The first edition of the five books of Phaedrus was published by Pithou at Troyes in 1596. But, from the gaps in the books as well as from the disproportionate shortness of some of them, it is plain that this collection is incomplete. In the beginning of the 18th century there was discovered at Parma a MS. of Perotti (1430-1480), archbishop of Siponto, containing sixty-four fables of Phaedrus, of which thirty-two were new. These new fables were first published at Naples by Cassitto in 1808, and afterwards (much more correctly) by Jannelli in 1811. Both editions were superseded by the discovery of a much better preserved MS. of Perotti in the Vatican, which was published by Angelo Mai in 1831. For some time the authenticity of these new fables was disputed, but they are now generally accepted, and with justice, as genuine fables of Phaedrus. They do not form a sixth book, for we know from Avianus that Phaedrus wrote five books only, but it is impossible to assign them to their original places in the five books. They are usually printed as an appendix. Even thus it is probable that we have not the whole of Phaedrus.

In the Middle Ages Phaedrus exercised a considerable influence through the prose versions of his fables which were current, though his own works and even his name were forgotten. Of these prose versions the oldest existing seems to be that known as the “Anonymus Nilantianus,” so called because first edited by Nilant at Leyden in 1709 from a MS. of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. It approaches the text of Phaedrus so closely that it was probably made directly from it. Of the sixty-seven fables which it contains thirty are derived from lost fables of Phaedrus. But the largest and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus is that which bears the name of “Romulus.” It contains eighty-three fables, is as old as the 10th century, and seems to have been based on a still earlier prose version, which, under the name of “Aesop,” and addressed to one Rufus, may have been made in the Cariovingian period. The preface of Romulus, in which he professes to have translated the fables from the Greek, is a mere fiction of the copyist; no such Romulus as this ever existed, although in the Middle Ages he was sometimes thought to have been a Roman emperor, and has still a place in the Biographie Universelle (1863). The collection of fables in the Weissenburg (now Wolfenbüttel) MS. is based on the same version (the Aesopus ad Rufum) as Romulus. These three prose versions contain in all one hundred distinct fables, of which fifty-six are derived from the existing and the remaining forty-four presumably from lost fables of Phaedrus. Some modern scholars, as Burmann, Dressier, and L. Müller, have tried to restore these lost fables by versifying the prose versions.

The collection bearing the name of Romulus became in its turn the source from which, during the second half of the Middle Ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn. A version of the first three books of Romulus in elegiac verse enjoyed a wide popularity, even into the Renaissance. Its author (generally referred to since the edition of Névelet in 1610 as the Anonymous of Névelet) was long unknown, but Hervieux has lately shown grounds for identifying him with Walther of England, chaplain to Henry II. and afterwards archbishop of Palermo. The version dates from the latter part of the 12th century. It was especially popular in Italy, where the Italian translation of Accio Zuccho (Verona, 1479) was frequently reprinted. Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157, and towards the end of his life (early part of 13th century) abbot of the Augustinian monastery at Exeter. Neckam knew and copied Walther’s version, but his Oλvn never had the same popularity. Amongst the collections partly derived from Romulus the most famous is probably that in French verse by Marie de France (q.v.). About 1200 a collection of fables in Latin prose, based partly on Romulus, was made by the Cistercian monk Odo of Sherrington; they have a strong mediaeval and clerical tinge. In 1370 Gerard of Minden wrote a poetical version of Romulus in Low German.

Since the first edition of Phaedrus by Pithou in 1596 the editions and translations have been very numerous; among the editions may specially be mentioned those of Burmann (1718 and 1727), Bentley (1726), Schwabe (1806), Berger de Xivrey (1830), Orelìi (1832), Eyssenhardt (1867), L. Müller (1877), Hervieux, in his work Les Fabulistes Latins depuis le siècle d’Auguste jusqu’à la fin du moyen age, Paris, 1884. For the mediaeval versions of Phaedrus and their derivatives see L. Roth, in Philologus, i. p. 523 sq. ; H. Oesterley, Romulus die Paraphrasen des Phaedrus und die aesopische Fabel im Mittelalter, 1870 (untrustworthy); E. Grosse, in Jahrbb. f class. Philol., vol. cv. (1872); and especially the learned work of Hervieux, who gives the Latin texts of all the mediaeval imitators (direct and indirect) of Phaedrus, some of these texts being now edited for the first time.

PHOeNICIA (Gr. Φοινίκη) forms part of the seaboard of Syria (q.υj), extending along the Mediterranean (sometimes called the Phoenician Sea) from the mouth of the Eleutherus in the north to Mount Carmel in the south, a distance of rather more than two degrees of latitude. In early times Phoenicians were settled beyond this district, but for the Persian period Dor may be taken approximately as the limit towards the south. In the north a strip of country on the other side of the Eleutherus (Nahr al-Kebír) was frequently reckoned to Phoenicia. Formed partly by alluvium carried down by perennial streams from the mountains to the east, and fringed by great sand-dunes thrown up by the sea, Phoenicia is covered by a very fertile, vegetable soil. It is only at Eleutherus in the north, and near Acre (Akka) in the south, that this strip of coastland widens out into plains of any extent; a smaller plain is found at Beirút (Beyrout). For the most part the mountains approach within not many miles of the coast, or even close to it, leaving only a narrow belt of lowland, which from remote antiquity has been traversed by a caravanroute. To the south of Tyre the cliffs sometimes advance so close to the sea that a passage for the road had to be hewn out of the rocks, as at Scala Tyriorum (Ras an-Nakura), and farther north at Promontorium Album (Ras al-Abyad). It is not known how far inland the Phoenician territory extended; the limit was probably different at different times. Both the maritime district, partly under artificial irrigation, and the terraces, laid out with great care on the mountain-sides, were in antiquity in a high state of cultivation; and the country—more especially that portion which lies north of the Kásimíye (Litání) along the flanks of Lebanon—still presents some of the richest and most beautiful landscapes in the world, in this respect far excelling the Italian Riviera. The lines of the limestone mountains, running for the most part parallel to the sea, are pierced by deep river-valleys; those that debouch to the south of the Kásimíye have already been mentioned in the article Palestine ; the most important of those to the north are the Nahr Zaherani, Al-Auwali, Damur (Tamy-ras), Nahr Beirút, Nahr al-Kelb (Lycus), Nahr Ibrahim (Adonis), Nahr Abu Ali (Kaddisha). The mountains are not rich in mineral products; but it may be mentioned that the geologist Fraas has recently discovered indubitable traces of amber-digging on the Phoenician coast. The purple-shell {Murex trunculus and brandaris) is still found in large quantities. The harbours on the Phoenician coast which played so important a part in antiquity are nearly all silted up, and, with the exception of that of Beirút, there is no safe port for the large vessels of modern times. A few bays, open towards the north, break the practically straight coast-line; and there are a certain numb.·r of small islands off the shore. It was, in the main, such points as these that the Phoenicians chose for their towns; since, while affording facilities for shipping, they also enabled the Phoenicians to protect themselves from attacks from the mainland, which was subject to them within but narrow limits.

Race.— The ethnographic relations of the Phoenicians have been the subject of much debate. As in Gen. x., Sidon, the firstborn of Canaan, is classed with the Hamites, many investigators are still of opinion that, in spite of their purely Semitic language, the Phoenicians were a distinct race from the Hebrews. They attach great weight to the peculiarities that mark the course of Phoenician civilization, and, above all, to their political organization and colonizing habits, which find no analogies among the Semites. In favour of the opposite and more probable view, that the Phoenicians, like the Canaanites, are an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, it may be urged (1) that the account in Gen. x. is not framed on strict ethnographic lines, and (2) that the absence from Phoenicia of all trace of an original non-Semitic form of speech cannot be reconciled with the theory of an exchange of language. The close connexion which existed from an early period between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians accounts for many coincidences in the matter of religion. Phoenician civilization, being on the whole of but little originality, may have been that of a Semitic people, who, from their situation on the narrow strip of country at the east end of the Mediterranean, were naturally addicted to trade and colonization.

