Joppa towards the south was balanced by Ramantha, or Laodicea, towards the north.  Fifty miles north of Aradus and Antaradus (Tortosa), in Lat. 35º 30’ nearly, occupying the slope of a hill facing the sea, with chalky cliffs on either side, that, like those of Dover, whiten the sea, and with Mount Casius in the background, lay the most northern of all the Phoenician cities in a fertile and beautiful territory.[498] The original appellation was, we are told, Ramantha,[499] a name intended probably to mark the lofty situation of the place;[4100] but this appellation was forced to give way to the Greek term, Laodicea, when Seleucus Nicator, having become king of Syria, partially rebuilt Ramantha and colonised it with Greeks.[4101] The coins of the city under the Seleucidae show its semi-Greek, semi-Phoenician character, having legends in both languages.  One of these, in the Phoenician character, is read as l’Ladika am b’Canaan, i.e. “of Laodicea, a metropolis in Canaan,” and seems to show that the city claimed not only to be independent, but to have founded, and to hold under its sway, a number of smaller towns.[4102] It may have exercised a dominion over the entire tract from Mount Casius to Paltos, where the dominion of Aradus began.  Laodicea is now Latakia, and is famous for the tobacco grown in the neighbourhood.  It still makes use of its ancient port, which would be fairly commodious if it were cleared of the sand that at present chokes it.[4103]

It has been said that Phoenicia was composed of “three worlds” with distinct characteristics;[4104] but perhaps the number of the “worlds” should be extended to five.  First came that of Ramantha, reaching from the Mons Casius to the river Badas, a distance of about fifty miles, a remote and utterly sequestered region, into which neither Assyria nor Egypt ever thought of penetrating.  Commerce with Cyprus and southern Asia Minor was especially open to the mariners of this region, who could see the shores of Cyprus without difficulty on a clear day.  Next came the “world” of Aradus, reaching along the coast from the Badas to the Eleutherus, another stretch of fifty miles, and including the littoral islands, especially that of Ruad, on which Aradus was built.  This tract was less sequestered than the more northern one, and contains traces of having been subjected to influences from Egypt at an early period.  The gap between Lebanon and Bargylus made the Aradian territory accessible from the Coelesyrian valley; and there is reason to believe that one of the roads which Egyptian and Assyrian conquest followed in these parts was that which passed along the coast as far as the Eleutherus and then turned eastward and north-eastward to Emesa (Hems) and Hamath.  It must have been conquerors marching by this line who set up their effigies at the mouth of the Nahr-el-Kelb, and those who pursued it would naturally make a point of reducing Aradus.  Thus this second Phoenician “world” has