UllTA
575
MAtTA
were under cultivation in the Halt«sc islands. Of
these 6546 belong to Government, 0682 to tlte
Church and wous institutionB, and 25,520 to private
individuals. Wheataud barley, potAtoes. cotton, and
grapes fonn the chief produce of the land. The Hal-
teae honey, from the superior quality of which the
island was supposed to derive its name of Helita (i, e.
Greek (lAi, gen. /iAiToi= honey )^ now lives mostly
oo its rsputatioa. Agriculture m Malta has been
starved by trade. A peouliariy national industry la
the Maltese lace, chiefly made in Goto.
Civil History. — There can be no doubt that, at a very early date, Malta waa colooixed by the Phcenicians. Numerous megalithic and other remains, as well as inscripttona, testify to this fact. It is even probable that the PtuBnicians gave the island it« name, which seems to be derived from the verb "malat (Heb. oi>D), "to take refuee" and to mean, therefore, "the
Slaoe of refuge". It is often asserted that Malta, uring the eighth century b. c, passed into the pos- session of the Greeks and was held by them for three centuries, but there is little evidence to support this view. It is clear, however, that the Carthagimaas became masters of the island, probably in the fifth century b. c, at a time when the weaker Phcmician states united, for mutual protection, under the leader- ship of Carthage. It is certain, too, that Malta, about the time of the Second Punic war. though the pteinse date of its capture cannot be fixed (cf. Livy, xxi, 51), became a Roman possession and, after the destruction of the Roman power in the West, remained subject to
pears, they were, as in Sicily and elsewhere, welcomed
as deliverers from the hated Byzantine yoke.
The principal and almost the only monument of the Arab dominion is said to be the Maltese langua^, which is Semitic and has much in common with Arabic. The weight of the beet authority seems, how- ever, to incline decjdedlv to the vieW that the present Malt«se language is airectly descended from the Phtenician with but little modification by the Arabic. The Arabs, in fact, seem to have left the Maltese very much to themselves and to have interfered with their language aa little aa they interfered with their religion ana their popular customs. The account of the cap-
and philology alike point to the conclusion that the
Maltese, m spite of powerful outside influences, are
still, subatantially, a PhisniDian pe^le. Count Roger
of Sicily, who landed in Malta in 1090, was welcomed,
it seems, not as a deliverer from an oppressive yoke,
but because the iaiandere naturally preferred a Chris-
probabiy during this period that the aMence of a
national hterature, the need of employing foreign
notaries, and other causes, forced the Maltese to adopt
ture of Malta by the Normans, as given by Matat«rra,
thesecretary of Count Roger, does not, certainly, con-
vey the idea that the Saracens were sufficiently numer-
ous to offer any serious resistance to the invaders. If
the Arab influence had prei^ed so far as to make a
complete change in the hnguage of the iijandera, this
could only have been the sequel t« a process of dena-
tionalisation which had no counterpart in the neigh-
bouring island of Sicily and which would have implied
the presence of a strong army of occupation. History
lidlian as their written language. Later on, when the
more fuUv developed Italian aasert«d itself in Sicily
it naturally beisame the medium of legal and com-
mereial transactions in Malta. Its influence on the
spoken language was confined to the vocabulary,
which contains a number of Italian words, the struc-
ture remaining unaltered. At least conjointly with
Latin and other languages, Italian has remained the
literary language of the island right down to our
In llflO Malta, along with Sicily, passed into the hands of the Swabian emperors, but, after the battle of Beneventum (1266) in which Charles of Anjou put an end to the Swabian rule in Apulia and Sicilv, it remained for seventeen years in the possession of the French. In 1283. the vear after the "Sicilian Ves- pers", the island, which had fared badly under the Swabians and worse still under the French, once more changed masters and became the property ot King Peter III of Aragon. Under the Spanish rule, which lasted two centuries and a half, Malta made consider- able progress in civiliaation. This was very lately owing to the influence of the religious orders, especially the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Auguatinians, but partly also to the influx of foreign beneliciarieB who, if they lived on the wealth of tiie land, made some return in the higher culture which they helped to diffuse. Early in 1523, the Knights of St. John, after the fall of Rhodes, left that island with the honours of war, and being unable, for nearly seven years, to find a lodgment that was convenient to all parties concerned, they were at length established in Malta, which was conferred upon them by the Enipei-or Charles V in the year 1530. The earlier period of their rule was the golden age of the history of the island, for during that time Malta was one of the chief bulwarks of Christen- dom against the power of the Turks. The successful defence of the isliuid by the Grand Master La Vallette, in 1565, ranks as high as the Battle of Lepanto among the feats of Christian chivalry. The invaders, num- bering over 40,000 men, must have considerably out- numMred the total population of the island which contained but 8500 men bearing arms, including the 592 members of the order. Yet such was the spirit which the brave islanders iralubfid.(w^ ■-■■--'
