undermined; their colonies, grown old enough to stand alone, fell
away from them, some after a hard fight, others in mutual agreement or
silently; and the nations in whose estimation and fear they had held the
first place, and who had been tributary to them, disdained them, ignored
them, and finally struck them utterly out of the list of nations, till
they dwindled away miserably, a warning to all who should come after
them."[314]

The prominent qualities in this description would seem to be industry
and perseverance, audacity in enterprise, adaptability and pliability,
acuteness of intellect, unscrupulousness, and want of good faith. The
Phoenicians were certainly among the most industrious and persevering of
mankind. The accounts which we have of them from various quarters,
and the remains which cover the country that they once inhabited,
sufficiently attest their unceasing and untiring activity through almost
the whole period of their existence as a nation. Always labouring in
their workshops at home in mechanical and æsthetic arts, they were at
the same time constantly seeking employment abroad, ransacking the
earth for useful or beautiful commodities, building cities, constructing
harbours, founding colonies, introducing the arts of life among wild
nations, mining and establishing fisheries, organising lines of land
traffic, perpetually moving from place to place, and leaving wherever
they went abundant proofs of their diligence and capacity for hard work.
From Thasos in the East, where Herodotus saw "a large mountain turned
topsy-turvy by the Phoenicians in their search for gold,"[315] to the
Scilly Islands in the West, where workings attributable to them are
still to be seen, all the metalliferous islands and coast tracts bear
traces of Phoenician industry in tunnels, adits, and air-shafts,
while manufactured vessels of various kinds in silver, bronze, and
terra-cotta, together with figures and gems of a Phoenician type, attest