fine arts,
and even in decay Crete left to Greece the tradition of mastery
in laws and government.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SHIP

From Torr, _Ancient Ships_.]

The power of Crete was already in its decline centuries before
the Trojan War, but during a thousand years it had spread its own
and Egyptian culture over the shores of the AEgean. The destruction
of the island empire in about 1400 B.C. apparently was due to some
great disaster that destroyed her fleet and left her open to invasion
by a conquering race--probably the Greeks--who ravaged her cities
by sword and fire. On account of her commanding position in the
Mediterranean, Crete might again have risen to sea power but for
the endless civil wars that marked her subsequent history.

The successor to Crete as mistress of the sea was Phoenicia. The
Phoenicians, oddly enough, were a Semitic people, a nomadic race
with no traditions of the sea whatever. When, however, they migrated
to the coast and settled, they found themselves in a narrow strip
of coast between a range of mountains and the sea. The city of Tyre
itself was erected on an island. Consequently these descendants of
herdsmen were compelled to find their livelihood upon the sea--as
were the Venetians and the Dutch in later ages--and for several
hundred years they maintained their control of the ocean highways.

The Phoenicians were not literary, scientific, or artistic; they
were commercial. Everything they did was with an eye to business.
They explored the Mediterranean and beyond for the sake of tapping
new sources of wealth, they planted colonies for the sake of having
trading posts on their routes, and they developed fighting ships for
the sake of preserving their trade monopolies. Moreover, Phoenicia
lay at the end of the Asiatic caravan routes. Hence Phoenician ships
received the wealth of the Nile valley and Mesopotamia and distributed
it along the shores of the Mediterranean. Phoenician ships also
uncovered the wealth of Spain and the North African coast, and,
venturing into the Atlantic, drew metals from the British Isles.
According to Herodotus, a Phoenician squadron circumnavigated Africa
at the beginning of the seventh century before Christ, completing
the voyage in three years. We should know far more now of the extent
of the explorations made by these master mariners of antiquity
were it not for the fact that they kept their trade routes secret
as far as possible in order to preserve t