Note 505 — Chapter XVIII · PHENICIANS.

Strabo, xiv, pp. 754-758; Skylax, Peripl. c. 104; Justin, xviii, 3; Arrian, Exp. Al. ii, 16-19; Xenophon, Anab. i, 4, 6.

Unfortunately, the text of Skylax is here extremely defective, and Strabo’s account is in many points perplexed, from his not having travelled in person through Phenicia, Cœle-Syria, or Judæa: see Groskurd’s note on p. 755 and the Einleitung to his Translation of Strabo, sect. 6.

Respecting the original relation between Palæ-Tyrus and Tyre, there is some difficulty in reconciling all the information, little as it is, which we possess. The name Palæ-Tyrus (it has been assumed as a matter of course: compare Justin, xi, 10) marks that town as the original foundation from which the Tyrians subsequently moved into the island: there was, also, on the main land a place named Palæ-Byblos (Plin. H. N. v, 20; Ptolem. v, 15) which was in like manner construed as the original seat from whence the town properly called Byblus was derived. Yet the account of Herodotus plainly represents the insular Tyrus, with its temple of Hêraklês, as the original foundation (ii, 44), and the Tyrians are described as living in an island even in the time of their king Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon (Joseph. Ant. Jud. viii, 2, 7). Arrian treats the temple of Hêraklês in the island-Tyre as the most ancient temple within the memory of man (Exp. Al. ii, 16). The Tyrians also lived on their island during the invasion of Salmaneser king of Nineveh, and their position enabled them to hold out against him, while Palæ-Tyrus on the terra firma was obliged to yield itself (Joseph. ib. ix, 14, 2). The town taken (or reduced to capitulate), after a long siege, by Nebuchadnezzar, was the insular Tyrus, not the continental or Palæ-Tyrus, which had surrendered without resistance to Salmaneser. It is not correct, therefore, to say—with Volney (Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. ch. xiv, p. 249), Heeren (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, abth. 2, p. 11), and others—that the insular Tyre was called new Tyre, and that the site of Tyre was changed from continental to insular, in consequence of the taking of the continental Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar: the site remained unaltered, and the insular Tyrians became subject to him and his successors until the destruction of the Chaldæan monarchy by Cyrus. Hengstenberg’s Dissertation, De Rebus Tyriorum (Berlin, 1832), is instructive on many of these points: he shows sufficiently that Tyre was, from the earliest times traceable, an insular city; but he wishes at the same time to show, that it was also, from the beginning, joined on to the main land by an isthmus (pp. 10-25),—which is both inconsistent with the former position and unsupported by any solid proofs. It remained an island strictly so called, until the siege by Alexander: the mole, by which that conqueror had stormed it, continued after his day, perhaps enlarged, so as to form a permanent connection from that time forward between the island and the main land (Plin. H. N. v, 19; Strabo, xvi, p. 757), and to render the insular Tyrus capable of being included by Pliny in one computation of circumference jointly with Palæ-Tyrus, the main-land town.

It may be doubted whether we know the true meaning of the word which the Greeks called Παλαι-Τύρος. It is plain that the Tyrians themselves did not call it by that name: perhaps the Phenician name which this continental adjacent town bore, may have been something resembling Palæ-Tyrus in sound, but not coincident in meaning.

The strength of Tyre lay in its insular situation; for the adjacent main-land, whereon Palæ-Tyrus was placed, was a fertile plain, thus described by William of Tyre during the time of the Crusaders:—

“Erat prædicta civitas non solum munitissima, sed etiam fertilitate præcipuâ et amœnitate quasi singularis: nam licet in medio mari sita est, et in modum insulæ tota fluctibus cincta; habet tamen pro foribus latifundium per omnia commendabile, et planitiem sibi continuam divitis glebæ et opimi soli, multas civibus ministrans commoditates. Quæ licet modica videatur respectu aliarum regionum, exiguitatem suam multâ redimit ubertate, et infinita jugera multiplici fœcunditate compensat. Nec tamen tantis arctatur angustiis. Protenditur enim in Austrum versus Ptolemaidem usque ad eum locum, qui hodie vulgo dicitur districtum Scandarionis, milliaribus quatuor aut quinque: e regione in Septentrionem versus Sareptam et Sidonem iterum porrigitur totidem milliaribus. In latitudinem vero ubi minimum ad duo, ubi plurimum ad tria, habens milliaria.” (Apud Hengstenberg, ut sup. p. 5.) Compare Maundrell, Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, p. 50, ed. 1749; and Volney, Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii, pp. 210-226.