Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/50

 30 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. factories whence their merchandize could flow readily into all the markets of the neighbouring peninsula. Emboldened by success the Sidonians ventured to brave the terrors of the open sea, and penetrated into the second basin of the Mediterranean, the basin bounded on the west by Italy and Sicily. In Africa they built Utica and Kambc, on the site that was afterwards to become famous as that of Carthage ; they braved the long rollers of the Adriatic, they touched at certain points in southern Italy and Sicily, and they took possession of Malta and Gozo, where they found excellent harbours of refuge in which their ships could rest and refit. 1 About 1000 or 900 B.C. the supremacy passed from Sidon to Tyre. 2 Taken by the Philistines and sacked, the former town received a blow from which she took long to recover, but she had done so much for the interests and glory of Phoenicia that for a long time, both in Syria and in the east, the words Phoenician and Sidonian were looked upon as convertible terms. In their official acts the princes who reigned at Tyre called them- selves kings of the Sidonians. 3 The first Tyrian kings of whom history says anything are Abibaal, the contemporary of David, and his son Hiram, the friend of Solomon. We find the names of several more in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the writings of the Greek and Roman historians, but their probable dates and sequence are often difficult to establish. It is certain, however, that Tyre continued the work of Sidon, and that, with greater energy and on a wider scale, the Tyrian colonies multiplied on the more fertile parts of the North African coast, and became rich and populous cities ; among them were Hippo, Hadrumetium, Leptis, and, towards the year 800 B.C. " the new city," Kart-hadast, which the Greeks called Carchedon and the Romans Carthage. o Thanks to her splendid situation Carthage developed rapidly ; but she never forgot that she was the daughter of Tyre. Every year a solemn embassy left the colony to sacrifice in the temple of Melkart, the most august of the metropolitan shrines. 4 After a successful war Carthage sent a tithe of the spoil to the same 1 DIODORUS tells us that Malta and Gozo were colonized by the Phoenicians, but he does not tell us when (v. xii. 3, 4). 2 JUSTIN, xviii. 3. 3 PH. BERGER, La Phcnicie, 7. 4 POLYBIUS, xxxi. xx. 9, 12 ; CfKiiis, iv. ii. 8; DiODORUS, xx. xiv. i.