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Thucydides observes that in ancient times the Phenicians had occupied the promontories of Sicily and the small islands lying around Sicily, in order to carry on trade with the Sicels.146 Diodorus Siculus tells us that when the Phenicians extended their trade to the western ocean they settled in the island of Melite (Malta), owing to its situation in the middle of the sea and excellent harbours, in order to have a refuge for their ships. The island of Gaulus also, which lies close to Melite, is said to have been a colony of the Phenicians.147 On the south-eastern promontory of Malta there was a temple of Heracles-Melkarth,148 the foundation walls of which appear to be still in existence, and still more definite evidence of the former population of this island is given by the Phenician inscriptions found there. The island, like the mother-country, carried on weaving, and the products were much sought after in antiquity. On Gaulus also, a name mentioned on Phenician coins, are the remains of a Phenician temple. Between Sicily and the coast of Africa, where it approaches Sicily most nearly, lay the island of Cossyra, coins of which bear Phenician legends. Along with a dwarfish figure they present the name "island of the sons,"149 i. e. no doubt, the children of the sun-god whom we met with in Rhodes. On the east coast of Sicily there lay, on a small promontory scarcely connected with the mainland (now Isola degli Magnisi), the city of Thapsos, the name of which reveals its founders; Tiphsach means coming over, here coming over to the mainland. In the same way the promontory of Pachynus (pachun means wart), further to the south, and the harbour of Phœnicus are evidence of Phenician colonisation. On the south coast of Sicily, not far from the mouth of the Halycus, the Phenicians built that city which is known to the Greeks as Makara and Minoa, or Heracleaminoa; the coins of the city present in Phenician characters the name Rus-Melkart, i. e. "head (promontory) of Melkarth."150 Off the west coast of Sicily the Phenicians occupied the small island of Motye.151 On this coast of the larger island, on Mount Eryx, which rises steeply out of a bald table land (2000 feet above the sea), they founded the city of Eryx, and on the summit of the mount, 5000 feet high, they built a temple to the Syrian Aphrodite. In Diodorus it is Eryx the son of Aphrodite who builds this temple; Æneas then adorns it with many votive offerings, "since it was dedicated to his mother."152 Virgil represents the temple as being founded on the summit of Eryx, near to the stars, in honour of Venus Idalia, i. e. the goddess worshipped at Idalion (Idial) on Cyprus by the immigrants from the East, who, with him, are the companions of Æneas.153 The courtezans at this temple, the sensual character of the worship, and the sacred doves kept here (in a red one the goddess herself was supposed to be seen154), even without the Phenician inscriptions found there, would leave no doubt of its Syrian origin. The mighty substructure of the building is still in existence. Dædalus is said to have built it for the king of the Sicanians (p. 64). Beside the Syrian goddess, the Phenicians also worshipped here the Syrian god Baal Melkarth. According to the account of Diodorus, Heracles overcame Eryx in wrestling, and so took his land from him, though he left the usufruct of it to the inhabitants.155 The kings of Sparta traced their origin to Heracles. When Dorieus, the son of Anaxandridas, king of Sparta, desired to emigrate in his anger that the crown had fallen to his brother Cleomenes, the oracle bade him retire to Eryx; the land of Eryx belonged to the Heraclids because their ancestor won it. The Carthaginians, it is true, did not acknowledge this right; Dorieus was slain, and most of those who followed him.156 On the north coast of Sicily, Panormus (Palermo) and Soloeis were the most important colonies of the Phenicians. Panormus, on coins of the Phenicians Machanath, i. e. the camp, worshipped the goddess of the sexual passion; Soloeis (sela, rock) worshipped Melkarth. In a hymn to Aphrodite, Sappho inquires whether she lingers in Cyprus or at Panormus.157 Motye, Soloeis and Panormus were in the fifth century the strongest outposts of the Carthaginians in Sicily.158
On Sardinia also, as Diodorus tells us, the Phenicians planted many colonies.159 The mountains of Sardinia contained iron, silver, and lead. According to the legend of the Greeks, Sardus, the son of Makeris, as the Libyans called Heracles, first came with Libyans to the island. Then Heracles sent his brother's son Iolaus, together with his own sons, whom he had begotten in Attica, to Sardinia. As Heracles had been lord of the whole West, these regions belonged of right to Iolaus and his companions. Iolaus conquered the native inhabitants, took possession of and divided the best and most level portion of the land which was afterwards known by the name of Iolaus; then he sent for Dædalus out of Sicily and erected large buildings, which, Diodorus adds, are still in existence; but in Sicily temples were erected to himself, and honour paid as to a hero, and a famous shrine was erected in Agyrion, "where," as Diodorus remarks of this his native city, "even to this day yearly sacrifices are offered."160 Makeris, the supposed father of Sardus, is, like Makar, a form of the name Melkarth. If Sardinia and the whole West as well as Eryx is said to have belonged to Heracles, if Heracles sends out his nearest relations to Sardinia, if the artist Dædalus is his companion here as he was the companion of Minos in Crete and Sicily, it becomes obvious that the temples of Baal Melkarth on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily lie at the base of these legends of the Greeks, that it was the Phenicians who brought the worship of their god along with their colonies to these coasts, to which they were led by the wealth of the Sardinian mountains in copper. As we already ventured to suppose (I. 368), Iolaus may be an epithet or a special form of Baal.161
