page_title: Phoenicia
section_title: Hellenistic period (332–63 BC)
hierarchical_section_title: Phoenicia / History / Hellenistic period (332–63 BC)
caption_attribution_description: A naval action during the siege of Tyre
context_page_description: Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, specifically modern Lebanon. It was concentrated along the coast of Lebanon and included some coastal areas of Syria and northern Palestine reaching as far north as Arwad and as far south as Acre and possibly Gaza. At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula.
  The term Phoenicia is an exonym originating from ancient Greek that most likely described Tyrian purple, a major export of Canaanite port towns; it did not correspond precisely to Phoenician culture or society as it would have been understood natively. Scholars thus debate whether the Phoenicians were actually a distinct civilization from the Canaanites and other residents of the Levant.
  The Phoenicians came to prominence following the collapse of most major cultures during the Late Bronze Age. They were renowned in antiquity as adept merchants, expert seafarers, and intrepid explorers.
context_section_description: Located on the western periphery of the Persian Empire, Phoenicia was one of the first areas to be conquered by Alexander the Great during his military campaigns across western Asia. Alexander's main target in the Persian Levant was Tyre, now the region's largest and most important city. It capitulated after a roughly seven month siege, during which many of its citizens fled to Carthage. Tyre's refusal to allow Alexander to visit its temple to Melqart, culminating in the killing of his envoys, led to a brutal reprisal: 2,000 of its leading citizens were crucified and a puppet ruler was installed. The rest of Phoenicia easily came under his control, with Sidon, the second most powerful city, surrendering peacefully.
  Unlike the Phoenicians—and for that matter their former Persian rulers—the Greeks were notably indifferent, if not hostile, to foreign cultures. Alexander's empire had a policy of Hellenization, whereby Greek culture, religion, and sometimes language were spread or imposed across conquered peoples. This was typically implemented through the founding of new cities (most notably Alexandria in Egypt), the settlement of a Greek urban elite, and the alteration of native place names to Greek. 
  However, the Phoenicians were once again an outlier within an empire: there was evidently no "organised, deliberate effort of Hellenisation in Phoenicia", and with one or two minor exceptions, all Phoenician city states retained their native names, while Greek settlement and administration appears to have been limited. This is despite the fact that adjacent areas had been Hellenized, as had peripheral territories like the Caucasus and Bactria.
  The Phoenicians also continued to maintain cultural and commercial links with their western counterparts. Polybius recounts how the Seleucid king Demetrius I escaped from Rome by boarding a Carthaginian ship that was delivering goods to Tyre. An inscription in Malta, made between the second and third centuries BC, was dedicated to Herakles/Melqart in both Phoenician and Greek. To the extent the Phoenicians were subject to some degree of Hellenization, "there was much continuity with their Phoenician past—in language and perhaps in institutions; certainly in their cults; probably in some sort of literary tradition; perhaps in the preservation of archives; and certainly in a continuous historical consciousness." There is even evidence that a Hellenistic-Phoenician culture spread inland to Syria. The adaptation to Macedonian rule was likely aided by the Phoenician's historical ties with the Greeks, with whom they shared some mythological stories and figures; the two peoples were even sometimes considered "relatives". 
  Alexander's empire collapsed soon after his death in 323 BC, dissolving into several rival kingdoms ruled by his generals, relatives, or friends. The Phoenicians came under the control of the largest and most powerful of these successors, the Seleucids. The Phoenician homeland was repeatedly contested by the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt during the forty year Syrian Wars, coming under Ptolemaic rule in the third century BC. The Seleucids reclaimed the area the following century, holding it until the mid-first century BC. Under their rule, the Phoenicians were evidently allowed a considerable degree of autonomy. 
  During the Seleucid Dynastic Wars (157–63 BC), the Phoenician cities were fought over by the warring factions of the Seleucid royal family. The Seleucid Empire, which once stretched from the Aegean Sea to Pakistan, was reduced to a rump state comprising portions of the Levant and southeast Anatolia. Little is known of life in Phoenicia during this time, but the Seleucids were severely weakened, and their realm left as a buffer between various rival states before being annexed to Rome by Pompey in 63 BC. After centuries of decline, the last vestiges of Phoenician power in the Eastern Mediterranean were absorbed into the Roman province of Coele-Syria.
caption: A naval action during Alexander the Great's siege of Tyre (350 BC). Drawing by André Castaigne, 1888–89.
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