Ammianus speaks of the region under Lebanon as full of pleasantness and beauty. The upper slopes of the mountain furnish pasture and forests; in the rocks are copper and iron. The high mountain-range, which sharply divided the inhabitants of the coast from the interior (at a much later time, even after the improvements of the Roman Cæsars, there were, as there are now, nothing but mule-tracks across Lebanon[65 - Rénan, "Mission de Phénicie," p. 836.]), lay behind the inhabitants of the coast, and before them lay the sea. At an early period they must have become familiar with that element. The name of the tribe which the Hebrew Scriptures call the "first-born of Canaan" means "fishermen." The places on the coast found the sea the easiest means of communication. Thus the sea, so rich in islands, the long but proportionately narrow basin which lay before the Sidonians, Giblites and Arvadites, would soon attract to longer voyages the fishermen and navigators of the coast.

We found that the beginning of civilisation in Canaan could not be placed later than about the year 2500 B.C., and we must therefore allow a considerable antiquity to the cities of the Sidonians, Giblites, Arvadites, Zemarites and Arkites. The settlement on the site of Sidon was founded, no doubt, before the year 2000 B.C., and that on the site of Byblus cannot certainly be placed later than this period.[66 - Vol. i. pp. 344, 345.] The campaigns which the Pharaohs undertook against Syria and the land of the Euphrates after the expulsion of the Shepherds could not leave these cities unmoved. If the Zemar of the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. is Zemar (Simyra) near Aradus, and Arathutu is Aradus itself, the territories of these cities were laid waste by this king in his sixth campaign (about the year 1580 B.C.); if Arkatu is Arka, south of Aradus, this place must have been destroyed in his fifteenth campaign (about the year 1570 B.C.). Sethos I. (1440-1400 B.C.) subdued the land of Limanon (i. e. the region of Lebanon), and caused cedars to be felled there. One of his inscriptions mentions Zor, i. e. Tyre, among the cities conquered by him. The son and successor of Sethos I., Ramses II., also forced his way in the first decades of the fourteenth century as far as the coasts of the Phenicians. At the mouth of the Nahr el Kelb, between Sidon and Berytus, the rocks on the coast display the memorial which he caused to be set up in the second and third year of his reign in honour of the successes obtained in this region.[67 - Vol. i. p. 151.] In the fifth year of his reign Ramses, with the king of the Cheta' defeats the king of Arathu in the neighbourhood of Kadeshu on the Orontes, and Ramses III. about the year 1310 B.C., mentions beside the Cheta who attack Egypt the people of Arathu, by which name, in the one case as in the other, may be meant the warriors of Aradus.[68 - Vol. i. p. 153.] If Arathu, like Arathutu, is Aradus, it follows, from the position which Ramses II. and III. give to the princes of Arathu, that beside the power to which the kingdom of the Hittites had risen about the middle of the fifteenth century B.C., and which it maintained to the end of the fourteenth,[69 - Vol. i. p. 344.] the Phenician cities had assumed an independent position. The successes of the Pharaohs in Syria come to an end in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Egypt makes peace and enters into a contract of marriage with the royal house of the Cheta; the Syrians obtain even the preponderance against Egypt (I. 152), to which Ramses III. towards the end of the fourteenth century was first able to oppose a successful defence.

The overthrow of the kingdom of the Hittites, which succumbed to the attack of the Amorites (I. 348) soon after the year 1300 B.C., must have had a reaction on the cities of the Phenicians. Expelled Hittites must have been driven to the coast-land, or have fled thither, and in the middle of the thirteenth century the successes gained by the Hebrews who broke in from the East, over the Amorites, the settlement of the Hebrews on the mountains of the Amorites, must again have thrown the vanquished, i. e. the fugitives of this nation, towards the coast.

With this retirement of the older strata of the population of Canaan to the coast is connected the movement which from this period emanates from the coasts of the Phenicians, and is directed towards the islands of the Mediterranean and the Ægean. It is true that on this subject only the most scanty statements and traces, only the most legendary traditions have come down to us, so that we can ascertain these advances only in the most wavering outlines. One hundred miles to the west off the coast of Phœnicia lies the island of Cyprus. On the southern coast of this island, which looked towards Phœnicia, stood the city of Citium, Kith and Chith in the inscriptions of the Phenicians, and apparently Kittii in those of the Assyrians. Sidonian coins describe Citium as a daughter of Sidon.[70 - The legend runs, "From the Sidonians, Mother of Kamb, Ippo, Kith(?), Sor," Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 134.] After this city the whole island is known among the Semites as Kittim and Chittim; this name is even used in a wider sense for all the islands of the Mediterranean.[71 - Isaiah xxiii. 1, 19; Jeremiah ii. 10; Ezekiel xxvii. 6; Joseph. "Antiq." 1, 6, 1.] The western writers state that before the time of the Trojan war Belus had conquered and subjugated the island of Cyprus, and that Citium belonged to Belus.[72 - Virgil, "Æn." 1, 619, 620.] The victorious Belus is the Baal of the Phenicians. The date of the Trojan war is of no importance for the settlement of the Phenicians in Cyprus, for this statement is found in Virgil only. More important is the fact that the settlers brought the Babylonian cuneiform writing to Cyprus. This became so firmly rooted in use that even the Greeks, who set foot on the island at a far later time, scarcely before the end of the ninth century, adopted this writing, which here meanwhile had gone through a peculiar development, and had become a kind of syllabic-writing, and used it on coins and in inscriptions even in the fifth century B.C.[73 - Brandis, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1873, s. 645 ff.] The settlement of the Sidonians in Cyprus must therefore have taken place before the time in which the alphabetic writing, i. e. the writing specially known as Phenician, was in use in Syria, and hence at the latest before 1100 B.C. How long before this time the settlement of the Phenicians in Cyprus took place can, perhaps, be measured by the fact that the Cyprian alphabet is a simplification of the old Babylonian cuneiform writing. The simplified form would undoubtedly have been driven out by the far more convenient alphabetic writing of the Phenicians if the Cyprian writing had not become fixed in use in this island before the rise of the alphabetic writing. Further, since the Phenicians, as we shall see, set foot on the coast of Hellas from about the year 1200 B.C. onwards, we must place the foundation of the colonies on the coasts nearest them, the settlement in Cyprus, before this date, about the middle of the thirteenth century B.C.