The legend of the Greeks makes Heracles, i. e. Baal Melkarth, lord of the whole West. As a fact, the colonies of the Phenicians went beyond Sardinia in this direction. Their first colonies on the north coast of Africa appear to have been planted where the shore runs out nearest Sicily; Hippo was apparently regarded as the oldest colony.162 In the legends of the coins mentioned above (p. 53) Hippo is named beside Tyre and Citium as a daughter of Sidon. When a second Hippo was afterwards founded further to the west, opposite the south coast of Sardinia, at the mouth of the Ubus, the old Hippo got the name of "Ippoacheret," and among the Greeks "Hippon Zarytos," i. e. "the other Hippo."163 Ityke (atak, settlement, Utica), on the mouth of the Bagradas (Medsherda), takes the next place after this Hippo, if indeed it was not founded before it. Aristotle tells us that the Phenicians stated that Ityke was built 287 years before Carthage,164 and Pliny maintains that Ityke was founded 1178 years before his time.165 As Carthage was founded in the year 846 B.C. (below, chap. 11), Ityke, according to Aristotle's statement, was built in the year 1133 B.C. With this the statement of Pliny agrees. He wrote in the years 52-77 A.D., and therefore he places the foundation of Ityke in the year 1126 or 1100 B.C.
About the same time, i. e. about the year 1100 B.C., the Phenicians had already reached much further to the west. In his Phenician history, Claudius Iolaus tells us that Archaleus (Arkal, Heracles166), the son of Phœnix, built Gadeira (Gades).167 "From ancient times," such is the account of Diodorus, "the Phenicians carried on an uninterrupted navigation for the sake of trade, and planted many colonies in Africa, and not a few in Europe, in the regions lying to the west. And when their undertakings succeeded according to their desire and they had collected great treasures, they resolved to traverse the sea beyond the pillars of Heracles, which is called Oceanus. First of all, on their passage through these pillars, they founded upon a peninsula of Europe a city which they called Gadeira, and erected works suitable to the place, chiefly a beautiful temple to Heracles, with splendid offerings according to the custom of the Phenicians. And as this temple was honoured at that time, so also in later times down to our own days it was held in great reverence. When the Phenicians, in order to explore the coasts beyond the pillars, took their course along the shore of Libya, they were carried away far into the Oceanus by a strong wind, and after being driven many days by the storm they came to a large island opposite Libya, where the fertility was so great and the climate so beautiful that it seemed by the abundance of blessings found there to be intended for the dwelling of the gods rather than men."168 Strabo says, the Gaditani narrated that an oracle bade the Tyrians send a colony to the pillars of Heracles. When those who had been sent reached the straits of Mount Calpe they were of opinion that the promontories which enclosed the passage, Calpe and the opposite headland of Abilyx in Libya,169 were the pillars which bounded the earth, and the limit of the travels of Heracles, which the oracle mentioned. So they landed on this side of the straits, at the spot where the city of the Axitani (Sexi) now stands; but since the sacrifices were not favourable there they turned back. Those sent out after them sailed through the straits, and cast anchor at an island sacred to Heracles, 1500 stades beyond the pillars, opposite the city of Onoba in Iberia; but as the sacrifices were again unfavourable they also again turned home. Finally, a third fleet landed on a little island 750 stades beyond Mount Calpe, close to the mainland, and not far from the mouth of the Bætis. Here, on the east side of the island, they built a temple to Heracles; on the opposite side of the island they built the city of Gadeira, and on the extreme western point the temple of Cronos. In the temple of Heracles there were two fountains and "two pillars of brass, eight cubits in height, on which is recorded the cost of the building of this temple."170 This foundation of Gades, which on the coins is called Gadir and Agadir, i. e. wall, fortification, the modern Cadiz, and without doubt the most ancient city in Europe which has preserved its name, is said to have taken place in the year 1100 B.C.171 If Ityke was founded before 1100 B.C. or about that time, we have no reason to doubt the founding of Gades soon after that date. Hence the ships of the Phenicians would have reached the ocean about the time when Tiglath Pilesar I. left the Tigris with his army, trod the north of Syria, and looked on the Mediterranean.
