3. Decline of Phænician Commerce. The Phoenicians, from what has just been remarked, were then a manufacturing and a tracing people, depending on others for their subsistence, n some points resembling the English, in others more lie the Dutch. The prosperity of such a people could not be everlasting, and it is interesting to examine into the causes of their decline. It is probable that the increase of the wealth and power of Carthage was in some degree prejudicial to the parent state, as the trade of Spain must have fallen, in a great measure, into the hands of the former. In such a case, it is likely that the Phoenicians must have had to pay dearer for its productions than heretofore, and perhaps, as Carthage and the other colonies were manufacturers also, the demand for Phonician goods decreased. It is also supposed, that the Phoenicians must have suffered by the planting of the Grecian colonies on the coast of Asia Minor, as these likewise manufactured to a great extent, and, it is almost certain, traded directly, by means of caravans, with Thapsacus on the Euphrates, to which place the goods of Babylon and India were brought up the river. We doubt, however, if they interfered much with the Phoenicians, as their trade took chiefly a northern di

on the west side of the Persian Gulf. Here the an- Sarephta. Little trinkets and ornaments were also cient geographers placed the isles of Aradus and Ty- made by this people. The Phoenician merchant offers rus, to which the Tyrians brought the products of In- for sale to the females of Syria a string of amber beads dia. They were taken by the caravans across the with gold ornaments. (Hom., Od., 14, 459.) The Arabian desert to Tyre on the Mediterranean, at that ivory, which they procured from Ethiopia and India, time the great mart of the world.-A commercial road received new forms under the skilful hands of the Tyrbetween Tyre and the Euphrates would be necessary ians; and all the costly decorations of Solomon's temto diffuse the products of Tyrian industry and com- ple were made under the direction of an artist of Tyre, merce, and also to procure the valuable wool furnished whose mother was "a woman of the daughters of Dan, by the nomadic tribes. In the Syrian desert, about and his father a man of Tyre." (Chronicles, 2, 1, 14; three days' journey from the old ford of the Euphra- | 2, 4, 17.—Long's Ancient Geography, p. 3, seqq.— tes, modern travellers behold with astonishment the Heeren, Ideen, vol. 2, p. 1, seqq.) magnificent and extensive ruins of Palmyra. The Arabs of the desert still call it Tadmor, and attribute these buildings to the magic power of Solomon. We are told that Solomon built Baleth and Tadmor in the wilderness. The latter was no doubt intended as a great entrepôt between the Euphrates and the sea. Its situation, and the possession of springs of water in an arid desert, would not fail to attract a prince so wise as Solomon, and a merchant with such extensive dealings as Hiram. From the mountains of Armenia, the Tyrians procured copper and slaves: the regions of the Caucasus, at the present day, supply the harems of the Turks and Persians with the females of Georgia and Circassia. The Phoenicians seem, in the earlier ages, not to have had very extensive dealings with the Egyptians but cotton and cotton cloths are enumerated among the articles which they received from Egypt. When Thebes, in Upper Egypt, ceased to be the place of resort for the caravans of Africa and Asia, the favourable situation of Memphis, at the apex of the Delta, made it the chief mart of Egypt; and the Tyrians who traded there were so numerous, that a part of the city was inhabited by them.-Grain of various kinds was carried to Tyre from the country of the Hebrews and other parts of Syria. Solomon gave Hiram wheat and oil; and the Tyrian, in exchange, fur-rection, extending into Tartary, and perhaps to China. nished him with the pines and cedars of Libanus. The commercial intercourse between the Greeks and Tyrians appears never to have been great the two trading nations of the Mediterranean were probably jealous of one another; and, besides this, their colonies led them in different directions. Sicily was the point where the Greek and Tyrian merchant met in competition. When the Phoenicians were obliged to submit to the Persians, we find their navy willingly and actively employed against their commercial rivals. —Tyre was, before the era of the Persians, the centre of the traffic of the ancient world: in her markets were found the products of all the countries between India and Spain, between the extremity of the great peninsula of sandy Arabia, and the snowy summits of Caucasus. Her vessels were found in the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, and in the Indian Ocean. There was even a tradition, that in the time of Necho, king of Egypt, some Tyrian ships, at the desire of that king, sailed down the Red Sea; and, after circumnavigating the continent of Africa, entered the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar. (Vid. Africa.)—The Phoenicians furnished the world with several articles produced by their own industry and skill. The dyed cloths of Sidon, and the woven vests and needlework of Phoenician women, were in high repute among the ancient Greeks. The name of Tyrian purple is famil-kings with Judah after the return from captivity. The iar, even in modern times; but it is a mistake to suppose that a single colour is to be understood: deep red and violet colours were those which were most highly prized. The liquor of a shellfish, that was found in abundance on their coast, supplied them with the various colours denominated purple. (Plin., 9, 36.) It was principally woollen cloths the Tyrians used to dye, though cotton and linen dyed garments are mentioned also.-The Phoenicians are said to have possessed the art of making glass: it is probable they had manufactured this article for many centuries at Sidon and

