ZIDON, SIDON (Phcen. rlY ; Heb. Irn ; Gr. .EtSchv; the present Ls...0, Saida), the name of a Phcenician city, probably derived from 11Y, to hunt, to fish, and bestowed upon it for the abund ance of the fish found in its neighbourhood (Urbs . quam a piscium ubertate Sidona appellave runt : nam piscem ['? piscatund Phcenices Sidon [cf.
Syr. 5 3 vocant, Just. IS. 3), situated in a narrow plain between the Lebanon and the Mediter ranean, in 33° 34' o5" N. L., 200 stadia from Tyre, 400 from Berytus (Strabo). The term first-born of Canaan,' bestowed upon it in the genealogical table of Gen. x. 15, can only be understood in the sense of its having early reached the highest place among the cities and tribes of Phcenicia ; for the existence of other Phcenician cities before Zidon seems sufficiently proved from the circum stance Berytus and Byblos being mentioned much earlier by Sanchuniathon than Zidon ; and further, from the priority and position of the local deities of the two former places in the colo nies. Thus the worship of the Cabiri, the tutelary deities Berytus, and of Aphrodite, of Byblus, was nowhere found as a national cultus in Zidon ian or Tyrian colonies, while long before historical times they flourished in Cyprus, and had reached the most distant coast of the Mediterranean. That pre-historic period of a preponderance of northern Phcenicia, however, had passed away when we first meet Zidon in the Bible and Homer. There it appears already in the full zenith of its wealth and power :—‘ rroy,' Zidon the Great, ot Zidon the Metropolis, scil. of Zidonia. This district appears to have embraced the states of Zidon, Tyre, and Aradus, and its inhabitants are always distinguished from the inhabitants of the city itself (called Dwellers, 4Z.V.,14, of Zidon) as 01.)11Y, Zidonians,' or dwellers in the districts ; and it seems in those early times to have extended north wards to the Giblites, southwards to the Carmel (Zebulon's border, Gen. xlix. 13). At a later period the boundaries south were determined by the fluctuating issue of the struggle for the hege mony between Zidon and Tyre, while northwards the river Tamyrus divided it from the State of Berytus. To the east, where it never had extended
very far (Dan, a Zidonian colony, being described as being far from the Zidonians,' Judg. xviii. 7) in early days, it touched, at a later period, the territory of Damascus. The assumption, however, drawn by some writers from the inexact way in which the appellation Zidonian is used by ancient writers—viz. that this name stood for Phcenician,' and Zidonia itself for the whole of Phcenicia, an important part of which it only formed—is in correct. Tyre, of later origin than Zidon, if not indeed founded by it, in the same way styles itself on coins DrIV Metropolis of Zidonia,' in the sense of its momentary hegemony over Zidon only, possibly also with a secondary reference to the nationality of its inhabitants, mostly immigrants from Zidon.
The frequent allusions to the skilfulness of the Zidonians in arts and manufactures, the extent of their commerce, their nautical information and prowess, in ancient writers, are well known. Thus Homer, who never seems to have heard of Tyre, speaks of a large silver bowl cunningly wrought by Zidonians, which Achilles bestows as a prize upon the swiftest runner at the games in honour of Patroclus (//. 741). Menelaos gives Telemachus a similar bowl of silver, gold-edged, a gift to him from the king of the Zidonians (0d. e 618). Sidonian women had worked the garment which Hecuba offers to Minerva (R. r 290), etc. Of the trade of the Zidonian merchants' (Is. xxiii.), both by land and sea, we hear in Diod. Sic. (16, 41, 45); of their glass, linen, and other manufactories in Pliny, Virgil, Strabo, and other classical writers. As we have already spoken on this subject of their trade under PHCENICIA, it will suffice here to remind our readers of the terms roAtixaXKos ap plied to Zidonia, and iroXuSalSaXoc to its inhabit ants, by Homer, to show what was the renown both of the metal-produce of the country and of the skill of its sons and daughteis in the early days of Greece.