advances in navigation—­Her general commercial honesty—­Occasional kidnapping—­Stories of Io and Eumaeus—­Internal government—­ Relations with the Israelites.

When the Phoenician immigrants, in scattered bands, and at longer or shorter intervals, arrived upon the Syrian coast, and finding it empty occupied it, or wrested it from its earlier possessors, there was a decided absence from among them of any single governing or controlling authority; a marked tendency to assert and maintain separate rule and jurisdiction.  Sidon, the Arkite, the Arvadite, the Zemarite, are separately enumerated in the book of Genesis;[0141] and the Hebrews have not even any one name under which to comprise the commercial people settled upon their coast line,[0142] until we come to Gospel times, when the Greeks have brought the term “Syro-Phoenician” into use.[0143] Elsewhere we hear of “them of Sidon,” “them of Tyre,"[0144] “the Giblites,"[0145] “the men of Arvad,"[0146] “the Arkites,” “the Sinites,” “the Zemarites,"[0147] “the inhabitants of Accho, of Achzib, and Aphek,"[0148] but never of the whole maritime population north of Philistia under any single ethnic appellation.  And the reason seems to be, that the Phoenicians, even more than the Greeks, affected a city autonomy.  Each little band of immigrants, as soon as it had pushed its way into the sheltered tract between the mountains and the sea, settled itself upon some attractive spot, constructed habitations, and having surrounded its habitations with walls, claimed to be—­and found none to dispute the claim—­a distinct political entity.  The conformation of the land, so broken up into isolated regions by strong spurs from Lebanon and Bargylus, lent additional support to the separatist spirit, and the absence in the early times of any pressure of danger from without permitted its free indulgence without entailing any serious penalty.  It is difficult to say at what time the first settlements took place; but during the period of Egyptian supremacy over Western Asia, under the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties (ab.  B.C. 1600-1350), we seem to find the Phoenicians in possession of the coast tract, and their cities severally in the enjoyment of independence and upon a quasi-equality.  Tyre, Sidon, Gebal, Aradus, Simyra, Sarepta, Berytus, and perhaps Arka, appear in the inscriptions of Thothmes III,[0149] and in the “Travels of a Mohar,"[1410] without an indication of the pre-eminence, much less the supremacy, of any one of them.  The towns pursued their courses independently one of another, submitting to the Egyptians when hard pressed, but always ready to reassert themselves, and never joining, so far as appears, in any league or confederation, by which their separate autonomy might have been endangered.  During this period no city springs to any remarkable height of greatness or prosperity; material progress is, no doubt, being made by the nation; but it is not very marked, and it does not excite any particular attention.