Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/467

 CHAPTER VI. THE R6LE OF THE PHCENICIANS IN HISTORY. IN this book on Phoenicia and the island of Cyprus we have devoted a much larger space to the discussion of the industrial arts than in the volumes which have gone before. And nothing can be easier than to justify this apparent disproportion. In the true sense of the word we can hardly say that Phoenicia had a national art. She built much and sculptured much, so we cannot say she had no art at all ; but if we attempt to define it, it eludes us. Like an unstable chemical compound it dissolves into its elements, and we recognize one as Egyptian, another as Assyrian, and yet anpther, in its later years, as purely Greek. The only thing that the Phoenicians can claim as their own is the recipe, so to speak, for the mixture. We may point, besides, to certain special arrange- ments suggested by special wants, such as those which have to do with the construction of fortified inclosures and the arrangement of harbours, and a few singularities of style which are to be explained by the peculiar properties of the materials used. But these are only matters of detail ; looking at it as a whole, one is tempted to conclude that the sole originality of Phoenician art lies in its want of that quality. It was not so with industry ; there Phoenicia was far superior to her neighbours ; there she developed an activity and a variety of resource that compels our admiration. Often enough, no doubt, she made use of methods discovered by others ; but even those she perfected and used better than her predecessors. Sometimes she opened up an entirely new industry, as in the case of the purple dyes. In the domain of art the Phoenician genius was a timid genius, it did not dare to expand its wings for an independent flight ; but, on the other hand, it stopped at nothing by which its