The marvellous and impressive aspect of the rocky gate which opens a path for the waves of the Mediterranean to the boundless waters of the Atlantic Ocean might implant in the Phenician mariners who first passed beyond it the belief that they had found in these two mountains the pillars which the god set up to mark the end of the earth; in the endless ocean beyond them they could easily recognise the western sea in which their sun-god went to his rest. That Gades, on the shore of the sea into which the sun went down, was especially zealous in the worship of Melkarth, that the descent of the god into the western ocean (the supposed death of Heracles172) and the awakening of the god with the sun of the spring were here celebrated with especial emphasis, is a fact which requires no explanation. The legends of the Hesperides, the daughters of the West, in whose garden Melkarth celebrates the holy marriage with Astarte (I. 371), of the islands of the blest in the western sea, appear to have a local background in the luxuriant fertility and favoured climate of Madeira and the Canary islands.
The land off the coast of which Gades lay, the valley of the Guadalquivir, was named by the Phenicians Tarsis (Tarshish), and by the Greeks Tartessus. The genealogical table in Genesis places Tarsis among the sons of Javan. The prophet Ezekiel represents the ships of Tarshish as bringing silver, iron, tin and lead to Tyre. "The ships of Tarshish," so he says to the city of Tyre, "were thy caravans; so wert thou replenished and very glorious in the midst of the sea."173 The Sicilian Stesichorus of Himera expresses himself in more extravagant terms. He sang of the "fountains of Tartessus (the Guadalquivir) rooted in silver." The Greeks represent the Tartessus, the river which brought down gold, tin, iron in its waters, as springing from the silver mountain,174 and according to Herodotus the first Greek ship, a merchantman of Samos, which was driven about the year 630 B.C. by a storm from the east to Tartessus, made a profit of 60 talents.175 Aristotle tells us that the first Phenicians who sailed to Tartessus obtained so much silver in exchange for things of no value that the ships could not carry the burden, so that the Phenicians left behind the tackle and even the anchor they had brought with them and made new tackle of silver.176 Poseidonius says that among that people it was not Hades, but Plutus, who dwelt in the under-world. Once the forests had been burned, and the silver and gold, melted by an enormous fire, flowed out on the surface; every hill and mountain became a heap of gold and silver. On the north-west of this land the ground shone with silver, tin and white gold mixed with silver. This soil the rivers washed down with them. The women drew water from the river and poured it through sieves, so that nothing but gold, silver and tin remained in the sieve.177 Diodorus tells the same story of the ancient burning of the forests on the Pyrenees (from which fire they got their name), by which the silver ore was rendered fluid and oozed from the mountains, so that many streams were formed of pure silver. To the native inhabitants the value of silver was so little known that the Phenicians obtained it in exchange for small presents, and gained great treasures by carrying the silver to Asia and all other nations. The greed of the merchants went so far that when the ships were laden, and there was still a large quantity of silver remaining, they took off the lead from the anchors and replaced it with silver. Strabo assures us that the land through which the Bætis flows was not surpassed in fertility and all the blessings of earth and sea by any region in the world; neither gold nor silver, copper nor iron, was found anywhere else in such abundance and excellence. The gold was not only dug up, but also obtained by washing, as the rivers and streams brought down sands of gold. In the sands of gold pieces were occasionally found half-a-pound in weight, and requiring very little purification. Stone salt was also found there, and there was abundance of house cattle and sheep, which produced excellent wool, of corn and wine. The coast of the shore beyond the pillars was covered with shell-fish and large purple-fish, and the sea was rich in fish (the tunnies and the Tartessian murena so much sought after in antiquity),178 which the ebb and flow of the tide brought up to the beach. Corn, wine, the best oil, wax, honey, pitch and cinnabar were exported from this fortunate land.179
