the lesser towns being under the command of the great cities. Aradus
presided over three subordinate townships (Arrian ii. 133; Berytus,
which had no king of its own, probably formed with Byblus a
single kingdom; while Tripolis consisted of a federation of three
cities separated by a stadium from each other, and provided a meeting-place
for the federal council, which was chiefly occupied in dealings
with the Persian government (Diod. xvi. 41). But federation on a
larger scale was never possible in Phoenicia, for the reason that no
sense of political unity existed to bind the different states together.
Commercial interests dominated everything else, and while these
stimulated a municipal life not without vigour, civil discipline and
loyalty were but feebly felt. On occasion the towns could defend
their independence with strenuous courage; the higher qualities
which make for a progressive national life the Phoenicians did not
possess.
Phoenicia now became part of the fifth satrapy of the Persian Empire, and entered upon a spell of comparative peace and The Persian Period, 538-333 B. C. growing prosperity. Favoured for the sake of their fleet, and having common interests against Greece,[1] the Phoenicians were among the most loyal subjects of the empire. At this period Sidon occupied the position of leading state; in the fleet her king ranked next to Xerxes and before the king of Tyre (Herod. viii. 67); her situation afforded advantages for expansion which Tyre on its small and densely populated island could not rival. The city was distinguished by its cosmopolitan character; the satrap resided there when he came to Phoenicia, and the Persian monarch had his paradise outside the walls. In the first half of the 4th century Straton I. (in Phoen. ‘Abd-‘ashtart or Bod-‘ashtart) was king, c. 374-362. He cultivated friendly relations with Athens, indicated in a decree of proxenia (Michel, Rec. d'inscr. gr. No. 93 = CIG. No. 87); his court was famed for its luxury; and the extent to which phil-Hellenic tendencies prevailed at this time in Sidon is shown by the royal sarcophagi, noble specimens of Greek art, which have been excavated in the necropolis of the city. It was in the reign of Straton that Tyre fell into the hands of Evagoras, king of Salamis, who had already supplanted Phoenician with Greek civilization in Cyprus (Isocr. Evag. 62, Paneg. 161; Diod. xv. 2). Straton made friends with Nicocles, son of Evagoras, and with him came to an untimely end through their implication in the great revolt of the satraps, 362 B.C. (see the story of Straton's death in Jerome, adv. Jovin. i. 45). A new revolt of Sidon against the Persians took place under King Tennes owing to the insults offered to the Sidonians at the federal diet in Tripolis. With the aid of Nectanebus of Egypt, who had grievances of his own to avenge, the Sidonians carried the rest of Phoenicia with them and drove the satraps of Syria and Cilicia out of the country. Tennes, however, betrayed his people and opened the city to Artaxerxes III.; the inhabitants to the number of 40,000 are said to have set fire to their houses and perished; Tennes himself was executed after he had served the ends of the great king (346 B.C.; Diod. xvi. 41-45). The last king of Sidon was Straton II. (‘Abd-‘ashtart, 346-332) before the Persian Empire came to an end.[2]
Towards the close of the 5th century the Phoenician coins begin to supplement our historical sources (see Numismatics). From the time of Darius the Persian monarchs issued a gold coinage, and reserved to themselves the right of doing so; but they allowed their satraps and vassal states to coin silver and copper money at discretion. Hence Aradus, Byblus, Sidon and Tyre issued a coinage of their own, of which many specimens exist: the coins are stamped as a rule with emblem or name of the city, sometimes with the name of the ruler.[3] Thus from the coins of Byblus we learn the names of four kings, ‘El-pa‘al, ‘Az-ba‘al (between 360 and 340 B.C.), Adar-melek, ‘Ain-el; from the coins of the other cities it is difficult to obtain much information. The native inscriptions, however, now become available, though most of them belong to the period which follows, and only a few have been discovered in Phoenicia itself. One of the earliest of these is the inscription of Byblus (CIS. i. 1 = NSI. No. 3), dating from the Persian period; it records a dedication made by Yeḥaw-milk, king of Gebal, and mentions the name of the king's grandfather, Uri-milk, but the exact dates of their reign are not given.