Language.— Inscriptions, coins, topographical names preserved by classical writers, proper names of persons, and the Punic passages in the Paenulus of Plautus combine to show that the Phoenician language, like Hebrew, belonged to the north Semitic group. Even the Phoenician which survived as a rustic dialect in north Africa till the 5th century of our era was very closely akin to Hebrew. Though it retained certain old forms obsolete in Hebrew, Phoenician, as we know, represents on the whole a later stage of grammatical structure than the language of the Old Testament. Its vocabulary, in like manner, apart from a few archaisms, coincides most nearly with later Hebrew. At a very early period Semitic words were adopted into Greek from Phoenician; and it is also quite certain that the Phoenicians had at least a great share in the development and diffusion of the alphabetic character which forms the foundation of all European alphabets. We possess, however, only a few Phoenician inscriptions and coins of very early date. The longest and most important of the inscriptions—that on King Eshmun'azar’s tomb—is in letters which, while very ancient in certain of their features, present a series of important modifications of the original type of the Semitic alphabet, as it can be fixed by comparison of the oldest documents. Still more divergent from the ancient characters are the forms of the letters on the Phoenician, i.e., Punic, .monuments of north Africa. (a. so.) Religion.— Considering the great part which the Phoenicians played in the movements of ancient civilization, it is singular how fragmentary are our sources of knowledge for all the most essential elements of their history. What we are told of their religion is only in appearance an exception to this rule. Eusebius in the Praeparatio Eυangelica cites at length from the Greek of Philo of Byblus a cosmogony and theogony professedly translated from a Berytian Sanchuniathon, who wrote 1221 b.c. But that this work is a forgery appears from the apocryphal authorities cited, and the affinity displayed with the system of Euhemerus. The forger was Philo himself, for the writer borrows largely from Hesiod and was therefore a Greek; he gives Byblus the greatest prominence in a history professedly Berytian, and was therefore a Byblian; and finally Philo was a fanatical Euhemerist, and the admitted object of the work was to make converts to that system. The materials used by Philo were, however, in all probability mainly genuine, but so cut and clipped to fit his system that they must be used with great caution and constantly controlled by the few scattered data that can be gathered from authentic sources.

The two triads of Hannibal’s oath to Philip of Macedon (Polyb., vii. 9, 2)—Sun, Moon, and Earth, and Rivers, Meadows, and Waters—contain the objects on which all Phoenician worship is based. Rivers were generally sacred to gods, trees to goddesses; mountains, too, were revered as nearer than other places to heaven; and baetylia or meteoric stones were held sacred as divine messengers.

Philo’s second generation of men (Genos and Genea) first worshipped the plants of the earth, till a drought ensued and they stretched out their hands towards the sun as the Lord of Heaven or Beelsamên (Baal-Shamaim), —an indication that the worship of heavenly bodies was regarded as a later development of religion. Baudissin, on the other hand, has lately maintained that all Phoenician deities were astral and only manifested themselves in the terrestrial sphere, that the things holy to them on earth were symbols, not dwelling-places, of the gods. And there seems to be little doubt that this was the theory of later Phoenician theology, as appears in the legend of the fiery star of the queen of heaven that fell into the holy stream at Aphaca (Sozom., ii. 5, 5), in the coincidence of the names of sacred rivers with those of the celestial gods, and in the name Ζευς θαλάσσιος (Hesych.) for a Sidonian sea-god. But surely this theory was devised to remove a contradiction which theologians felt to be involved in the popular religion. In the latter logical consistency is not necessarily to be presumed, and astral and terrestrial worships might well exist side by side. In historical times the astral element had the ascendency; the central point in religion, and the starting-point in all Phoenician mythology, was the worship of the Sun, who has either the Moon or (as the sun-god is also the heaven-god) the Earth for wife. In Byblus, forwhich alone we possess some details of the local cult, El was the founder and lord of the town, and therefore of course had the pre-eminence in religion; and so the Byblian Philo makes El to be the highest god and the other ëlìm or elõhim subordinate to him. In the other towns also the numen patrium was a form of the sun-god, or else his wife, and enjoyed somewhat exclusive honour—a step in the direction of monotheism similar to the Moabite worship of Chemosh (cp. the Mesha stone). El is represented as the first to introduce circumcision and the first who sacrificed an only son or a virgin daughter to the supreme god. He wanders over all the earth, westward towards the setting sun, and leaves Byblus to ∙his spouse Baaltis—this is meant to explain why she had the chief place in the cult of Byblus; her male companion Eliün, Shadid (or μεγιστos θεός), is conceived as her youthful lover, and El is transformed into a hostile god, who slays Shadid with the sword. According to another legend the youthful god is killed by a boar while hunting, and the mourning for him with the finding of him again make up a chief part of Byblian worship, which at an early date was enriched with elements borrowed from Egypt and the myth of Osiris. In other places we find as spouse of the highest god the moongoddess Astarte with the cow’s horns, who in Tyre was worshipped under the symbol of a star as queen of heaven. With her worship as with that of Baaltis were associated wild orgies; and traces of the like are not lacking even at Carthage (Aug., Civ. Pei, ii. 4), where theology had given a more earnest and gloomy character to the goddess. Astarte was viewed as the mother of the Tyrian sungod Melkarth (Eudoxus, in Athen., ix. p. 392 D), or, as his full title runs, “our lord Melkarth the Baal of Tyre” {CH.S., No. 122). On account of his regular daily course the Sun is viewed as the god who works and reveals himself in the world, as son of the god who is above the world, and as protector of civil order. But, again, as the Sun engenders the fruitfulness of the earth, he becomes the object of a sensual nature-worship, one feature of which is that men and women interchange garments. A chief feast to his honour in Tyre was the “awaking of Heracles” in the month Peritius (February∕March; Menander of Eph., in Jos., Ant., viii. 5, 3), a festival of the returning power of the sun in spring, probably alluded to in the sarcasm of Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 27). Peculiar to Berytus is the worship of Poseidon and other sea-gods, who are connected genealogically with Zeus Belus, a son of El, born beyond the Euphrates, and perhaps therefore connected with the Babylonian fish-gods. Berytus was also a chief seat of the worship of the Cabïri, the seven nameless sons of Sydek, with their brother Eshmùn, who is the eighth and greatest of the Cabiri. Philo supplies for them a genealogy which is an attempt to present the growth of man from rude to higher civilization, and presents analogies, long since observed, to the genealogy of the sons of Cain in Genesis. Not only their half-divine ancestors but the Cabïri themselves belong to a comparatively recent stage of religious development. They are the patron deities of manual arts and civil industry, and as such are the great gods of the Phoenician land, specially worshipped in the federal centre Tripolis. On coins of this town they are called Syrian (i.e., perhaps Assyrian) gods, which seems to imply that the Phoenicians themselves regarded as not primitive the many Egyptian elements which were quite early introduced into the religion of the Cabïri, and especially of Eshmùn. On the other hand, a figure allied to Eshmùn, Taaut, the inventor of the alphabet, is certainly borrowed from the Egyptian Tehuti. So, too, Onka (Steph., s.v. “Όγκαΐαι ”) is probably the Anuke of Sais, and it is possible that the whole cycle of gods λvho revealed and interpreted the sacred books is Egyptian; some of the latter have the form of a serpent.