If the Phenicians were able in the thirteenth century to settle upon Cyprus and Rhodes, the islands of the Ægean and the coasts of Hellas, their population must have been numerous, their industry active, their trade lucrative. That subsequently in the twelfth century they also took into possession the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia and North Africa by means of their colonies is a proof that the request for the raw products and metals of the West was very lively and increasing in Syria and in Egypt, in Assyria and Babylonia. The market of these lands must have been very remunerative to the Phenicians in order to induce them to make their discoveries, their distant voyages and remote settlements. If the Phenicians about the year 1100 B.C. were in a position to discover the straits of Gibraltar, the fact shows us that they must have practised navigation for a long time. The horizon of the Greek mariner ended even in the ninth century in the waters of Sicily, and in the fifth century B.C. the voyage of a Greek ship from the Syrian coast to the pillars of Heracles occupied 80 days.180 After the founding of Gades the Phenicians ruled over the whole length of the Mediterranean by their harbour fortresses and factories. Their ships crossed the long basin in every direction, and everywhere they found harbours of safety. They showed themselves no less apt and inventive in the arts of navigation than the Babylonians had shown themselves in technical inventions and astronomy; they were bolder and more enterprising than the Assyrians in the campaigns which the latter attempted at the time when the Phenicians were building Gades; they were more venturesome and enduring on the water than their tribesmen the Arabians on the sandy sea of the desert. In the possession of the ancient civilisation of the East their mariners and merchants presented the same contrast to the Thracians and Hellenes, the Sicels, the Libyans and Iberians which the Portuguese and the Spaniards presented 2500 years later to the tribes of America.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRIBES OF ISRAEL
Not far removed from the harbour-cities, whose ships discovered the land of silver, which carried the natural wealth of the West to the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris, and the Nile, in order to exchange them for the productions of those countries, in part immediately upon the borders of the marts which united the East and the West, and side by side with them, dwelt the Israelites on the heights and in the valleys which they had conquered, in very simple and original modes of life.
Even during the war against the ancient population of Canaan, immediately after the first successes against the Amorites, they had, as we have seen, dropped any common participation in the struggle, any unity under one leader. According to their numbers and bravery, and the resistance encountered, the various tribes had won larger or smaller territories, better or inferior districts. Immigration and conquest did not lead among the Israelites to a combination of their powers under the supremacy of one leader, but rather to separation into clans and cantons, which was also favoured by the nature of the country conquered, a district lying in unconnected parts, and possessing no central region adapted for governing the whole. Thus, after the settlement, the life of the nation became divided into separate circles according to the position and character of the mountain canton which the particular tribe had obtained, and the fortune which it had experienced. Even if there was an invasion of the enemy, the tribe attacked was left to defend itself as well as it could. It was only very rarely, and in times of great danger, that the nobles and elders of the whole land, and a great number of the men of war from all the tribes, were collected round the sacred ark at Shiloh, at Bethel, at Mizpeh, or at Gilgal for common counsel or common defence. But even when a resolution was passed by the nobles and elders and the people, individual tribes sometimes resisted, even by force of arms, the expressed will of the nation, or at least of a great part of the nobles and people, and the division of the tribes sometimes led even to open war.
Within the tribes also there was no fixed arrangement, no fixed means for preserving peace. The clans and families for the most part possessed separate valleys, glens, or heights. The heads of the oldest families were also the governors of these cantons, and composed the differences between the members of the clan, canton, or city by their decisions; while in other places bold and successful warriors at the head of voluntary bands made acquisitions, in which the descendants of the leader took the rank of elder and judge. Eminent houses of this kind, together with the heads of families of ancient descent, formed the order of nobles and elders; "who hold the judge's staff in their hands, and ride on spotted asses with beautiful saddles, while the common people go afoot."181 If a tribe fell into distress and danger, the nobles and elders assembled and took counsel, while the people stood round, unless some man of distinction had already risen and summoned the tribe to follow him. For the people did not adhere exclusively to the chief of the oldest family in the canton; nobles and others within, and in special cases without, the tribe, who had obtained a prominent position by warlike actions, or by the wisdom of their decisions, whose position and power promised help, protection and the accomplishment of the sentence, were invited to remove strife and differences, unless the contending persons preferred to help themselves. Only the man who could not help himself sought, as a rule, the decision of the elder or judge.