The settlement of the Greeks in Egypt, however, must have been positively injurious to them, as the winetrade of that country, of which they appear before this to have had the monopoly, must have been now, in great measure, carried on by the Greeks in their own bottoms; and perhaps this is the true reason of the hostility which the Phoenicians are said to have evinced to the Greeks in the time of the Persian war. It is remarkable enough, that in the accounts which we have of the trade of Athens and Corinth, no mention is made of any with the Phoenicians. Perhaps their chief commerce was with the colonies in Asia. From the Hebrew prophet it appears that they traded with the Ionians (of Asia) and with the people of the Peloponnesus. The rivalry just noted, however, could have but little affected the prosperity of the Phonicians. The real cause of their decline was the commotions that took place in Western Asia, which caused the downfall of so many states; for independent states are always better customers to a manufacturing people than those which are under the yoke of foreigners. While the kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Damascus, and others flourished, the demand for Phoenician manufactures must have been far gıcater than after they became subject to the monarchs of Babylon and Persia. Let any one, for example, compare Judah under her

very circumstance of there being no court must have made a great difference to those who supplied them with luxuries. The conquest and reduction to prov inces of Babylonia and Egypt by the Persian monarch must have greatly affected the Phoenician commerce; but it was the foundation of Alexandrea by the Macedonian conqueror which proved the ruin of the trade of both Phoenicia and Babylon, just as the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope ruined, in a great measure, Bagdad, Alexandrea, and Venice-the Tyre of the middle ages. From that time

the decline of the prosperity of the towns in the coast of Phoenicia was rapid and irremediable. (Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 27, p. 211, seq.)

the process by which he arrived at his conclusion, it would not follow that he was in error. But if we examine the only reasons which he assigns for his belief that the most ancient Greek alphabet was found at Thebes, we find that they are such as we cannot rely on, though to him they would seem perfectly demonstrative. He produces three inscriptions in verse, which he had seen himself, engraved on some vessels in a temple at Thebes, and in characters which he calls Cadmaan, and which he says nearly resembled the Ionian. These inscriptions purported to record donations made to the temple before the Trojan war, and to be contemporaneous with the acts which they recorded. And that they were really ancient need not be questioned, though imitations of an obsolete mode of writing were not uncommon in Greece'; but their genuineness cannot be safely assumed as the ground of an argument. Other grounds he may indeed have had; but, since he does not mention them, they are to us none, and we are left to form our own judgment on the disputed question of the Cadmæan colony at Thebes. (Thirlwall's Greece, vol. 1, p. 238, seq.) We have already, in a previous article (vid. Cadmus), shown the utter improbability of any Phoenician colony under Cadmus, and have traced this latter name to a Pelasgic origin. In this way, perhaps, the two traditions may be reconciled; one of which makes the Phonicians to have introduced letters into Greece, while the other states that they were previously known to, and invented by the Pelasgi. It is probable that two distinct periods of time are here alluded to, an earlier and a later introduction of them; in both instances, however, from Phoenicia. When the alphabet of this country was first brought in, its use may have been extremely limited; it may have come in, as Knight supposes, with the first Pelasgic settlers, who may have brought an alphabet much less perfect, and, therefore, probably more ancient than the so-called Cadmæan. The second introduction of letters found the Greeks, in all likelihood, much more advanced in civilization, and it therefore took a firmer hold, and became the subject of more established and general tradition. (Consult Knight, Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet, p. 120.-Sandford, Remarks on Thiersch's Gr. Gr., p. 6.. Hug, die Erfindung der Buchstabenschrift,

