Sidon’s pre-eminence in the manufacture, the dyeing, and the embroidery of textile fabrics was at the same time equally unquestionable.  Hecuba, being advised to offer to Athene, on behalf of her favourite son, the best and loveliest of all the royal robes which her well-stored dress-chamber could furnish—­

     She to her fragrant wardrobe bent her way,
     Where her rich veils in beauteous order lay;
     Webs by Sidonian virgins finely wrought,
     From Sidon’s woofs by youthful Paris brought,
     When o’er the boundless main the adulterer led
     Fair Helen from her home and nuptial bed;
     From these she chose the fullest, fairest far,
     With broidery bright, and blazing as a star.[1419]

Already, it would seem, the precious shell-fish, on which Phoenicia’s commerce so largely rested in later times, had been discovered; and it was the dazzling hue of the robe which constituted its especial value.  Sidon was ultimately eclipsed by Tyre in the productions of the loom; and the unrivalled dye has come down to us, and will go down to all future ages, as “Tyrian purple;” but we may well believe that in this, as in most other matters on which prosperity and success depended, Tyre did but follow in the steps of her elder sister Sidon, perfecting possibly the manufacture which had been Sidon’s discovery in the early ages.  According to Scylax of Cadyanda, Dor was a Sidonian colony.[1420] Geographically it belonged rather to Philistia than to Phoenicia; but its possession of large stores of the purple fish caused its sudden seizure and rapid fortification at a very remote date, probably by the Phoenicians of Sidon.[1421] It is quite possible that this aggression may have provoked that terrible war to which reference has already been made, between the Philistines under the hegemony of Ascalon and the first of the Phoenician cities.  Ascalon attacked the Sidonians by land, blockaded the offending town, and after a time compelled a surrender; but the defenders had a ready retreat by sea, and, when they could no longer hold out against their assailants, took ship, and removed themselves to Tyre, which at the time was probably a dependency.[1422]

In navigation also and colonisation Sidon took the lead.  According to some, she was the actual founder of Aradus, which was said to have owed its origin to a body of Sidonian exiles, who there settled themselves.[1423] Not much reliance, however, can be placed on this tradition, which first appears in a writer of the Augustan age.  With more confidence we may ascribe to Sidon the foundation of Citium in Cyprus, the colonisation of the islands in the AEgean, and of those Phoenician settlements in North Africa which were anterior to the founding of Carthage.  It has even been supposed that the Sidonians were the first to make a settlement at Carthage itself,[1424] and that the Tyrian occupation under Dido was a recolonisation of an already occupied