The cities of the dead lay close together in the background, on the slope of the nearest chain of hills; still further back lay a plain celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriance of its verdure: Lebanon, with its wooded peaks, was shut in on the north and south, but on the east the mountain sloped downwards almost to the sea-level, furnishing a pass through which ran the road which joined the great military highway not far from Qodshu. The influence of Arvad penetrated by means of this pass into the valley of the Orontes, and is believed to have gradually extended as far as Hamath itself--in other words, over the whole of Zahi. For the most part, however, its rule was confined to the coast between G-abala and the Nahr el-Kebir; Simyra at one time acknowledged its suzerainty, at another became a self-supporting and independent state, strong enough to compel the respect of its neighbours.* Beyond the Orontes, the coast curves abruptly inward towards the west, and a group of wind-swept hills ending in a promontory called Phaniel,** the reputed scene of a divine manifestation, marked the extreme limit of Arabian influence to the north, if, indeed, it ever reached so far. * Simyra is the modern Surnrah, near the Nahr el-Kebir. ** The name has only come down to us under its Greek form, but its original form, Phaniel or Penuel, is easily arrived at from the analogous name used in Canaan to indicate localities where there had been a theophany. Renan questions whether Phaniel ought not to be taken in the same sense as the Pne-Baal of the Carthaginian inscriptions, and applied to a goddess to whom the promontory had been dedicated; he also suggests that the modern name _Cap Madonne_ may be a kind of echo of the title _Rabbath_ borne by this goddess from the earliest times. Half a dozen obscure cities flourished here, Arka,* Siani,** Mahallat, Kaiz, Maiza, and Botrys,*** some of them on the seaboard, others inland on the bend of some minor stream. Botrys,**** the last of the six, barred the roads which cross the Phaniel headland, and commanded the entrance to the holy ground where Byblos and Berytus celebrated each year the amorous mysteries of Adonis. * Arka is perhaps referred to in the tablets of Tel el- Amarna under the form Irkata or Irkat; it also appears in the Bible (Gen. x. 17) and in the Assyrian texts. It is the Cassarea of classical geographers, which has now resumed its old Phoenician name of Tell-Arka. ** Sianu or Siani is mentioned in the Assyrian texts and in the Bible; Strabo knew it under the name of Sinna, and a village near Arka was called Sin or Syn as late as the XVth century. *** According to the Assyrian inscriptions, these were the names of the three towns which formed the Tripolis of Graeco-Roman times.