walls; though probably constituting to a certain extent one political community, and serving as a place of common meeting and deliberation for the entire Phenician name.[509] The outlying promontories of Libanus and Anti-Libanus touched the sea along the Phenician coast, and those mountainous ranges, while they rendered a large portion of the very confined area unfit for cultivation of corn, furnished what was perhaps yet more indispensable,—abundant supplies of timber for ship-building: the entire want of all wood in Babylonia, except the date-palm, restricted the Assyrians of that territory from maritime traffic on the Persian gulf. It appears, however, that the mountains of Lebanon also afforded shelter to tribes of predatory Arabs, who continually infested both the Phenician territory and the rich neighboring plain of Cœle-Syria.[510] [505] Strabo, xiv, pp. 754-758; Skylax, Peripl. c. 104; Justin, xviii, 3; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16-19; Xenophon, Anab. i, 4, 6. Unfortunately, the text of Skylax is here extremely defective, and Strabo’s account is in many points perplexed, from his not having travelled in person through Phenicia, Cœle-Syria, or Judæa: see Groskurd’s note on p. 755 and the Einleitung to his Translation of Strabo, sect. 6. Respecting the original relation between Palæ-Tyrus and Tyre, there is some difficulty in reconciling all the information, little as it is, which we possess. The name Palæ-Tyrus (it has been assumed as a matter of course: compare Justin, xi, 10) marks that town as the original foundation from which the Tyrians subsequently moved into the island: there was, also, on the main land a place named Palæ-Byblos (Plin. H. N. v, 20; Ptolem. v, 15) which was in like manner construed as the original seat from whence the town properly called Byblus was derived. Yet the account of Herodotus plainly represents the insular Tyrus, with its temple of Hêraklês, as the original foundation (ii, 44), and the Tyrians are described as living in an island even in the time of their king Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon (Joseph. Ant. Jud. viii, 2, 7). Arrian treats the temple of Hêraklês in the island-Tyre as the most ancient temple within the memory of man (Exp. Al. ii, 16). The Tyrians also lived on their island during the invasion of Salmaneser king of Nineveh, and their position enabled them to hold out against him, while Palæ-Tyrus on the terra firma was obliged to yield itself (Joseph. _ib._ ix, 14, 2). The town taken (or reduced to capitulate), after a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar, was the insular Tyrus, not the continental or Palæ-Tyrus, which had surrendered without resistance to Salmaneser. It is not correct, therefore, to say—with Volney (Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. ch. xiv, p. 249), Heeren (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, abth. 2, p. 11), and others—that the insular Tyre was called new