Though Tyre is not a very old city, it is not so new as to be denied a few of those associations known as "historical."

Tyre, which had resisted for seven months the armies of Alexander, remained to the fall of the empire a great emporium of trade; it monopolized the manufacture of imperial purple.

Even silver tyres to the wheels became the fashion.

Tyre was the great commercial centre of the world at that time, as Babylon was the centre of imperial power.

Sidon, if indeed within their boundary, never lost its independence; Tyre, if it existed, was a town too obscure to be named; Ecdippa and Acco remained in the power of the Canaanites; Joppa is not mentioned as a port till much later.

Take what art you pleased, Tyre was a dunce.

So, by an accident of idleness, he presently found himself standing rapt before the most wonderful picture he had ever seen,a picture to see which, he said to himself, men would make pilgrimages to Tyre, when Tyre was a moss-grown, ruinous seaport, from which the traffic of the world had long since passed away.