The Phoenicians did not set up anthropomorphic statues of the gods, but symbolic pillars of stone, or, in the case of the queen of heaven, of wood (ashërãh). If an actual image was used, likeness to man was avoided by fantastic details: the god had two heads or wings, or some animal emblem, or was dwarfish or hermaphrodite, and so on. The sacrifices were of oxen and other male domestic animals— as expiatory offerings also stags —and for minor offerings birds. Human sacrifices were exceptionally offered by the state to avert great disasters; the victim was chosen from among the citizens and must be innocent, wherefore children were chosen, and by preference firstborn or only sons. The same idea that the godhead demanded the holiest and most costly gift explains the prostitution. of virgins at certain feasts in the sacred groves of the queen of heaven, and the temporary consecration of maidens or matrons as kìhleshoth fιεpο8οvλοι). For this custom, as for that of human sacrifice, substitutes were by and by introduced in many places; thus at Byblus it was held sufficient that the women cut off their hair at the feast of Adonis {Pe Pea Syr., c. 6).

Origin of the Phoenicians.— The oldest towns were held to have been founded by the gods themselves, who presumably also placed the Phoenicians in them. Imitating the Egyptians, the race claimed an antiquity of 30,000 years (Africanus, in Syncellus, p. 31), yet they retained some memory of having migrated from older seats on an Eastern sea. Herodotus (vii. 89) understood this of the Persian Gulf; the companions of Alexander sought to prove by learned etymologies that they had actually found here the old seats of the Phaenicians. But all this rested on a mere blunder, and the true form of the tradition is preserved by Trogus (Just., xviii. 3, 3), who places the oldest seats of the Phaenicians on the Syrium stagnum or Dead Sea—with which the Greeks before the time of the Diadochi had no acquaintance—and says that, driven thence by an earthquake, they reached the coast, and founded Sidon. This earthquake Bunsen has ingeniously identified with that which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, and with which Genesis itself connects the migrations of Lot. Perhaps it played much such a part in the mythic history of the peoples of Canaan as the breach of the dam of Märib does in the history of the Arabs.

In historical times the Phaenicians called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan (Kena'an, Kcna'; Xvâ in Hecataeus, fr. 254), the latter applying equally to the coast which they tnemselves held and the inland highlands which the Israelites occupied. The Greeks call people and land Φοίνικες, Φοινίκη ; the former is the older word, which in itself disposes of the idea that Phoenicia means the land of the date-palm, which the Greeks called φοινιξ, i.e., Phoenician. In truth, Φοίνικες, with an antique termination used in forming other names of nations {Aιθικες, θpηικες), is derived from φοινός, “blood-red,” probably in allusion to the dark complexion of the race.

When the southern part of the coast of Canaan was occupied by the Philistines the region of Ekron became the boundary of Phoenicia to the south (Josh, xiii. 3); the northern boundary in the time of the Persians was the town of Posidium and the mouth of the Orontes (Herod., iii. 91; Pseudo-Scylax, § 104). Under the Seleucids these limits contracted, the southern boundary being the Chorseus (Ptol., Codd. B.E., Pal. 1), which falls into the sea north of the tower of Straton, and the northern the river Eleutherus, so that Orth6sia was the last town of Phoenicia and the whole region of Aradus was excluded. Under the Roman empire the southern boundary was unchanged, but the northern advanced to a little south of Balanea. A still narrower definition of Canaan is that in Gen. x. 19 and Josh, xiii. 2-6, where Sidon or its territory is the northern limit; but the reference is only to the land destined to be occupied by Israel, for a younger hand has added to Sidon (the firstborn of Canaan) and Heth a list of other nations, sons of Canaan, extending northwards as far as Hamath.

It is a singular fact that alike in the Old Testament and in Homer, in the time of Tyre’s greatest might, we constantly read of Sidonians and not of Tyrians. The explanation that Sidonians is a synonym of Phoenicians in general is defended on 1 Kings v. 1 [15] compared with ver. 6 [20], but is not adequate; the same chapter distinguishes between the Sidonians and the Giblites or men of Byblus (E.V., “stone squarers,” ver. 18 [32]). And in Gen. x. we have besides Sidon the peoples of Arce, Sinna, Aradus, and Simyra enumerated in order from south to north—mostly unimportant towns afterwards absorbed in the land of Aradus—and yet Tyre is lacking, though one fancies that we could better miss even Aradus, which was a colony from Sidon (Strabo, xvi. p. 753), only Aradus was founded by fugitives, and so must, from the first, have been independent. Hence we may conjecture that the list in Genesis is political in principle; and this gives us a solution of the whole difficulty, viz., that, during the flourishing period of Phoenicia, Sidon and Tyre formed a single state whose kings reigned first in Sidon and then in Tyre, but whose inhabitants continued to take their name from the old metropolis. The first unambiguous example of two distinct kings in Tyre and Sidon is in the end of the 8th century b.c., on an inscription of Sennacherib (Schrader, K.A.T., 2d ed., p. 286 s⅛.), and there is every reason to think that the revolt of Sidon from Tyre about 726 spoken of by Menander (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) was a revolt not from Tyrian hegemony but from the Tyrian kingdom. The several Phoenician cities had lists of their kings back to a very early date. Abedbalus reigned at Berytus in the time which Philo had ciphered out as that of the judge Jerubbaal, i.e., about the beginning of the 13th century b.c., and in Sidon there is word of kings at the time to which the Greeks referred the rape of Europa (15th century; see Laetus, in Tatian, Adv. Graecos, 58). The leading Phoenician towns are mentioned in connexion with the Syrian wars of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties (16th-l3th century); thus under Thothmes III. we read of Berytus, Ace, Joppe, and repeatedly of Aradus, which is commonly spoken of along with Haleb (Aleppo) and other eastern districts. The mention of Tyre is less certain, as there were two cities which the Egyptians called T’ar; but there is no mistake as to the city on the sea called “T’aru the haven” in the journey of an Egyptian of the 14th century (Rec. of the Past, ii. 107 sqf,— “water is carried to it in barks, it is richer in fish than in sands”; the noble aqueducts therefore, of which the ruins are still seen, were not yet constructed.

The oldest parts of Tyre were taken to be the town on the mainland, afterwards known as Palaetyrns, and the so-called temple of Hercules built on a rocky islet, which Hiram by and by united with the insular part of the town. According to native historians this temple was more properly one of Olympian Zeus, that is, of Baal-Shamaim, the Lord of Heaven. Herodotus, after inquiries made on the spot, fixes the founding of the city in 2756 b.c. ; but Tyre did not attain great importance till the later island city was built. According to Trogus (Justin, xviii. 3, 5) the Phoenicians (not the people of Sidon, as the passage is often misread to mean), who had been subdued by the king of Ascalon, took ship and founded Tyre a year before the taking of Troy. This goes well with the spread of the Philistine power in the time of the later judges and with the fact that Ascalon was still a Canaanite town under Raineses II. (c. 1385 B.C.), while in the eighth year of Rameses III. (c. 1246) the Pulosata made a raid into Egypt. Philistus (in Euseb., Can., No. 803) gives us without knowing it the era used in Tyre and in early times also in Carthage when he says that Zorns {i.e., Çõr, Tyre) and Carchedon built Carthage in 1213 fi.c., or rather, according to a very good MS. (Regin.), in 1209, which agrees with the date 1208 for the fall of Troy on the Parian marble, and also may be reconciled with the notice (taken from Philistus) in Appian, Punica, i., that the founding of Zorus and Carchedon was fifty years before the fall of Troy, if we suppose that Philistus took for the latter event the latest date we know of, viz., that assigned by Democritus. Now Josçphus {Ant., viii. 3, 1) counts 229 years from the building of Tyre to Hiram, and places the foundation of Carthage (Conk Ap., i. 18) in the 155th year from Hiram’s accession. The best authority for the last-named event is Timaeus, who puts it in 814 b.c. This gives us for the founding of Tyre a date twelve years later than that of Philistus, but it is probable that Josephus in summing up the individual reigns between Hiram and the building of Carthage as given by Menander departed from the intention of his author in assuming that the twelve years of Astartus and the twelve of the contemporaneous usurper were not to be reckoned separately. This hypothesis enables us to give a restored chronology which cannot be far from the truth (see infra). Manufactures and Inventions.— The towns of the Phoenician coast were active from a very early date in various manufactures. Glass work, for which the sands of the Belus gave excellent material, had its chief seat in Sidon; embroidery and purple-dyeing were favoured by the prevalence of the purple-giving murex all along the coast. The ancients ascribed to the Phoenicians the invention of all three industries, but glass-making seems to have been borrowed from Egypt, where this manufacture is of immemorial antiquity; and several circumstances indicate that the other two arts probably came from Babylon—in particular, the names of the two main tints of purple— dark red (argãmãn) and dark blue (tèkhêleth)—seem not to be Phoenician. The Phoenicians, however, brought these arts to perfection and spread the knowledge of them. In other particulars also the ancients looked on the Phoenicians as the inventive people par excellence : to them as the great trading nation was ascribed the invention of arithmetic, measure, and weight, which are really Babylonian in origin, and also of writing, although it is not even quite certain that it was the Phoenicians who adapted the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet to Semitic use. Yet here again the Phoenicians have undisputedly the scarcely inferior merit of having communicated the art to all the nations of the Mediterranean basin.

