Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/60

 40 HISTORY 01 ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Babylonians, her merchants were supplanted in many markets by those of Greece and Etruria. After the fall of Babylon Cyrus became sole master of western Asia, and the Phcunicians, like the Jews, made haste to accept the Persian rule. The Achsemenids had no religious fanaticism ; they left a large measure of liberty to the subject peoples of their empire, and their monetary exactions were moderate. 1 They were especially tender with the Pruunicians. The Persians had no navy, and they required one for their contest with Greece ; they could not reckon on any cordial co-operation from the cities of Ionia, but two strong inducements led the Phoenicians to give the help required. In the first place the direct profit was great ; a never-ceasing stream of darics poured into their ports to pay for their ships of war and their hardy crews. Secondly, they had an opportunity for taking some kind of revenge on those enterprising rivals who had for centuries past been narrowing the field of their commerce. Down to the time of the Macedonian conquest the kings of Persia had no subjects more faithful than the Phoenicians. History mentions but one case of refusal to co-operate with the Persians on the part of the Syrian coast towns ; and that was when Cambyses, fresh from the conquest of Egypt, wished to undertake an expedition against Carthage. The Phoenicians, says Herodotus, declared that it was quite impossible that they should take part in any such campaign, " because the most sacred oaths bound them to the Carthaginians, and in fighting against their own children they would be violating both ties of blood and scruples of religion." Such a scruple did honour both to their heads and hearts. At the end of the sixth century Carthage was on the high road to the foundation of a colonial power in the Mediter- ranean of which the mother city might well be proud, and it was impossible that the latter should help to nip it in the bud or to hinder the development of a commercial prosperity in which, thanks to the intimate relations that subsisted between the ports of Africa and those of Syria, Tyre and Sidon would be certain to share. The fortune of Carthage was made by her distance from the 1 HERODOTUS (iii. 91) does not tell how much of the tribute of 350 talents which the fifth satrapy (Syria and the island of Cyprus) had to pay, fell to the share of Phoenicia. 2 HERODOTUS, iii. 19.