4. Did Phoenicia give an alphabet to Greece? On this point, though for a long time made the subject of learned discussion, there is now no room for dispute. The names of most of the letters, their order, and the forms which they exhibit in the most ancient monuments, all confirm the truth of the tradition, that the Greek alphabet was derived from the Phonician; and every doubt on this head, which a hasty view of it, in its later state, might suggest, has long since received the most satisfactory solution. Several changes were necessary to adapt the Eastern characters to a foreign and totally different language. The powers of those which were unsuited to the Greek organs were exchanged for others which were wanting in the Phoenician alphabet; some elements were finally rejected as superfluous from the written language, though they were retained for the purpose of numera⚫tion; and, in process of time, the peculiar demands of the Greek language were satisfied by the invention of some new signs. The alterations which the figures of the Greek characters underwent may be partly traced to the inversion of their position, which took place when the Greeks instinctively dropped the Eastern practice of writing from right to left; a change the gradual progress of which is visible in several extant inscriptions. This fact, therefore, is established by evidence, which could scarcely borrow any additional weight from the highest classical authority. But the epoch at which the Greeks received their alphabet | from the Phoenicians is a point as to which we cannot expect to find similar proof; and the event is so remote, that the testimony even of the best historians cannot be deemed sufficient immediately to remove all doubt upon the question. A statement, however, deserving of attention, both on account of its author, and of its internal marks of diligent and thoughtful inquiry, is given by Herodotus. The Phoenicians, he relates, who came with Cadmus to Thebes, introduced letters, along with other branches of knowledge, among the Greeks the characters were at first precisely the same as those which the Phoenicians continued to use in his own day; but their powers and form were gradually changed, first by the Phoenician colonists themselves, and afterward by the Greeks of the adjacent region, who were Ionians. These, as they received their letters from Phoenician teachers, named them Phe-ent day consist of, 1. Coins and inscriptions. 2. Glossnician letters; and the historian adds, that, in his own es and Phanician proper names, occurring in the time, the Iouians called their books or rolls, though Greek and Latin writers. 3. A Phenician passage made from the Egyptian papyrus, skins, because this of considerable length (together with some shorter spewas the material which they had used at an earlier pe- cimens) in the Panulus of Plautus.The coins and riod, as many barbarous nations even then continued to inscriptions give us the written forms of the language do. It cannot be denied that this account appears, at with great accuracy, but throw no light on the sounds first sight, perfectly clear and probable; and yet there of the Phoenician tongue or its system of pronunciaare some points in it which, on closer inspection, tion, since in almost every instance the vowels are raise a suspicion of its accuracy. The vague manner omitted. The ablest work on these is that of Gesein which Herodotus describes the Ionians, who were nius, entitled "Scripturæ Linguæque Phanicia Monuneighbours of the Phoenician colony, seems to imply menta quotquot supersunt," &c., Lips., 1837, 4to.that what he says of them is not grounded on any di- On the other hand, the Punic words that occur in the rect tradition, but is a mere hypothesis or inference. Greek and Roman writers, give, it is true, a sound exThe fact which he appears to have ascertained is, that pressed in the characters of those languages, and show the Asiatic Ionians, who were, according to his own us with what vowels they were enunciated by the Phoview, a very mixed race, were beforehand with the nicians: still, however, there is often very great difother Greeks in the art of writing: they called their ficulty in tracing back these same words to a Phoenibooks or rolls by a name which probably expressed the cian orthography, since the common or vulgar mode Phoenician word for the same thing, and they descri- of pronouncing was accustomed to contract certain bed their alphabet by the epithet which marked its Ori- forms, and to neglect in others the letters that were ental origin. But, as the historian thought he had suf- necessary to indicate the etymology of the term.—The cient grounds for believing that it had been first com- most curious remnant, however, of the Phoenician municated to the Greeks by the Phoenician colony at tongue is the passage, already referred to, in Plautus. Thebes, he concludes that the Asiatic Ionians must It occurs in the first scene of the fifth act of the Pœnuhave received it, not directly from the Phoenicians, but lus, and consists of ten entire Punic verses, expressed through their European forefathers. Still, if this was in Latin characters (for the remaining six are Liby.

