Phoenician Naval Power in Persian Wars: Trade, Battles, and Legacy

Phoenicia, a region of the eastern Mediterranean seacoast, became known for its seafaring and trade throughout antiquity. The region was composed of city-states such as Tyre, Sidon, and Ugarit, which at various times became the premier cities. Ugarit was chief among the cities during the Bronze Age until it was destroyed in the great migrations and never rebuilt. Archaeological finds of Mycenaean artifacts indicate these cities were rich trading partners during the Bronze Age. Mycenaean merchants had extensive connections throughout the coast of Asia Minor and Phoenicia.

Homer in his Iliad and Odyssey featured numerous examples of Phoenician goods being traded and given as gifts. Since Homer’s poems were composed in the eighth century, these references could also be talking about his time and not during the time of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, the trade connections are clearly seen when Odysseus relates how he came into contact with the “greedy and wily” Phoenicians; and in another story, he is helped by Phoenician merchants to escape. While Odysseus uses the stories to tell about his own wanderings, they nevertheless portray the Phoenicians as seafarers with strong ties with other cultures on the coastline, including the Phoenicians, Egyptians, and Libyans.

The intervening period, the Dark Ages, were devoid of much trade by the Greeks. The so-called Dorian invasion eliminated trade connections and interactions. With the decline of Mycenaean society and power, the traditional routes no longer functioned. The Phoenicians do not seem to have ventured into Greece during this time.

The historians Herodotus and Thucydides both wrote that the Phoenicians had established trading colonies throughout the western Mediterranean. Their dates, often during the Bronze Age, do not reconcile with other sources that put them three to four centuries later. While the chronology and mythical foundations are not reliable, they do point to a picture of seafaring connections throughout the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians were able to continue and develop their trading organizations during the Dark Ages and into the Archaic Age, when they established colonies. Many of the Phoenicians fled west, with many going to Carthage and other colonies in Spain, Sicily, and southern France. During this time, the connection between Phoenicia and Greece increased, with the most important connection being the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet to Greece, probably in the mid-eighth century.

The Phoenicians then came under the control of the Persians in the sixth century. Tyre and Sidon vied for the most important city of Phoenicia, with Sidon winning. The Persians allowed the local kings to continue to rule and issue their own coinage. Although they were under Persian control, they were treated almost like satraps, having strong degrees of independence to carry on their trade. This allowed the Persians to have a large, well-trained navy for their operations against the Greeks in Ionia. After Croesus’s defeat and the takeover of Ionia, the Persians in 525 used the Phoenician fleet under Cambyses to invade Egypt.

With the civil war that began after Cambyses’s death, Persia underwent a transformation from Cyrus’s household to the family of Darius. With the invasion of Scythia in 513, Darius used Phoenician and Ionian ships to build a bridge across the Bosporus and Hellespont. The rebellion of Ionia in 499 led to several major naval battles between the Phoenician and Ionian fleets. The most important was at the Battle of Lade, where the Phoenician fleet defeated the rebel fleet.

After the elimination of the Ionian fleet and the reconquest of Asia Minor, Darius now ordered his fleet to move north in 492 to aid the invasion of Thrace and northern Greece as it made its way toward southern Greece. The Persian strategy had always been that the army and navy traveled together. As the Persian general Mardonius moved around Thrace, a great storm wrecked the fleet at Mount Athos. This disaster ended the invasion from the north.

Darius now ordered the Phoenician fleet to move across the Aegean under Datis, taking and ravaging Naxos and the Cyclades but sparing Delos. The Persian army was defeated at Marathon in 490, ending this phase of the invasion. In 483, Darius’s son, Xerxes, began the next phase, launching a massive invasion by both land and sea. The Phoenician navy arrived at the Hellespont and constructed a great pontoon boat across the straits. Xerxes’s great army moved around the northern coast of Greece, with the navy supporting it. Xerxes ordered a great canal over a mile long to be dug across Mount Athos, the site where ten years earlier the fleet had been destroyed by a storm; the project supposedly took three years to complete. Different groups participated in the digging of the canal at Mount Athos, including the Phoenicians. Herodotus indicated that most of the other groups just dug straight down so that when the hole got deep enough, the sides collapsed. The Phoenicians dug wide and down so that the sides did not collapse. The canal, once doubted, has been shown from aerial photographs to have existed but has been filled in and no longer functions.

When Xerxes traveled south, the fleet sailed alongside, going to Artemisium near Thermopylae, where the Greek fleet had assembled to protect Leonidas’s army at the pass. The Persian navy arrived, and late on the first day, they attacked the Greek fleet but were outmaneuvered and suffered losses. A storm that night prevented the Greeks from following up on the battle while the Persians were dispersed. The second day saw both sides reequipping, with the Greeks engaging in battle against a group of Cilician ships. On the third day, both sides engaged in battle. Although both sides suffered about the same number of losses, the Greek fleet, being smaller, was reduced more significantly. On the fourth day, the Greeks realized that they could not hold the line again. At the same time, the Persians had overcome the Greeks at Thermopylae, making the fleet no longer necessary to hold Artemisium. The battle was indecisive for both sides since the Persians did not destroy the Greek fleet and the Greeks did not inflict enough casualties on the Persians to make a difference.

The Persian fleet, with the Phoenicians numbering nearly a quarter of the sailors, moved south toward Athens with the Persian army. The Greek fleet assembled at Salamis and waited. The Greeks needed to cripple the Persian fleet to prevent transports from ferrying troops across the Saronic Gulf and taking the Peloponnese in the rear. The Greek fleet numbered about 375 warships, while the Persians supposedly had 1,200, 300 of which were contributed by the Phoenicians. The Greeks won the battle in a melee where the Phoenicians’ superior numbers were countered by the narrows and their lack of maneuverability. The exact number of losses is unknown, but the Persians, not knowing how to swim, got the worst of it, probably losing around 200 to 300 ships. The following year, the Persian fleet assembled at Mount Mycale in Ionia and prepared for battle. They sent the Phoenician fleet away for an unknown reason, perhaps to protect the coasts of Phoenicia against hit-and-run attacks. The fleet was defeated at Mycale.

In 469 or 466, the Phoenician fleet sailed to the Eurymedon River, where they planned to join the Persian army in a major offensive. This appears to have been the first effort since 479 to attack the Greeks. Their intent is unknown, but they probably planned to attack the cities of Asia Minor and retake the ones that had been lost over the past ten to fifteen years. The Athenians under Cimon attacked the Persian fleet, which retreated to shore and were attacked and defeated, with the Greeks destroying 200 of the Phoenician ships. The victory over the Phoenician fleet ended the Persian military threat in the Aegean once and for all.

The Phoenicians were major supporters of Persian rule, given their support for the Persian king by supplying him with a strong fleet. Around 350, Sidon rebelled against Persia, with the help of Egypt. They were defeated, and the city was destroyed. This allowed Tyre to reemerge as the strongest of the Phoenician cities. The Phoenicians continued to support the Persians even when Alexander the Great attacked although they were defeated by Alexander and forced into his empire.