The History of Rome, vol 3 | Page 2

migrations may have altered the line of demarcation
and thrown the races across each other, a deep sense of diversity has
always severed, and still severs, the Indo- Germanic peoples from the
Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations. This diversity was no less marked
in the case of that Semitic people which spread more than any other in
the direction of the west--the Phoenicians. Their native seat was the
narrow border of coast bounded by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria,
and Egypt, and called Canaan, that is, the "plain." This was the only
name which the nation itself made use of; even in Christian times the
African farmer called himself a Canaanite. But Canaan received from

the Hellenes the name of Phoenike, the "land of purple," or "land of the
red men," and the Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites
Punians, as we are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician
or Punic race.
Their Commerce
The land was well adapted for agriculture; but its excellent harbours
and the abundant supply of timber and of metals favoured above all
things the growth of commerce; and it was there perhaps, where the
opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean so
rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all its
greatness upon man. The Phoenicians directed all the resources of
courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of
commerce and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and
colonization, and thus connected the east and the west. At an incredibly
early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in
Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall
in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands
passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory,
lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from
Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wines of Greece, the
copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from
Elba. The Phoenician mariners brought to every nation whatever it
could need or was likely to purchase; and they roamed everywhere, yet
always returned to the narrow home to which their affections clung.
Their Intellectual Endowments
The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the side
of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a fresh proof,
and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the development of national
energies in antiquity was of a one-sided character. Those noble and
enduring creations in the field of intellect, which owe their origin to the
Aramaean race, do not belong primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith
and knowledge in a certain sense were the especial property of the
Aramaean nations and first reached the Indo-Germans from the east,

neither the Phoenician religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so
far as we can see, held an independent rank among those of the
Aramaean family. The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were
rude and uncouth, and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster
rather than to restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in
times of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by
their religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician
architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy, to say
nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient seat of
scientific observation and of its application to practical purposes was
Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It was there
probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it was there
that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the sounds of
language; it was there that they began to reflect on time and space and
on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces of astronomy and
chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and measures, point to that
region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed themselves of the artistic and
highly developed manufactures of Babylon for their industry, of the
observation of the stars for their navigation, of the writing of sounds
and the adjustment of measures for their commerce, and distributed
many an important germ of civilization along with their wares; but it
cannot be demonstrated that the alphabet or any other of those
ingenious products of the human mind belonged peculiarly to them,
and such religious and scientific ideas as they were the means of
conveying to the Hellenes were scattered by them more after the
fashion of a bird dropping grains than of the husbandman sowing his
seed. The power which the Hellenes and even