:

p. 7.)

5. Remains of the Phænician Language. The remains of the Phoenician language at the pres

naan,

Phoenician, or, as some think, vulgar Punic), to which undoubtedly is the more correct course, and far supe are to be added fourteen short sentences, intermingled rior to the plan pursued by those who have had rewith a Latin dialogue, in the second and third scenes. course to the Arabic, as, for example, Casiri (Bibl Modern scholars have, at various times, exercised their Escurial., vol. 2, p. 27), or to the Maltese idiom, as skill in remodelling and explaining these specimens of Agius de Soldanis (Dissertazione cioè vera spiega. the Phoenician, and in attempting to recall them to the zione della scena della comedia di Plauto in Panulo, analogy of the Hebrew tongue. Some have contined Rom., 1751, 4to) Another class of writers hardly detheir attention to particular words or individual sen- serve mention. They are those dreaming visionaries, tences, such as Joseph Scaliger (ad fragm. Græcorum, who call in to their aid the Irish language! such as Valp. 32), Aldrete (Antiguedades, p. 207), Selden (de Dis lancey (Essay on the Antiq. of the Irish Lang., DubSyris, proleg., c. 2), Le Moyne (Varia Sacra, p. 100, in, 1722, 8vo; Lond, 1808, 8vo), O'Connor (Chron113), Hyde (ad Peritsol., p. 45), Reinesius ('loropov-icles of Eri, &c., from the original MSS. in the Phapeva lingua Punica, c. 12), Tychsen (Nov. Act. Up-nician dialect (1) of the Scythian language, London, sal., vol. 7, p. 100, seq.), and many others, enumera- 1822, 2 vols. 8vo), Villaneuva, (Phoenician Ireland, ted by Fabricius (Bibl. Lat., vol. 1, p. 5), and by the translated by H. O'Brien, Lond, 1833, 8vo), or who Bipont editor of Plautus (vol. 1, p. xix.). A smaller have resource to the Basque, as De l'Ecluse (Gramnumber have undertaken to interpret all the Punic spe- maire Basque, Toulouse, 1826, 8vo), and Santa Tecimens contained in the three scenes alluded to. The resa (Robiano, Etudes, &c., p. 78.-Gesenius, Phœfirst of these was Petitus (Petit), who, in his work en- nic. Mon., p. 357, seqq). titled "Miscellaneorum Libri novem" (p. 58, seqq., Paris. 1640, 4to), endeavoured to mould the Punic of the three scenes into Hebrew, and gave a translation of them in Latin. Pareus, who came after, also exhibited the Punic of Plautus in a Hebrew dress, and even added vowel points; but the whole is done so carelessly and strangely, that the words resemble Chinese and Mongul as much as they do Hebrew. This was in the first and second editions of his Plautus. In the third, however, he adopted the interpretation of Petitus, and even enlarged upon it in a poetical paraphrase. Many subsequent editors of Plautus have followed in the same path, such as Boxhorn, Operarius, Gronovius, and Ernesti. Sixteen years after Petitus, the learned Bochart published the result of his labours on the Punic of the first scene, in his Sacred Geography (Ca2, 6), and executed the task with so much learning and ability, that, during nearly two centuries, until the explanation given by Gesenius in 1837, though there may have been some who have given more probable interpretations of particular phrases and words, no one was found more successful in explaining the passage as a whole. (Gesen., Phan. Mon., p. 359.) Clericus (Le Clerc) closely follows the interpretation of Bochart (Biblioth. Univ. et Hist., vol. 9, p. 256), though he errs in thinking that each verse consists of two hemistichs, which have a similarity of ending. Passing over some others who have written on this same subject, we come to the three most recent expounders of this much-contested passage; namely, Bellermann (Versuch einer Erklärung der Punischen Stellen im Panulus des Plautus. Stück, 1-3, Berlin, 1806-1808, ed. 2, 1812), Count de Robiano (Etudes sur l'ecriture, &c., suivies d'un essai sur la langue Punique, Paris, 1834, 4to), and Gesenius (Phan. Mon., p. 366, seqq.). The first two, abandoning the true view of the subject, as taken by Bochart, regard the whole sixteen verses as Punic, and endeavour, after the example of Petitus, to adapt them, by every possi-ence in the mode of writing and pronouncing, the ble expedient, to the analogy of the Hebrew tongue. Bellermann, however, in doing this, confines himself within the regular limits of Hebraism, whereas Robiano calls in to his aid, at one time the Syriac, at another the Arabic, and discovers also many peculiarities in the structure of the Punic language, of which no one dreamed before, and the sole authority for which is found in his own imagination. The explanation of Gesenius, as may readily be inferred from his known proficiency in Oriental scholarship, is now regarded as having borne away the palm, though some parts have been made the subject of criticism by the learned of his own country. (Gesen., Phan. Mon., p. 366. Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, 1839, p. 539, seqq.)-The writers thus far mentioned have, with the exception, perhaps, of Robiano, attempted to illustrate the Punic of Plautus by a reference to the Hebrew, occasionally calling in the Chaldee and Syriac. This

