Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/349

 NEBUCHADNEZZAR. - PSAMMIS. 333 served out of the Tyrian annals, that during this interval there were disputes and irregularities in the government of Tyre, 1 judges being for a time substituted in the place of kings ; while Merbal and Hirom, two princes of the regal Tyrian line, detained captive in Babylonia, were successively sent down on the special petition of the Tyrians, and reigned at Tyre; the former four years, the latter twenty years, until the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. The Egyptian king Apries, indeed, the son of Psammis, and grandson of Nekos, attacked Sidon and Tyre both by land and sea, but seemingly without any result. 2 To the Persian empire, as soon as Cyrus had conquered Babylon, they cheerfully and spontaneously submitted, 3 whereby the restoration of the captive Tyrians to their home was probably conceded to them, like that of the captive Jews. Nekos in Egypt was succeeded by his son Psammis, and he again, after a reign of six years, by his son Apries ; of whose power and prosperity Herodotus speaks in very high general 1 Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. 'Errt Eti?w/?u/loi; TOV flaaikiuf l-o/.iopKriae Na,3ovxodov6vopoe TTJV Tvpov tV KTTJ dtKarpia. That this s : .ege of thirteen years ended in the storming, capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes beyond the evidence when he says, '' Lcs Tyricns furent emportes (Passant par le roi do Babylone," Recherches sur 1'Ilistoire Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldsean king, is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Ilcngstenbcrg (Do Helms Tyrio- rum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most of them very incon- clusive, to prove this point, about which the passage cited by Josephus from Mcnander leaves no doubt. What is not true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by Nebuchadnezzar : still less can it be believed that that king conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Bcrosus, so far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe, the argument of Larcher ad Hcrodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping him of his foreign possessions in Ju- daea and Syria, have been exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself. 2 Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in the text ; while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king took Sidon by as- tault, terrified the other Phenician towns into submission, and defeated the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil. What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know ; but the measured statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of orerlit. 3 Ilcrodot. iii, 19.