If the Phoenicians had had to deal only with the piratical expeditions of the peoples of the coast or with the jealous watchfulness of the rulers of the sea, they might have endured the evil, but they had now to put up, in addition, with rivalry in the artistic and industrial products of which they had long had the monopoly. The spread of art had at length led to the establishment of local centres of production everywhere, which bade fair to vie with those of Phoenicia. On the continent and in the Cyclades there were produced statuettes, intaglios, jewels, vases, weapons, and textile fabrics which rivalled those of the East, and were probably much cheaper. The merchants of Tyre and Sidon could still find a market, however, for manufactures requiring great technical skill or displaying superior taste--such as gold or silver bowls, engraved or decorated with figures in outline--but they had to face a serious falling off in their sales of ordinary goods. To extend their commerce they had to seek new and less critical markets, where the bales of their wares, of which the Ægean population was becoming weary, would lose none of their attractions. We do not know at what date they ventured to sail into the mysterious region of the Hesperides, nor by what route they first reached it. It is possible that they passed from Crete to Cythera, and from this to the Ionian Islands and to the point of Calabria, on the other side of the straits of Otranto, whence they were able to make their way gradually to Sicily.* * Ed. Meyer thinks that the extension of Phoenician commerce to the Western Mediterranean goes back to the XVIIIth dynasty, or, at the latest, the XVth century before our era. Without laying undue stress on this view, I am inclined to ascribe with him, until we get further knowledge, the colonisation of the West to the period immediately following the movements of the People of the Sea and the diminution of Phoenician trade in the Grecian Archipelago. Exploring voyages had been made before this, but the founding of colonies was not earlier than this epoch.