It was probably under these circumstances, when Athens owed the recovery
of her greatness in no small measure to the Phoenicians, that those
relations of friendship and intimacy were established between the two
peoples of which we have evidence in several inscriptions. Phoenicians
settled in Attica, particularly at Phalerum and the Piræus, and had
their own places of worship and interment. Six sepulchral inscriptions
have been found, either in Athens itself or at the Piræus,[14316] five
of them bilingual,[14317] which mark the interment in Attic soil of
persons whose nationality was Phoenician. They had monuments erected
over them, generally of some pretension, which must have obtained as
much respect as the native tombstones, since otherwise they could not
have endured to our day. There is also at the Piræus an altar,[14318]
which a Phoenician must have erected and dedicated to a Phoenician god,
whom he worshipped on Attic soil apparently without let or hindrance.
The god’s name is given as “Askum-Adar,” a form which does not elsewhere
recur, but which is thought to designate the god elsewhere called
Sakon, who corresponded to the Grecian Hermes.[14319] Moreover, there is
evidence of the Phoenicians having worshipped two other deities in their
Attic abodes, one a god who corresponded to the Greek Poseidon and the
Roman Neptune, the other the Babylonian and Assyrian Nergal. Among the
lost orations of Deniarchus was one delivered by that orator on the
occasion of the suit between the people of Phalerum and the
Phoenician inhabitants of the place with respect to the priesthood of
Poseidon;[14320] and a sepulchral monument at the Piræus was erected
to Asepta, daughter of Esmun-sillem, of Sidon, by Itten-bel, son of
Esmun-sibbeh, high priest of the god Nergal.[14321] It appears further
from the Greek inscription, edited by Böckh,[14322] that about this time
(B.C. 390-370) a decree was promulgated by the Council {bonle} of
Athens whereby the relation of Proxenia was established between
Strato (Abd-astartus), king of Sidon, and the Athenian people, and
all Sidonians sojourning in Attica were exempted from the tax usually
charged upon foreign settlers, from the obligation of the Choregia, and
from all other contributions to the state.
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