6. General character of the Phænician tongue. That the Phoenician or Punic language was closely allied to the Hebrew, we learn from the express testimony of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. The latter, in particular, is a very high authority on this subject, since he lived in Africa at a period when the Punic tongue was still spoken in that country, and since, in one part of his writings, he even acknowledges himself to be of Punic origin. (Contra Julian., lib. 3, c. 17.) On another occasion, referring to the Hebrew and Punic, he remarks, “Istæ linguæ non multum inter se differunt." (Quæst. in Jud., lib. 7, qu. 16. — Op., ed. Benedict., vol. 3, p. 477.) So again, speaking of our Saviour, he says, "Hunc Hebræi dicunt Messiam, quod verbum linguæ Punica consonum est, sicut alia permulta et pæne omnia." (Contra lit. Petil., 2, 104.-Op., vol. 9, col. 198.) Again, in another part of his writings, he observes, "Cognatæ quippe sunt linguæ istæ et vicina, Hebræa, Punica et Syra." (In Joann., tract. 15.- Op., vol. 3, col. 302) In commenting on the words of our Saviour (Serm., 35), where he explains what is meant by the term " Mammon," he says, "Hebræum verbum est, cognatum linguæ Punicæ : istæ enim linguæ significationis quadam vicinitate sociantur." To the same effect St. Jerome: Tyrus et Sidon in Phonices litore principes civitates, &c. Quarum Carthago colonia. Unde et Pœni sermone corrupto quasi Phani appellantur. Quarum lingua lingua Hebrææ magna ex parte confinis est." (In Jerem., 5, 25.) So again, "Linguâ quoque Punicâ, quæ de Hebræorum fontibus manare dicitur, proprie virgo alma appellatur." (In Jes., 3, 7.)-Modern scholars, as many as have turned their attention to the subject, have come to the same conclusion, although on one point there exists among them a great difference of opinion. Some of them maintain, for instance, that, with the exception of a slight differ

66

Phoenician was identical with the Hebrew, and free from any forms derived from the cognate dialects. (Tychsen, Comment. de ling. Phan. et Hebr. mutua aqualitate, p. 89.-Akerblad, de Inscr. Oxon., p. 26.

