phnicia

Updated: June 28, 2025

The classic names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phnicia.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

To prevent is safer, as well as more honorable, than to repel, an attack; and a design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that had been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore of Phnicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet.

Edward Gibbon - History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5