Remarkable reading
 You may recollect that Sherlock Holmes once remarked to his colleague Dr Watson: "Let me recommend
this book — one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade's 'Martyrdom of man'." I
recently was tempted to take another look at that same book, which is a vast overview of the
various phases through which human culture has passed, and I have to admit that Holmes had a
point. One section that I found particularly engrossing was Reade's description of the ancient
Phoenicians.
Phoenicia, I suspect, has been rather neglected in the selection of historical studies in schools,
but it has a strangely modern aspect that links it strongly to our own times. The Phoenicians,
or as they were called in antiquity Phoenikes or Poeni, were a Semitic race inhabiting
the narrow coastal strip of the Levant. They earned their name, it is said, either from their
copper-coloured complexion or their expertise in preparing purple dyes from shellfish. Their
established cities were Tyre, Sidon and Byblos, which have been traced back to the third millennium
BC, and they later set up an important settlement at Carthage, which occupies a powerful situation
in the ancient world of trade and conquest.
The unique characteristic of the Phoenicians was their entrepreneurial activity, remarkably
similar to that which which we are now struggling to contain in our tricky economic globalisation.
Tyre and Sidon were mainly concerned with the murex dye industry, which had close connection
with the textiles of flax, cotton and wool produced in the same cities. Other crafts included
metalworking of jewellery and trinkets, glass-making, wood carving and stone carving. Agriculture
and husbandry were also carried on. Ivory was worked in Carthage. But the great genius of Phoenicia
lay in trading and the shipbuilding that this involved. The Phoenicians were almost crazy about
maritime trading, and did not limit their activity to local seaports.
Phoenician seamen were preceded only by the Minoans, who were active about 3000BC. When Carthage
was established as a colony in 814BC, and continuing until 146BC, it became the centre for expeditions
and sailing training. The Persians had come to dominate the homeland, and impeded as they became
to the east, the seamen turned their attention to the western horizon. They sailed through the
Straits of Gibraltar and northward along the coasts of Spain and France to the British Isles,
from which they derived a rich booty of tin and copper, used in the manufacture of bronze. They
may even have reached the Azores on some of their expeditions.
It is curious that, by contrast with most of their neighbours, the Phoenicians preferred to
be sailors rather than soldiers. Their enthusiasm worried the Romans, and Cato in the second
century BC declared "Delenda est Carthago" meaning that "Carthage must be destroyed" because
it was a rising menace. This has a modern ring.
William Winwood Reade himself was a great traveller, mainly in Africa, but he turned at one
time to medicine and studied for three years at St Mary's Hospital in London. He wrote a series
of books, mostly dealing with mystery religions, and was severely criticised and even accused
of blasphemy. Yet for a man who died at the early age of 36 he had a remarkable career.
In the preface to his 'Martyrdom' (1872) he wrote: "My conscience is my adviser, my audience
and my judge. It bade me write as I have written, without evasion, without disguise; it bids
me to go on as I have begun, whatever the result may be. . . . One thing at all events I know — that
it has done me good to write this book, and therefore I do not think that it can injure those
by whom it will be read."
If there were more of such spirit in the world it would be a better place.
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