CANON RAWLINSON'S HISTORY OF PHENICIA.*

DURING his long tenure of the Camden Professorship of Ancient History at Oxford, Canon Rawlinson wrote a History of the Ancient Monarchies of the East. It filled four large octavo volumes, and sold well. The author refers with pride, in his preface, to the success which crowned this work, and similar success may be safely predicted for his present volume It may be remembered, though, that his previous History appeared at a very opportune moment. Public curiosity had been excited by the discoveries made by Layard and others in the East, and the Professor gratified that curiosity by illustrating his History with many admirable drawings.

• The History of Phoenicia. By George Rawlinson, Canon of Canterbury. London : Longman and Co. 1889. He had also recently preached the-tBampton -Lectures for' 1859, and the subject of those lectures was " Historical Evidences of the Truth of the Scripture Record, with special reference to the Doubts and Discoveries of Modern Times" It was natural, therefore, that, as a historian, he lost no opportunity of showing what one of his critics called "the exact coherence and harmony between profane history and that of the Bible." _ It was natural also, a quarter of a century ago, that a History written on those lines by a manz,of accurate and sober learning met with success. But from a purely literary point of view, no very high praise can be assigned to' Canon Rawlinson as a historian. He- is patient of details, indeed, and painstaking, and tolerably impartial. But his style lacks the charm which in the last resort makes a historian's reputaticin permanent. This History of Phcenicia, for instance, reads like•a prodigiously long article on Phcenicia, written for a publication of fifty times the size of the Encyclopmdia Britanniza. So that if theanthor, by reason of his accuracy, is seldom caught napping, so much will hardly be said of some of his readers. His chapter on the geography, physical and topical, of Phcenicia forms a curious contrast to Napoleon's description of Italy, and the only sentence in it that can fairly be called striking is that in which we read that the main productions of Phoenicia must always have been vegetable rather than animal, and have consisted in its timber, especially cedars and pines.

On the ethnography of, the Phcenicians there was nothing new to be said. They belong to the group of nations called Semitic, which comprises the Assyrians, who later on became Babylonians, the Aramseans or Syrians, the Moabites, the Arabians, the Hebrews, and the Phcenicians. Human sacrifices were in vogue, more or less, among some of these nations. But the Phcenicians bore away the palm for senselessness with the children whom they offered to—

"Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood

Of human sacrifice and parents' tears," and with the " lustful orgies " which they practised in honour of Astarte. The Canon suggests no explanation of how these orgies may have originated, and can only say of the tribute paid to Baal that it was probably grounded on the notion that children were the dearest possessions of their parents, and, as pure and innocent beings, were an offering most certain to propitiate the wrath of that grisly god. His counterfeit pre- sentment in the section on the methetic art of Phcenicia, is ugly enough ; but it is not clear that the artist intended to make it ugly. Ugliness, with few exceptions, is the badge of all Phoenician art, though the finely executed illustrations of it in this volume may be fairly called beautiful.

The chapter on the mercantile navy of Phcenicia is very interesting. But we are not quite sure that the Canon does not give his "pioneers of civilisation" credit for more in- trepidity and love of adventure than they possessed. Many, and perhaps the majority of his readers, will admire and wonder at the dauntless merchant sailors who made their way from Tyre to the Scilly Isles in ships driven by none too manageable oars and sails. Visions of these adventurers crossing the Bay of Biscay will probably strike the imagina- tion of those readers. It may be worth while, therefore, to con- sider how that voyage was first, and perhaps, with some slight modifications, always made The Phcenicians would hug the shore from Cadiz to the neighbourhood of Boulogne, whence, crossing the Straits of Dover, they would hug it again from Dungeness to the Land's End. It is probable that, from the first, stations of call were founded by the provident Orientals on the English, French, and Spanish coasts. It is probable, also, that they were as much as possible fair-weather sailors. And it is more than probable that their vessels could, on emergency, be beached in ordinary times with impunity. These considerations do not detract from the courage which the Phcenioians showed in undertaking such a voyage. But they tend, if correct, to show that they were actuated by a thirst for gain rather than by a love of adventure. And there is priractlacie evidence that the above considera- tions are correct, in the fact that the captain of a Phoenician merchantman, finding himself followed by the vessels of some other nation, wrecked his own in order that the route to the Cassiterides, or Isles of Tin, might remain a secret.