The names of some of the men whose decision was sought in that time have been preserved in the tradition of the Israelites. Tholah of the tribe of Issachar, Jair of the land of Gilead, Ebzan of Bethlehem in the tribe of Judah, Elon of the tribe of Zebulun, and Abdon of Ephraim, are all mentioned as judges of note. Of Jair we are told that he had 30 sons, who rode on 30 asses, and possessed 30 villages. Ebzan is also said to have had 30 sons and to have married 30 daughters; while Abdon had 40 sons and 30 grandsons, who rode on 70 asses.182
On the heights and table-lands of the districts east of the Jordan, in the land of Gilead, were settled the tribes of Reuben and Gad and a part of the tribe of Manasseh. At an early period they grew together, so that the name of the region sometimes represents the names of these tribes. Here the pastoral life and breeding of cattle remained predominant, as in the less productive districts on the west of the Jordan. But on the plains and in the valleys of the west the greater part of the settlers devoted themselves to the culture of the vine and agriculture. The walls of the ancient cities were at first used as a protection against the attacks of robbers, or raids of enemies; the inhabitants, afterwards as before, planted their fields and vineyards outside the gates.183 But the custom of dwelling together led to the beginnings of civic life, industrial skill, and common order. The trade of the Phenicians, which touched the land of the Hebrews here and there, and the more advanced culture of the cities of the coast, could not remain without influence on the Hebrews.
The religious feeling which separated the Israelites from the Canaanites was not more thoroughly effective than the community of blood and the contrast to the ancient population of the land in bringing about the combination and union of the Israelites. The religious life was as much without organisation as the civic; on the contrary, as the Israelites spread as settlers over a larger district, the unity and connection of religious worship which Moses previously established again fell to the ground. It is true, the sacred ark remained at Shiloh, five leagues to the north of Bethel, under the sacred tent in the land of the tribe of Ephraim. At this place a festival was held yearly in honour of Jehovah, to which the Israelites assembled to offer prayer and sacrifice. On other occasions also people went to Shiloh to offer sacrifice.184 The priestly office in the sacred tent at the sacred ark remained with the descendants of Aaron, in the family of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the eldest son of Aaron (I. 497). But with the settlement a number of other places of sacrifice had risen up beside the sanctuary at Shiloh. On the heights and under the oaks at Ramah in the land of Benjamin, at Mizpeh in the same district, as well as at Mizpeh beyond Jordan, where Jacob and Laban had parted in peace,185 at Bethel on the borders of the land of Ephraim and Benjamin, where Abraham sacrificed (between Bethel and Ai) and Jacob received the name of Israel;186 finally at Gilgal on the east of Jordan, where Joshua lay encamped, and kept the passover, before he attacked Jericho, Jehovah was invoked. At these places also the firstlings of the fruits were offered; goats, rams, and bulls were offered, with or without the intervention of the priest, and inquiry made for the will of Jehovah without priestly help or intervention. Any one who set up an altar established a priest there, or hired a priest. For this purpose men were chosen who claimed to be of the race of Moses and Aaron, just as the service of the sacred ark at Shiloh was in the hands of this family; but men of other origin and tribes were not excluded even from the priesthood at the ark.187
In such a want of any defined and influential position of the priesthood, in the want of any church organisation, it was only the superior personal power of the priests at Shiloh which could protect the religious feeling and traditional custom against the influences of the new surroundings, and Canaanitish rites. Tradition, at any rate from the first third of the eleventh century B.C., had no good to tell of the morals of the priests at Shiloh. To those who came to bring an offering the servant of the priest said, "Give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not have it sodden but raw." If the person sacrificing replied, "We will burn only the fat, then take what you desire," the servant answered, "You must give it me now, and if you will not I shall take it by force." If the priest desired cooked flesh from the sacrifice, he sent his servant, who struck with his three-pronged fork into the cauldron, and what he brought out was the priest's.
