Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/73

 ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS. goddess a row of oves and arrow-heads may be distinguished (Fig. 1 6). None of this is very pure either in form or proportion, but except in such symbols as the crescent moon, it includes nothing to remind us of Egypt or Assyria, nothing in fact that we can call Phoenician. In order to follow the history of Carthage in the west and to trace her career down to the moment when her civilization became blended in that of Greece and Rome, we have for the FIG. 13. Votive stele from Carthage. French National Library. moment lost sight of Tyre and Sidon. We must now return to them, for neither the Persian nor even the Macedonian conquest crushed the genius and prosperity of the industrious race by which they were inhabited. The Persian sovereignty had been accepted as a deliverance, and to the Persian kings the Phoenicians had given the assistance of their fleets in suppressing the revolts which broke out, every now and again, in Ionia, Cyprus, and Egypt. But their fidelity began to waver towards the middle