Renan, in his brilliant but not over-trustworthy sketch of Phcenicia, marks die noticeable fact that the inventors of; writing, as the Phcenicians were deemed by all antiquity to be, have scarcely left the world any literature. The Teiipitis of Ranno, and the Phoenician Instaiyof SanChonlatlion, are the only samples of it that have reached us. The foinibr was translated into Greek by we know not whom, an latter

was translated into Greek by Philo of Byblus. Boyle doubted ' the authenticity of Hanno's Periplus. 'Canon Rawlinetin doeS not Share Boyle's doubts, but he gives more praise to Ilintio*S' narrative than it deserves. He speaks of it as having th&

directness of Caesar's Commentaries and of the Duke of Wellington's Despatches, and he has Montesquieu to keep' him in countenance. But the work that has reached us -as

H_anno's account of the circumnavigation of Africa, - is k30' short, that a translation of 'the whole of it does not fill more than a few pages of this book. The reader can

judge' for himself between Canon Rawlinson's estimate of this fragment and our own. An inscription on a tomb

found at Beyrout in 1886, shows that there was a ' -be- lief in Phoenicia analogous to that which the inscriptio;" beneath his bust in Stratfor&upon-Avon Church seethe to

indicate that Shakspeare held. . And this belief is all the more' curious, because the nation thought, as Job did, that our life is rounded with a sleep. Canon Rawlinson, by-the:way, refuses to see in " Women weeping for Tammuz " any reference'

to the declension of the sun in the winter constellations. It is likely enough that he is right ; and-if he is, the origin of the Adonis or Tammuz myth raises a question of which adepts in-,

the lore of myths are unable to hazard even a vague solution, The Phcenioians were -no propagandists of their uncouth.- religion, but they clung to it with. Semitic obstinacy and., fidelity. The celebrated defence of Tyre against Alexander= of Macedon was due to the feelings raised by that conqueror's refusal to pay sufficient reverence, to Melkarth. The arts of war, however, were never practised by the Phcenicians so

successfully as the arts of peace were. Vessel for vessel, their. navy was never a match for that of Athens, and the victories, of Hannibal were not won by soldiers of Phcenioian descent. A full, but not too full, account is given of the political history of Phcenicia from the foundation of Tyre to its submission to Rome. It yielded easily to Assyria, straggled long and fiercely with Egypt, and bedame an important dependency of Persia. We have spoken of the resistance which it offered to

Alexander, and under his successors it became thoroughly Hellenised. A proof of this may be seen in the fact that the ablest literary opponent of Christianity was a Tyrian of the name of Porphyry. Nor would it be too much to say that, Roman rule left Phcenicia practically as it found it. The great civilisers of antiquity welded Gaul and Spain to their civilisation, as England has not yet succeeded in welding Ireland to hers; but they stood to their Eastern possessions, pretty much as England stands to India. They certainly were never what Canon Rawlinson calls them, in the peroration of his History, oppressors of Phoenicia,. That peroration runs.

as follows :—

" The mission of the Phcenicians as a people was accom- plished before the subjugation to Rome began. Under the Romans they were still ingenious, industrious, intelligent. But in the earlier times they were far more than this. They were' the great pioneers of civilisation. Intrepid, inventive, enter- prising, they at once made great progress in the arts them- selves, and carried their knowledge, their active habits, and their commercial instincts into the remotest regions of the old continent. They exercised a stimulating, refining, and civilising influence wherever they -went. North and South, and East and West, they adventured themselves among perils of all kinds, actuated more by the love of adventure than by the thirst for gain, conferring benefits, spreading knowledge, suggesting, encouraging, and developing trade, turning men from the bar- barous and unprofitable pursuits of war and bloodshed to the peaceful occupations of productive industry. They did not aim at conquest; they united the various races of men by the friendly links of mutual advantage and mutual dependence, conciliated them, softened them, humanised them. While among the nations of the earth generally, brute-force was worshipped as the true source of power, and the only basis of national repute, the Phcenicians succeeded in proving that as much could be done by arts as by arms, and by the quiet agencies of exploration, trade, and commerce, as by the violent and brutal methods of war, massacre, and ravage. They were the first to set this example. If the history of the world since their time has not been wholly one of the potency in human affairs of blood and iron,' it is very much owing to them. They, and their kinsmen of Carthage, showed. mankind what a power might be wielded by commercial States. The lesson has not been altogether neglected in the past. May the writer be pardoned if, in the last words of what is probably his last historical work, he expresses a hope that in the future- the nations of the earth will more and more take the lesion to' heart, and vie with each other in the arts which adorned Phcenicia

rather than in the arts which exalted Rome, her oppressor and destroyer ?"

This summary is not quite impartial. The Romans formed one wing, and that the mightiest, of the noble army which founded ancient civilisation. Commerce was never the backbone of that civilisation, and commerce even in modern times has not yet proved to be so sinless an agent of civilisation as Canon Rawlinson optimistically considers her. War followed the track of Phoenician commerce with unerring footsteps. And Ezekiel dwells as emphatically upon the harm which the multitude of her merchandise did to Tyre, as Livy dwells upon Punica fides. It may be conceded that some exaggeration may lurk in the language of the prophet and in that of the historian. It is probable that " the pioneers of civilisation" wrought far more good than evil to mankind. But it is difficult to believe that their efforts did much towards abrogating or mollifying the horrors of war. The Canon's well-meaning wish is not likely, it seems, to be soon fulfilled. The British Empire, at all events, is still in need of all appliances and means for carrying out most strenuously a policy of "blood and iron." But in any case, the Phoenicians were an interesting people, and Canon Rawlinson has told their story in a volume which deserves to find a place on the shelves of every lover of historical literature.