Phoenicia grew so
extraordinarily rich as to rouse the envy of neighboring rulers,
and to maintain themselves the traders of Tyre and Sidon had to
develop fighting fleets as well as trading fleets.

Early in Egyptian history the distinction was made between the
"round" ships of commerce and the "long" ships of war. The round
ship, as the name suggests, was built for cargo capacity rather
than for speed. It depended on sail, with the oars as auxiliaries.
The long ship was designed for speed, depending on oars and using
sail only as auxiliary. And while the round ship was of deep draft
and rode to anchor, the shallow flat-bottomed long ships were drawn
up on shore. The Phoenicians took the Egyptian and Cretan models
and improved them. They lowered the bows of the fighting ships,
added to the blunt ram a beak near the water's edge, and strung
the shields of the fighting men along the bulwarks to protect the
rowers. To increase the driving force and the speed, they added a
second and then a third bank of oars, thus producing the "bireme" and
the "trireme." These were the types they handed down to the Greeks,
and in fact there was little advance made beyond the Phoenician war
galley during all the subsequent centuries of the Age of the Oar.

About the beginning of the seventh century before Christ the Phoenicians
had reached the summit of their power on the seas. Their extraordinary
wealth tempted the king of Assyria, in 725 B.C., to cross the mountain
barrier with a great army. He had no difficulty in overrunning the
country, but the inhabitants fled to their colonies. The great
city of Tyre, being on an island, defied the invader, and finally
the Assyrian king gave up and withdrew to his own country. Having
realized at great cost that he could not subdue the Phoenicians
without a navy, he set about finding one. By means of bribes and
threats he managed to seduce three Phoenician cities to his side.
These furnished him sixty ships officered by Phoenicians, but manned
by Assyrian crews.

With this fleet an attack was made on Tyre, but such was the contempt
felt by the Tyrians for their enemy that they held only twelve ships
for defense. These twelve went out against the sixty, utterly routed
them, and took 500 prisoners. For five years longer the Assyrian
king maintained a siege of Tyre from the mainland, attempting to
keep the city from its source of fresh water, but as the Tyrians
had free command of the sea, they had