The religious views of the Israelites, not sufficiently represented among themselves, were the more exposed to the influence of the rites of the Canaanites, as these rites belonged to tribes of kindred nature and character. In this way it came about that the Canaanitish gods Baal and Astarte were worshipped beside Jehovah, the god of Israel, and that in one or two places the old worship was perhaps entirely driven out by these new gods. But even where this did not take place, it was owing to the example and impulse of the Syrian modes of worship that images were here and there set up on the altars of Jehovah. When the conception of the divine nature in the spirit of a nation passes beyond the first undefined feeling and intimation, – when it receives a plainer and more expressive shape in the minds of men, and the first steps of artistic and technical skill, or the example of neighbours, are coincident with this advance, – the general result is that men desire to see the ruling powers fixed in distinct forms, then the gods are presented in a realistic manner in visible forms and images. And thus it was among the Israelites. The command of Moses given in opposition to the images of Egypt (I. 354) was long since forgotten. Michah, a man of the tribe of Ephraim, caused a goldsmith to make a carved and molten image of Jehovah of 200 shekels of silver; and set it up in a temple on Mount Ephraim, establishing as a priest a Levite, the "descendant of Moses." When a part of Dan marched northwards in order to win for themselves abodes there, which they could not conquer from the Philistines, the men of Dan carried off this image along with the Levite and set it up in the city of Laish (Dan), which they took from the Sidonians (I. 371), and the "grandson of Moses" and his descendants continued to be priests before this image.188 At Nob also there was a gilded image of Jehovah, and many had Teraphim, or images of gods in the form of men, in their houses.189
Nothing important was undertaken before inquiry was made of the will of Jehovah. The inquiry was made as a rule by casting lots before the sacred tabernacle at Shiloh, before the altars and images of Jehovah,190 or by questioning the priests and soothsayers. Counsel was also taken of these if a cow had gone astray, and they received in return bread or a piece of money.
Of the feuds which the tribes of Israel carried on at this time, some have remained in remembrance.191 The concubine of a Levite, so we are told in the book of Judges, who dwelt on Mount Ephraim, ran away from her husband; she went back to her father, to Bethlehem in Judah. Her husband rose and followed her, pacified her, and then set out on his return. The first evening they reached the city of the Jebusites, but the Levite would not pass the night among the Canaanites (I. 500), and turned aside to Gibeah, a place in the tribe of Benjamin. Here no one received the travellers; they were compelled to remain in the street till an old man came home late in the evening from his work in the field. When he heard that the traveller was from Ephraim he received him into his house, for he was himself an Ephraimite, gave fodder to the asses of the Levite and his concubine, and placed his attendant with his own servants. Then they washed their feet, and drank, and their hearts were merry. But the men of Gibeah collected round the house in the evening, pressed on the door, and demanded that the stranger from Ephraim should be given up to them; they wished to destroy him. In order to save himself the priest gave up to them his concubine, that they might satisfy their passions on her. The men of Gibeah abused her the whole night through, so that next morning she lay dead upon the threshold. The Levite went with the corpse to his home at Ephraim, cut it into twelve pieces with a knife, and sent a piece to each tribe. Every one who saw it said, "The like was never heard since Israel came out of Egypt." And the chiefs of the nation assembled and pronounced a curse upon him who did not come to Mizpah (in the land of Benjamin) that he should be put to death. Then all the tribes assembled at Mizpah, it is said about 400,000 men;192 only from Jabesh in Gilead and the tribe of Benjamin no one came. The Levite told what had happened to him, and the tribes sent messengers to Benjamin, to bring the men of Gibeah. But the children of Benjamin refused, and assembled their men of war, more than 26,000 in number, and took up arms. Then the people rose up and said, "Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin."193 Every tenth man was sent back for supplies; the rest marched out against Benjamin. But "Benjamin was a ravening wolf, who ate up the spoil at morning and divided the booty in the evening;" they were mighty archers, and could throw with the left hand as well as the right.194 They fought twice at Gibeah with success against their countrymen. Not till the third contest did the Israelites gain the victory, and then only by an ambuscade and counterfeit flight. After this overthrow the whole tribe is said to have been massacred, the flocks and herds destroyed, and the cities burnt. Only 600 men, as we are told, escaped to the rock Rimmon on the Dead Sea. When the community again assembled at Bethel the people were troubled that a tribe should be extirpated and wanting in Israel; so they caused peace and a safe return to be proclaimed to the remainder of Benjamin. And when 12,000 men were sent out against Jabesh to punish the city because none of their inhabitants came to the gathering at Mizpeh, they were ordered to spare the maidens of Jabesh. In obedience to this command they brought 400 maidens back from Jabesh, and these were given to the Benjamites. But as this number was insufficient the Benjamites were allowed, when the yearly festival was held at Shiloh (p. 92), and the daughters of Shiloh came out to dance before the city, to rush out from the vineyards and carry off wives for themselves. Thus does tradition explain the non-execution of the decree that no Israelite should give his daughter to wife to a man of Benjamin, and the rescue of the tribe of Benjamin from destruction.195