When Alexander the Great entered Phoenicia after the battle of Issus (333 B.C.), the kings were absent with the Persian fleet The Macedonian Period, 333-69 B.C. in the Aegean; but the cities of Aradus, Byblus and Sidon welcomed him readily, the last-named showing special zeal against Persia. The Tyrians also offered submission, but refused to allow the conqueror to enter the city and sacrifice to the Tyrian Heracles. Alexander was determined to make an example of the first who should offer opposition, and at once began the siege. It lasted seven months. With enormous toil the king drove out a mole from the mainland to the island and thus brought up his engines; ships from the other Phoenician towns and from Cyprus lent him their aid, and the town at length was forced in July 332; 8000 Tyrians were slain, 30,000 sold as slaves, and only a few notables, the king Azemilkos, and the festal envoys from Carthage who had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Melkarth, were spared (Diod. xvii. 40-46). It is not unlikely that Zech. ix. 2-4 refers to this famous siege. For the time Tyre lost its political existence, while the foundation of Alexandria presently changed the lines of trade, and dealt a blow even more fatal to the Phoenician cities.
During the wars of Alexander's successors Phoenicia changed hands several times between the Egyptian and the Syrian kings. Thus in 312 Tyre was captured from Antigonus by Ptolemy I., the ally of Seleucus; in 287 it passed into the dominion of Seleucus; in 275 again it was captured by Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, and began to recover itself as an autonomous municipality. From the year 275 “the people of Tyre” reckoned their era (CIS. i. 7 = NSI. No. 9, cf. 10). The Tyrian coins of the period, stamped with native, Greek and Egyptian symbols, illustrate the traditional relations of the city and the range of her ambitions. A special interest attaches to these silver tetradrachms and didrachms (staters and half-staters), because they were used by the Jews for the payment of the temple tax as “shekels of the sanctuary” (NSI. pp. 351, 44).
Among the Phoenician states we know most about Sidon during this period. The kingship was continued for a long time. The story goes that Alexander raised to the throne a member of the royal family, Abdalonymus, who was living in obscure poverty and working as a gardener (Justin xi. 10; Curt. iv. 1; Diod. xvii. 47 wrongly connecting the story with Tyre). In 312 Ptolemy, then master of Phoenicia, appointed his general Philocles king of the Sidonians, and a decree in honour of this king has been found at Athens (Michel, No. 387, cf. 1261); but he cannot have reigned long. For at the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 3rd century we have evidence of a native dynasty in the important inscriptions of Tabnith, Eshmun-‘azar and Bod-‘ashtart, and in the series of inscriptions (repeating the same text) discovered at Bostan esh-Shēkh near Sidon (NSI. Nos. 4, 5, 6 and App. i.).[4] The last-named texts imply that the first king of this dynasty was Eshmun-‘azar; his son Tabnith succeeded him; then came Eshmun-‘azar II., who died young, then Bod-‘ashtart, both of them grandsons of Eshmun-‘azar I. With Bod-‘ashtart, so far as we know, the dynasty came to an end, say about 250 B.C.; and it is not unlikely that the Sidonians reckoned an era of independence from this event (NSI. p. 95 n.).
Of the other Phoenician cities something is known of the history of Aradus. Its era began in 259 B.C., when it probably became a republic or free city. While the rest of Phoenicia passed under the
- ↑ The naval expeditions against Greece in 480-449 and Sparta in 396-387 were mainly fitted out by Phoenicia. See Persia: Ancient History, for the whole of this section.
- ↑ Justin xviii. 3 tells a story about Tyre during this period: the city, after being worn out though not defeated in long wars with the Persians, was so enfeebled that it was seized by the slaves, who rose and massacred their masters; one Straton alone escaped and was afterwards made king. The reference to the Persians is obviously incorrect; the story, if it can be taken seriously at all, must refer to one of the sieges by the Assyrians or Chaldaeans, and, as Meyer suggests (Ency. Bib. col. 3760), may be derived from the story of Abdalonymus of Sidon mentioned below.
- ↑ See especially E. Babelon, Les Perses Achéménides, and cf. NSI. No. 149.
- ↑ The date of this dynasty has been much disputed; but the reference to “the lord of kings” in the great inscr. of Eshmun-‘azar (line 18) points to the Ptolemaic period, for the Persian monarch is always styled “king of kings.” The interpretation of many details of the inscr. from Bostan esh-Shēkh is still uncertain.