Navigation, Trade, Colonies.— The beginnings of navigation lie beyond all human memory, but it is not hard to understand how the ancients made this also an invention of the Phoenicians, whose skill as seamen was never matched by any ancient people before or after them. Even in later times Greek observers noted with admiration the exact order kept on board Phoenician ships, the skill with which every corner of space was utilized, the careful disposition of the cargo, the vigilance of the steersmen and their mates (Xen., Oec., viii. 11 sqf. They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the Phoenician star (Hyginus, Po. Ast., ii. 2); and all their vessels, from the common round γαυλos, to the great Tarshish ships, the East-Indiamen—so to speak—of the ancient world, had a speed wdιich the Greeks never rivalled. Of the extent of the Phoenicians’ trade in the last days of Tyre’s glory Ezekiel (xxvii. 12-25) has left a lively picture, which shows how large was the share they had in overland as well as in naval commerce. It was they, in fact, who from the earliest time distributed to the rest of the world the wares of Egypt and Babylon (Herod., i. 1). To the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris there were two routes: the more northerly passed obliquely through Mesopotamia and had on it the trading places of Haran (Carrhae), Canneh (Caenae), and Eden; the other, more southerly, had Sheba (Sabaea) for its goal, and led down the Euphrates, passing Asshur (Sura) and Chilmad (Charmande). There were other routes in the Persian and Macedonian period, but they do not belong to the present history.

Actual inland settlements of the Phoenicians seem to have been few; we know of one near the head of the northern trade road, Laish, which was lost to the Danites in the time of the judges (Judges xviii.), and one on the southern route, Eddana on the Euphrates (Steph. B., s.v.), which corresponds in name with Eden, but is not the same place, but perhaps rather the Giddan of Isidore of Charax (§ 1). In the Arabian caravan trade in perfume, spices, and incense for worship the Phoenicians had a lively interest (Herod., iii. 107). These wares were mainly produced not in Arabia but in eastern Africa and India; but Sheba in Yemen was the emporium of the whole trade, and the active commerce of this rich and powerful state in the times before the Persian is seen better than by any direct testimony from the exact knowledge of the Sabaean lands shown in Gen. x., from the many references to Arabia and Sheba in the Assyrian monuments, and from such facts as Euting’s discovery at Taimã in the heart of Arabia of an Aramaic inscription of the 6th century b.c., composed by a man with an Egyptian name. 1

In Egypt Phoenician trade and civilization soon took firm root; they alone were able to maintain their Egyptian trade and profits in the anarchic times of the XXIIId to the XXVth Dynasties (825-650 b.c.), times like those of the Mameluke beys, in which all other foreign merchants were frightened away and the Greek legend of the inhospitable Busiris originated. 2 The Tyrians had their own quarter in old Memphis (Herod., ii. 112), but there never were real colonies of the Phoenicians in Egypt.

That in matters economic Syria and Palestine depended on Phoenicia might have been inferred even if we had not the express testimony of Ezekiel that these lands were included in the sphere of Tyrian trade; so too was Togarmah, an Armenian district.

Cilicia was important to the Phoenicians as the natural point of shipment for wares from the Euphrates regions; and the opposite island of Cyprus attracted them by its store of timber for shipbuilding, and of copper. Both these countries were originally peopled by the non-Semitic Kittïm, who have left their name in the Cilician district Cetis and the Cyprian city Citium; but they came under profound Semitic influences, mainly those of the Phoenicians, who on the mainland had settlements at Myri-andus (Xen., Anab., i. 4, 6) and Tarsus, 3 while in Cyprus Citium—which to the last remained the chief seat of the Phoenician tongue and culture—was held to have its foundation from Belus (Steph., s.v. “ Αάπηθος”), and Carpasia from Pygmalion (id., s.vf. Pseudo-Scylax (§ 103), writing in 346 b.c., knows Carpasia, Cerynea, and Lapethus as Phoenician; but the view that Phoenician sway in Cyprus was very ancient and that the Phoenicians were gradually driven back by the Greeks appears not to be sound. On the contrary, the balance of power seems to have varied greatly; the Assyrian tribute-lists of 673 and 667 (Schrader, K.A.T., p. 354 sqf contain but two names of Phoenician cities in Cyprus, Sillü (Soli) and Kartihadast (probably New Paphos); not one of the later Phoenician kingdoms is mentioned, so that presumably none of them then existed, and not one of the ten Cyprian kings mentioned appears to be Phoenician by name. Menander tells us (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) that the kings of Tyre ruled over Cyprus at the close of the 8th century; but a very clear proof that there was no ancient and uninterrupted political connexion with Phoenicia lies in the fact that the Cyprian Greeks took the trouble to frame a Greek cuneiform character modelled on the Assyrian.

The Homeric poems represent the Phoenicians as present in Greek waters for purposes of traffic, including the purchase and capture of slaves, but not as settlers. Tradition (see especially Thucyd., i. 8) is unanimous in representing the Carians and Phoenicians as having occupied the islands of the Aegean before the migrations of the Greeks to Asia Minor, but so far as the Phoenicians are concerned this holds only of the southern islands—afterwards occupied by Dorians—where they had mining-stations, and also establishments for the capture of the murex and purpledyeing. 4 The most northerly of the Cyclades on which we can prove a Phoenician settlement is Oliarus (Steph., s.vf, which was occupied by Sidonians, probably with a view to the use of the marble quarries of Paros, which lies opposite. Similarly the Byblians occupied Melos (Steph., s.vf, which produced a white pigment (Melian earth), alum, and sulphur. Two great islands were held as main seats of the purple trade, Cythera (Herod., i. 105) and Thera, with the neighbouring Anaphe (Herod., i

