them even while it
awed. The commercial and enterprising Phoenicians, now foreboding the
march of the Babylonian king, who had "taken counsel against Tyre, the
crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the
honourable of the earth," at all times were precluded from the desire
of conquest by their divided states [100], formidable neighbours, and
trading habits.

In Egypt a great change had operated upon the ancient character; the
splendid dynasty of the Pharaohs was no more. The empire, rent into
an oligarchy of twelve princes, had been again united under the
sceptre of one by the swords of Grecian mercenaries (B. C. 616); and
Neco, the son of the usurper--a man of mighty intellect and vast
designs--while he had already adulterated the old Egyptian customs
with the spirit of Phoenician and Greek adventure, found his field of
action only in the East (defeats Josiah B. C. 609). As yet, then, no
foreign enemy had disturbed the early rise of the several states of
Greece; they were suffered to form their individual demarcations
tranquilly and indelibly; and to progress to that point between social
amenities and chivalric hardihood, when, while war is the most sternly
encountered, it the most rapidly enlightens. The peace that follows
the first war of a half-civilized nation is usually the great era of
its intellectual eminence.

II. At this time the colonies in Asia Minor were far advanced in
civilization beyond the Grecian continent. Along the western coast of
that delicious district--on a shore more fertile, under a heaven more
bright, than those of the parent states--the Aeolians, Ionians, and
Dorians, in a remoter age, had planted settlements and founded cities
(probably commenced under Penthilus, son of Orestes, about B. C.
1068). The Aeolian colonies (the result of the Dorian immigrations)
[101] occupied the coasts of commenced Mysia and Caria--on the
mainland twelve cities--the most renowned of which were Cyme and
Smyrna; and the islands of the Heccatonnesi, Tenedos, and Lesbos, the
last illustrious above the rest, and consecrated by the muses of
Sappho and Alcaeus. They had also settlements about Mount Ida. Their
various towns were independent of each other; but Mitylene, in the
Isle of Lesbos, was regarded as their common capital. The trade of
Mitylene was extensive--its navy formidable.

The Ionian colonies (probably commenced about 988 B. C.), founded
subsequently to the Aeolia