What population the Phenicians found on Cyprus it is not possible to discover. Herodotus tells us that the first inhabitants of the island were Ethiopians, according to the statements of the Cyprians. It is beyond a doubt that not Citium only, but the greater part of the cities of the island were founded by the Phenicians, and that the Phenician element became the ruling element of the whole island.[74 - Herod. 7, 90.] It is Belus who is said to have conquered Cyprus, and to whom the city of Citium is said to belong; i. e. Citium worshipped the god Baal. At Amathus, to the west of Citium, on the south coast of the island, which was called the oldest city on Cyprus, and which nevertheless bears a distinctly Semitic name (Hamath), Adonis and Ashera-Astarte were worshipped,[75 - Stephan. Byz. Ἀμαθοῦς.] and these deities had also one of their oldest and most honoured seats of worship at Paphos (Pappa in the inscriptions), on the west coast. The Homeric poems represent Aphrodite as hastening to her altar at Paphos in Cyprus. Pausanias observes that the Aphrodite of Cyprus was a warlike Aphrodite,[76 - "Odyss." 8, 362; Tac. "Annal." 2, 3; Pausan. 1, 14, 6; Pompon. Mela, 2, 7.] and as the daughters of the Cyprians surrendered themselves to the foreign seamen in honour of this goddess,[77 - Vol. i. p. 359.] it was the Astarte-Ashera of the Phenicians who was worshipped at Amathus and Paphos. The Zeus of the Cyprian city Salamis (Sillumi in the inscriptions of the Assyrians), to whom, according to the evidence of western writers, human sacrifices were offered, can only be Baal Moloch, the evil sun-god of the Phenicians. In the beginning of the tenth century B.C. the cities of Cyprus stood under the supremacy of the king of Tyre.[78 - Joseph. "in Apion." 1, 18; "Antiq." 8, 5, 3, 9, 14, 2.] The island was of extraordinary fertility. The forests furnished wood for ship-building; the mountains concealed rich veins of the metal which has obtained the name of copper from this island.[79 - Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 239, 240.] Hence it was a very valuable acquisition, an essential strengthening of the power of Sidon in the older, and Tyre in the later, period.

Following Zeno of Rhodes, who wrote the history of his home in the first half of the second century B.C.,[80 - Diod. 5, 56.] Diodorus tells us: The king of the Phenicians, Agenor, bade his son Cadmus seek his sister Europa,[81 - In Homer Europa is not the daughter of Agenor but of Phœnix ("Il." 14, 321), just as Cadmus, Thasos, and Europa are sometimes children of Agenor and sometimes of Phœnix. In Hdt. 1, 2 it is Cretans who carry off Europa, the daughter of the king of Tyre.] who had disappeared, and bring back the maiden, or not return himself to Phœnicia. Overtaken by a violent storm, Cadmus vowed a shrine to Poseidon. He was saved, and landed on the island of Rhodes, where the inhabitants worshipped before all other gods the sun, who had here begotten seven sons and among them Makar. Cadmus set up a temple in Rhodes to Poseidon, as he had vowed to do, and left behind Phenicians to keep up the service; but in the temple which belonged to Athena at Cnidus in Rhodes he dedicated a work of art, an iron bowl, which bore an inscription in Phenician letters, the oldest inscription which came from Phœnicia to the Hellenes. From Rhodes Cadmus came to Samothrace, and there married Harmonia. The gods celebrated this first marriage by bringing gifts, and blessing the married pair to the tones of heavenly music.[82 - Diod. 4, 2, 60; 5, 56, 57, 58, 48, 49.]

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 - Ephor. Frag. 12, ed. Müller.] 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 Lacedæmon. 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 Bœotia, and the Phenicians who were with him inhabited the land and taught the Hellenes many things, among others the use of writing, "which as it seems to me the Hellenes 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 - Herod. 4, 147; 2, 45, 49; 5, 58, 59.] According to the narrative of Hellanicus, 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 - Frag. 8, 9, ed. Müller.] According to the statement of Pherecydes Cadmus also built the city of Thebes.[86 - Frag. 40-42, 43-45, ed. Müller.] With Hecatæus of Miletus Cadmus passes as the discoverer of letters; according to others he also discovered the making of iron armour and the art of mining.[87 - Frag. 163, ed. Müller.]

The direction of the Phenician settlements, which proceeds in the Ægean 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 Eubœa, the mainland of Hellas was trodden by the Phenicians, who are said to have gained precisely from this point a deep-reaching influence over the Hellenes. 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 - "Theog." 937, 975; Pind. "Pyth." 3, 88 seqq.] Agenor, the father of Cadmus, is a name which the Greeks have given to the Baal of the Phenicians.[89 - Movers, "Phœniz." 1, 129, 131.] Cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a goddess, – who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble, bring gifts and sing, – whose wife was worshipped as the protecting goddess of Thebes,[90 - Plut. "Pelop." c. 19.]– whose daughters, Ino, Leucothea and Semele, are divine creatures, whom Zeus leads to the Elysian fields,[91 - Pind. "Olymp." 2, 141.]– can only be a god. He seeks the lost Europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. We know the moon-goddess of the Phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned Astarte, who wears a cow's head, the goddess 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 goddess, "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-goddess, 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 goddess;[92 - Vol. i. 271.] the gloomy Europa changes into Harmonia, the goddess 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 Bœotia; 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 - Movers, "Phœniz." 1, 517.] 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 Ægean.[94 - Thac. 1, 8.] 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-god and the seven children which he begot there were worshipped. In the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the Phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the Baal of the Phenicians (I. 357). And if Diodorus mentions Makar among the seven sons of the sun-god 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 worshipped 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 worshipped Baal under the form of a bull, and the Greeks are wont to denote Baal Moloch by the name of Cronos.[95 - Vol. i. 363, 364.] These forms of worship continued to exist even when at a later time Hellenic 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 - Athenæus, p. 360.] 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 - Diod. 5, 58.] Even at a later time Rhodes stood in close relation with Phœnicia, especially with the city of Aradus.[98 - Bœckh. C. I. G. 2526.] Thus it happened that the colonies which the Rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in Sicily, Gela and Acragas, carried thither the worship 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 - Hefter, "Götterdienste auf Rhodos," 3, 18; Welcker, "Mythologie," 1, 145; Brandis, "Munzwesen," s. 587.] 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 - Schol. Pind. "Pyth." 4, 88; Pausan. 3, 1, 7, 8; Steph. Byz. Μεμβλίαρος.] 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 worshipped the hero Phœnix.[101 - Bœckh. C. I. G. 2448.] Of the island of Melos we learn that it was occupied by Phenicians of Byblus, and named by them after their mother city;[102 - Herod. 4, 147; Steph. Byz. Μῆλος.] the island of Oliaros near Paros was, on the other hand, according to Heraclëides Ponticus, occupied by the Sidonians.[103 - Steph. Byz. Ὠλίαρος.] 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 - Strabo, pp. 346, 457, 472; Diod. 5, 47.] 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 gods of the Phenicians, were worshipped on Samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from Roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods," i. e. to the Cabiri.[105 - Vol. i. 378; Herod. 2, 51; Conze, "Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres," e. g. s. 91.] The islands of Imbros and Lemnos also worshipped the Cabiri; Lemnos especially worshipped Hephæstus, who had a leading place in this circle.[106 - Strabo, p. 473; Steph. Byz. Ἴμβρος; vol. i. 378.] The island of Thasos is said, according to the statement of the Greeks, to have been called after a son of Phœnix, 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 - Herod. 2, 44; 6, 47.] 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 Hellenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the goddess 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 worshipped there by the Phenicians as Astarte-Ashera, i. e. as the goddess of war and love.[108 - Herod. 1, 105; Pausan. 1, 14, 7; 3, 23, 1.]

Not in the islands only, but on the coasts of Hellas also, the Phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of worship belonging to them. On the isthmus of Corinth Melicertes, i. e. Melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting navigation; Corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.[109 - Pausan. 10, 11, 5; Bœckh, "Metrologie," s. 45.] Aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of Acrocorinthus, was worshipped by prostitution like the Ashera-Bilit of the Phenicians. In Attica also, in the deme of Athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess 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 - Pausan. 1, 2, 5; 1, 14, 6, 7.] At Marathon, where Heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name represents the Phenician city Marathus, rose a fountain which had the name Makaria, i. e. Makar,[111 - Strabo, p. 377; Pausan. 1, 32, 5.] 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 fashion of Phenician graves; and shafts lead down to them from the surface. The ornaments and works in glass, ivory, gold and brass discovered here, which are made after Babylonian and Egyptian models, can only have been brought by the Phenicians.[112 - ΑΘΗΝΑΙΟΝ ς´ γ´, 1877, and below, chap. xi.] 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 gods; we can prove that the seven gates were dedicated to the gods of the sun, the moon and the five planets;[113 - Brandis, "Hermes," 2, 275 ff. I cannot agree in all points with the deductions of this extremely acute inquiry.] 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 Phœnix, 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 Dædalus 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 - "Il." 14, 321; 18, 593; "Odyss." 19, 178; 11, 568.] His descendants rule in Crete.[115 - "Odyss." 11, 523.] Later accounts tell us that Zeus in the form of a bull carried off Europa from Phœnicia, and bore her over the sea to Crete. The wife of her son Minos, Pasiphaë, 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 - Diod. 4, 60.] 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 - Serv. ad "Æneid." 6, 30.] 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 - Hesych. ἐπ᾿ Εὐρυγύν ἀγών; Plut. "Thes." c. 15; Diod. 4, 65.] Others narrate that Hephæstus had given Minos a man of brass, who wandered round the island and kept off foreign vessels, and clasped to his glowing breast all who were disobedient to Minos.[119 - Apollodor. 1, 9, 26; Suidas, Σαρδώνιος γέλως.] When Dædalus retired before the wrath of Minos from Crete to Sicily, Minos equipped his ships to bring him back; but he there found, according to Herodotus, a violent death.[120 - Herod. 7, 110.] 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 ships, they founded the city Minoa in Sicily; but the tomb of Minos was shown in Crete also.[121 - Diod. 4, 76-78; Schol. Callim. "Hymn. in Jovem," 8.]

A bull-god carries the daughter of Phœnix over the sea to Crete and begets Minos; a bull who rises out of the sea begets with Pasiphaë, i. e. the all-shining, the Minos-bull, to which in case of blight and famine boys and girls are sacrificed in the number sacred among the Semites; Androgeos succumbs 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-god may be the Baal Samim or the Baal Moloch of the Phenicians; Europa has already revealed herself to us as the moon-goddess of the Phenicians (p. 58); Pasiphaë is only another name for the same goddess, 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-god, 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 - Istri frag. 47, ed. Müller.] 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 - Istri frag. 33, ed. Müller.] 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 worship of the Syrian goddess at Athmonon, and the worship of Melkarth at Marathon, the worship of Baal Moloch had penetrated as far as Megara and Attica. Minos, the son of the sky-god, the husband of the moon-goddess, who from time to time receives revelations from heaven, and even after his death is judge of the dead, is himself a god; 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 - Müllenhoff, "Deutsche Alterthumskunde," i. 222.] 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 goddess of war into the goddess 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 god, 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 title which proves beyond doubt that Minos was one of the names given by the Greeks to this god of the Phenicians.

The worship of Baal Moloch, which the Phenicians brought to Crete and the shores 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 Dædalus, 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 institutions 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 - Plato, "Minos," pp. 262, 266, 319, 321; "De. Legg," init.; Aristot. "Pol." 2, 8, 1, 2; 7, 9, 2.] In the circle of the Cabiri the sky-god 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 Ægean sea, before the settlements of the Greeks obtained the supremacy over the islands and the ships 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 ships whenever necessary.[126 - Herod. 1, 171; 3, 122; 7, 169-171.] "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 - Herod. 1, 4.] 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 Ægean 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 Ægean, just as Thebes was the point on the mainland where they planted the firmest foot. The title Minoa seems to lie at the base of the name of Minos, a title 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 worship denoted by them. Coins of the Cretan cities Gortys and Phæstus exhibit a bull or a bull-headed man as a stamp. Near the Cretan city of Cydonia the Jardanus, 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 - Herod. 3, 122.] was previously named Kairatus; Karath in Phenician means city. Itanus, in Crete (Ethanath in the Semitic form), is expressly stated to be a foundation of the Phenicians.[129 - Strabo, p. 476; Steph. Byz. Ἰτανός.]

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 assume 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 illustrated 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 ships, 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 quantities 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 Hellas. When the fall of the kingdom of the Hittites 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 ships 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 ships 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 Eubœa,[130 - Pausan. 3, 21, 6.] purple-fish were found in extraordinary quantities. 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 - Aristotle, in Steph. Byz. Κύθηρα.] 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 - Above, p. 63.] Midway between the straits of Eubœa 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 Ægean 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 Ægean 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 brass. 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 workmanship essentially non-Hellenic. From these facts we may draw the conclusion that the ships of the Phenicians brought to these inhabitants their earliest weapons in brass 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 assume 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 worship of the Cabiri to some places on the Trojan coast.[133 - Strabo, p. 479.] Far more definite traces of the Phenician style and skill are in existence on the shore of the bay of Argos. The ancient tombs which have been recently discovered behind the lions' gate at Mycenæ 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 Phœnicia. 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 - Below, chap. 11.] The corpses are covered with gold ornaments and other decorations. There is a large number of weapons and ornaments of gold, silver, copper, brass and glass in the tombs; the execution exhibits a technical skill sometimes more, sometimes less practised. The ornaments remind us of Babylonian and Assyrian 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 ships. 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 Hellenes, but which Thucydides quotes as a mark of the tombs of the Carians.[135 - Thuc. 1, 8.] 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 god, the "Zeus Stratius" as the Greeks called him, the "axe-god," the Chars-El in the Carian language (I. 573), on some ornaments of the tombs of Mycenæ, the supposition forces itself upon us that Carians from the western islands must have occupied the shore of the bay of Argos. In any case, the tombs of Mycenæ, 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 Hellas? Herodotus tells us that Troy was taken in the third generation after the death of Minos.[136 - Herod. 7, 171.] 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 Phœnicia beyond the islands to Bœotia 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. 166⅔ years, before this date, or about the year 1516 or 1496 B.C.[137 - Herod. 2, 44, 145.] On the island of Thera, Herodotus further remarks, the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind him there had dwelt for eight generations, i. e. 266⅔ years, before the Dorians came to the island.[138 - Herod. 4, 147.] Melos was also occupied by Dorians, who asserted in 416 B.C. that their community had been in existence 700 years,[139 - Thuc. 5, 112.] 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 assume 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 + 266⅔), 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 Bœotia. 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, Œdipus 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 - Herod. 5, 89; "Il." 13, 451; "Odyss." 19, 178.] 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 - Euseb. "Chron." 2, p. 34 seqq. ed. Schöne. Even in Diodorus, 4, 60, we find two Minoses, an older and a younger.]

We can hardly obtain fixed points for determining the time of the settlements of the Phenicians in the Ægean 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 - Lenormant, "Antiq. de la Troade," p. 32.] 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 ships 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 ships or settlers, a supposition which is forbidden by the antiquity of the other remains discovered with or near the lentils. Among the sons of Japheth, the representative of the northern nations, Genesis mentions Javan, i. e. the Ionian, the Greek; and enumerates the sons of Javan: Elisha, Tarshish, Chittim, and Dodanim or Rodanim – the reading is uncertain.[143 - Genesis x. 2-4: 1 Chron. i. 5-7.] 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 Phœnicia, 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 - Kiepert, "Monatsberichte Berl. Akad." 1859.] Tarshish 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 - Ezek. xxvii. 7.] the islands and coasts of the Ægean 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 Ægean were known in Syria, but even then the name of the distant land of Tarshish was current in Syria. We shall further see that as early as 1100 B.C. Phenician ships had passed 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 Hellas 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 - Thuc. vi. 2.] 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 ships. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.[147 - Diod. v. 12.] On the south-eastern promontory of Malta there was a temple of Heracles-Melkarth,[148 - Ptolem. 4, 3, 47.] 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 - Ai benim; Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 355, 359, 362.]i. e. no doubt, the children of the sun-god 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 Phœnicus 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 - Heracl. Pont. frag. 29, ed. Müller; Gesen. "Monum." p. 293; Olshausen, "Rh. Mus." 1852, S. 328.] Off the west coast of Sicily the Phenicians occupied the small island of Motye.[151 - Thuc. 6, 2.] 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; Æneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."[152 - Diod. 4, 83.] Virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of Eryx, near to the stars, in honour of Venus Idalia, i. e. the goddess worshipped at Idalion (Idial) on Cyprus by the immigrants from the East, who, with him, are the companions of Æneas.[153 - "Æn." 5, 760.] The courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen[154 - Diod. 4, 83; Strabo, p. 272; Athenæus, p. 374; Aelian, "Hist. An." 4, 2; 10, 50.]), 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. Dædalus is said to have built it for the king of the Sicanians (p. 64). Beside the Syrian goddess, the Phenicians also worshipped here the Syrian god 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 - Diod. 4, 23.] 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 - Herod. 5, 43.] 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, worshipped the goddess of the sexual passion; Soloeis (sela, rock) worshipped Melkarth. In a hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho inquires whether she lingers in Cyprus or at Panormus.[157 - Steph. Byz. Σολοῦς. Sapphon. frag. 6, ed. Bergk; it is possible that Panormus on Crete may be meant.] Motye, Soloeis and Panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the Carthaginians in Sicily.[158 - Thuc. 6, 2.]

On Sardinia also, as Diodorus tells us, the Phenicians planted many colonies.[159 - Diod. 5, 35.] 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 Dædalus 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 - Diod. 4, 24, 29, 30; 5, 15; Arist. "De mirab. ausc." c. 104; Pausan. 10, 17, 2.] 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 Dædalus 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 worship of their god 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 - Movers ("Phœniz." 1, 536) assumes that Iolaus may be identical with Esmun (I. 377).]

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 shore runs out nearest Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.[162 - Sallust, "Jugurtha," 19, 1.] 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 - Movers, loc. cit. s. 144.] 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 - "De mirab. ausc." c. 146.] and Pliny maintains that Ityke was founded 1178 years before his time.[165 - "Hist. nat." 16, 79.] 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 - Arkal or Archal may mean "fire of the All," "light of the All."]), the son of Phœnix, built Gadeira (Gades).[167 - Etym. Magn. Γαδεῖρα.] "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 Oceanus. First of all, on their passage 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 shore of Libya, they were carried away far into the Oceanus 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 gods rather than men."[168 - Diod. 5, 19, 20.] 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 passage, Calpe and the opposite headland of Abilyx in Libya,[169 - On the meaning given in Avienus ("Ora marit") of Abila as "high mountain," and Calpa as "big-bellied jar," cf. Müllenhoff, "Deutsche Alterthumsk," 1, 83.] 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 (Sexi) 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 Onoba 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 Bætis. 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 brass, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."[170 - Strabo, pp. 169-172. Justin (44, 5) represents the Tyrians as founding Gades in consequence of a dream. In regard to the name cf. Avien. "Ora marit," 267-270.] 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 - Movers, "Phœniz." 2, 622. Strabo (p. 48) puts the first settlements of the Phenicians in the midst of the Libyan coast and at Gades just after the Trojan war, Velleius (1, 2, 6, in combination with 1, 8, 4), in the year 1100 B.C. Cf. Movers, loc. cit. S. 148, note 90. The Greeks called both land and river Tartessus. The pillars of the Tyrian god "Archaleus," are with them the pillars of their "Heracles," which he sets up as marks of his campaigns. Here, opposite the mouth of the Tartessus, they place the island Erythea, i. e. the red island on which the giant Geryon, i. e. "the roarer," guards the red oxen of the sun: Erythea is one of the islands near Cadiz; Müllenhoff, Deutsche "Alterthumsk: " 1, 134 ff.] 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 ships 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 passed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the god 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-god went to his rest. That Gades, on the shore of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship of Melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the supposed death of Heracles[172 - Sall. "Jugurtha," c. 19.]) and the awakening of the god 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 (Tarshish), and by the Greeks Tartessus. The genealogical table in Genesis places Tarsis among the sons of Javan. The prophet Ezekiel represents the ships of Tarshish as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to Tyre. "The ships of Tarshish," 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 - Ezek. xxvii. 12, 25.] 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 - In Strabo, p. 148; Müllenhoff, loc. cit. 1, 81.] and according to Herodotus the first Greek ship, 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 - Herod. 4, 152.] Aristotle tells us that the first Phenicians who sailed to Tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the ships 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 - "De mirab. ausc." c. 147.] 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 - In Strabo, p. 148.] 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 ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. Strabo assures us that the land through which the Bætis flows was not surpassed 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 washing, 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 shore beyond the pillars was covered with shell-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 - Aristoph. "Ranae," 475.] 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 - Diod. 5, 35; Strabo, p. 144 seqq.]

