Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/283

 SITUATION OF THE PHEXICIAN TOWNS. 2C7 tached to one or other of these last mentioned, and several islands close to the coast occupied in h'ke manner ; while the colony ol Myriandrus lay farther north, near the borders of Kilikia. Whether Sidon or Tyre was the most ancient, seems not determi- nable : if it be true as some authorities affirmed, that Tyre was originally planted from Sidou, the colony must have grown so site of Tyre was changed from continental to insular, in consequence of the taking of the continental Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar : the site remained unaltered, and the insular Tyrians became subject to him and his successors until the destruction of the Chaldaean monarchy by Cyrus. Hcngstenberg's Dissertation, De Rebus Tyriorum (Berlin, 1832), is instructive ca many of these points : he shows sufficiently that Tyre was, from the earliest times traceable, an insular city ; but he wishes at the same time to show, that it was also, from the beginning, joined on to the main land by an isthmus (pp. 10-25), which is both inconsistent with the former position and unsup- ported by any solid proofs. It remained an island strictly so called, until the siege by Alexander : the mole, by which that conqueror had stormed it, continued after his day, perhaps enlarged, so as to form a permanent con- nection from that time forward between the island and the main land (Plin. II. X. v, 19 ; Strabo, xvi, p. 757), and to render the insular Tyrus capable of being included by Pliny in one computation of circumference jointly with Palae- Tyrus, the mainland town. It may be doubted whether we know the true meaning of the word which the Greeks called ITa/lat-Ti'poc. It is plain that the Tyrians themselves did not call it by that name : perhaps the Phenician name which this continental adjacent town bore, may have been something resembling Palse- Tyrus in sound, but not coincident in meaning. The strength of Tyre lay in its insular situation ; for the adjacent main- land, whereon Palae-Tyrus was placed, was a fertile plain, thus described by William of Tyre during the time of the Crusaders : Erat pra;dicta civitas non solum munitissirna, sed etiam fertilitatc prce- cipuii et amcenitate quasi singularis : nam licet in medio mari sita est, et in modum insulae tota fluctibus cincta; habet tamen pro foribus latifundinm per omnia commcndabile, et planitiem sibi continuam divitis glebae et opimi soli, multas civibus ministrans commoditates. Qure licet modica vidcatnr respectu aliarum regionum, exiguitatem suam multa redimit ubertate, et infinite jogera multiplici feecunditatc compensat. Nee tamen tantis arctatur angustiis. Protenditur enim in Austrum versus Ptolemaidem usque ad eura locum, qui hodie vulgo dicitur districtum Scandarionis, milliaribus quatuor aut quinque: e regione in Septentrionem versus Sareptam et Sidonem iterum porrigitur totidcm milliaribus. In latitudinem vero ubi minimum ad duo, ubi plurimum ad tria, habens milliaria." (Apud Hengstcnberg, ut sup. p. 5.) Compare Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 50. cd 1749; and r olney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii, pp. 210-22C,.