distant from khe Bee t slaughter, the first impulse of
the inhabitants must have been to march forth at once in battle .'nay to strengthen the hands ol Jezebel, their own princess, in behali ol Baal, their Phoenii When again afterwards, bj means of falsehood and treachery, Jehu was enabled to massacre the worship-
pers of Baal in the land of Israel, we cannot doubt that the intelligence was received in Tyre, Sidon, and the other cities of Phoenicia, with a similar burst of horror and indignation to that with which the news of the
massacr i St. Bartholomew's day was received in all
Protestant countries; and there must have been an in- tense de-ire in the Phoenicians, if they had the power, to invade the territories ol Israel without delay and in- dict signal chastisement on Jehu f2 Kings \. 18 28 . The fact that Israel was their granary would undoubt- edly have been an element in restraining the Phoeni- cians, even on occasions bui h as these; but probably
Still deeper mOtivCS were likewi-e at Work. Il -..in-
, to have been part of the settled policy of the Phoeni- cian cities to avoid attempts to make conquests on the continent of Asia. For this there were excellent reasons in the position of their small territory, which, with t lie
range of Lebam ne side a- a barrier, and the Bea
mi the other, was easily defensible by a wealthy power having command of the sea, against second or third rate powers, but for the same reason was not well situated for offensive war on the laud side. It may be added
I that a pacific policy was their manifest interest as a commercial nation, unless by war they were morally certain to obtain an important accession of territory, or unless a warlike policy was an absolute necessity to
prevent the formidable pre] derance of any one great
neighbor. At last, indeed, they even carried their sys- tem of non-intervention in continental wars too far. if it would have been possible for them by any alliances in Syria and dele-Syria to prevent the establishment mi the oilier side of the Lebanon of one great empire, for from thai moment their ultimate doom was c< rtain, and it was merely a question of time as to the arrival of the fatal hour when they would lose their indepen- dence. But too little i- known of the details of their bistor} lo warrant an opinion as to whether they might at any time by any course of policy have raised up a barrier against the empire of the Assyrians or Chaldees. See I OMMEKCE.
The impulse given to industry and the art.- by this al- most unparalleled extension of the commercial sphere of the Phoenicians was enormous. < (riginally exporters or traders only tor the wares of Egypl and Assyria, they soon began to manufacture these wares themselves, and
drew the whole world into their circle of commerce. As
to the early and most extensive commercial intercourse between Phoenicia ami < Sreece and her colonies, nothing can be more striking than the circumstance of nearly all the (.nek name- for the principal objects of Oriental commerce being Phoenician, or rather Shi mine ; identi- cal, almost, with the terms found in l he ( Hd T« -lament. The descriptions of the abundance of precious metals verge on the fabulous. Thus, the Phoenicians are -op- posed to have made even their anchors of silver, when liny tii-i discovered the mines, not knowing how to .-tow away all the silver in their vessel. What must have been the state of these mines is clear from the fact that even in the Roman time 40,000 men were constant- ly employed a- miners, and the stale received a clear revenue of 20,500 drachms dai|v. The "Fortunate
Islands," which, according to Diodorus, they discovered
after many days' Bailing along the coast of Africa, be- yond the Pillars of Hercules, and which, to judge from
the name l'urpuraria- given to some islands off the coast of Mauritania, would seem to have been die Canaries, yielded them I he shell-li-h purpura, so useful for their
dyeing manufactories, Besides their wholesale cora-
iii' i.. .allied on by fleets and caravans, they also ap- pear to have gone about the interior of Syria .-mil Pal- estine, retailing their home or foreign produce. What degree of perfection they had reached in metallurgy may be seen iii the minute description of i he mining process contained in Job (xxviii, l 1 1 I, probably derived from mines H hich they worked in the Lebanon. Cj pro-, Thasos, Iberia, larii s-u-. and w herever a trace of metal
was found. That they had acquired a high Btanding
PHOENICIA
157
PHOENICIA
in what we should call the fine arts may be gathered from the fact that not only architects, but skilful work- ers of all kinds, for the adornment and embellishment of the Temple, were sent for by Solomon when he in- tended to fulfil the task his father David had set him- self, in all the magnificence and splendor worthy of Ins golden reign. Their sculptures — what there has been found of them — do not, it is true, give us a very high notion of their artistic perfection ; but, for all we know, these may be only the archaic beginnings, or the rem- nants of a corrupt age or unskilful hands. Better things may come to light any day. There certainly exist some exceedingly skilful engravings of theirs on gems among the Assyrian remnants. We further know (comp. the gold-edged silver bowl, for instance, given to Telem- achus by Menelaos, which had been previously given to Hephsestos by the king of the Sidonians; the silver vase offered by Achilles as a prize at the funeral games for Patroclus; the columns and the magnificent vessels cast for the Temple of Jerusalem by Tyrian artists, and the like) that they manufactured all kinds of beautiful vessels and ornaments in gold, silver, and ivory, and knew how to extract perfumes from the lily and cy- press; but, as in every other respect, they must in this province also be declared to have been only the skilful appropriators of the knowledge of others, of which, how- ever, they made use with a diligence and perseverance entirely unparalleled.