Baaleth; at Carthage, Baal-Hamon, and Tanith.  But the same god changes his name according as he is conceived as creator or destroyer; thus Baal as destroyer is worshipped at Carthage under the name of Moloch.  These gods, represented by idols, have their temples, altars, and priests.  As creators they are honored with orgies, with tumultuous feasts; as destroyers, by human victims.  Astoreth, the great goddess of Sidon, whom they represented by the crescent of the moon and the dove, had her cult in the sacred woods.  Baal Moloch is figured at Carthage as a bronze colossus with arms extended and lowered.  When they wished to appease him they laid children in his hands who fell at once into a pit of fire.  During the siege of Carthage by Agathocles the principal men of the city sacrificed to Moloch as many as two hundred of their children.

This sensual and sanguinary religion inspired other peoples with horror, but they imitated it.  The Jews sacrificed to Baal on the mountains; the Greeks adored Astarte of Sidon under the name of Aphrodite, and Baal Melkhart of Tyre under the name of Herakles.

PHOENICIAN COMMERCE

=Phoenicians Occupations.=—­Crowded into a small territory, the Phoenicians gained their livelihood mainly from commerce.  None of the other peoples of the East—­the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, nor the barbarian tribes of the West (Spaniards, Gauls, Italians) had a navy.  The Phoenicians alone in this time dared to navigate.  They were the commission merchants of the old world; they went to every people to buy their merchandise and sold them in exchange the commodities of other countries.  This traffic was by caravan with the East, by sea with the West.

=Caravans.=—­On land the Phoenicians sent caravans in three directions: 

  1.—­Towards Arabia, from which they brought gold, agate, and onyx,
  incense and myrrh, and the perfumes of Arabia; pearls, spices,
  ivory, ebony, ostrich plumes and apes from India.

  2.—­Towards Assyria, whence came cotton and linen cloths, asphalt,
  precious stones, perfumery, and silk from China.

  3.—­Towards the Black Sea, where they went to receive horses,
  slaves, and copper vases made by the mountaineers of the Caucasus.

=Marine Commerce.=—­For their sea commerce they built ships from the cedars of Lebanon to be propelled by oars and sails.  In their sailing it was not necessary to remain always in sight of the coast, for they knew how to direct their course by the polar star.  Bold mariners, they pushed in their little boats to the mouth of the Mediterranean; they ventured even to pass through the strait of Gibraltar or, as the ancients called it, the Pillars of Hercules, and took the ocean course to the shores of England, and perhaps to Norway, Phoenicians in the service of a king of Egypt started in the seventh century B.C. to circumnavigate Africa, and returned, it is said, at the end of three years by the Red Sea.  An expedition issuing from Carthage skirted the coast of Africa to the Gulf of Guinea; the commander Hanno wrote an account of the voyage which is still preserved.