United States or Ghana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The following year, however, it took an important island, Aradus, off the coast of Syria, once a stronghold of the Phnicians, and sacked it with savage barbarity. An expedition sent from Constantinople to recover Alexandria was met by this fleet and routed. This first naval victory over the Christians gave the Saracens unbounded confidence in their ability to fight on the sea.
There remain fifteen important cities, of which six may be placed in the first rank and nine in the second the six being Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Byblus or Gebal, Marathus, and Tripolis; the nine, Laodicea, Simyra, Arka, Aphaca, Berytus, Ecdippa, Accho, Dor, and Joppa. It will be sufficient in the present place to give some account of these fifteen.
"If my father Iarbas submitted to the domination of Carthage, it was because at the head of it was Hamilcar, an African, a Numidian like ourselves. I hate the Carthaginian merchants as bitterly as you do those ancient Phœnicians from the rock-bound Aradus who prospered and reproduced like worms, afterwards to cross the sea and take possession of our beautiful soil of Africa.
Importance of the cities in Phoenicia Their names and relative eminence Cities of the first rank Sidon Tyre Arvad or Aradus Marathus Gebal or Byblus Tripolis Cities of the second rank Aphaca Berytus Arka Ecdippa Accho Dor Japho or Joppa Ramantha or Laodicea Fivefold division of Phoenicia. Phoenicia, like Greece, was a country where the cities held a position of extreme importance.
Here he erected altars and offered sacrifices to the gods, after which he received the submission of the principal Phoenician states, among which Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, and Aradus may be distinctly recognized. He then proceeded inland, and visited the mountain range of Amanus, where he cut timber, set up a sculptured memorial, and offered sacrifice.
At this time an architect from Aradus, Callias by name, coming to Rhodes, gave a public lecture, and showed a model of a wall, over which he set a machine on a revolving crane with which he seized an helepolis as it approached the fortifications, and brought it inside the wall.
The sons of the great king, who had reached Phoenician Aradus and there embarked vaingloriously on shipboard to claim mastery of the Western Sea, were reduced to little better than vassals of their father's former vassal, Babylon; and up to the close of the eleventh century Assyria had not revived.
It may have exercised a dominion over the entire tract from Mount Casius to Paltos, where the dominion of Aradus began. Laodicea is now Latakia, and is famous for the tobacco grown in the neighbourhood. It still makes use of its ancient port, which would be fairly commodious if it were cleared of the sand that at present chokes it.
Hence they called the tract Phoenicia, or "the Land of Palms;" and the people who inhabited it the Phoenicians, or "the Palm-tree people." The term was from the first applied with a good deal of vagueness. The palm is the numismatic emblem of Aradus, and though not now very frequent in the region which Strabo calls "the Aradian coast-tract," must anciently have been among its chief ornaments.
Upon this he spent some days in acquiring new strength, the fleet among other reinforcements came to him speedily from Asia, and crossed over into Aradus with the object of getting both money and ships from the people also. There he was intercepted with but few followers and ran into danger.
Word Of The Day