1^71. c U Iti I) a. 1 1. d p La. I IV
very possible that the population on the mainland may have exceeded the popidation on the island (see Mov- ers, loc. cit. p. 81).
2. Connection icith Sidon. — Whether built before or later than Patetyrus, the renowned cityof Tyre, though it laid claims to a verv high antiquity (Isa. xxiii, 7; Herod, ii, 14 ; Quintus Curtius. iv, 4), is not mentioned either in the Iliud or in the Odyssey ; but no inference can be legitimately drawn from this fact as to the ex- istence or non-existence of the city at the time when those poems were composed. The tribe of Canaanitcs that inhabited the small tract of country which may be called Phoenicia proper was known by the generic name of Sidonians (Judg. xviii, 7; Isa. xxiii, 2, 4, 12; Josh, xiii, 6; Ezek. xxxii, oO); and this name un- doubtedly inchnleil Tyrians. the inhabitants being of the same race, and the two cities being less than twenty English miles distant from each other. Hence when Solomon sent to Hiram king of Tyre for cedar-trees out of Lebanon, to be hewn by Hiram's subjects, he reminds Hiram that "there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like the Sidonians" (1 Kings v, (>). Hence Virgil, who, in his very lirst mention of Carthage, expressly states that it was founiled by colonists from Tyre {^-En. i, 12 ), afterwards, with perfect projDriety and consistency, calls it the Sidonian city (ibid. 1. 677, 678; iv, 545; see Des Vignoles, loc. cit. p. 25). In like manner, when Sidonians are spoken of in the Homeric poems (//. vi, 290; xxiii, 743; Od. iv,-84; xvii, 424), this might comprehend Tyrians; and the mention of
TYRE
614
TYRE
the city Sidon, while there is no similar mention of Tyre, would be fully accounted for — if it were necessary to account for such a circumstance at all in a poem — by Sidon's having been in early times more flourishing than Tyre. It is worthy, likewise, of being noted that Tyre is not mentioned in the Pentateuch ; but here, again, though an inference may be drawn against the importance, no inference can be legit itnatvly drawn against the existence, of Tyre in the times to wliieli the I'entateucli refers. See Sidon.
3. Geiii'tid Characteristics. — As already intimated, Tyre was composed of two distinct parts or towns in historical times: the one situated on the mainland, or continental Tyre, and one on the island opposite, from four to thirty stadia (I'liny, Stralni) distant from each other. According to riiny, the circumference of botii was reckoned at about nineteen Roman miles, the island- town comprising about twenty-two stadia. The town on the sht)re was called Palivtyrus, not from its having been founded before Island-Tyrus — for this, indeed, we may assume to have been the lirst of the two (Reland, Vitringa, Ilengstenberg, etc.) — but from the circum- stance of its having actiieved a high renown long be- fore its much less favorably situated island-sister. Con- stantly exjxjsed to earthipiakes and deluges— occupying a space naturally circumscribed, and rendered still more so bv the erections necessary for the purple-fisheries and manufactories— and cut off from the easy means of export and import by caravans that belonged to the op- posite city. Island-Tyrus was by far inferior in impor- tance. In fact, only one (the western) part of the isl- and had been built o.ver up to the time of Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon — viz. the " Old Town" ( to iiffTv), which probably served as harbor, a place for ar- senals and magazines, to Palretyrus, that Iw this time had sent out colonies already to Tartessus and the northern coast of Lil)ya. The other part of the isl- and, or rather a small island b_y itself, which has now ceased to be such, and which was tirst joined to the darv as the "New Town" by Hiram, had till then probably been inhabited only by the priests attached to the sanc- tuary of Melkart. Besides these two there was a third town or suburb, the Eurychoros (esplanade), formed by means of substructions on the eastern side of the rock. Palietyrus, extending from the river Leontes on the north to the Ras el-Ain on tlie south, covered with all its outlying parts the whole available maritime strip of land, and lay in one of the most fertile and blooming I)lains of Phcenicia (comp. Hos. ix, 13, m3j nblT'ii;, ■■ planted in a pleasant place ;" or William of Tyre, " Fer- tilitate prtecipua et amuiuitate quasi singularis, habet planitiein sibi continuam divitis glebte et opimi soli," xiii, 3). It was watered by several aqueducts, which carried the stream from the fountain-group situated in the plain itself (head of the well, Ras al-Ayin), not only through the whole territory of the continental city, but, probably by means of subterranean pipes, also into the island-city. Without this supposition it would hardly be credible how the latter, which, up to the siege bj' Shalraaneser (before the 8th century), had subsisted on rain-water only collected in cisterns and open canals (iit^payojyoi) from tlie Ras, could have stood the long sieges by Nebuchadnezzar (thirteen years) and of Alex- ander, who naturally stopped the overground supplies, without apparently once suffering from want of water. Possibly we may, in a certain aniuial rite called the '■ Wedding of the land-water to the sea-water," still kept up by the inhabitants, see a faint reminiscence of this ancient jinicture. Here also stood the ancient roy- al palace and the first sanctuary of Hercules, though the most celebrated one lay on the island opposite. The happy mixture of land and sea scenerj' thus exhibited by the two cities in the time of their prosperity is graphically described by Nonnus, a learned Egyptian antideologist of the end of the 4th Christian century: '• The sailor furrows the sea with his oar, as the plough-