DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0134
io6 STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Towards the west as well as the east there came
with the supremacy of Tyre, about 1000-900 B.C., a fresh
impulse of adventure. If our earliest records, Genesis
and Homer, name only Sidon, from 1000 B.c. onwards
the glory of the younger city, Tyre, is in every mouth.
It is the adventurous mariners of Tyre who push their
way into the second basin of the Mediterranean, beyond
the coast of Greece.
We have only to glance at the map to see how much
more hazardous was this second enterprise. An open
boat will safely fare from the coast of Phoenicia to
Cyprus ; from thence to the eastern coast of Hellas,
step by step, island by island, needs but little science of
navigation. Hellas turns her face eastward ; eastward
her coast is studded with islands ; eastward she opens
her friendly harbours. To the west is a Avide space of
trackless sea. Across that sea the Tyrian navigators
ventured. Even in Crete there were legends of these
further voyages. King Minos, they said, went to Sicily,
and there death came upon him; but not before he had
wedded Astarte and changed her from the goddess of
war to the goddess of love. After his death he became
king of Hades, always the impersonation of the sunset-
shadows of the west. On the south coast, in later
Greek days, there still remained the town of Minoa to
witness to the legend. The historian Thucydides adds
his testimony. He says (vii. 2): “The Phoenicians
Towards the west as well as the east there came
with the supremacy of Tyre, about 1000-900 B.C., a fresh
impulse of adventure. If our earliest records, Genesis
and Homer, name only Sidon, from 1000 B.c. onwards
the glory of the younger city, Tyre, is in every mouth.
It is the adventurous mariners of Tyre who push their
way into the second basin of the Mediterranean, beyond
the coast of Greece.
We have only to glance at the map to see how much
more hazardous was this second enterprise. An open
boat will safely fare from the coast of Phoenicia to
Cyprus ; from thence to the eastern coast of Hellas,
step by step, island by island, needs but little science of
navigation. Hellas turns her face eastward ; eastward
her coast is studded with islands ; eastward she opens
her friendly harbours. To the west is a Avide space of
trackless sea. Across that sea the Tyrian navigators
ventured. Even in Crete there were legends of these
further voyages. King Minos, they said, went to Sicily,
and there death came upon him; but not before he had
wedded Astarte and changed her from the goddess of
war to the goddess of love. After his death he became
king of Hades, always the impersonation of the sunset-
shadows of the west. On the south coast, in later
Greek days, there still remained the town of Minoa to
witness to the legend. The historian Thucydides adds
his testimony. He says (vii. 2): “The Phoenicians