This energetic people conveyed the ivory of Africa to Europe, worked the lead mines of the Eastern Pyrenees, and sent the coral and purple of the Mediterranean and the bronze of the Po basin over Northern Europe. The prosperity of Tyre depended on its trade.
“Inventors of alphabetical writing, of calculation, and of astronomy, essential to them in their distant navigations, skilful architects, gold-workers, jewellers, engravers, weavers, dyers, miners, founders, glass-workers, coiners, past-masters of all industries, wonderful sailors, intrepid tradesmen, the Phœnicians, by their incomparable activity, held the old world in their grip; and from the Persian Gulf to the Isles of Britain, either by their caravans or by their ships, were everywhere present as buyers or sellers.”[1]
Archæological discoveries come to substantiate the conclusions arrived at from scanty allusions by the ancients. The Carthaginians had succeeded to the trade of Tyre; but Carthage was a daughter of Tyre. At Marseilles have been found forty-seven little stone chapels or shrines of Melkarth, seated under an arch, either with his hands raised, sustaining the arch, or with them resting on his knees; and these are identical in character with others found at Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage. Nor is this all. An inscription has been unearthed, also at Marseilles, containing a veritable Levitical code for the worship of Baal, regulating the emoluments of his priests.
In the year B.C. 542 a fleet of Phocœans came from Asia Minor, flying from the Medes; and the citizens of Phocœa, abandoning their ancient homes, settled along the coast of the Riviera. Arles, Marseilles, Nice—all the towns became Greek. It was they who introduced into the land of their adoption the vine and the olive. They acquired the trade of the Mediterranean after the fall of Carthage, B.C. 146.
The Greeks of the coast kept on good terms with Rome. They it was who warned Rome of the approach of Hannibal; and when the Ambrons and Teutons poured down a mighty host with purpose to devastate Italy, the Phocœan city of Marseilles furnished Marius with a contingent, and provisioned his camp at the junction of the Durance with the Rhone.
The Romans were desirous of maintaining good relations with the Greek colonies, and when the native Ligurians menaced Nice and Antibes, they sent an army to their aid, and having defeated the barbarians, gave up the conquered territory to the Greeks.