PHOeNICIA (Gr. Φοινίκη) forms part of the seaboard of Syria (q.υj), extending along the Mediterranean (sometimes called the Phoenician Sea) from the mouth of the Eleutherus in the north to Mount Carmel in the south, a distance of rather more than two degrees of latitude. In early times Phoenicians were settled beyond this district, but for the Persian period Dor may be taken approximately as the limit towards the south. In the north a strip of country on the other side of the Eleutherus (Nahr al-Kebír) was frequently reckoned to Phoenicia. Formed partly by alluvium carried down by perennial streams from the mountains to the east, and fringed by great sand-dunes thrown up by the sea, Phoenicia is covered by a very fertile, vegetable soil. It is only at Eleutherus in the north, and near Acre (Akka) in the south, that this strip of coastland widens out into plains of any extent; a smaller plain is found at Beirút (Beyrout). For the most part the mountains approach within not many miles of the coast, or even close to it, leaving only a narrow belt of lowland, which from remote antiquity has been traversed by a caravanroute. To the south of Tyre the cliffs sometimes advance so close to the sea that a passage for the road had to be hewn out of the rocks, as at Scala Tyriorum (Ras an-Nakura), and farther north at Promontorium Album (Ras al-Abyad). It is not known how far inland the Phoenician territory extended; the limit was probably different at different times. Both the maritime district, partly under artificial irrigation, and the terraces, laid out with great care on the mountain-sides, were in antiquity in a high state of cultivation; and the country—more especially that portion which lies north of the Kásimíye (Litání) along the flanks of Lebanon—still presents some of the richest and most beautiful landscapes in the world, in this respect far excelling the Italian Riviera. The lines of the limestone mountains, running for the most part parallel to the sea, are pierced by deep river-valleys; those that debouch to the south of the Kásimíye have already been mentioned in the article Palestine ; the most important of those to the north are the Nahr Zaherani, Al-Auwali, Damur (Tamy-ras), Nahr Beirút, Nahr al-Kelb (Lycus), Nahr Ibrahim (Adonis), Nahr Abu Ali (Kaddisha). The mountains are not rich in mineral products; but it may be mentioned that the geologist Fraas has recently discovered indubitable traces of amber-digging on the Phoenician coast. The purple-shell {Murex trunculus and brandaris) is still found in large quantities. The harbours on the Phoenician coast which played so important a part in antiquity are nearly all silted up, and, with the exception of that of Beirút, there is no safe port for the large vessels of modern times. A few bays, open towards the north, break the practically straight coast-line; and there are a certain numb.·r of small islands off the shore. It was, in the main, such points as these that the Phoenicians chose for their towns; since, while affording facilities for shipping, they also enabled the Phoenicians to protect themselves from attacks from the mainland, which was subject to them within but narrow limits.

Race.— The ethnographic relations of the Phoenicians have been the subject of much debate. As in Gen. x., Sidon, the firstborn of Canaan, is classed with the Hamites, many investigators are still of opinion that, in spite of their purely Semitic language, the Phoenicians were a distinct race from the Hebrews. They attach great weight to the peculiarities that mark the course of Phoenician civilization, and, above all, to their political organization and colonizing habits, which find no analogies among the Semites. In favour of the opposite and more probable view, that the Phoenicians, like the Canaanites, are an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, it may be urged (1) that the account in Gen. x. is not framed on strict ethnographic lines, and (2) that the absence from Phoenicia of all trace of an original non-Semitic form of speech cannot be reconciled with the theory of an exchange of language. The close connexion which existed from an early period between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians accounts for many coincidences in the matter of religion. Phoenician civilization, being on the whole of but little originality, may have been that of a Semitic people, who, from their situation on the narrow strip of country at the east end of the Mediterranean, were naturally addicted to trade and colonization.

Language.— Inscriptions, coins, topographical names preserved by classical writers, proper names of persons, and the Punic passages in the Paenulus of Plautus combine to show that the Phoenician language, like Hebrew, belonged to the north Semitic group. Even the Phoenician which survived as a rustic dialect in north Africa till the 5th century of our era was very closely akin to Hebrew. Though it retained certain old forms obsolete in Hebrew, Phoenician, as we know, represents on the whole a later stage of grammatical structure than the language of the Old Testament. Its vocabulary, in like manner, apart from a few archaisms, coincides most nearly with later Hebrew. At a very early period Semitic words were adopted into Greek from Phoenician; and it is also quite certain that the Phoenicians had at least a great share in the development and diffusion of the alphabetic character which forms the foundation of all European alphabets. We possess, however, only a few Phoenician inscriptions and coins of very early date. The longest and most important of the inscriptions—that on King Eshmun'azar’s tomb—is in letters which, while very ancient in certain of their features, present a series of important modifications of the original type of the Semitic alphabet, as it can be fixed by comparison of the oldest documents. Still more divergent from the ancient characters are the forms of the letters on the Phoenician, i.e., Punic, .monuments of north Africa. (a. so.) Religion.— Considering the great part which the Phoenicians played in the movements of ancient civilization, it is singular how fragmentary are our sources of knowledge for all the most essential elements of their history. What we are told of their religion is only in appearance an exception to this rule. Eusebius in the Praeparatio Eυangelica cites at length from the Greek of Philo of Byblus a cosmogony and theogony professedly translated from a Berytian Sanchuniathon, who wrote 1221 b.c. But that this work is a forgery appears from the apocryphal authorities cited, and the affinity displayed with the system of Euhemerus. The forger was Philo himself, for the writer borrows largely from Hesiod and was therefore a Greek; he gives Byblus the greatest prominence in a history professedly Berytian, and was therefore a Byblian; and finally Philo was a fanatical Euhemerist, and the admitted object of the work was to make converts to that system. The materials used by Philo were, however, in all probability mainly genuine, but so cut and clipped to fit his system that they must be used with great caution and constantly controlled by the few scattered data that can be gathered from authentic sources.

The two triads of Hannibal’s oath to Philip of Macedon (Polyb., vii. 9, 2)—Sun, Moon, and Earth, and Rivers, Meadows, and Waters—contain the objects on which all Phoenician worship is based. Rivers were generally sacred to gods, trees to goddesses; mountains, too, were revered as nearer than other places to heaven; and baetylia or meteoric stones were held sacred as divine messengers.

Philo’s second generation of men (Genos and Genea) first worshipped the plants of the earth, till a drought ensued and they stretched out their hands towards the sun as the Lord of Heaven or Beelsamên (Baal-Shamaim), —an indication that the worship of heavenly bodies was regarded as a later development of religion. Baudissin, on the other hand, has lately maintained that all Phoenician deities were astral and only manifested themselves in the terrestrial sphere, that the things holy to them on earth were symbols, not dwelling-places, of the gods. And there seems to be little doubt that this was the theory of later Phoenician theology, as appears in the legend of the fiery star of the queen of heaven that fell into the holy stream at Aphaca (Sozom., ii. 5, 5), in the coincidence of the names of sacred rivers with those of the celestial gods, and in the name Ζευς θαλάσσιος (Hesych.) for a Sidonian sea-god. But surely this theory was devised to remove a contradiction which theologians felt to be involved in the popular religion. In the latter logical consistency is not necessarily to be presumed, and astral and terrestrial worships might well exist side by side. In historical times the astral element had the ascendency; the central point in religion, and the starting-point in all Phoenician mythology, was the worship of the Sun, who has either the Moon or (as the sun-god is also the heaven-god) the Earth for wife. In Byblus, forwhich alone we possess some details of the local cult, El was the founder and lord of the town, and therefore of course had the pre-eminence in religion; and so the Byblian Philo makes El to be the highest god and the other ëlìm or elõhim subordinate to him. In the other towns also the numen patrium was a form of the sun-god, or else his wife, and enjoyed somewhat exclusive honour—a step in the direction of monotheism similar to the Moabite worship of Chemosh (cp. the Mesha stone). El is represented as the first to introduce circumcision and the first who sacrificed an only son or a virgin daughter to the supreme god. He wanders over all the earth, westward towards the setting sun, and leaves Byblus to ∙his spouse Baaltis—this is meant to explain why she had the chief place in the cult of Byblus; her male companion Eliün, Shadid (or μεγιστos θεός), is conceived as her youthful lover, and El is transformed into a hostile god, who slays Shadid with the sword. According to another legend the youthful god is killed by a boar while hunting, and the mourning for him with the finding of him again make up a chief part of Byblian worship, which at an early date was enriched with elements borrowed from Egypt and the myth of Osiris. In other places we find as spouse of the highest god the moongoddess Astarte with the cow’s horns, who in Tyre was worshipped under the symbol of a star as queen of heaven. With her worship as with that of Baaltis were associated wild orgies; and traces of the like are not lacking even at Carthage (Aug., Civ. Pei, ii. 4), where theology had given a more earnest and gloomy character to the goddess. Astarte was viewed as the mother of the Tyrian sungod Melkarth (Eudoxus, in Athen., ix. p. 392 D), or, as his full title runs, “our lord Melkarth the Baal of Tyre” {CH.S., No. 122). On account of his regular daily course the Sun is viewed as the god who works and reveals himself in the world, as son of the god who is above the world, and as protector of civil order. But, again, as the Sun engenders the fruitfulness of the earth, he becomes the object of a sensual nature-worship, one feature of which is that men and women interchange garments. A chief feast to his honour in Tyre was the “awaking of Heracles” in the month Peritius (February∕March; Menander of Eph., in Jos., Ant., viii. 5, 3), a festival of the returning power of the sun in spring, probably alluded to in the sarcasm of Elijah (1 Kings xviii. 27). Peculiar to Berytus is the worship of Poseidon and other sea-gods, who are connected genealogically with Zeus Belus, a son of El, born beyond the Euphrates, and perhaps therefore connected with the Babylonian fish-gods. Berytus was also a chief seat of the worship of the Cabïri, the seven nameless sons of Sydek, with their brother Eshmùn, who is the eighth and greatest of the Cabiri. Philo supplies for them a genealogy which is an attempt to present the growth of man from rude to higher civilization, and presents analogies, long since observed, to the genealogy of the sons of Cain in Genesis. Not only their half-divine ancestors but the Cabïri themselves belong to a comparatively recent stage of religious development. They are the patron deities of manual arts and civil industry, and as such are the great gods of the Phoenician land, specially worshipped in the federal centre Tripolis. On coins of this town they are called Syrian (i.e., perhaps Assyrian) gods, which seems to imply that the Phoenicians themselves regarded as not primitive the many Egyptian elements which were quite early introduced into the religion of the Cabïri, and especially of Eshmùn. On the other hand, a figure allied to Eshmùn, Taaut, the inventor of the alphabet, is certainly borrowed from the Egyptian Tehuti. So, too, Onka (Steph., s.v. “Όγκαΐαι ”) is probably the Anuke of Sais, and it is possible that the whole cycle of gods λvho revealed and interpreted the sacred books is Egyptian; some of the latter have the form of a serpent.

