CHAPTER IV--THE CITIES.
Importance of the cities in Phoenicia--Their names and relative eminence--Cities of the first rank--Sidon--Tyre-- Arvad or Aradus--Marathus--Gebal or Byblus--Tripolis--Cities of the second rank--Aphaca--Berytus--Arka--Ecdippa--Accho-- Dor--Japho or Joppa--Ramantha or Laodicea--Fivefold division of Phoenicia.
Phoenicia, like Greece, was a country where the cities held a position of extreme importance.

The nation was not a centralised one, with a single recognised capital, like Judaea, or Samaria, or Syria, or Assyria, or Babylonia.

It was, like Greece, a congeries of homogeneous tribes, who had never been amalgamated into a single political entity, and who clung fondly to the idea of separate independence.

Tyre and Sidon are often spoken of as if they were metropolitical cities; but it may be doubted whether there was ever a time when either of them could claim even a temporary authority over the whole country.

Each, no doubt, from time to time, exercised a sort of hegemony over a certain number of the inferior cities; but there was no organised confederacy, no obligation of any one city to submit to another, and no period, as far as our knowledge extends, at which all the cities acknowledged a single one as their mistress.[41] Between Tyre and Sidon there was especial jealousy, and the acceptance by either of the leadership of the other, even temporarily, was a rare fact in the history of the nation.
According to the geographers, the cities of Phoenicia, from Laodicea in the extreme north to Joppa at the extreme south, numbered about twenty-five.