The relations of Phoenicia towards the Assyrian monarchy continued to be absolutely peaceful for above a century.  The cities retained their native monarchs, their laws and institutions, their religion, and their entire internal administration.  So long as they paid the fixed tribute, they appear not to have been interfered with in any way.  It would seem that their trade prospered.  Assyria had under her control the greater portion of those commercial routes across the continent of Asia,[14129] which it was of the highest importance to Phoenicia to have open and free from peril.  Her caravans could traverse them with increased security, now that they were safeguarded by a power whereof she was a dependency.  She may even have obtained through Assyria access to regions which had been previously closed to her, as Media, and perhaps Persia.  At any rate Tyre seems to have been as flourishing in the later times of the Assyrian dominion as at almost any other period.  Isaiah, in denouncing woe upon her, towards the close of the dominion, shows us what she had been under it:—­

     Be silent (he says), ye inhabitants of the island,
     Which the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have
          replenished. 
     The corn of the Nile, on the broad waters,
     The harvest of the River, has been her revenue: 
     She has been the mart of nations . . . 
     She was a joyful city,
     Her antiquity was of ancient days . . . 
     She was a city that dispensed crowns;
     Her merchants were princes,
     And her traffickers the honourable of the earth.[14130]

A change in the friendly feelings of the Phoenician cities towards Assyria first began after the rise of the Second or Lower Assyrian Empire, which was founded, about B.C. 745, by Tiglath-pileser II.[14131] Tiglath-pileser, after a time of quiescence and decay, raised up Assyria to be once more a great conquering power, and energetically applied himself to the consolidation and unification of the empire.  It was the Assyrian system, as it was the Roman, to absorb nations by slow degrees—­to begin by offering protection and asking in return a moderate tribute; then to draw the bonds more close, to make fresh demands and enforce them; finally, to pick a quarrel, effect a conquest, and absorb the country, leaving it no vestige of independence.  Tiglath-pileser began this process of absorption in Northern Syria about the year B.C. 740.  He rearranged the population in the various towns, taking from some and giving to others,[14132] adding also in most cases an Assyrian element, appointing Assyrian governors,[14133] and requiring of the inhabitants “the performance of service like the Assyrians."[14134] Among the places thus treated between the years B.C. 740 and B.C. 738, we find the Phoenician cities of Zimirra, or Simyra, and Arqa, or Arka.  Zimirra was in the plain between the sea and Mount Bargylus, not very far from the