In the struggle (which soon followed these events) between Antony and Augustus, Phoenicia had the misfortune to give offence to the latter.  The terms on which they stood with Antony, and the protection which he had afforded to their cities against the greed of Cleopatra, naturally led them to embrace his cause; and it should scarcely have been regarded as a crime in them that they did so with ardour.  But Augustus, who was certainly not clement by nature, chose to profess himself deeply aggrieved by the preference which they had shown for his rival, and, when he personally visited the East in B.C. 20, inflicted a severe punishment on two at least of the cities.  Dio Cassius can scarcely be mistaken when he says that Tyre and Sidon were “enslaved”—­i.e. deprived of freedom—­by Augustus,[14477] who must certainly have revoked the privilege originally granted by Pompey.  Whether the privilege was afterwards restored is somewhat uncertain; but there is distinct evidence that more than one of the later emperors was favourably disposed to Rome’s Phoenician subjects.  Claudius granted to Accho the title and status of a Roman colony;[14478] while Hadrian allowed Tyre to call herself a “metropolis."[14479]

Two important events have caused Tyre and Sidon to be mentioned in the New Testament.  Jesus Christ, in the second year of his ministry, “arose and went” from Galilee “into the borders of Tyre and Sidon,” and there wrought a miracle at the earnest request of a “Syro-Phoenician woman."[14480] And Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, when at Caesarea in A.D. 44, received an embassy from “them of Tyre and Sidon,” with whom he was highly offended, and “made an oration” to the ambassadors.[14481] In this latter place the continued semi-independence of Tyre and Sidon seems to be implied.  Agrippa is threatening them with war, while they “desire peace.”  “Their country” is spoken of as if it were distinct from all other countries.  We cannot suppose that the Judaean prince would have ventured to take up this attitude if the Phoenician cities had been fully incorporated into the Roman State, since in that case quarrelling with them would have been quarrelling with Rome, a step on which even Agrippa, with all his pride and all his rashness, would scarcely have ventured.  It is probable, therefore, that either Tiberius or Claudius had revoked the decree of Augustus, and re-invested the Phoenician cities with the privilege whereof the first of the emperors had deprived them.

Not long after this, about A.D. 57, we have evidence that the great religious and social movement of the age had swept the Phoenician cities within its vortex, and that, in some of them at any rate, Christian communities had been formed, which were not ashamed openly to profess the new religion.  The Gospel was preached in Phoenicia[14482] as early as A.D. 41.  Sixteen years later, when St. Paul, on his return from his third missionary journey, landed at Tyre, and proceeded thence to Ptolemais,