If the Phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon Cyprus and Rhodes, the islands of the Ægean and the coasts of Hellas, 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 Assyria 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 ship from the Syrian coast to the pillars of Heracles occupied 80 days.[180 - Scylax, "Peripl." c. 111.] After the founding of Gades the Phenicians ruled over the whole length of the Mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. Their ships 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 Assyrians 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 Hellenes, the Sicels, the Libyans and Iberians which the Portuguese and the Spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of America.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL

Not far removed from the harbour-cities, whose ships discovered the land of silver, which carried the natural wealth of the West to the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Nile, in order to exchange them for the productions of those countries, in part immediately upon the borders of the marts which united the East and the West, and side by side with them, dwelt the Israelites on the heights and in the valleys which they had conquered, in very simple and original modes of life.

Even during the war against the ancient population of Canaan, immediately after the first successes against the Amorites, they had, as we have seen, dropped any common participation in the struggle, any unity under one leader. According to their numbers and bravery, and the resistance encountered, the various tribes had won larger or smaller territories, better or inferior districts. Immigration and conquest did not lead among the Israelites to a combination of their powers under the supremacy of one leader, but rather to separation into clans and cantons, which was also favoured by the nature of the country conquered, a district lying in unconnected parts, and possessing no central region adapted for governing the whole. Thus, after the settlement, the life of the nation became divided into separate circles according to the position and character of the mountain canton which the particular tribe had obtained, and the fortune which it had experienced. Even if there was an invasion of the enemy, the tribe attacked was left to defend itself as well as it could. It was only very rarely, and in times of great danger, that the nobles and elders of the whole land, and a great number of the men of war from all the tribes, were collected round the sacred ark at Shiloh, at Bethel, at Mizpeh, or at Gilgal for common counsel or common defence. But even when a resolution was passed by the nobles and elders and the people, individual tribes sometimes resisted, even by force of arms, the expressed will of the nation, or at least of a great part of the nobles and people, and the division of the tribes sometimes led even to open war.

Within the tribes also there was no fixed arrangement, no fixed means for preserving peace. The clans and families for the most part possessed separate valleys, glens, or heights. The heads of the oldest families were also the governors of these cantons, and composed the differences between the members of the clan, canton, or city by their decisions; while in other places bold and successful warriors at the head of voluntary bands made acquisitions, in which the descendants of the leader took the rank of elder and judge. Eminent houses of this kind, together with the heads of families of ancient descent, formed the order of nobles and elders; "who hold the judge's staff in their hands, and ride on spotted asses with beautiful saddles, while the common people go afoot."[181 - Judges v. 10, 14; x. 4.] If a tribe fell into distress and danger, the nobles and elders assembled and took counsel, while the people stood round, unless some man of distinction had already risen and summoned the tribe to follow him. For the people did not adhere exclusively to the chief of the oldest family in the canton; nobles and others within, and in special cases without, the tribe, who had obtained a prominent position by warlike actions, or by the wisdom of their decisions, whose position and power promised help, protection and the accomplishment of the sentence, were invited to remove strife and differences, unless the contending persons preferred to help themselves. Only the man who could not help himself sought, as a rule, the decision of the elder or judge.

The names of some of the men whose decision was sought in that time have been preserved in the tradition of the Israelites. Tholah of the tribe of Issachar, Jair of the land of Gilead, Ebzan of Bethlehem in the tribe of Judah, Elon of the tribe of Zebulun, and Abdon of Ephraim, are all mentioned as judges of note. Of Jair we are told that he had 30 sons, who rode on 30 asses, and possessed 30 villages. Ebzan is also said to have had 30 sons and to have married 30 daughters; while Abdon had 40 sons and 30 grandsons, who rode on 70 asses.[182 - Judges x. 1-5; xii. 8-15.]

On the heights and table-lands of the districts east of the Jordan, in the land of Gilead, were settled the tribes of Reuben and Gad and a part of the tribe of Manasseh. At an early period they grew together, so that the name of the region sometimes represents the names of these tribes. Here the pastoral life and breeding of cattle remained predominant, as in the less productive districts on the west of the Jordan. But on the plains and in the valleys of the west the greater part of the settlers devoted themselves to the culture of the vine and agriculture. The walls of the ancient cities were at first used as a protection against the attacks of robbers, or raids of enemies; the inhabitants, afterwards as before, planted their fields and vineyards outside the gates.[183 - e. g. Judges ix. 27.] But the custom of dwelling together led to the beginnings of civic life, industrial skill, and common order. The trade of the Phenicians, which touched the land of the Hebrews here and there, and the more advanced culture of the cities of the coast, could not remain without influence on the Hebrews.

The religious feeling which separated the Israelites from the Canaanites was not more thoroughly effective than the community of blood and the contrast to the ancient population of the land in bringing about the combination and union of the Israelites. The religious life was as much without organisation as the civic; on the contrary, as the Israelites spread as settlers over a larger district, the unity and connection of religious worship which Moses previously established again fell to the ground. It is true, the sacred ark remained at Shiloh, five leagues to the north of Bethel, under the sacred tent in the land of the tribe of Ephraim. At this place a festival was held yearly in honour of Jehovah, to which the Israelites assembled to offer prayer and sacrifice. On other occasions also people went to Shiloh to offer sacrifice.[184 - Judges xxi. 19; 1 Sam. i. 3; ii. 13.] The priestly office in the sacred tent at the sacred ark remained with the descendants of Aaron, in the family of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the eldest son of Aaron (I. 497). But with the settlement a number of other places of sacrifice had risen up beside the sanctuary at Shiloh. On the heights and under the oaks at Ramah in the land of Benjamin, at Mizpeh in the same district, as well as at Mizpeh beyond Jordan, where Jacob and Laban had parted in peace,[185 - Judges xx. 1; vol. i. 410.] at Bethel on the borders of the land of Ephraim and Benjamin, where Abraham sacrificed (between Bethel and Ai) and Jacob received the name of Israel;[186 - 1 Sam. x. 3; vol. i. 390, 411.] finally at Gilgal on the east of Jordan, where Joshua lay encamped, and kept the passover, before he attacked Jericho, Jehovah was invoked. At these places also the firstlings of the fruits were offered; goats, rams, and bulls were offered, with or without the intervention of the priest, and inquiry made for the will of Jehovah without priestly help or intervention. Any one who set up an altar established a priest there, or hired a priest. For this purpose men were chosen who claimed to be of the race of Moses and Aaron, just as the service of the sacred ark at Shiloh was in the hands of this family; but men of other origin and tribes were not excluded even from the priesthood at the ark.[187 - Judges xvii. 5, 10; xviii. 30; 1 Sam. vii. 1; 2, vi. 3.]

