CHAPTER XXI - Decline of the Phenicians.—Growth of Carthage

Summary

The preceding sketch of that important system of foreign nations—Phenicians, Assyrians, and Egyptians—who occupied the south-eastern portion of the (oíκovμévη) inhabited world of an early Greek, brings them down nearly to the time at which they were all absorbed into the mighty Persian empire. In tracing the series of events which intervened between 700 B.C. and 530 B.C., we observe a material increase of power both in the Chaldæans and Egyptians, and an immense extension of Grecian maritime activity and commerce—but we at the same time notice the decline of Tyre and Sidon, both in power and traffic. The arms of Nebuchadnezzar reduced the Phenician cities to the same state of dependence as that which the Ionian cities underwent half a century later from Crœsus and Cyrus, while the ships of Milêtus, Phôkæa and Samos gradually spread over all those waters of the Levant which had once been exclusively Phenician. In the year 704 B.C, the Samians did not yet possess a single trireme : down to the year 630 B.C, not a single Greek vessel had yet visited Libya; but when we reach 550 B.C, we find the Ionic ships predominant in the Ægean, and those of Corinth and Korkyra in force to the west of Peloponnesus—we see the flourishing cities of Kyrênê and Barka already rooted in Libya, and the port of Naukratis a busy emporium of Grecian commerce with Egypt.