had entered into alliance in 454. The subsequent decline of Athenian land-power had the effect of weakening this new connexion, at the time of the Peloponnesian War Phocis was nominally an ally and dependent of Sparta, and had lost control of Delphi.
In the 4th century Phocis was constantly endangered by its Boeotian neighbours. After helping the Spartans to invade Boeotia during the Corinthian War (395-94), the Phocians were placed on the defensive. They received assistance from Sparta in 380, but were afterwards compelled to submit to the growing power of Thebes. The Phocian levy took part in Epaminondas' inroads into Peloponnesus, except in the final campaign of Mantinea (370-62), from which their contingent was withheld. In return for this negligence the Thebans fastened a religious quarrel upon their neighbours, and secured a penal decree against them from the Arnphictyonic synod (356). The Phocians, led by two capable generals, Philomelus and Onomarchus, replied by seizing Delphi and using its riches to hire a mercenary army. With the help of these troops the Phocian League at first carried the war into Boeotia and Thessaly, and though driven out of the latter country by Philip of Macedon, maintained itself for ten years, until the exhaustion of the temple treasures and the treachery of its leaders placed it at Philip's mercy. The conditions which he imposed—the obligation to restore the temple funds, and the dispersion of the population into open villages—were soon disregarded. In 339 the Phocians began to rebuild their cities; in the following year they fought against Philip at Chaeronea. Again in 323 they took part in the Lamian War against Antipater, and in 279 helped to defend Thermopylae against the Gauls.
Henceforth little more is heard of Phocis. During the 3rd century it passed into the power of Macedonia and of the Aetolian League, to which in 196 it was definitely annexed. Under the dominion of the Roman republic its national league was dissolved, but was revived by Augustus, who also restored to Phocis the votes in the Delphic Amphictyony which it had lost in 346 and enrolled it in the new Achaean synod. The Phocian League is last heard of under Trajan.
See Strabo, pp. 401, 418, 424-425; Pausanias x. 1-4; E. Freeman, History of Federal Government (ed. 1893, London), pp. 113-114; G. Kazarow, De foederis Phocensium institutis (Leipzig, 1899); B. Head, Historia numorum (Oxford, 1887), pp. 287-288.
PHOCYLIDES, Greek gnomic poet of Miletus, contemporary of Theognis, was born about 560 B.C. A few fragments of his “maxims” have been preserved (chiefly in the Florilegium of Stobaeus), in which he expresses his contempt for the pomps and vanities of rank and wealth, and sets forth in simple language his ideas of honour, justice and wisdom. A complete didactic poem (230 hexameters) called Ποίημα νουθετικόν or γνῶμαι, bearing the name of Phocylides, is now considered to be the work of an Alexandrian Christian of Jewish origin who lived between 170 B.C. and A.D. 50. The Jewish element is shown in verbal agreement with passages of the Old Testament (especially the book of Sirach); the Christian by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Some Jewish authorities, however, maintain that there are in reality no traces of Christan doctrine to be found in the poem, and that the author was a Jew. The poem was first printed at Venice in 1495, and was a favourite school textbook during the Reformation period.
See fragments and the spurious poem in T. Bergk, Poetae lyrici graeci, ii. (4th ed., 1882), J. Bernays, Über das Phokylideische Gedicht (1858); Phocylides, Poem of Admonition, with introduction and commentaries by J. B. Fenling, and translation by H. D. Goodwin (Andover, Mass., 1879); F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, (1892), ii 642; S. Krauss (s.v. “Pseudo-Phocylides”) in The Jewish Encyclopedia and E. Schürer, Hist. of the Jewish People, div. ii., vol. iii, 313-316 (Eng. trans., 1886), where full bibliographies are given. There is an English verse translation by W. Hewett (Watford, 1840), The Perceptive Poem of Phocylides.
PHOEBE, in astronomy, the ninth satellite of Saturn in order of discovery, or the tenth and outermost now known in the order of distance. It was discovered by W. H. Pickering in 1899 by photographs of the stars surrounding Saturn. It is remarkable in that its motion around the planet is retrograde. (See Saturn.)
