have been sometimes red. Some have regarded the name "Phoenician" as
indicating that they were of a red or red-brown colour;[338] but it is
better to regard the appellation as having passed from the country to
its people, and as applied to the country by the Greeks on account of
the palm-trees which grew along its shores.



CHAPTER IV--THE CITIES

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. The nation was not a centralised one, with a
single recognised capital, like Judæa, or Samaria, or Syria, or Assyria,
or Babylonia. It was, like Greece, a congeries of homogeneous tribes,
who had never been amalgamated into a single political entity, and who
clung fondly to the idea of separate independence. Tyre and Sidon are
often spoken of as if they were metropolitical cities; but it may be
doubted whether there was ever a time when either of them could claim
even a temporary authority over the whole country. Each, no doubt, from
time to time, exercised a sort of hegemony over a certain number of the
inferior cities; but there was no organised confederacy, no obligation
of any one city to submit to another, and no period, as far as our
knowledge extends, at which all the cities acknowledged a single one as