The Phoenicians did not set up anthropomorphic statues of the gods, but symbolic pillars of stone, or, in the case of the queen of heaven, of wood (ashërãh). If an actual image was used, likeness to man was avoided by fantastic details: the god had two heads or wings, or some animal emblem, or was dwarfish or hermaphrodite, and so on. The sacrifices were of oxen and other male domestic animals— as expiatory offerings also stags —and for minor offerings birds. Human sacrifices were exceptionally offered by the state to avert great disasters; the victim was chosen from among the citizens and must be innocent, wherefore children were chosen, and by preference firstborn or only sons. The same idea that the godhead demanded the holiest and most costly gift explains the prostitution. of virgins at certain feasts in the sacred groves of the queen of heaven, and the temporary consecration of maidens or matrons as kìhleshoth fιεpο8οvλοι). For this custom, as for that of human sacrifice, substitutes were by and by introduced in many places; thus at Byblus it was held sufficient that the women cut off their hair at the feast of Adonis {Pe Pea Syr., c. 6).

Origin of the Phoenicians.— The oldest towns were held to have been founded by the gods themselves, who presumably also placed the Phoenicians in them. Imitating the Egyptians, the race claimed an antiquity of 30,000 years (Africanus, in Syncellus, p. 31), yet they retained some memory of having migrated from older seats on an Eastern sea. Herodotus (vii. 89) understood this of the Persian Gulf; the companions of Alexander sought to prove by learned etymologies that they had actually found here the old seats of the Phaenicians. But all this rested on a mere blunder, and the true form of the tradition is preserved by Trogus (Just., xviii. 3, 3), who places the oldest seats of the Phaenicians on the Syrium stagnum or Dead Sea—with which the Greeks before the time of the Diadochi had no acquaintance—and says that, driven thence by an earthquake, they reached the coast, and founded Sidon. This earthquake Bunsen has ingeniously identified with that which destroyed Sodom and Gomorrha, and with which Genesis itself connects the migrations of Lot. Perhaps it played much such a part in the mythic history of the peoples of Canaan as the breach of the dam of Märib does in the history of the Arabs.

In historical times the Phaenicians called themselves Canaanites and their land Canaan (Kena'an, Kcna'; Xvâ in Hecataeus, fr. 254), the latter applying equally to the coast which they tnemselves held and the inland highlands which the Israelites occupied. The Greeks call people and land Φοίνικες, Φοινίκη ; the former is the older word, which in itself disposes of the idea that Phoenicia means the land of the date-palm, which the Greeks called φοινιξ, i.e., Phoenician. In truth, Φοίνικες, with an antique termination used in forming other names of nations {Aιθικες, θpηικες), is derived from φοινός, “blood-red,” probably in allusion to the dark complexion of the race.

When the southern part of the coast of Canaan was occupied by the Philistines the region of Ekron became the boundary of Phoenicia to the south (Josh, xiii. 3); the northern boundary in the time of the Persians was the town of Posidium and the mouth of the Orontes (Herod., iii. 91; Pseudo-Scylax, § 104). Under the Seleucids these limits contracted, the southern boundary being the Chorseus (Ptol., Codd. B.E., Pal. 1), which falls into the sea north of the tower of Straton, and the northern the river Eleutherus, so that Orth6sia was the last town of Phoenicia and the whole region of Aradus was excluded. Under the Roman empire the southern boundary was unchanged, but the northern advanced to a little south of Balanea. A still narrower definition of Canaan is that in Gen. x. 19 and Josh, xiii. 2-6, where Sidon or its territory is the northern limit; but the reference is only to the land destined to be occupied by Israel, for a younger hand has added to Sidon (the firstborn of Canaan) and Heth a list of other nations, sons of Canaan, extending northwards as far as Hamath.

It is a singular fact that alike in the Old Testament and in Homer, in the time of Tyre’s greatest might, we constantly read of Sidonians and not of Tyrians. The explanation that Sidonians is a synonym of Phoenicians in general is defended on 1 Kings v. 1 [15] compared with ver. 6 [20], but is not adequate; the same chapter distinguishes between the Sidonians and the Giblites or men of Byblus (E.V., “stone squarers,” ver. 18 [32]). And in Gen. x. we have besides Sidon the peoples of Arce, Sinna, Aradus, and Simyra enumerated in order from south to north—mostly unimportant towns afterwards absorbed in the land of Aradus—and yet Tyre is lacking, though one fancies that we could better miss even Aradus, which was a colony from Sidon (Strabo, xvi. p. 753), only Aradus was founded by fugitives, and so must, from the first, have been independent. Hence we may conjecture that the list in Genesis is political in principle; and this gives us a solution of the whole difficulty, viz., that, during the flourishing period of Phoenicia, Sidon and Tyre formed a single state whose kings reigned first in Sidon and then in Tyre, but whose inhabitants continued to take their name from the old metropolis. The first unambiguous example of two distinct kings in Tyre and Sidon is in the end of the 8th century b.c., on an inscription of Sennacherib (Schrader, K.A.T., 2d ed., p. 286 s⅛.), and there is every reason to think that the revolt of Sidon from Tyre about 726 spoken of by Menander (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) was a revolt not from Tyrian hegemony but from the Tyrian kingdom. The several Phoenician cities had lists of their kings back to a very early date. Abedbalus reigned at Berytus in the time which Philo had ciphered out as that of the judge Jerubbaal, i.e., about the beginning of the 13th century b.c., and in Sidon there is word of kings at the time to which the Greeks referred the rape of Europa (15th century; see Laetus, in Tatian, Adv. Graecos, 58). The leading Phoenician towns are mentioned in connexion with the Syrian wars of the Pharaohs of the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties (16th-l3th century); thus under Thothmes III. we read of Berytus, Ace, Joppe, and repeatedly of Aradus, which is commonly spoken of along with Haleb (Aleppo) and other eastern districts. The mention of Tyre is less certain, as there were two cities which the Egyptians called T’ar; but there is no mistake as to the city on the sea called “T’aru the haven” in the journey of an Egyptian of the 14th century (Rec. of the Past, ii. 107 sqf,— “water is carried to it in barks, it is richer in fish than in sands”; the noble aqueducts therefore, of which the ruins are still seen, were not yet constructed.

