The History of Antiquity, Vol. 2 (of 6). Duncker Max

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to the bridal-bed."88 Agenor, the father of Cadmus, is a name which the Greeks have given to the Baal of the Phenicians.89 Cadmus himself, the wealthiest of mortals, who leads home the daughter of a god and a goddess, – who celebrates the first marriage at which the gods assemble, bring gifts and sing, – whose wife was worshipped as the protecting goddess of Thebes,90– whose daughters, Ino, Leucothea and Semele, are divine creatures, whom Zeus leads to the Elysian fields,91– can only be a god. He seeks the lost Europa, and is to follow the cow which bears the sign of the full moon. We know the moon-goddess of the Phenicians, who bears the crescent moon and cow's horns, the horned Astarte, who wears a cow's head, the goddess of battle and sensual desire, and thus the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. "The great temple of Astarte at Sidon," so we find in the book of the Syrian goddess, "belongs, as the Sidonians say, to Astarte; but a priest told me that it was a temple of Europa, the sister of Cadmus." The meaning of the word Europa has been discussed previously (I. 371). Cadmus, who seeks the lost moon-goddess, who at length finds and overcomes her, and celebrates with her the holy marriage, is the Baal Melkarth of the Phenicians. The death-bringing Istar-Astarte is changed into Bilit-Ashera, into the fruit-giving goddess;92 the gloomy Europa changes into Harmonia, the goddess of union, birth and increase, yet not without leaving to her descendants deadly gifts. It is the myth of Melkarth and Astarte which the Greeks present to us in the story of Cadmus; with this myth they have connected the foundation of the Phenician settlements in Rhodes, Thera, Samothrace, Thasos and Bœotia; they have changed it into the foundation of these colonies. The name Cadmus means the man of the East; to the Hebrews the Arabs who dwelt to the east of them were known as Beni Kedem, i. e. sons of the East.93 To the Greeks the Phenicians were men of the East, just as to the English of the thirteenth century the merchants of Lubeck were Easterlings. The citadel of Thebes, which the men of the East built, preserved the name of Cadmus the son of the East, and kept it alive among the Greeks.

      What we can gather from Grecian legend is confirmed by some statements of historians and by traces which tell of settlements of the Phenicians. Thucydides informs us that the Phenicians colonised most of the islands of the Ægean.94 Diodorus has already told us with regard to Rhodes that in the temples of this island were Phenician works of art and inscriptions, and that in Rhodes the sun-god and the seven children which he begot there were worshipped. In the number eight made by these deities we can hardly fail to recognise the eight great deities of the Phenicians; the sun-god at their head is the Baal of the Phenicians (I. 357). And if Diodorus mentions Makar among the seven sons of the sun-god of Rhodes, – if according to others Rhodes, like Cyprus, was called Macaria, – Makar is a Greek form of the name Melkarth. We further learn that on the highest mountain summit in Rhodes, on Atabyris, Zeus was worshipped under the form of a bull, and that a human sacrifice was offered yearly to Cronos. In Atabyris we cannot fail to recognise the Semitic Tabor, i. e. the height. We found above that the Phenicians worshipped Baal under the form of a bull, and the Greeks are wont to denote Baal Moloch by the name of Cronos.95 These forms of worship continued to exist even when at a later time Hellenic immigrants had got the upper hand in Rhodes. It was the Dorians who here met with resistance from the Phenicians at Camirus and Ialysus; they got the upper hand, but admitted Phenician families into their midst,96 and continued their sacred rites. Diodorus informs us that the Phenicians whom Cadmus had left behind on Rhodes had formed a mixed community with the Ialysians, and that it was said that priests of their families had performed the sacred duties.97 Even at a later time Rhodes stood in close relation with Phœnicia, especially with the city of Aradus.98 Thus it happened that the colonies which the Rhodians planted in the seventh and sixth centuries in Sicily, Gela and Acragas, carried thither the worship of Zeus Atarbyrius. Zeus Atarbyrius was the protecting deity of Acragas, and human sacrifices were offered to his iron bull-image on the citadel of that city as late as the middle of the sixth century. The coins of Gela also exhibit a bull.99 Of the island of Thera, Herodotus told us that the Phenicians colonised it and inhabited it for eight generations, i. e. for more than 250 years according to his computation. Herodotus names the chief of the Phenicians whom Cadmus left behind on Thera; others speak of the two altars which he erected there.100 The descendants of these Phenicians were found here by the Greek settlers from Laconia. It is certain that even in the third century B.C. the island worshipped the hero Phœnix.101 Of the island of Melos we learn that it was occupied by Phenicians of Byblus, and named by them after their mother city;102 the island of Oliaros near Paros was, on the other hand, according to Heraclëides Ponticus, occupied by the Sidonians.103 Strabo informs us that Samothrace was previously called Melite (Malta); from its height (the island is a mountain rising high in the sea and covered with oak forests; the summit reaches 5000 feet) it obtained the name of Samos, "for high places are called Sami;"104 as a matter of fact the stem of the word of this meaning, like the name Melite, belongs to the Phenician language. Ephorus has already told us (p. 56) that the Samothracians sought for Harmonia at their festivals; Diodorus represents Cadmus as celebrating the marriage with Harmonia on Samothrace as well as at Thebes, and we learn from Herodotus that the Cabiri, i. e. the great gods of the Phenicians, were worshipped on Samothrace; votive tablets of the island dating from Roman times still bear the inscription, "to the great gods," i. e. to the Cabiri.105 The islands of Imbros and Lemnos also worshipped the Cabiri; Lemnos especially worshipped Hephæstus, who had a leading place in this circle.106 The island of Thasos is said, according to the statement of the Greeks, to have been called after a son of Phœnix, or Agenor, of the name of Thasos, who was consequently a brother of Cadmus. Herodotus saw on the island a temple which the Phenicians had built to Heracles, i. e. to Baal-Melkarth, and the mines which they had made on the coast opposite Samothrace; "they had overturned a great mountain in order to get gold from it."107 Herodotus also tells us that the temple of Aphrodite Urania on the island of Cythera off the coast of Laconia was founded by the Phenicians, and Pausanias calls this temple the oldest and most sacred temple of Urania among the Hellenes; the wooden image in this temple exhibited the goddess in armour. Aphrodite Urania is with the Greeks the Syrian Aphrodite; if she was represented on Cythera in armour it is clear that she was worshipped there by the Phenicians as Astarte-Ashera, i. e. as the goddess of war and love.108

      Not in the islands only, but on the coasts of Hellas also, the Phenicians have left traces of their ancient occupation, especially in the form of worship belonging to them. On the isthmus of Corinth Melicertes, i. e. Melkarth, was worshipped as a deity protecting navigation; Corinthian coins exhibit him on a dolphin.109 Aphrodite, whose shrine stood on the summit of Acrocorinthus, was worshipped by prostitution like the Ashera-Bilit of the Phenicians. In Attica also, in the deme of Athmonon, there was a shrine of the goddess of Cythera, which king Porphyrion, i. e. the purple man, the Phenician, is said to have founded there at a very ancient time "before king Actaeus."110 At Marathon, where Heracles was worshipped, and of whom the name represents the Phenician city Marathus, rose a fountain which had the name Makaria, i. e. Makar,111 the name of Melkarth, which we have already met with in Cyprus and Rhodes, and shall meet with again. More plainly still do the tombs lately discovered in Hymettus at the village of Spata attest the ancient settlement of the Phenicians on the Attic coast. These are chambers

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