Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/51

 ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS. temple. 1 If the two cities never combined for any great political action or even to resist a common enemy, their abstention was due to the distaste of the Phoenicians for such methods of work ; but between the merchants of Tyre and those of Carthage close and intimate relations sprang up wherever they met. They were in continual correspondence, and at a word or glance they would combine to defeat the rivalry of foreign traders, such as the Greeks and Etruscans, and to keep profitable transactions to themselves. There was no necessity for agreements in writing or for binding oaths. Their co-operation was founded upon community of blood, of language and religion, of habits; and, above all, on that strongest of all ties, community of loves, hates, and interests. In spite of the increasing prosperity of Carthage, Tyre remained for two centuries more the richest and most powerful of Phoenician cities. By the time its great African colony was founded Tyre had already begun to pervade the westernmost basin of the Mediterranean ; she had visited all its shores and multiplied naval stations upon them. The great antiquity of the commercial relations between Italy and Tyre is proved by the words Serranus, SarraniLs, which survived in the Latin language down to the classic period ; 2 they are a corruption of the true Semitic form of the word Tyre, Tsor. Tyrius, a corruption from Serranus, did not begin to come into general use at Rome till much later, when the Latins had come under the influence of the Greeks, who had turned Tsor into Tyros (Tvpos}. The presence and persistence of the form Serramis proves that the former people had been in close connection with Phoenicia, through the maritime trade of Tyre, ' before intimate relations had sprung up between the natives of Italy and the Greeks. In the course of their movement west- ward the ships of Tyre put into the ports of the great island of Sardinia, where they found several useful metals in abundance. Their harbour was the magnificent anchorage of Caralis, now 1 JUSTIN, xviii. 7 ; DIODORUS, xx. xiv. 2. 2 VIRGIL, Georgic II. 505 : " Hie petit excidiis urbem miserosque Penates Ut gemma bibat et Serrano dormiat ostro." 3 We take this observation from W. Helbig's interesting paper on the discoveries made a few years ago at Prseneste (Cenni sopra Varte fenicia, p. 210, in the Ann ales de t Institut de Correspondance Archeologique, 1878, pp. 197-257).