The People. 73 we see the boats of the Phoenicians put out from Cyprus, their first stage in the western path, and creep along the whole extent of the south coast of Asia Minor, until at Rhodes they unlock the "gate of the Archipelago." Here they resume their journey, keeping close to the shore of the peninsula, steering northward, where in the deep inlets of the sea and mouths of the rivers, they found shelters more and more secure for their ships ; where too innumerable capes and islets jutting out into the sea offered convenient stations to the sagacious mariners for their vessels or fisheries. In no other part of the coast could there be found natural harbours better fitted for a brisk coasting trade and exchange of mart, than the bays into which the Hermus and Maeander discharge their waters ; here too is the meeting-place of the roads that lead towards Central Anatolia ; and close at hand are great islands that run far out into the sea ; whilst lofty headlands, such as those of Samos and Chios, rule the Cyclades. The first Sidonian boats that ever launched out to sea must have steered towards these regions, which were to become Ionia, and yet here are preserved fewer traces of Phoenician establishments than anywhere else. The reason of this apparent anomaly is easily explained. If the trail which the Semite left here behind him so soon vanished, it was because the Asiatic Greeks were the first to avail themselves of the stranger's teaching, and were thereby placed in a position to fight him with his own weapons long before any of their brethren. They showed the way to the other Hellenic tribes how to assert their independence, not only at home, in their own cities and the land surrounding them, but in the waters that washed their shores. The Phoenicians held out longer in the islands.^ Some were unproductive, of no great extent, and therefore uncoveted by their neighbours ; they alone had thrift and patience enough slowly to discover and collect — as they did at Siphnos and Seriphos — the gold-nuggets buried in the rock. Others, such as the islands of the Thracian sea, were larger, and in places might be brought under cultivation ; but they lay outside the sea-routes followed by trade between Europe and Asia. Here they long held more than their own, and apparently were left in undisturbed possession
- Thucydides was aware that the islands had been occupied by Phoenicians
and Carians.