The oldest parts of Tyre were taken to be the town on the mainland, afterwards known as Palaetyrns, and the so-called temple of Hercules built on a rocky islet, which Hiram by and by united with the insular part of the town. According to native historians this temple was more properly one of Olympian Zeus, that is, of Baal-Shamaim, the Lord of Heaven. Herodotus, after inquiries made on the spot, fixes the founding of the city in 2756 b.c. ; but Tyre did not attain great importance till the later island city was built. According to Trogus (Justin, xviii. 3, 5) the Phoenicians (not the people of Sidon, as the passage is often misread to mean), who had been subdued by the king of Ascalon, took ship and founded Tyre a year before the taking of Troy. This goes well with the spread of the Philistine power in the time of the later judges and with the fact that Ascalon was still a Canaanite town under Raineses II. (c. 1385 B.C.), while in the eighth year of Rameses III. (c. 1246) the Pulosata made a raid into Egypt. Philistus (in Euseb., Can., No. 803) gives us without knowing it the era used in Tyre and in early times also in Carthage when he says that Zorns {i.e., Çõr, Tyre) and Carchedon built Carthage in 1213 fi.c., or rather, according to a very good MS. (Regin.), in 1209, which agrees with the date 1208 for the fall of Troy on the Parian marble, and also may be reconciled with the notice (taken from Philistus) in Appian, Punica, i., that the founding of Zorus and Carchedon was fifty years before the fall of Troy, if we suppose that Philistus took for the latter event the latest date we know of, viz., that assigned by Democritus. Now Josçphus {Ant., viii. 3, 1) counts 229 years from the building of Tyre to Hiram, and places the foundation of Carthage (Conk Ap., i. 18) in the 155th year from Hiram’s accession. The best authority for the last-named event is Timaeus, who puts it in 814 b.c. This gives us for the founding of Tyre a date twelve years later than that of Philistus, but it is probable that Josephus in summing up the individual reigns between Hiram and the building of Carthage as given by Menander departed from the intention of his author in assuming that the twelve years of Astartus and the twelve of the contemporaneous usurper were not to be reckoned separately. This hypothesis enables us to give a restored chronology which cannot be far from the truth (see infra). Manufactures and Inventions.— The towns of the Phoenician coast were active from a very early date in various manufactures. Glass work, for which the sands of the Belus gave excellent material, had its chief seat in Sidon; embroidery and purple-dyeing were favoured by the prevalence of the purple-giving murex all along the coast. The ancients ascribed to the Phoenicians the invention of all three industries, but glass-making seems to have been borrowed from Egypt, where this manufacture is of immemorial antiquity; and several circumstances indicate that the other two arts probably came from Babylon—in particular, the names of the two main tints of purple— dark red (argãmãn) and dark blue (tèkhêleth)—seem not to be Phoenician. The Phoenicians, however, brought these arts to perfection and spread the knowledge of them. In other particulars also the ancients looked on the Phoenicians as the inventive people par excellence : to them as the great trading nation was ascribed the invention of arithmetic, measure, and weight, which are really Babylonian in origin, and also of writing, although it is not even quite certain that it was the Phoenicians who adapted the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet to Semitic use. Yet here again the Phoenicians have undisputedly the scarcely inferior merit of having communicated the art to all the nations of the Mediterranean basin.

Navigation, Trade, Colonies.— The beginnings of navigation lie beyond all human memory, but it is not hard to understand how the ancients made this also an invention of the Phoenicians, whose skill as seamen was never matched by any ancient people before or after them. Even in later times Greek observers noted with admiration the exact order kept on board Phoenician ships, the skill with which every corner of space was utilized, the careful disposition of the cargo, the vigilance of the steersmen and their mates (Xen., Oec., viii. 11 sqf. They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the Phoenician star (Hyginus, Po. Ast., ii. 2); and all their vessels, from the common round γαυλos, to the great Tarshish ships, the East-Indiamen—so to speak—of the ancient world, had a speed wdιich the Greeks never rivalled. Of the extent of the Phoenicians’ trade in the last days of Tyre’s glory Ezekiel (xxvii. 12-25) has left a lively picture, which shows how large was the share they had in overland as well as in naval commerce. It was they, in fact, who from the earliest time distributed to the rest of the world the wares of Egypt and Babylon (Herod., i. 1). To the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris there were two routes: the more northerly passed obliquely through Mesopotamia and had on it the trading places of Haran (Carrhae), Canneh (Caenae), and Eden; the other, more southerly, had Sheba (Sabaea) for its goal, and led down the Euphrates, passing Asshur (Sura) and Chilmad (Charmande). There were other routes in the Persian and Macedonian period, but they do not belong to the present history.

Actual inland settlements of the Phoenicians seem to have been few; we know of one near the head of the northern trade road, Laish, which was lost to the Danites in the time of the judges (Judges xviii.), and one on the southern route, Eddana on the Euphrates (Steph. B., s.v.), which corresponds in name with Eden, but is not the same place, but perhaps rather the Giddan of Isidore of Charax (§ 1). In the Arabian caravan trade in perfume, spices, and incense for worship the Phoenicians had a lively interest (Herod., iii. 107). These wares were mainly produced not in Arabia but in eastern Africa and India; but Sheba in Yemen was the emporium of the whole trade, and the active commerce of this rich and powerful state in the times before the Persian is seen better than by any direct testimony from the exact knowledge of the Sabaean lands shown in Gen. x., from the many references to Arabia and Sheba in the Assyrian monuments, and from such facts as Euting’s discovery at Taimã in the heart of Arabia of an Aramaic inscription of the 6th century b.c., composed by a man with an Egyptian name. 1

In Egypt Phoenician trade and civilization soon took firm root; they alone were able to maintain their Egyptian trade and profits in the anarchic times of the XXIIId to the XXVth Dynasties (825-650 b.c.), times like those of the Mameluke beys, in which all other foreign merchants were frightened away and the Greek legend of the inhospitable Busiris originated. 2 The Tyrians had their own quarter in old Memphis (Herod., ii. 112), but there never were real colonies of the Phoenicians in Egypt.

That in matters economic Syria and Palestine depended on Phoenicia might have been inferred even if we had not the express testimony of Ezekiel that these lands were included in the sphere of Tyrian trade; so too was Togarmah, an Armenian district.

