in Crete is indicated by the haven "Phoenix," where St. Paul's
conductors hoped to have wintered their ship;[556] by the town of
Itanus, which was named after a Phoenician founder,[557] and was a
staple of the purple-trade,[558] and by the existence near port Phoenix
of a town called "Araden." Leben, on the south coast, near Cape
Leo, seems also to have derived its name from the Semitic word for
"lion."[559] Crete, however, does not appear to have been occupied by
the Phoenicians at more than a few points, or for colonising so much
as for trading purposes. They used its southern ports for refitting and
repairing their ships, but did not penetrate into the interior, must
less attempt to take possession of the whole extensive territory. It was
otherwise with the smaller islands. Cythera is said to have derived its
name from the Phoenician who colonised it, and the same is also reported
of Melos.[560] Ios was, we are told, originally called Phoenicé;[561]
Anaphé had borne the name of Membliarus, after one of the companions
of Cadmus;[562] Oliarus, or Antiparos, was colonised from Sidon.[563]
Thera's earliest inhabitants were of the Phoenician race;[564] either
Phoenicians or Carians had, according to Thucydides,[565] colonised in
remote times "the greater part of the islands of the Ænean." There was a
time when probably all the Ægean islands were Phoenician possessions,
or at any rate acknowledged Phoenician influence, and Siphnus gave its
gold, its silver,[566] and its lead,[567] Cythera its shell-fish,[568]
Paros its marble, Melos its sulphur and its alum,[569] Nisyrus its
millstones,[570] and the islands generally their honey,[571] to increase
the wealth and advance the commercial interests of their Phoenician
masters.

From the Sporades and Cyclades the advance was easy to the islands
of the Northern Ægean, Lemnos, Imbrus, Thasos, and Samothrace. The
settlement of the Phoenicians in Thasos is attested by Herodotus, who