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Rh rivals and furnished two hundred and seven ships. In digging the canal through the isthmus to avoid the storms around Mount Athos, Phoenician engineering skill showed its excellence. In the naval battle of Salamis (480) almost the entire fleet was destroyed. The Phoenician cities began to flourish again as centres of international trade. Aradus, Byblus, Sidon and Tyre were allowed local autonomy. In the fourth century these Phoenician city-states were federated with one another and a newly created city, Tripoli, was made the seat of the federal institutions. Originally consisting of three separate settlements for representatives of Tyre, Sidon and Aradus, the city of Tripoli coalesced into one about 359, serving as regional capital and meeting-place of the Phoenician common assembly.

A revolt at Sidon in 351 spread to the rest of Phoenicia, but Sidon was burned by the Persians and the other cities capitulated. Nevertheless, Persian power was clearly ebbing, while its cultural influence left little impress except for a tendency to dualism in religion. The whole Persian period is one of the most obscure in the entire history of Syria, but certainly its civilization continued to be broadly Semitic, increasingly modified by Greek influences, as manifested in silver coins and Attic sculpture and earthenware. In the seventh century Phoenicia was still influencing Greece; in the sixth there was a rough balance; in the fifth Phoenicia was definitely on the receiving end, with Greek trading settlements appearing in Syria. For at least a century before the Macedonian conquest the coastal cities were sprinkled with Greek merchants and craftsmen. Rh