The settlements planted by Tyre in the first burst of her colonising
energy seem to have been, besides Gades, Thasos, Abdera, and Pronectus
towards the north, Malaca, Sexti, Carteia, Belon, and a second Abdera in
Spain, together with Caralis in Sardinia,[1443] Tingis and Lixus on
the West African coast, and in North Africa Hadrumetum and the lesser
Leptis.[1444] Her aim was to throw the meshes of her commerce wider than
Sidon had ever done, and so to sweep into her net a more abundant booty.
It was Tyre which especially affected “long voyages,”[1445] and induced
her colonists of Gades to explore the shores outside the Pillars of
Hercules, northwards as far as Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, southwards
to the Fortunate Islands, and north-eastwards into the Baltic. It is, no
doubt, uncertain at what date these explorations were effected, and some
of them may belong to the _later_ hegemony of Tyre, ab. B.C. 600;
but the forward movement of the twelfth century seems to have been
distinctly Tyrian, and to have been one of the results of the new
position in which she was placed by the sudden collapse of her elder
sister, Sidon.
According to some,[1446] Tyre, during the early period of her supremacy,
was under the government of _shôphetim_, or “judges;” but the general
usage of the Phoenician cities makes against this supposition. Philo in
his “Origines of Phoenicia” speaks constantly of kings,[1447] but never
of judges. We hear of a king, Abd-Baal, at Berytus[1448] about B.C.
1300. Sidonian kings are mentioned in connection with the myth of
Europa.[1449] The cities founded by the Phoenicians in Cyprus are
always under monarchical rule.[1450] Tyre itself, when its history first
presents itself to us in any detail, is governed by a king.[1451] All
that can be urged on the other side is, that we know of no Tyrian king
by name until about B.C. 1050; and that, if there had been earlier
kings, it might have been expected that some record of them would have
come down to us. But to argue thus is to ignore the extreme scantiness
and casual character of the notices which have reached us bearing upon
the early Phoenician history. No writer has left us any continuous
history of Phoenicia, even in the barest outline.[1452] Native
monumental annals are entirely wanting. We depend for the early
times upon the accident of Jewish monarchs having come into contact
occasionally with Phoenician ones, and on Jewish writers having noted
the occasions in Jewish histories. Scripture and Josephus alone furnish
our materials for the period now under consideration, and the materials
are scanty, fragmentary, and sadly wanting in completeness.
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