ushed and desolated it, that from that day to this, though
twenty-four centuries have intervened, it has never been able to recover
its independence. The Persian advance on the south shore toward Carthage
failed because of the indisposition of the Phoenicians to assist in
any operations against that city. We must particularly remark that the
ravaging of Egypt by Cambyses was contemporaneous with the cultivation
of philosophy in the southern Italian towns--somewhat more than five
hundred years before Christ.

[Sidenote: The Fall of Tyre.]

Among the incidents occurring during the struggles between the Egyptian
and Babylonian kings there is one deserving to be brought into
conspicuous prominence, from the importance of its consequences in
European history. It was the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. So long
as that city dominated in the Mediterranean, it was altogether
impossible for Greek maritime power to be developed. The strength of
Tyre is demonstrated by her resistance to the whole Babylonian power for
thirteen years, "until every head was bald and every shoulder peeled."
The place was, in the end, utterly destroyed. It was made as bare as the
top of a rock on which the fisherman spreads his nets. The blow thus
struck at the heart of Tyrian commerce could not but be felt at the
utmost extremities. "The isles of the sea were troubled at her
departure." It was during this time that Greece fairly emerged as a
Mediterranean naval power. Nor did the inhabitants of New Tyre ever
recover the ancient position. Their misfortunes had given them a rival.
A re-establishment in an island on the coast was not a restoration of
their supremacy. Carrying out what Greece instinctively felt to be her
national policy, one of the first acts of Alexander's Asiatic campaign,
two hundred and fifty years subsequently, was the siege of the new city,
and, after almost superhuman exertions, its capture, by building a mole
from the mainland. He literally levelled the place to the ground; a
countless multitude was massacred, two thousand persons were crucified,
and Tyrian influence disappeared for ever.

[Sidenote: Foreign epochs in Greek history.]

In early Greek history there are, therefore, two leading foreign events:
1st, the opening of the Egyptian ports, B.C. 670; 2nd, the downfall of
Old Tyre, 573. The effect of the first was chiefly intellectual; that of
the second was to permit the commencement of commercial prosperity and
give lif