Before Chrift 506. 59 



Its breadth permitted two triremes to pafs each other, and its length re- 

 quired four days to navigate it *. 



If the Phoenicians ever had any colonies in the iflands of the Perfian 

 gulf, as is fuppofed by fome authors, the fettlement of them may be 

 perhaps placed about this time, when Darius king of Perfia, who was 

 fovereign of Phoenicia, and the north coafi: of that gulf, with the adja- 

 cent coafl as far as the Indus, appears to have been defirous of eftablifh- 

 ing an extenfive commerce in his dominions, for the management of 

 which he could find none fo proper as the Phoenician merchants. The 

 exiflence of Phoenician colonies in the Perfian gulf appears to be found- 

 ed chiefly upon two iflands in it being called Tyrus or Tylus, and Ara- 

 dus, as is fuppofed, from Tyrus and Aradus on the Phoenician coafl, and 

 upon the ruins of fome temples, faid to be built in the Phoenician man- 

 ner, being found upon them. Strabo, however, fays, the people of thofe 

 iflands reverfed the fliory, and claimed the honour of being the ancef- 

 tors of the Tyrians and Aradians of the Mediterranean coafl:. [Strabo, 

 L. xvi, p. mo — andjee Bochart^Geog. facr. col. 689]. But it mufl: be 

 acknowleged, that there is no very good authority for any connedion 

 between the Phoenicians and any people in the Perfian gulf. 



Tylus appears to have been rather occupied by the Arabians, as it is 

 called an Arabian ifland by an antient author ; and its inhabitants were 

 a commercial, or at leafl; a maritime, people, who built vefl^els of a kind 

 of wood (perhaps the teek of India) fo durable, that, after remaining 

 above two hundred years in the water, they were perfedtly found and 

 undecayed. {/Theophraftus, L. v, c. 6,] 



Some idea of the value of money in thofe days may be obtained from 

 the amount of the revenue of the Perfian empire under Darius. It was 

 then almofl: at the zenith of its power. It extended from the Ocean on 

 the fouth to the Scythian deferts on the north ; and from the banks of 

 the Indus it fl;retched weft to the ^gtean and Euxine feas, and to the 

 confines of the Carthaginian territories in Africa. The twenty depend- 

 ent fatrapies or governments, into which the countries conquered by 

 the Perfians were divided, yielded a revenue amounting to 14,560 Eu- 

 boic talents of filver, which, together with fome payments in kind, 

 fcarcely exceeded three millions of our money ; a funi not equal to the 

 annual fubfidy, which in our own times has been given to a foreign 

 prince for the pay of his mercenary troops by an ifland, inferior in po- 

 pulation and excent to fome of the fatrapies of the Perfian empire. It 

 is evident, that the neceflaries of life could be purchaled for avery fmall 



* Such is the account of this famous canal, as him, that the water of the Red fea was higher 



tlcfcribed by Heiodotus, [Z. ii, c. 138; Z. iv, than the land of Egypt; and they give the ho- 



r. 393 who very probably faw it, with velTels go- nour of corr.pleting the work to the Ptolemys, 



ing from fea to lea upon it. But Diodorus Sici:- who probably c'.ear.ed out the foil depofitcd in i' 



lus and Strabo affirm, that Darius did not com- by the Nile, 

 plete the work, being terriiied by fome, who told 



I H 2 



