Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/281

 PHEXICIANS. 265 It has already been remarked that the Phenician merchant and trading vessel figures in the Homeric poems as a well-known visitor, and that the variegated robes and golden ornaments fabri- cated at Sidon are prized among the valuable ornaments belong- ing to the chiefs. 1 We have reason to conclude generally, that in these early times, the Phenicians traversed the -5geau sea habitually, and even formed settlements for trading and mining purposes upon some of its islands: on Thasos, especially, near the coast of Thrace, traces of their abandoned gold-mines were vis- ible even in the days of Herodotus, indicating both persevering labor and considerable length of occupation. But at the time when the historical era opens, they seem to have been in course of gradual retirement from these regions,- and their com- merce had taken a different direction. Of this change we can deviation from the physical type of the Egyptian to the strongly-marked character of the negro, and that without any very decided break or interrup- tion. The Egyptian language, also, in the great leading principles of its grammatical construction, bears much greater analogy to the idioms of Africa than to those prevalent among the people of other regions." 1 Homer, Iliad, vi, 290 : xxiii. 740 ; Oclyss. xv, 1 1C : .... r:e~Xoi KafiKoiKi^oi, epja j-vvaiKuv Tyre is not named either in the Iliad or Odyssey, though a passage in Probus (ad Virg. Georg. ii, 115) seems to show that it was mentioned in one of the epics which passed under the name of Homer : " Tyrum Sarram appellatam esse, Homerus docet : quern etiam Ennius scquitur cum dicit, Pcenos Sarri oriundos." The Hcsiodic catalogue sceins to have noticed both Byblus and Sidon : see Hesiodi Fragment, xxx, cd. Marktscheffel, and Etymolog. Magnum, v, V>r3Xor. name Adrumctum is said to be of Phenician origin (Olshausen, De Origine Alphabet!, p. 7, in Kieler Philologische Studicn, 1841). There were valuable mines afterwards worked for the account of Croesus near Pcrgamus, and these mines may have tempted Phenician settlers to those regions (Aristotel. Mirab. Auscult. c. 52). The African Inscriptions, in the Monumenta Phocnic. of Gesenias, recog- nize Makar as a cognomen of Baal : and Movers imagines that the hero Makar, who figures conspicuously in the mythology of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, K6s, Ehodcs, etc, is traceable to this Phenician god and Phenician early settlements in thos^ islands (Movers, Die Religion der Phoniker p. 420). VOL. 111. 12
 * The name Adramyttion or Atramyttion very like the Africo-Phenician