Cilicia was important to the Phoenicians as the natural point of shipment for wares from the Euphrates regions; and the opposite island of Cyprus attracted them by its store of timber for shipbuilding, and of copper. Both these countries were originally peopled by the non-Semitic Kittïm, who have left their name in the Cilician district Cetis and the Cyprian city Citium; but they came under profound Semitic influences, mainly those of the Phoenicians, who on the mainland had settlements at Myri-andus (Xen., Anab., i. 4, 6) and Tarsus, 3 while in Cyprus Citium—which to the last remained the chief seat of the Phoenician tongue and culture—was held to have its foundation from Belus (Steph., s.v. “ Αάπηθος”), and Carpasia from Pygmalion (id., s.vf. Pseudo-Scylax (§ 103), writing in 346 b.c., knows Carpasia, Cerynea, and Lapethus as Phoenician; but the view that Phoenician sway in Cyprus was very ancient and that the Phoenicians were gradually driven back by the Greeks appears not to be sound. On the contrary, the balance of power seems to have varied greatly; the Assyrian tribute-lists of 673 and 667 (Schrader, K.A.T., p. 354 sqf contain but two names of Phoenician cities in Cyprus, Sillü (Soli) and Kartihadast (probably New Paphos); not one of the later Phoenician kingdoms is mentioned, so that presumably none of them then existed, and not one of the ten Cyprian kings mentioned appears to be Phoenician by name. Menander tells us (Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2) that the kings of Tyre ruled over Cyprus at the close of the 8th century; but a very clear proof that there was no ancient and uninterrupted political connexion with Phoenicia lies in the fact that the Cyprian Greeks took the trouble to frame a Greek cuneiform character modelled on the Assyrian.

The Homeric poems represent the Phoenicians as present in Greek waters for purposes of traffic, including the purchase and capture of slaves, but not as settlers. Tradition (see especially Thucyd., i. 8) is unanimous in representing the Carians and Phoenicians as having occupied the islands of the Aegean before the migrations of the Greeks to Asia Minor, but so far as the Phoenicians are concerned this holds only of the southern islands—afterwards occupied by Dorians—where they had mining-stations, and also establishments for the capture of the murex and purpledyeing. 4 The most northerly of the Cyclades on which we can prove a Phoenician settlement is Oliarus (Steph., s.vf, which was occupied by Sidonians, probably with a view to the use of the marble quarries of Paros, which lies opposite. Similarly the Byblians occupied Melos (Steph., s.vf, which produced a white pigment (Melian earth), alum, and sulphur. Two great islands were held as main seats of the purple trade, Cythera (Herod., i. 105) and Thera, with the neighbouring Anaphe (Herod., i

PHOeNIX. Herodotus (ii. 73), speaking of the animals in Egypt, mentions a sacred bird called “phaenix,” which he had only seen in a picture, but which the Heliopolitans said visited them once in five hundred years on the death of its father. The story was that the phaenix came from Arabia, bearing its father embalmed in a ball of myrrh, and buried him in the temple of the sun. Herodotus did not believe this story, but he tells us that the picture represented a bird with golden and red plumage, and closely resembling an eagle in size and shape. The story of the phaenix is repeated with variations by later writers, and was a favourite one with the Romans. There is only one phaenix at a time, says Pliny (A r . H., x. 2), who, at the close of his long life, builds himself a nest with twigs of cassia and frankincense, on which he dies; from his corpse is generated a worm which grows into the young phaenix. The young bird lays his father on the altar in the city of the sun, or burns him there, as Tacitus has it (Ann., vi. 28). The story of the birth and death of the phaenix has several other forms. According to Horapollo (ii. 57) he casts himself on the ground and receives a wound, from the ichor of which the new phaenix springs; but the most familiar form of the legend is that in the Physiologus, where the phaenix is described as an Indian bird which subsists on air for 500 years, after which, lading his wings with spices, he flies to Heliopolis, enters the temple there, and is burned to ashes on the altar. Next day the young phaenix is already feathered; on the third day his pinions are full-grown, he salutes the priest and flies away. The period at which the phaenix reappears is very variously stated, some authors giving as much as 1461 or even 7006 years, but 500 years is the period usually named; and Tacitus tells us that the bird was said to have appeared first under Sesostris, then under Amasis, again under Ptolemy III., and once more in 34 A.D., after an interval so short that the genuineness of the last phaenix was suspected. The phaenix that was shown at Rome in the year of the secular games, a.u.c. 800, was universally admitted to be an imposture.

The form and variations of these stories characterize them as popular tales rather than official theology; but they evidently must have had points of attachment in the mystic religion of Egypt, and indeed both Horapollo and Tacitus speak of the phaenix as a symbol of the sun. Now we know from the Book of the Dead and other Egyptian texts that a bird called the “bennu” was one cf the sacred symbols of the worship of Heliopolis, and Wiedemann (Ztsch. f. Aeg. Sprache, xvi. p. 89 sg.) has made it tolerably clear that the bennu was a symbol of the rising sun, whence it is represented as “self-generating” and called “the soul of Ra (the sun),” “the heart of the renewed Sun.” All the mystic symbolism of the morning sun, especially in connexion with the doctrine of the future life, could thus be transferred to the bennu, and the language of the hymns in which the Egyptians praised the luminary of dawn as he drew near from Arabia, delighting the gods with his fragrance and rising from the sinking flames of the morning glow, was enough to suggest most of the traits materialized in the classical pictures of the Phaenix. That the bennu is the prototype of the phaenix is further confirmed by the fact that the former word in Egyptian means also “palm-tree,” just as the latter does in Greek. How far the Egyptian priests translated the symbolism of the bennu into a legend it would be vain to conjecture; that the common people did so is only what we should expect; and it is to be observed that the monuments have not yet shown any trace of the element in the classical legend which makes the phaenix a prodigy instead of a symbol—its actual appearance at long intervals. The very various periods named make it probable that the periodical return of the phaenix belongs only to vulgar legend, materializing what the priests knew to be symbolic. The hieroglyphic figure of the bennu is that of a heron ( bennu, or bah), and the gorgeous colours and plumed head spoken of by Pliny and others would be least inappropriate to the purple heron (Ardea purpurea), with which, or with the allied Ardea cinerea, it has been identified byLepsius and Peters (Aelteste Texte des Todten-buchs, 1867, p. 51). But it must be remembered that the bennu in the Egyptian texts is really a mere symbol, having the very vaguest connexion with any real bird, and the golden and purple hues described by Herodotus may be the colours of sunrise rather than the actual hues of the purple heron. How Herodotus came to think that the 1oird was like an eagle is quite unexplained; perhaps this is merely a slip of memory.

Many commentators still understand the word 5∏∏, chõl, in Job xxix. 18 (A.V. “sand”) of the phaenix. This interpretation is perhaps as old as the (original) Septuagint, and is current with the later Jews, whose appetite for fable, however, is often greater than their exegetical sagacity. Compare Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Juden- lhum, vol. i. passim. Among the Arabs the story of the phaenix was confused with that of the salamander; and the samand or samandal (Damiri, ii. 36 sq.) is represented sometimes as a quadruped, sometimes as a bird. It was firmly believed in, for the incombustible cloths woven of flexible asbestos were popularly thought to be made of its hair or plumage, and were themselves called by the same name (comp. Yakut, i. 529, and Dozy, s.υ.). The 'anká (Pers, símurglì), a stupendous bird like the roc (rukh) of Marco Polo and the Arabian Nights, also borrows some features of the phaenix. According to Kazwíní (i. 420) it lives 1700 years, and when a young bird is hatched the parent of opposite sex burns itself alive. In the book of Kalilah and Dimnah the símúr or 'anká is the king of birds, the Indian garúda on whom Vishnu rides.

PHOeNIXVILLE, a borough in the United States, in Schuylkill township, Chester county, Pennsylvania, is situated 27⅛ miles north-west of Philadelphia by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, on the right bank of the Schuylkill river, which is there joined by French Creek, crossed by eight fine bridges. Phoenixville is best known as the seat of the blast-furnaces and mills of the Phaenix Iron Company, which had its origin in a rolling and slitting mill erected in 1790 by Benjamin Longstreth, and long ranked as the largest in the States. The works cover 150 acres and employ sometimes 2500 men. Phoenixville also contains a pottery, a sash and planing mill, a shirt-factory, and needle works; and iron, copper, and lead are all mined in the neighbourhood. The vicinity of the borough is noted for its large number of magnificent iron bridges. The population was 2670 in 1850, 4886 in 1860, 5292 in 1870, and 6682 in 1880.