The Essential Works of George Rawlinson: Egypt, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Phoenicia, Parthia, Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylon, Persia, Sasanian Empire & Herodotus' Histories. George Rawlinson
the cause of the Tyrians before Hadrian.14495 A little later we hear of Maximus, who flourished under Marcus Aurelius and Commodus (ab. A.D. 160-190), a Tyrian, like Paulus, and a rhetorician and Platonic philosopher.14496 The literary glories of Tyre culminated and terminated with Porphyry, of whose works we have already given an account.
Towards the middle of the third century after Christ a school of law and jurisprudence arose at Berytus, which attained high distinction, and is said by Gibbon14497 to have furnished the eastern provinces of the empire with pleaders and magistrates for the space of three centuries (A.D. 250-550). The course of education at Berytus lasted five years, and included Roman Law in all its various forms, the works of Papinian being especially studied in the earlier times, and the same together with the edicts of Justinian in the later.14498 Pleaders were forced to study either at Berytus, or at Rome, or at Constantinople,14499 and, the honours and emoluments of the profession being large, the supply of students was abundant and perpetual. External misfortune, and not internal decay, at last destroyed the school, the town of Berytus being completely demolished by an earthquake in the year A.D. 551. The school was then transferred to Sidon, but appears to have languished on its transplantation to a new soil and never to have recovered its pristine vigour or vitality.
It is difficult to decide how far these literary glories of the Phoenician cities reflect any credit on the Phoenician race. Such a number of Greeks settled in Syria and Phoenicia under the Seleucidæ that to be a Tyrian or a Sidonian in the Græco-Roman period furnished no evidence at all of a man having any Phoenician blood in his veins. It will have been observed that the names of the Tyrian, Sidonian, and Berytian learned men and authors of the time—Antipater, Apollonius, Boëthus, Diodotus, Philo, Hermippus, Marinus, Paulus, Maximus, Porphyrius—are without exception either Latin or Greek. The language in which the books were written was universally Greek, and in only one or two cases is there reason to suppose that the authors had any knowledge of the Phoenician tongue. The students at Berytus between A.D. 250 and 550 were probably, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, Greeks or Romans. Phoenician nationality had, in fact, almost wholly disappeared in the Seleucid period. The old language ceased to be spoken, and though for some time retained upon the coins together with a Greek legend,14500 became less frequent as time went on, and soon after the Christian era disappeared altogether. It is probable that, as a spoken language, Phoenician had gone out of use even earlier.14501
In two respects only did the old national spirit survive, and give indication that, even in the nation’s “ashes,” there still lived some remnant of its “wonted fires.” Tyre and Sidon were great commercial centres down to the time of the Crusades, and quite as rich, quite as important, quite as flourishing, commercially, as in the old days of Hiram and Ithobal. Mela14502 speaks of Sidon in the second century after Christ as “still opulent.” Ulpian,14503 himself a Tyrian by descent, calls Tyre in the reign of Septimus Severus “a most splendid colony.” A writer of the age of Constantine says of it: “The prosperity of Tyre is extraordinary. There is no state in the whole of the East which excels it in the amount of its business. Its merchants are persons of great wealth, and there is no port where they do not exercise considerable influence."14504 St. Jerome, towards the end of the fourth century, speaks of Tyre as “the noblest and most beautiful of all the cities of Phoenicia,"14505 and as “an emporium for the commerce of almost the whole world."14506 During the period of the Crusades, “Tyre retained its ancient pre-eminence among the cities of the Syrian coast, and excited the admiration of the warriors of Europe by its capacious harbours, its wall, triple towards the land and double towards the sea, its still active commerce, and the beauty and fertility of the opposite shore.” The manufactures of purple and of glass were still carried on. Tyre was not reduced to insignificance until the Saracenic conquest towards the close of the thirteenth century of our era, when its trade collapsed, and it became “a rock for fishermen to spread their nets upon."14507
The other respect in which the vitality of the old national spirit displayed itself was in the continuance of the ancient religion. While Christianity was adopted very generally by the more civilised of the inhabitants, and especially by those who occupied the towns, there were shrines and fanes in the remote districts, and particularly in the less accessible parts of Lebanon, where the old rites were still in force, and the old orgies continued to be carried on, just as in ancient times, down to the reign of Constantine. The account of the licentious worship of Ashtoreth at Aphaca, which has been already quoted from Eusebius, belongs to the fourth century after our era, and shows the tenacity with which a section of the Phoenicians, not withstanding their Hellenisation in language, in literature, and in art, clung to the old barbarous and awful cult, which had come down to them by tradition from their fathers. A similar worship at the same time maintained itself on the other side of the Lebanon chain in Heliopolis, or Baalbek, where the votaries of impurity allowed their female relatives, even their wives and their daughters, to play the harlot as much as they pleased.14508 Constantine exerted himself to put down and crush out these iniquities, but it is more than probable that, in the secret recesses of the mountain region, whither government officials would find it hard to penetrate, the shameful and degrading rites still found a refuge, rooted as they were in the depraved affections of the common people, to a much later period.
The mission of the Phoenicians, as a people, was accomplished before the subjection to Rome began. Under the Romans they were still ingenious, industrious, intelligent. But in the earlier times they were far more than this. They were the great pioneers of civilisation. Intrepid, inventive, enterprising, they at once made vast progress in the arts themselves, and carried their knowledge, their active habits, and their commercial instincts into the remotest regions of the old continent. They exercised a stimulating, refining, and civilising influence wherever they went. North and south and east and west they adventured themselves amid perils of all kinds, actuated by the love of adventure more than by the thirst for gain, conferring benefits, spreading knowledge, suggesting, encouraging, and developing trade, turning men from the barbarous and unprofitable pursuits of war and bloodshed to the peaceful occupations of productive industry. They did not aim at conquest. They united the various races of men by the friendly links of mutual advantage and mutual dependence, conciliated them, softened them, humanised them. While, among the nations of the earth generally, brute force was worshipped as the true source of power and the only basis of national repute, the Phoenicians succeeded in proving that as much could be done by arts as by arms, as great glory and reputation gained, as real a power built up, by the quiet agencies of exploration, trade, and commerce, as by the violent and brutal methods of war, massacre, and ravage. They were the first to set this example. If the history of the world since their time has not been wholly one of the potency in human affairs of “blood and iron,” it is very much owing to them. They, and their kinsmen of Carthage, showed mankind what a power might be wielded by commercial states. The lesson has not been altogether neglected in the past. May the writer be pardoned if, in the last words of what is probably his last historical work, he expresses a hope that, in the future, the nations of the earth will more and more take the lesson to heart, and vie with each other in the arts which made Phoenicia great, rather than in those which exalted Rome, her oppressor and destroyer?
FOOTNOTES
PREFACE