Fabricy, de Phan. lit. fontibus, p. 29, 221.—Gesenius, Gesch. der Hebr. Sprache, &c., p. 229.) Others affirmn, that the Phoenician is like the Hebrew, it is true; but, at the same time, intermingled with Arabic, Syriac, Chaldee, and Samaritan forms. Among these latter may be mentioned Bochart, Mazocchi, Clericus, Sappuhn, Peyron, and Hamaker. The last-mentioned writer, indeed, exceeds all bounds, and blends, in his explanations, all the Semitic tongues, so that he forms for himself a Phoenician language very far removed from the true one. (Hamaker, Diatrib., p. 65.-Id., Miscell. Phan., præf., p. viii., &c.)-If we follow the authority of Gesenius, and we do not know a safer one to take for our guide, the chief features in the

days and a third, then, converted into twenty-seven
years and a third, give the measure of a generation
among men. Reducing this, in order to make the
analogy with the moon as complete as possible, he
gives twenty-six years and two thirds as the result
The computation is then as follows:
Nine generations of men, or the
life of one crow, make 234+6
Four lives of the crow, or that
of a stag, make

Three lives of a stag, or that of

240 years.

960 years.

Phoenician language may be briefly stated as follows: | Poët. Min. Græc., vol. 1, p. 189.)-The whole com 1. The Phoenician agrees in most, if not all, respects putation here turns upon the meaning of the term with the Hebrew, whether we regard roots, or the generation (yeveά). Marcoz takes the moon for his mode of forming and inflecting words.-2. Wherever guide; and as this luminary ceases, like man, to exist, the usage of the earlier writers of the Old Testament only, like him, again to arise, the period of its revoludiffers from that of the later ones, the Phoenician tion becomes the standard required. Twenty-seven agrees with the latter rather than with the former.-3. Only a few words are found that savour of Aramæism, nor will more Aramæisms be found in the remains of the Phoenician language than in the books of the Old Testament.-4. There are still fewer resemblances to Arabism. The most remarkable of these is in the case of the article, which on one occasion occurs under the full forın al, and often under that of a, though most frequently it coincides with the Hebrew form.-Other words, which now can only be explained through the medium of the Arabic, were undoubtedly, at an earlier period, equally with many unas λeyóueva of the Old Testament, not less Hebrew than Arabic.-5. Among the peculiarities of the Phoenician and Punic tongues, the following may be noted: (a) A defective mode of orthography, in which the matres lectionis are employed as sparingly as possible. (b) In pronouncing, the Phoenicians (the Carthaginians certainly) expressed the long o by û; as, sufes, lu, alonuth, &c. (c) Instead of Segol and Schwa mobile, they appear to have employed an obtuse kind of sound, which the Roman writers expressed by the vowel y; as, yth (Hebrew eth, the mark of the accusative), ynnynu (ecce eum), &c. (d) The syllable al they contracted into o, analogous somewhat to the French cheval (chevau), chevaux. For other peculiarities consult Gesenius (Phan. Mon., p. 336).

PHOENICIA. Vid. Phoenice.

a raven, make

Nine lives of the raven, or that

2880 years.

25920 years.

of the phoenix, make This period of 25920 years is precisely the duration of the Great Year (Magnus Annus) of the fixed stars, having for its element exactly 50", the annual precession of the equinoxes. From this computation also we will be enabled to perceive how 50", converted into years, and multiplied by 1+2+3+4, that is, by 10, gave the Egyptians 500 years as the duration of the phoenix. These numbers, 1+2+3+4, indicate that the 50 seconds, converted into years, traverse successively the four quarters of the ecliptic, in order to form the Great Year, the astronomical duration of the life of the phoenix. (Marcoz, Astronomie Solaire d'Hipparque, p. xvi., seq.)-II. Son of Amyntor, king of Argos, and the preceptor of Achilles, to whom he was so attached that he accompanied him to the Trojan war. According to the Homeric account (Il., 9, 447, seqq.), Amyntor having transferred his affections from his lawful wife, Hippodamia, to a concubine, the former besought her son Phoenix to gain the affections of his father's mistress, and alienate her from Amyntor. Phoenix succeeded in his suit, and his enraged father imprecated upon him the bitterest curses. The son, therefore, notwithstanding the entreaties and efforts of his relations to detain him at his parent's court, fled to Phthia, in Thessaly, where he was kindly received by Peleus, monarch of the country, who assigned him a territory on the confines of Phthia, and the sway over the Dolopians. He intrusted him also with the education of his son Achilles.

