More than a century and a half had passed since the Israelites had won their land in Canaan. The greater part of the tribes, beside the breeding of cattle, were occupied with the cultivation of vines and figs, and regular agriculture; the minority had become accustomed to life in settled cities, and the earliest stages of industry; but the unity of the nation was lost, and in the place of the religious fervour which once accompanied the exodus from Egypt, the rites of the Syrian deities had forced their way in alongside of the worship of Jehovah. The division and disorganisation of the nation had exposed the Israelites to the attacks of their neighbours; the attempt of Abimelech to establish a monarchy in connection with the cities had failed; the anarchy still continued. Worse dangers still might be expected in the future. The forces of the Moabites, Midianites, and Ammonites were not superior to that of the Israelites, the attacks of the tribes of the desert were of a transitory nature; but what if the cities of the coast, superior in civilisation, art, and combined power, should find it convenient when the affairs of Israel were in this position to extend their borders to the interior, and Israel should be gradually subjugated from the coast? From the Phenicians there was nothing to fear: navigation and trade entirely occupied them; from the beginning of the eleventh century their ships devoted their attention to discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the straits of Gibraltar (p. 83). The case was different with the warlike cities of the Philistines. If the Philistines were behind the Israelites in the extent of their territory and dominion, their forces were held together and well organised by means of the confederation of the cities. Bounded to the west by the sea, and to the south by the desert, the only path open to them for extending their power was in the direction of the Hebrews. For a long time they had been content to put a limit upon the extension of the tribes of Judah and Dan, but in the first half of the eleventh century B.C. the condition of Israel appeared to the federation of the Philistines sufficiently inviting to induce them to pass from defence to attack. Their blows fell first on Judah, Simeon, and the part of Dan which had remained in the south on the borders of the Philistines; tribes which had hitherto been exempted from attack, whose territory had been protected by the deserts on the south, and the Dead Sea on the east. But now they were attacked from the direction of the sea. The struggle with the Philistines was not a matter of rapine and plunder, but of freedom and independence. The aim of the five princes of the Philistines (I. 348) was directed towards the extension of their own borders and their own dominion, and the war against the Israelites was soon carried on with vigour. The tribes of Judah and Dan were reduced to submission.[206] If the Israelites did not