In such a want of any defined and influential position of the priesthood, in the want of any church organisation, it was only the superior personal power of the priests at Shiloh which could protect the religious feeling and traditional custom against the influences of the new surroundings, and Canaanitish rites. Tradition, at any rate from the first third of the eleventh century B.C., had no good to tell of the morals of the priests at Shiloh. To those who came to bring an offering the servant of the priest said, "Give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not have it sodden but raw." If the person sacrificing replied, "We will burn only the fat, then take what you desire," the servant answered, "You must give it me now, and if you will not I shall take it by force." If the priest desired cooked flesh from the sacrifice, he sent his servant, who struck with his three-pronged fork into the cauldron, and what he brought out was the priest's.

The religious views of the Israelites, not sufficiently represented among themselves, were the more exposed to the influence of the rites of the Canaanites, as these rites belonged to tribes of kindred nature and character. In this way it came about that the Canaanitish gods Baal and Astarte were worshipped beside Jehovah, the god of Israel, and that in one or two places the old worship was perhaps entirely driven out by these new gods. But even where this did not take place, it was owing to the example and impulse of the Syrian modes of worship that images were here and there set up on the altars of Jehovah. When the conception of the divine nature in the spirit of a nation passes beyond the first undefined feeling and intimation, – when it receives a plainer and more expressive shape in the minds of men, and the first steps of artistic and technical skill, or the example of neighbours, are coincident with this advance, – the general result is that men desire to see the ruling powers fixed in distinct forms, then the gods are presented in a realistic manner in visible forms and images. And thus it was among the Israelites. The command of Moses given in opposition to the images of Egypt (I. 354) was long since forgotten. Michah, a man of the tribe of Ephraim, caused a goldsmith to make a carved and molten image of Jehovah of 200 shekels of silver; and set it up in a temple on Mount Ephraim, establishing as a priest a Levite, the "descendant of Moses." When a part of Dan marched northwards in order to win for themselves abodes there, which they could not conquer from the Philistines, the men of Dan carried off this image along with the Levite and set it up in the city of Laish (Dan), which they took from the Sidonians (I. 371), and the "grandson of Moses" and his descendants continued to be priests before this image.[188 - Judges xvii. ff.] At Nob also there was a gilded image of Jehovah, and many had Teraphim, or images of gods in the form of men, in their houses.[189 - 1 Sam. xix. 13-16; xxi. 9; Gen. xxxi. 34; Judges xvii. 5; xviii. 14, 17; 2 Kings xxiii. 24.]

Nothing important was undertaken before inquiry was made of the will of Jehovah. The inquiry was made as a rule by casting lots before the sacred tabernacle at Shiloh, before the altars and images of Jehovah,[190 - e. g. Judges vi. 36-40; xviii. 5; xx. 18 ff. The priests wore a pocket with lots (apparently small stones) on the breast. The Urim and Thummim of the High Priest was originally nothing but these lots.] or by questioning the priests and soothsayers. Counsel was also taken of these if a cow had gone astray, and they received in return bread or a piece of money.

Of the feuds which the tribes of Israel carried on at this time, some have remained in remembrance.[191 - On the composition of the Book of Judges, cf. De Wette-Schrader, "Einleitung," 325 ff.] The concubine of a Levite, so we are told in the book of Judges, who dwelt on Mount Ephraim, ran away from her husband; she went back to her father, to Bethlehem in Judah. Her husband rose and followed her, pacified her, and then set out on his return. The first evening they reached the city of the Jebusites, but the Levite would not pass the night among the Canaanites (I. 500), and turned aside to Gibeah, a place in the tribe of Benjamin. Here no one received the travellers; they were compelled to remain in the street till an old man came home late in the evening from his work in the field. When he heard that the traveller was from Ephraim he received him into his house, for he was himself an Ephraimite, gave fodder to the asses of the Levite and his concubine, and placed his attendant with his own servants. Then they washed their feet, and drank, and their hearts were merry. But the men of Gibeah collected round the house in the evening, pressed on the door, and demanded that the stranger from Ephraim should be given up to them; they wished to destroy him. In order to save himself the priest gave up to them his concubine, that they might satisfy their passions on her. The men of Gibeah abused her the whole night through, so that next morning she lay dead upon the threshold. The Levite went with the corpse to his home at Ephraim, cut it into twelve pieces with a knife, and sent a piece to each tribe. Every one who saw it said, "The like was never heard since Israel came out of Egypt." And the chiefs of the nation assembled and pronounced a curse upon him who did not come to Mizpah (in the land of Benjamin) that he should be put to death. Then all the tribes assembled at Mizpah, it is said about 400,000 men;[192 - In David's time only 270,000 are given: below, chap. 7.] only from Jabesh in Gilead and the tribe of Benjamin no one came. The Levite told what had happened to him, and the tribes sent messengers to Benjamin, to bring the men of Gibeah. But the children of Benjamin refused, and assembled their men of war, more than 26,000 in number, and took up arms. Then the people rose up and said, "Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin."[193 - Judges xx. 8; xxi. 7-18.] Every tenth man was sent back for supplies; the rest marched out against Benjamin. But "Benjamin was a ravening wolf, who ate up the spoil at morning and divided the booty in the evening;" they were mighty archers, and could throw with the left hand as well as the right.[194 - Gen. xlix. 27; Judges xx. 16; 1 Chron. viii. 39; xii. 2; 2 Chron. xiv. 7.] They fought twice at Gibeah with success against their countrymen. Not till the third contest did the Israelites gain the victory, and then only by an ambuscade and counterfeit flight. After this overthrow the whole tribe is said to have been massacred, the flocks and herds destroyed, and the cities burnt. Only 600 men, as we are told, escaped to the rock Rimmon on the Dead Sea. When the community again assembled at Bethel the people were troubled that a tribe should be extirpated and wanting in Israel; so they caused peace and a safe return to be proclaimed to the remainder of Benjamin. And when 12,000 men were sent out against Jabesh to punish the city because none of their inhabitants came to the gathering at Mizpeh, they were ordered to spare the maidens of Jabesh. In obedience to this command they brought 400 maidens back from Jabesh, and these were given to the Benjamites. But as this number was insufficient the Benjamites were allowed, when the yearly festival was held at Shiloh (p. 92), and the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance before the city, to rush out from the vineyards and carry off wives for themselves. Thus does tradition explain the non-execution of the decree that no Israelite should give his daughter to wife to a man of Benjamin, and the rescue of the tribe of Benjamin from destruction.[195 - These events belong, according to Judges xx. 27 ff., to the period immediately after the conquest: as a fact, the war against Benjamin is not to be placed long after this, i. e. about 1200 B.C. Cf. De Wette-Schrader, "Einleitung," S. 326.]

