no difficulty in getting
supplies of all kinds from their colonies. At the end of five years
the Assyrians again returned home, defeated by the Phoenician control
of the sea. When, twenty years later, Phoenicia was subjugated by
Assyria, it was due to the lack of union among the scattered cities
and colonies of the great sea empire. Widely separated, governed
by their own princes, the individual colonies had too little sense
of loyalty for the mother country. Each had its own fleets and its
own interests; in consequence an Assyrian fleet was able to destroy
the Phoenician fleets in detail. From this point till the rise of
Athens as a sea power, the fleets of Phoenicia still controlled the
sea, but they served the plans of conquest of alien rulers.

As a dependency of Persia, Phoenicia enabled Cambyses to conquer
Egypt. However, when the Phoenician fleet was ordered to subjugate
Carthage, already a strong power in the west, the Phoenicians refused
on the ground of the kinship between Carthage and Phoenicia. And
the help of Phoenicia was so essential to the Persian monarch that
he countermanded the order. Indeed the relation of Phoenicia to
Persia amounted to something more nearly like that of an ally than
a conquered province, for it was to the interests of Persia to
keep the Phoenicians happy and loyal.

When, in 498 B.C., the Greeks of Asia and the neighboring islands
revolted, it was due chiefly to the loyalty of the Phoenicians that the
Persian empire was saved. Thereafter, the Persian yoke was fastened
on the Asiatic Greeks, and any prospect of a Greek civilization
developing on the eastern shore of the AEgean was destroyed.

[Illustration: GREEK WAR GALLEY

From Torr, _Ancient Ships_.]

But on the western shore lay flourishing Greek cities still independent
of Persian rule. Moreover, the coastal towns like Corinth and Athens
were developing considerable power on the sea, and it was evident
that unless European Greece were subdued it would stand as a barrier
between Persia and the western Mediterranean. Darius perceived the
situation and prepared to destroy these Greek states before they
should become too formidable. The story of this effort, ending at
Salamis and Platea, and breaking for all time the power of Persia,
belongs in the subsequent chapter that narrates the rise and fall
of Athens as a sea power.

At this point, it is worth pausing to consider in detail the war
galley which the Phoenicians had de