Of these cities Sidon was once the head, but in time Tyre eclipsed it
in splendor, and writers, sacred and profane, have sung her glories.

These Phenicians had a genius for commerce and trade. They scented a
bargain from afar, and knew how to exchange "their broidered work, and
fine linen, and coral, and agate" (I Kings xxvii. 16), their glassware
and their wonderful cloths dyed in Tyrian scarlet and purple, for the
spices and jewels of the East, and for the gold and silver and the
ivory and the ebony of the south and west.

Their ships were coursing the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and
bringing back treasures from India and searching every inlet in the
Mediterranean, and finally, either through the canal they are said
to have cut, or the straits it had made, they sailed as far as the
British Isles and brought back tin.

But the gold and silver of the Iberian Peninsula were more alluring
than the spices of India or the tin of Britain. So upon the Spanish
coast they made permanent settlements and built cities. As early as
1100 B.C. they had founded beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the City
of _Gades_ (Cadiz), a walled and fortified town, and had taught
the Keltiberians how to open and work their gold and silver mines
systematically; and in exchange they brought an old civilization,
with new luxuries, new ideas and customs into the lives of the simple
people.

But they bestowed something far beyond this--something more enriching
than silver and gold,--an alphabet,--and it is to the Phenicians that
we are indebted for the alphabet now in use throughout the civilized
world.

CHAPTER II.

Such an extension of power, and the acquisition of sources of wealth
so boundless, excited the envy of other nations.

The Greeks are said to have been in the Iberian peninsula long before
the fall of Troy, where they came with a fleet from Zante, in the
Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place, called the city they founded
Zacynthus, which name in time became _Saguntum_. Now they sent more
expeditions and founded more cities on the Spanish coast; and the
Babylonians, and the Assyrians, and, at a later time, the Persians and
the Greeks, all took up arms against these insatiate traders.

Phenician supremacy was not easily maintained with so many jealous
rivals in the field, and it was rudely shaken in 850 B.C., when

"The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold."