aim and a patriotic purpose; but the fragments of Ctesias show us that other queens of Persia employed the same means to gratify the worst extravagances of revenge, jealousy and ambition. It was at such a banquet as Esther's, that queen Amestris obtained from Xerxes power over her sister-in-law, and mutilated her in a manner too horrible to be described.

Uncertainty of succession is the necessary result from the existence of a harem, and this has produced innumerable civil wars in every age of oriental history. In ancient as in modern Persia, every vacancy of the throne produced fratricide, assassination, and not unfrequently civil war; so that the empire was periodically subjected to the most frightful disorders. These evils were aggravated by the constitution of the court, which consisted chiefly of the royal tribe of the Pasargadæ, men who claimed clanship or relationship with the sovereign, and therefore added pride of birth to insolence of station. Both causes led them to tyrannize over the other subjects of the empire, and as they had the monopoly of all high offices, the rest of the nation was severely oppressed to gratify the rapacity of this "subordination of vultures." Hence the great body of the nation felt little influence in the fate of their rulers; one or two pitched battles decided the fate of Persia; there was no national resistance to the invader-it seemed as if Darius and Alexander merely contended for the military occupation of the country, while the great body of the nation looked on as unconcerned spectators.

It is impossible not to be struck with the similarity between the ancient Persians and the modern Turks; both were essentially nomades, and continued so in character and partly in habit, long after they had acquired settled abodes. The adherence to the usages of their ancestral

life has been with both the chief element of their weakness and their barbarism, and in all probability will in both cases produce the ruin of their empire. Fanaticism, indeed, has been a conservative principle which has long maintained Turkey, but it is very doubtful whether its efficacy would resist the efforts of Russia, did not the mutual jealousy of the European powers prevent them from permitting schemes of conquest.

CHAPTER IV.

PHOENICIAN AND CARTHAGINIAN CIVILIZATION.

FROM empires founded by warlike races of nomade conquerors, in which the efforts of the legislators were chiefly directed to maintain as much as possible the training and the feelings belonging to their ancient wandering life, after the community had become settled, we turn to a race owing its pre-eminence almost exclusively to the arts of peace. "The Phoenicians," says Heeren, "spread themselves, not by fire and sword, and sanguinary contests, but by peaceable and slower efforts, yet equally certain. No overthrown cities and desolated countries, such as marked the military expeditions of the Medes and Assyrians, denoted their progress; but a long series of flourishing colonies, agriculture, and the arts of peace, among previously rude barbarians, pointed out the victorious career of the Tyrian Hercules."*

the

The Phoenicians belonged to the same race as the Canaanites and Syrians, and probably were a trading people on the coasts of the Red Sea before they migrated to the Mediterranean. Though not equal to the Egyptians, the Canaanites had attained a very high degree of civilization so early as the days of Abraham. A portion of them, at least, retained the original purity of religion, and worshipped the one true God, as is evident from the history of

* Heeren's Asiatic Nations, ii. 57. There can be no doubt that the mythus of the Tyrian Hercules describes the maritime progress of the Phoenicians, for wherever they formed a colony they established the worship of their national deity.

Melchizedek. But at the same time traces may be discovered of the increase of the worship of the productive powers of Nature, a form of idolatry which has always led to sensuality and licentiousness. Their mode of government was monarchical, but not despotic; the public business was transacted in popular assemblies, and each petty king was obliged to consult his subjects before entering into any important engagement. It was to the children of Heth, not to their king, that Abraham bowed himself when about to make a purchase of land; Ephron did not treat with the patriarch alone; the whole tribe took a share in the transaction; and Hamar, king of Shechem, consulted his subjects respecting the answer he should make to the proposals of the sons of Jacob. Each city had its own king, as was the case in Greece during the heroic ages; but though independent of each other, they were frequently united by some form of confederation; we find, for instance, "the five kings of the cities of the plain" leagued together against Chedorlaomer. The cities were strongly fortified; in the words of the sacred historian, they were "great, and fenced up to heaven." Exorbitant ambition and lust of rule could not have been among their vices, or else there would not have been so many petty kingdoms remaining when the country was invaded by Joshua. There is, indeed, one exception, in the instance of Adonizebek; but the sacred narrative shows that his ambitious cruelty was a rare and individual example.

The separation of the Canaanites into so many petty states greatly facilitated the progress of an invading army; it was not until the submission of Gibeon, which appears to have excited more alarm than the destruction of Ai, that combination was formed to resist the progress of Joshua, and even then five monarchs only joined the confeder

acy. Still the resistance of the Canaanites was very pertinacious: notwithstanding the miraculous aid which the Israelites received, six years elapsed before the conquest of Canaan was effected, and even then it was far from complete, for the Israelites, weary of the war, permitted many of the tribes to remain in their original habitations.

The Israelite wars must have destroyed a great part of the land trade of the Syrians, and consequently must have given a stimulus to the maritime enterprise of those who had settled along the coast between Aradus and Tyre. Their country was the natural asylum of those who fled before Joshua; it was a short line of coast, rich in bays and harbours, protected by the chain of Mount Libanus, whose heights not only covered the land, but being crowned with magnificent forests, supplied valuable materials for fleets and habitations. In the Book of Joshua, Tyre is mentioned as "a strong city," and apparently as the limit of the dominions of the Israelites on their western frontier, and we find it similarly described when the children of Israel were numbered by command of David.

An enterprising population in a restricted territory naturally devotes itself to commerce and manufactures; and in the earliest ages we find the Phoenicians celebrated for their skill and industry in various productions of art. Their females particularly excelled in spinning and weaving. In the forty-fifth Psalm, which was primarily designed as a nuptial ode on the marriage of Solomon with an Egyptian princess, though prophetically it sets forth "the majesty and grace of Christ's kingdom," it is particularly mentioned that "the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift." In the sixth book of the Iliad, we find Hecuba selecting a garment embroidered by Phoenician cap