PHOENIX, I. a fabulous bird, of which Herodotus gives the following account in that part of his work which treats of Egypt. "The phoenix is another sacred bird, which I have never seen except in effigy. He rarely appears in Egypt; once only in five hundred years, immediately after the death of his father, as the Heliopolitans affirm. If the painters describe him truly, his feathers represent a mixture of crimson and gold; and he resembles the eagle in outline and size. They affirm that he contrives the following thing, which to me is not credible. They say that he comes from Arabia, and, bringing the body of his fa⚫ther enclosed in myrrh, buries him in the temple of the sun; and that he brings him in the following manner. First he moulds as great a quantity of myrrh into the shape of an egg as he is well able to carry ;-Such is the Homeric account. Later writers, howand, after having tried the weight, he hollows out the egg, and puts his parent into it, and stops up with some more myrrh the hole through which he had introduced the body, so that the weight is the same as before he then carries the whole mass to the temple of the sun in Egypt. Such is the account they give of the phoenix." (Herod., 2, 73.)-The whole of this fable is evidently astronomical, and the following very ingenious explanation has been given by Marcoz. He assumes as the basis of his remarks the fragment of Hesiod preserved by Plutarch in his treatise De Oraculorum Defectu. (Hepì Tüv ÉKλehoя. Xрnoт.-Op., ed. Reiske, vol. 7, p. 635.)

ἐννέα τοι ζώει γενεὰς λακέρυζα κορώνη ἀνδρῶν ἡβώντων· ἔλαφος δέ τε τετρακόρωνος· τρεῖς δ' ἐλάφους ὁ κόραξ γηράσκεται· αὐτὰρ ὁ φοίνιξ ἐννέα τοὺς κόρακας· δέκα δ' ἡμεῖς τοὺς φοίνικας νύμφαι ευπλόκαμοι, κοῖραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο. "The noisy crow lives nine generations of men who are in the bloom of years; the stag attains the age of four crows; the raven, in its turn, equals three stags in length of days; while the phoenix lives nine ravens. We nymphs, fair-of-tresses, daughters of Jove the ægisbearer, attain to the age of ten phoenixes." (Compare Auson., Idyll., 18.—Plin., 7, 48.-Gaisford,

ever, make Amyntor to have put out his son's eyes, and the latter to have fled in this condition to Peleus, who led him to Chiron, and persuaded the centaur to restore him to sight. (Lycophron, 422.- Tzetz. ad Lycophr., l. c.) The curse uttered against Phoenix was, that he might remain ever childless, and hence Tzetzes seeks to explain the story of his blindness, by making it a figurative allusion to his childless condition, a father's offspring being as it were his eyes in the language of antiquity. (Tzetz., 1. c.-Muller, ad schol. Tzetz., l. c.)-Apollodorus says that Phoenix was blinded by his father, on a false charge preferred against him by the concubine (καταψευσαμένης φθορὰν Φθίας τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς παλλακίδος.—Apollod., 3, 13, 8). The variations in the legend arose probably from made the story of Phoenix the subject of their compothe circumstance, of the tragic poets having frequently sitions, and having, of course, introduced more or less variations from the original tale. (Heyne, ad Apollod., l. c.) There was a Phoenix of Sophocles, another of Euripides, and a third of Ion. (Valck., Diatrib., c. 24)-To return to the story of the son of Amyntor: after the death of Achilles, Phoenix was one of those commissioned to return to Greece and bring young Pyrrhus to the war. On the fall of Troy, he returned. with that prince to Thessaly, in which country he con

tinued until his death. He was buried, according to Strabo, near the junction of the small river Phoenix with the Asopus, the former of these streams having received its name from him. (Strab., 428)-III. A son of Agenor, sent, as well as his brothers Cadmus and Cilix, in quest of their sister Europa. Not hav-pacity Photius acquitted himself so well as to gain ing succeeded in finding her, he was fabled to have settled in and given name to Phoenicia. (Apollod., 3, 1, 1.-Consult Heyne, ad loc.)