A KING OF TYRE.

CHAPTER I.

The island city of Tyre lay close to the Syrian coast. It seemed to float among the waves that fretted themselves into foam as they rolled in between the jagged rocks, and spread over the flats, retiring again to rest in the deep bosom of the Mediterranean. The wall that encircled the island rose in places a hundred cubits, and seemed from a distance to be an enormous monolith. It was therefore called Tsur, or Tyre, which means The Rock. At the time of our narrative, about the middle of the fifth century B.C., the sea-girt city contained a dense mass of inhabitants, who lived in tall wooden houses of many stories; for the ground space within the walls could not lodge the multitude who pursued the various arts and commerce for which the Tyrians were, of all the world, the most noted. The streets were narrow, often entirely closed to the sky by projecting balconies and arcades—mere veins and arteries for the circulation of the city's throbbing life.

For recreation from their dyeing-vats, looms, and foundries, the artisan people climbed to the broad spaces on the top of the walls, where they could breathe the sweet sea air, except when the easterly wind was hot and gritty with dust from the mainland, a few bow-shots distant. The men of commerce thronged the quay of the Sidonian harbor at the north end of the island, or that of the Egyptian harbor on the south side—two artificial basins which were at all times crowded with ships; for the Tyrian merchantmen scoured all the coast of the Great Sea, even venturing through the straits of Gades, and northward to the coasts of Britain, and southward along the African shore; giving in barter for the crude commodities they found, not only the products of their own workshops, but the freight of their caravans that climbed the Lebanons and wearily tracked across the deserts to Arabia and Babylon. The people of fashion paraded their pride on the Great Square, in the heart of the city—called by the Greeks the Eurychorus—where they displayed their rich garments in competition with the flowers that grew, almost as artificially, in gay parterres amid the marble blocks of the pavement.

But one day a single topic absorbed the conversation of all classes alike, in the Great Square, on the walls, and along the quays. Councillors of state and moneyed merchants debated it with bowed heads and wrinkled brows. Moulders talked of it as they cooled themselves at the doorways of their foundries. Weavers, in the excitement of their wrangling over it, forgot to throw the shuttle. Seamen, lounging on the heaps of cordage, gave the subject all the light they could strike from oaths in the names of all the gods of all the lands they had ever sailed to. Even the women, as they stood in the open doorways, piloting their words between the cries of the children who bestrode their shoulders or clung to their feet, pronounced their judgment upon the all-absorbing topic.

A bulletin had appeared on the Great Square proclaiming, in the name of the High Council of Tyre, a stupendous religious celebration. Vast sums of money had been appropriated from the city treasury, and more was demanded from the people. A multitude of animals was to be sacrificed, and even the blood of human victims should enrich the altar, that thus might be purchased the favor of Almighty Baal.

To understand this proclamation, we must know the circumstances that led to it.

The Phœnician prestige among the nations had for many years been steadily waning. The political dominance of Persia, with her capital far over the deserts at Susa, was less humiliating to this proud people than was the growing commercial importance of the Greeks across the sea. For not only had the Greeks whipped the Phœnicians in naval battles, as at Salamis and Eurymedon, but they were displacing Phœnician wares in foreign markets, and teaching the Greek language, customs, and religion to all the world. Yet the Greeks were thought by the Tyrians to be but an upstart people. They had not so many generations, as the Phœnicians had ages, of glorious history.

How could Phœnicia regain the supremacy? This was the all-absorbing question which appealed to the patriotism, and still more to the purses, of the Tyrians, and of their neighbors along the coast.

Many were the wiseacres who readily solved this problem to their own satisfaction. Thus, for example, the priests of Melkarth—the name they gave to Baal in his special office as guardian of the city—had a theory of their own. It was to the effect that the gods were offended at the growing laxity of worship, and especially at the falling-off of the temple revenues, which were in great measure the sumptuous perquisites of the priests themselves. They were especially disaffected towards their young king, Hiram, whom they regarded as an obstacle to any reforms on this line. Hiram had spent his early training years with the fleet, and was conversant with the faiths and customs of many countries. Thus he was educated to a cosmopolitan, not to say sceptical, habit of mind, and was led to doubt whether any movement that originated in the ambition of a horde of unscrupulous and superstitious priests could win the favor of the gods, even admitting that such supernal beings existed, of which the king was reported to have expressed a doubt.

King Hiram had been but a few months on the throne, to which he had succeeded on the death of his father, when he opened the meeting of the Great Council which issued the proclamation regarding the sacrifice.

His Majesty sat upon the bronze throne. Above him shone a canopy of beaten gold. At his back hung a curtain of richest Tyrian purple, in the centre of which gleamed a silver dove with outspread wings, the symbol of Tyre from those ancient days when its commerce and renown began to fly abroad over the world.

Hiram's face was typically Phœnician, and betokened the clear tide of his racial blood. His forehead was broad, and prominent at the brows. His eyes were gleaming black. His nose started as if with the purpose of being Jewish, but terminated in the expanded nostril that suggested the Egyptian. His hair was black, with the slightest touch of red, which, however, only strong light would reveal. He wore the conical cap of the sailor, for his pride of naval command had never become secondary to even his sense of royal dignity; and many a time had he declared that a true Phœnician king was chiefly king of the sea. The royal cap was distinguished from that of common sailors by the uræus, or winged serpent's crest, which was wrought in golden needlework upon the front. The king's