PHOEBUS (Gr. for “bright,” “pure,”), a common epithet of Apollo (q.v.). Artemis in like manner is called Phoebe, and in the Latin poets and their modern followers Phoebus and Phoebe are often used simply for the sun and moon respectively.
PHOENICIA, in ancient geography, the name given to that part of the seaboard of Syria which extends from the Eleutherus (Nahr el-Kebīr) in the north to Mt Carmel in the south, a distance of rather more than two degrees of latitude. These limits, however, were exceeded at various times; thus, north of the Eleutherus lay Aradus and Marathus, and south of Carmel the border sometimes included Dor and even Joppa. Formed partly by alluvium carried down by perennial streams from the mountains of Lebanon and Galilee, and fringed by great sand-dunes which the sea throws up, Phoenicia is covered with a rich and fertile soil. It is only at the mouth of the Eleutherus and at Acre (‘Akkā) that the strip of coast-land widens out into plains of any size; there is a certain amount of open country behind Beirut; but for the most part the mountains, pierced by deep river-valleys, approach to within a few miles of the coast, or even right down to the sea, as at Rās en-Nāḳūra (Scala Tyriorum, Jos. Bell. jud. ii. 10, 2) and Ras el-Abiaḍ (Pliny's Promunturium Album), where a passage had to be cut in the rock for the caravan road which from time immemorial traversed this narrow belt of lowland. From the flanks of Lebanon, especially from the heights which lie to the north of the Qāsimīyeh or Ḳasimiya (Līṭāny) River, the traveller looks down upon some of the finest landscape in the world; in general features the scenery is not unlike that of the Italian Riviera, but surpasses it in grandeur and a peculiar depth of colouring.
With regard to natural products the country has few worth mentioning; minerals are found in the Lebanon, but not in any quantity; traces of amber-digging have been discovered on the coast; and the purple shell (murex trunculus and brandaris) is still plentiful. The harbours which played so important a part in antiquity are nearly all silted up, and, with the exception of Beirut, afford no safe anchorage for the large vessels of modern times. A few bays, facing towards the north, break the coast-line, and small rocky islands are dotted here and there just off the shore. Sidon, Tyre and Aradus, though now connected with the mainland, were built originally upon islands; the Phoenicians preferred such sites, because they were convenient for shipping and easily defended against attack.
The chief towns of ancient Phoenicia, as we know of them from the Amarna tablets (15th century B.C.) and from Egyptian, Assyrian and the Old Testament documents, were the following: Acco (now Acre or ‘Akkā, Judg. i. 31), Achzib (now ez-Zīb, ibid.), Ahlab (in Assyrian Mahalliba, ibid.)—three towns on the coast south of Tyre, Ḳānāh (Josh. xix. 28), Tyre (Phoen. Ṣōr, now Ṣūr, Zarephath or Sarepta (1 Kings xvii. 9 now Sarafand), Sidon (now Ṣaidā), Berytus (Biruta in Egyptian, Biruna in the Amarna tablets, now Beirūt), Byblus (in Phoen. and Hebr. Gebal, now Jebeil), Arka, 80 m. north of Sidon (Gen. x. 17, now ‘Arḳā), Sin (Assyr. Siannu, ibid.), Simyra (Gen. x. 18, now Ṣumrā), Marathus (now Amrīt) not important till the Macedonian period, Arvad or Aradus (in Phoen. Arwād, now Ruād, Gen. x. 18; Ezek. xxvii. 8, 11), the most northerly of the great Phoenician towns, and always famous as a maritime state.
Race and Language.-The Phoenicians were an early offshoot from the Semitic stock, and belonged to the Canaanite branch of it. Curiously enough in Gen. x. Sidon, the “first-born” of Canaan, is classed among the descendants of Ham; but the table of nations in Gen. x. is not arranged upon strict ethnographic principles; perhaps religious antagonism induced the Hebrews to assign to the Canaanites an ancestry different from their own; at any rate the close connexion which existed from an early date between the Phoenicians and the Egyptians may have suggested the idea that both peoples belonged to the same race. The Phoenicians themselves retained some memory of having migrated from older seats on an eastern sea; Herodotus (i. 1; vii. 89) calls it the “red sea,” meaning probably the
