before Tyre: he had then to pay the price of his temerity
by 120 talents of gold and many loads of merchandise (728 B.C.). The
punishment was light and the loss inconsiderable in comparison with
the accumulated wealth of the city, which its maritime trade was daily
increasing:* Mutton thought the episode was closed,** but the peaceful
policy of his house, having been twice interrupted, could not be
resumed.

*[For a description of the trade carried on by Tyre, cf.
Ezelc. xxvi., xxvii., and xxviii.---Tr.]

** Pygmalion having died about 774 B.C., and Hiram II. not
appearing till 742 B.C., it is probable that we should
intercalate between these two Kings at least one sovereign
whose name is still unknown.

Southern Phoenicia, having once launched on the stream of Asiatic
politics, followed its fluctuations, and was compelled henceforth to
employ in her own defence the forces which had hitherto been utilised
in promoting her colonial enterprises. But it was not due to the foolish
caprice of ignorant or rash sovereigns that Tyre renounced her former
neutral policy: she was constrained to do so, almost perforce, by the
changes which had taken place in Europe. The progress of the Greeks, and
their triumph in the waters of the AEgean and Ionian Seas, and the rapid
expansion of the Etruscan navy after the end of the ninth century, had
gradually restricted the Phoenician merchantmen to the coasts of the
Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic: they industriously exploited
the mineral wealth of Africa and Spain, and traffic with the barbarous
tribes of Morocco and Lusitania, as well as the discovery and working of
the British tin mines, had largely compensated for the losses occasioned
by the closing of the Greek and Italian markets. Their ships, obliged
now to coast along the inhospitable cliffs of Northern Africa and to
face the open sea, were more strongly and scientifically built than any
vessels hitherto constructed. The Egyptian undecked galleys, with stem
and stern curving inwards, were discarded as a build ill adapted to
resist the attacks of wind or wave. The new Phoenician galley had a long,
low, narrow, well-balanced hull, the stern raised and curving inwards
above the steersman, as heretofore, but the bows pointed and furnished
with a sharp ram projecting from the keel, equally serviceable to cleave
the waves or to stave in the side of an enemy's ship. Motive power was
supplied by two