The port is the centre for numerous lines of steamers, of which the chief are the Messageries Maritimes, which ply to the eastern Mediterranean, the east coast of Africa, Australia, India, Indo-China, Havre and London, and the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, whose vessels run to Algiers, Tunis, Malta, Corsica, Morocco and the Antilles. In addition many important foreign lines call at the port, among them being the P. and O., the Orient, the North German Lloyd, and the German East Africa lines.
Marseilles has five chief railway stations, two of which serve the new harbours, while one is alongside the old port; the city is on the main line of the Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway from the Riviera and Toulon to Paris via Arles, Avignon and Lyons, another less important line connecting it with Aix.
Soap-making, introduced in antiquity from Savona and Genoa, is carried on in upwards of fifty factories. These utilize the products of the oil-distilleries and of the chemical works, the latter being also an important adjunct to the manufacture of candles, another leading industry. A large quantity of iron, copper and other ores is smelted in the blast-furnaces of Saint Louis in the vicinity and in other foundries, and the Mediterranean Engineering Company and other companies have large workshops for the construction or repair of marine steam-engines and every branch of iron shipbuilding. To these industries must be added flour-milling, the manufacture of semolina and other farinaceous foods and of biscuits, bricks and tiles, rope, casks, capsules for bottles and other tin-goods, tanning, distilling, brewing and sulphur- and sugar-refining. There are state tobacco and match factories.
_History._--The Greek colony of Massalia (Lat. _Massilia_) was founded by the mariners of Phocaea in Asia Minor, about 600 B.C. The settlement of the Greeks in waters which the Carthaginians reserved for their own commerce was not effected without a naval conflict; it is not improbable that the Phoenicians were settled at Marseilles before the Greek period, and that the name of the town is the Phoenician for "settlement." Whether the judges (_sophetim_, "suffetes") of the Phoenician sacrificial tablet of Marseilles were the rulers of a city existing before the advent of the Phocaeans, or were consuls for Punic residents in the Greek period, is disputed. In 542 B.C. the fall of the Phocaean cities before the Persians probably sent new settlers to the Ligurian coast and cut off the remote city of Massalia from close connexion with the mother country. Isolated amid alien populations, the Massaliots made their way by prudence in dealing with the inland tribes, by vigilant administration of their oligarchical government, and by frugality united to remarkable commercial and naval enterprise. Their colonies spread east and west along the coast from Monaco to Cape St Martin in Spain, carrying with them the worship of Artemis; the inland trade, in which wine was an important element, can be traced by finds of Massalian coins across Gaul and through the Alps as far as Tirol. In the 4th century B.C. the Massaliot Pytheas visited the coasts of Gaul, Britain and Germany, and Euthymenes is said to have sailed down the west coast of Africa as far as Senegal. The great rival of Massalian trade was Carthage, and in the Punic Wars the city took the side of Rome, and was rewarded by Roman assistance in the subjugation of the native tribes of Liguria. In the war between Caesar and Pompey Massilia took Pompey's side and in A.D. 49 offered a vain resistance to Caesar's lieutenant Trebonius. In memory of its ancient services the city, "without which," as Cicero says, "Rome had never triumphed over the Transalpine nations," was left as a _civitas libera_, but her power was broken and most of her dependencies taken from her. From this time Massilia has little place in Roman history; it became for a time an important school of letters and medicine, but its commercial and intellectual importance declined. The town appears to have been christianized before the end of the 3rd century, and at the beginning of the 4th century was the scene of the martyrdom of St Victor. Its reputation partly revived through the names of Gennadius and Cassian, which give it prominence in the history of Semi-Pelagianism and the foundation of western monachism.