Without unity and connection in their political and religious life, amid the quarrels and feuds of the tribes, families and individuals, when every one helped and avenged himself, and violence and cruelty abounded, – in the lawless condition when "every one in Israel did what was right in his own eyes," – the Israelites were in danger of becoming the prey of every external foe, and it was a question whether they could long maintain the land they had won. It was fortunate that there was no united monarchy at the head either of the Philistines or the Phenicians, that the latter were intent on other matters, as their colonies in the Mediterranean, while the cities of the Philistines, though they acquired a closer combination as early as the eleventh century B.C., or even earlier (I. 348), did not, at least at first, go out to make foreign conquests. But it was unavoidable that the old population, especially in the north, where they remained in the greatest numbers amongst the Israelites, should again rise and find strong points of support in the Canaanite princes of Hazor and Damascus; that the Moabites who lay to the east of the Dead Sea, the Ammonites, the neighbours of the land of Gilead, that the wandering tribes of the Syrian desert should feel themselves tempted to invade Israel, to carry off the flocks and plunder the harvests and, if they found no vigorous resistance, to take up a permanent settlement in the country. Without the protection of natural borders, without combination and guidance, as they were, the Israelites could only succeed in resisting such attacks when in the time of danger a skilful and brave warrior was found, who was able to rouse his own tribe, and perhaps one or two of the neighbouring tribes, to a vigorous resistance, or to liberation if the enemy was already in the land. It is the deeds of such heroes, and almost these alone, which remained in the memory of the Israelites from the first two centuries following their settlement; and these narratives, in part fabulous, must represent the history of Israel for this period.

Eglon, king of Moab, defeated the Israelites, passed over the Jordan, took Jericho, and here established himself. With Gilead the tribe of Benjamin, which dwelt nearest to Jericho, at first must have felt with especial weight the oppression of Moab. For 18 years the Israelites are said to have served Eglon. Then Ehud, of the tribe of Benjamin, a reputed great grandson of the youngest son of Jacob, the father of the Benjamites, came with others to Jericho to bring tribute. When the tax had been delivered Ehud desired to speak privately with the king. Permission was given, and Ehud went with a two-edged sword in his hand, under his garment, to the king, who sat alone in the cool upper chamber. Ehud spoke: "I have a message from God to thee;" and when Eglon rose to receive the message Ehud smote him with the sword in the belly, "so that even the haft went in, and the fat closed over the blade, for the king of Moab was a very fat man. But Ehud went down to the court, and closed the door behind him." When the servants found the door closed they thought that the king had covered his feet for sleep. At last they took the key and found the king dead on the floor. But Ehud blew the trumpet on Mount Ephraim, assembled a host, seized the fords of Jordan, and slew about 10,000 Moabites, and the Moabites retired into their old possessions.[196 - Judges iii. 12 ff.]

Another narrative tells of the fortunes of the tribes of Naphtali, Zebulun, and Issachar, which were settled in the north, under Mount Hermon. Jabin, king of Hazor, had chariots of iron, and Sisera his captain was a mighty warrior, and for 20 years they oppressed the Israelites.[197 - Judges iv., v.] Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, of the tribe of Issachar, dwelt in the land of Benjamin, between Bethel and Ramah, under the palm-tree; she could announce the will of Jehovah, and the people came to her to obtain counsel and judgment. At her command Barak, the son of Abinoam, assembled the men of the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali; assistance also came from Issachar, Manasseh, Ephraim and Benjamin. Sisera went forth with 900 chariots and a great host and the Israelites retired before him to the south of the brook Kishon. Sisera crossed the brook and came upon the Israelites in the valley of Megiddo; he was defeated, leapt from his chariot, and fled on foot and came unto the tent of Heber the Kenite. Jael, Heber's wife, met him and said, "Turn in, my lord, to me; fear not." When in his thirst he asked for water, she opened the bottle of milk and allowed him to drink, and when he lay down to rest she covered him with the carpet. Being wearied, he sank into a deep sleep. Then Jael softly took the nail of the tent and a hammer in her hand, and smote the nail through his temples so that it passed into the earth. When Barak, who pursued the fugitive, came, Jael said, "I will show thee the man whom thou seekest," and led him into the tent where Sisera lay dead on the ground.

Israel's song of victory is as follows: "Listen, ye kings; give ear, ye princes; I will sing to Jehovah, I will play on the harp of Jehovah, the king of Israel. There were no princes in Israel till I, Deborah, arose a mother in Israel. Arise, Barak; bring forth thy captives, thou son of Abinoam. Shout, ye that ride on she-asses, and ye that sit upon carpets, and ye that go on foot, and let the people come down into the plain, to the gates of the cities. Then I said, Go down, O people of Jehovah, against the strong; a small people against the mighty. From Ephraim they came and from Benjamin, from Machir (i. e. from the Manassites on the east of the lake of Gennesareth) the rulers came, and the chiefs of Issachar were with Deborah, and Zebulun is a people which perilled his life to the death, and Naphtali on the heights of the field. On the streams of Reuben there was taking of counsel, but why didst thou sit still among the herds to hear the pipe of the herdsmen? Gilead also remained beyond Jordan, and Asher abode on the shore of the sea in his valleys, and Dan on his heights. The kings came, they fought at the water of Megiddo; they gained no booty of silver. Issachar, the support of Barak, threw himself in the valley at his heels. The brook Kishon washed away the enemy: a brook of battles is the brook Kishon. Go forth, my soul, upon the strong. Blessed above women shall Jael be, above women in the tent. He asked for water, she gave him milk; she brought him cream in a lordly dish. She put forth her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman's hammer, and she smote Sisera, she shattered and pierced his temples. Between her feet he lay shattered. The mother of Sisera looked from her window; she called through the lattice: 'Why linger his chariots in returning? why delay the wheels of his chariot?' Her wise maidens answered her; nay, she answered herself: 'Will they not find spoil and divide it; one or two maidens to each, spoil of broidered robes for Sisera?' So must all thine enemies perish, O Jehovah, but may those who love him be as the sun going forth in his strength." Whether this song was composed by Deborah, or by some other person in her name, it is certainly an ancient song of victory and contemporary with the events it celebrates.

The tribes of Israel also which were settled in the land of Gilead remembered with gratitude a mighty warrior who had once delivered them from grievous oppression. The Ammonites, the eastern neighbours of the land of Gilead, oppressed "the sons of Israel who dwelt beyond Jordan" for 18 years, and marched over Jordan against Judah, Benjamin and the house of Ephraim. Then the elders of the land of Gilead bethought them of Jephthah (Jephthah means "freed from the yoke"), to whom they had formerly refused the inheritance of his father because he was not the son of the lawful wife, but of a courtezan. He had retired into the gorges of the mountain and collected round him a band of robbers, and done deeds of bravery. To him the elders went; he was to be their leader in fighting against the sons of Ammon. Jephthah said, "Have ye not driven me out of the house of my father? now that ye are in distress ye come to me." Still he followed their invitation, and the people of Gilead gathered round him at Mizpeh and made him their chief and leader. "If I return in triumph from the sons of Ammon," such was Jephthah's vow, "the first that meets me at the door of my house shall be dedicated to Jehovah, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt-offering." When he had asked the tribe of Ephraim for assistance in vain he set out against the Ammonites with the warriors of the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, and overcame them in a great battle on the river Arnon. The Ephraimites made it a reproach against Jephthah that he had fought against the Ammonites without them; they crossed the Jordan in arms. But Jephthah said, "I was in straits, and my people with me; I called to you, but ye aided me not." He assembled the men of Gilead, defeated the Ephraimites, and came to the fords of the Jordan before the fugitives, so that more than 42,000 men of Ephraim are said to have been slain.

