The impulse given to industry and the arts by this almost unparalleled extension of their commercial sphere, was enormous. °right:illy, exporters or traders only for tho wares of Egypt 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 PhialTele and Greece and her colonies, nothing can be more striking than the circumstance of nearly all the Greek names for the princi pal objects of oriental commerce being Pheuician, or rather Semitic—identieal almost with the terms found in the Old Testament. Thus, of spices—myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, galbantun, made, aloe, crocus, niacin, balsam, etc.; of jewels and precious stones—sap phire, jaspzir, smaragdos; of line materials, and garments, byssns, k:trpasos, shalom etc.; musical instruments—nabla, tympanom sambyke, etc.; oriental plants, vessels, and even writing implements. The wealth of silver, iron, tin, and lead was chiefly got from Tar tessus. The descriptions of the abundance of precious metals there verge on the fabulous. .Thus the Phenicians are supposed to have made even their anchors of silver, when they first discovered the country, not knowing how to stow 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 constantly employed as millers, and the state received a cleat' revenue of 20,500 drachmas daily. The " Fortunate islands," which, according to Diodorns, they discovered after many days' sailing along the coast of Africa, beyond the strait of Hercules, and which to judge from the.mune Porpurarite given to static islands off the coast of '.'llatiritaniat, would seem to have been the Canaries, yielded them the shell-fish purpura, so useful for their dyeing manufactories. Besides their wholesale com 'meree carried on by fleets and caravans, they also appear to have gone about the interior of Syria and Palestine retailing their home or foreign produce.
Although the Phenicians were erronemsly believed, by the western tribes, to manu facture all the wares in which they dealt themselves, yet no inconsiderable number of them was really their own work. None of their manufactures, however, stood in so high repute throughout antiquity as the purple dye prepared from the muricidte, a shell-fish of its coast; and none excelled more in it than the Tyrians. Purple was an alinost indispensable luxury of antiquity. particularly in Asia. In temples and palaces for gods and men, purple garments, hangings, curtains, and veils were needed; and Alexander the great found in Susa, alone a store of purple worth 5,000 talents. Sidon's principal production was glass—invented there, it was said, by accident; but probably the inven tion was derived from Egypt, where it was in use long before; the Phenician glass, however, was always supposed to be the best. The Sidonians knew the use of most of our own cont•ivances—the blowpipe, the lathe, and the graver. Hardly less great was the fame of Pitettician metallurgy. Their mining operations in the Lebanon and Cyprus, wherekthey dug for copper; in Thasos, where, according to Herodotus, they overturned a whole mountain in searching for gold; hut more particularly in Iberia, where at first silver was so abundant that hardly any labor was required to obtain it—were stupendous; and the minute description of the mining process contained in Job (chap. xxviii. 1-11) has prolndily been derived from a sight of Phenician mining-works. That they well understood how to work the metals thus gained, has been observed already. The art of founding brass must, indeed, have reached a high perfection to enable Hirain Abif to execute such works for Solomon's temple as they are described in the Bible. No less were they familiar xttith the art of imitating precious stones, and coloring glass by means of metallic oxides. To Sidon is further attributed the pre-eminence in the glyptic and plastic arts; and the artists sent by Hiram to Solomon were skillful workers in gold and silver, in brass, in iron, in purple and in blue, in stone and in timber, in fine hue'', and the engraving of precious stones. Their architecture seems to have been of a Cyclopean
nature. Their vessels, originally simple rafts, gradually developed—with the aid of the Lebanon, which afforded inexhaustible supplies of timber, and Cyprus, which possessed all the materials necessary for fitting up a ship, from the keel to the sails—into a firsts rate fleet. consisting of round ships, or genii, for short or coasting vovages; war or triremes; and fifty-oared craft, long in build. and adapted for rapid sailing or rowing. The internal arrangement of these vessels was perfeet, and excited the wonder and admi ration of the Greeks, by their being so splendidly adapted at once for navigation, freight, and defense, Their extraordinary three years' voyage of discovery, undertaken in the service of Neeho. round Africa, going out of the Red sea, and returning by the way cf the strait's month, is as well known as their voyages in the service of Solomon.
The golden age of Phenicia, during which her colonies. her manufactures, and her commerce were in this most brilliant phase, seems to have waned simultaneously almost with that of Judea. As Solomon in the latter, so in the former, mark the end of that peace and happiness which had made their countries rich•and glorious, as no other country of their day. According to a fragment preserved in Menauder, Hiram was fol lowed by his son Baleastartus, who died after a short reign of seven years, in 940 B.C., and a long series of political calamities and civil wars ensued. The last of Hiram's sons, Pheletus, fell, in 898, by the hands of lthobaal, the priest of Astarte, into whose family now passed the kingdom of Tyie. lie is the Ethb;ind mentioned in Scripture as the father of Jezebel, and father-in-law of Ahab; and a peculiiir coincidence is the simultane ous mention of the three years' drought in Judea (to which an end was put by Elijah's prayer) and ia Phenicia, where relief was obtained by Ithohaal, who seems to have stood in the odor of sanctity. It was during this unhappy period that the celebrated Elissa, better known as queen Dido (q.v.), fled, together with some of the most aristocratic families of Sidon, to Libya, where they founded a new city (Kartatehadata = Carthage), near the spot of an ancient Sidouian settlement, about 813 B.C. The fcurth and last period of PlieuiAan history may be dated from the middle of the 8th c., when Shal maneser, the ling of Assyria, invaded Phenicia, and besieged Tyre fur five years. but without result; nod there is every reason to believe that the peace concluded at the end of this period was very favorable to Tyre. But soon afterwards, Phenicia was drawn into the struggle for the supremacy then raging between Chaldea and Egypt, and was conquered by the. former power. A further calamity befell Phenicia at the hand of Pharaoh-Apries, who anticipated Nebuchadnezzar's intended attack on Egypt by destroy ing the Phenician fleet, conquering the country, and pillaging it. These calamities pro duced a series of internal troubles, in consequence of which the constitution was con stantly changed; and we hear now of a series of kings, and now of provisional efffetes—. all their respective reigns, however, being of very brief duration. From that time for ward. and even before the special histories of Sidon and Tyre, which alternately pos sessed themselves of the hegemony of Phenicia, constitute also the history of the country itself, and to these two cities we refer for what momentous events took place in the latter days of the once mighty empire. The battle on the Issus terminated even the shadow of Phenicia's independent existence, and it shared the fate of Alexander's vast empire. In 65 n.o. it became, under Roman dominion, part of Syria, and has since shared her fate for good or evil. See SYRIA, SIDON, TYRE, CARTHAGE.