Note 301 — Chapter V · THE AGE OF THE JUDGES

A reminiscence of the event is probably preserved in Justin, xviii. 3, where we read that in the year before the fall of Troy, ‘the king of the Ascalonians’ destroyed Sidon, whose inhabitants fled in their ships and founded Tyre. The date would harmonise with that of the reign of Ramses III. Lydian history related that Askalos, the son of Hymenæos, and brother of Tantalos, had been sent by the Lydian king Akiamos in command of an army to the south of Palestine, and had there founded Askalon (Steph. Byz. s.v. Ἀσκάλων), and according to Xanthos the Lydian historian, the goddess Derketô was drowned in the lake of Askalon by the Lydian Mopsos (Athen. Deipn. viii. 37, p. 346). In these legends we have a tradition of the fact that the Philistines and their allies came from the coast of Asia Minor and the Greek Seas.