When he returned to his home at Mizpeh his only daughter came to meet him joyfully, with her maidens and timbrels and dancing. Jephthah tore his garments and cried, "My daughter, thou hast brought me very low; I have opened my mouth to Jehovah and cannot take it back." "My father," she answered, "if thou hast opened thy mouth to Jehovah, do to me as thou hast spoken, for Jehovah has given thee vengeance on thine enemies, the Ammonites. But first let me go with my companions to the mountains, and there for two months bewail my virginity." This was done, and on her return Jephthah did to her according to his vow. And it was a custom in Israel for the maidens to lament the daughter of Jephthah for four days in the year. After this Jephthah is said to have been judge for six years longer beyond Jordan, i. e. to have maintained the peace in these districts.

Grievous calamity came upon Israel in this period from a migratory people of the Syrian desert, from the incursions of the Midians, who, like the Moabites and Ammonites, are designated in Genesis as a nation kindred to the Israelites, with whom Moses was said to have entered into close relations (I. 449, 468). Now the Midianites with other tribes of the desert attacked Israel in constant predatory incursions. "Like locusts in multitude," we are told, "the enemy came with their flocks and tents; there was no end of them and their camels. When Israel had sowed the sons of the East came up and destroyed the increase of the land as far as Gaza, and left no sustenance remaining, no sheep, oxen and asses. And the sons of Israel were compelled to hide themselves in ravines, and caves, and mountain fortresses."[198 - Judges vi. 2-5.] For seven years Israel is said to have been desolated in this manner. Beside the tribes of Issachar and Zebulun, between Mount Tabor and the Kishon, dwelt a part of the tribe of Manasseh. The family of Abiezer, belonging to this tribe, possessed Ophra. In an incursion of the Midianites the sons of Joash, a man of this family, were slain;[199 - Judges viii. 19.] only Gideon, the youngest, remained. When the Midianites came again, after their wont, at the time of harvest, and encamped on the plain of Jezreel, and Gideon was beating wheat in the vat of the wine-press in order to save the corn from the Midianites, Jehovah aroused him. He gathered the men of his family around him, 300 in number.[200 - The observation that Gideon was the least in the house of his father, and his family the weakest in Manasseh (Judges vi. 15), is due no doubt to the tendency of the Ephraimitic text to show how strong Jehovah is even in the weak. From similar motives it is said that Gideon himself reduced his army to 300 men (Judges vii. 2-6). In the presence of the Ephraimites Gideon speaks only of the family of Abiezer.] When Jehovah had given him a favourable sign, and he had reconnoitred the camp of the Midianites, together with his armour-bearer Phurah, he determined to attack them in the night. He divided his troop into companies containing a hundred men; each took a trumpet and a lighted torch, which was concealed in an earthen pitcher. These companies were to approach the camp of the Midianites from three sides, and when Gideon blew the trumpet and disclosed his torch they were all to do the same. Immediately after the second night-watch, when the Midianites had just changed the guards, Gideon gave the signal. All broke their pitchers, blew their trumpets, and cried, "The sword for Jehovah and Gideon!" Startled, terrified, and imagining that they were attacked by mighty hosts, the Midianites fled. Then the men of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulun and Naphtali arose, and Gideon hastily sent messengers to the Ephraimites that they should seize the fords of Jordan before the Midianites. The Ephraimites assembled and took two princes of the Midianites, Oreb (Raven) and Zeeb (Wolf). The Ephraimites strove with Gideon that he had not summoned them sooner. Gideon replied modestly, "Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? Did not Jehovah give the princes of Midian into your hand? Could I do what ye have done?" He pursued the Midianites over the Jordan in order to get into his power their princes Zebah and Zalmunna, who had previously slain his brothers. When he passed the river at Succoth he asked the men of Succoth to give bread to his wearied soldiers. But the elders feared the vengeance of the Midianites, and said, "Are Zebah and Zalmunna already in thine hand, that we should give bread to thy men?" Gideon replied in anger, "If Jehovah gives them into my hand I will tear your flesh with the thorns of the wilderness and with briers." The inhabitants of Penuel on the Jabbok also, to which Gideon marched, refused to feed their countrymen; like those of Succoth, they feared the Midianites. Gideon led his army by the way of the dwellers in tents far away to Karkor. Here he defeated and scattered the 15,000 Midianites who had escaped, and captured the two princes. Then he turned back to Succoth and said to the elders, "See, here are Zebah and Zalmunna, for whom ye mocked me." He caused them to be seized, seventy-seven in number, and tore them to death with thorns and briers. The tower of Penuel he destroyed, and caused the inhabitants of the place to be slain. To the captured princes he said, "What manner of men were they whom ye once slew at Tabor?" And they answered, "As thou art, they looked like the sons of a king." "They were my brethren, the sons of my mother," Gideon answered. "As Jehovah liveth, if ye had saved them alive I would not slay you. Stand up," he called to his first-born son Jether, "and slay them." But the youth feared and drew not his sword, for he was yet young. "Slay us thyself," said the prisoners, "for as the man is, so is his strength." This was done. When the booty was divided Gideon claimed as his share the golden ear-rings of the slain Midianites. They were collected in Gideon's mantle, and the weight reached 1700 shekels of gold, beside the purple raiment of the dead kings, and the moons and chains on the necks of the camels.

Gideon had gained a brilliant victory; no more is heard of the raids of the Midianites. Out of the booty he set up a gilded image (ephod) at Ophra.[201 - What is meant in Judges viii. 27 by an ephod is not clear. The words which follow in the verse – that all Israel went whoring after Gideon – are obviously an addition of the prophetic revision.] He overthrew the altar of Baal and the image of Astarte in his city; and this, as is expressly stated, in the night (from which we must conclude that the inhabitants of Ophra were attached to this worship); and in the place of it he set up an altar to Jehovah on the height, and in the city another altar, which he called "Jehovah, peace." "Unto this day it is still in Ophra."

After the liberation of the land, which was owing to him, Gideon held the first place in Israel. We are told that the crown had been offered to him and that he refused it.[202 - Judges viii. 22.] But if Gideon left 70 sons of his body by many wives, if we find that his influence descended to his sons, he must have held an almost royal position, in which a harem was not wanting. He died, as it seems, in a good old age, and was buried in the grave of his fathers (after 1150 B.C.[203 - Gideon's date can only be fixed very indefinitely. He and the generations after him must have belonged to the second half of the twelfth century B.C.]).