Tissaphernes to play so influential a part in Asia Minor during the later years of the Peloponnesian war.  It was the presence of their ships at Cnidus which, in B.C. 394, turned the scale between Athens and Sparta, enabling the Athenians to recover the naval supremacy which they had lost at AEgos-Potami.  It was the appearance of a Phoenician fleet in Greek waters[14315] which, in the following year, gave an opportunity to the Athenians to rebuild their “Long Walls,” alarmed Sparta for her own safety, and extorted from her fears—­in B.C. 387—­the agreement known as “the Peace of Antalcidas.”  Persia owed to her Phoenician subjects the glory of recovering complete possession of Asia Minor, and of being accepted as a sort of final arbiter in the quarrels of the Grecian states.  From B.C. 465 to B.C. 392 Phoenicia served Persia with rare fidelity, never hesitating to lend her aid, and never showing the least inclination to revolt.

It was probably under these circumstances, when Athens owed the recovery of her greatness in no small measure to the Phoenicians, that those relations of friendship and intimacy were established between the two peoples of which we have evidence in several inscriptions.  Phoenicians settled in Attica, particularly at Phalerum and the Piraeus, and had their own places of worship and interment.  Six sepulchral inscriptions have been found, either in Athens itself or at the Piraeus,[14316] five of them bilingual,[14317] which mark the interment in Attic soil of persons whose nationality was Phoenician.  They had monuments erected over them, generally of some pretension, which must have obtained as much respect as the native tombstones, since otherwise they could not have endured to our day.  There is also at the Piraeus an altar,[14318] which a Phoenician must have erected and dedicated to a Phoenician god, whom he worshipped on Attic soil apparently without let or hindrance.  The god’s name is given as “Askum-Adar,” a form which does not elsewhere recur, but which is thought to designate the god elsewhere called Sakon, who corresponded to the Grecian Hermes.[14319] Moreover, there is evidence of the Phoenicians having worshipped two other deities in their Attic abodes, one a god who corresponded to the Greek Poseidon and the Roman Neptune, the other the Babylonian and Assyrian Nergal.  Among the lost orations of Deniarchus was one delivered by that orator on the occasion of the suit between the people of Phalerum and the Phoenician inhabitants of the place with respect to the priesthood of Poseidon;[14320] and a sepulchral monument at the Piraeus was erected to Asepta, daughter of Esmun-sillem, of Sidon, by Itten-bel, son of Esmun-sibbeh, high priest of the god Nergal.[14321] It appears further from the Greek inscription, edited by Boeckh,[14322] that about this time (B.C. 390-370) a decree was promulgated by the Council {bonle} of Athens whereby the relation of Proxenia was established between Strato (Abd-astartus), king of Sidon, and the Athenian people, and all Sidonians sojourning in Attica were exempted from the tax usually charged upon foreign settlers, from the obligation of the Choregia, and from all other contributions to the state.