The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

In this double capacity as purveyors and slave dealers the Phœnicians appear in the Old Testament account of the armies which attacked the Jews. After the raid, led by the Philistines against the Jews about 845 B.C. (Joel iii. 3), the prophet said: “They have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they might drink,” and the same prophet, when mentioning the slave trade of the Syrians and Sidonians, writes: “The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head: And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off.”

The greater number of Phœnician slaves came from the neighbouring countries of Palestine and Syria; and this not only because of the nearness of these countries to Phœnicia, but also because of the political condition of their inhabitants. In a great part of Syria and Palestine the old populations had been enslaved by the races invading these countries. As the Canaanites had to submit to the Jews and Hebrews in the south, so the Syrians had to bow to the Canaanites in the north, where they were not only in force on the seacoast, but had become the ruling race far into the interior. A great number of the Jewish inhabitants in the district of the Phœnician maritime cities had the same fate, and, according to many accounts, they were driven into slavery. Hence the inherited enmity between the Phœnicians and the Syrians, and more especially between the Jews and every neighbouring race. The intermingling of so many different neighbouring small states caused continuous wars, which were often waged solely for the purpose of obtaining slaves and gaining wealth by the sale of them. Moreover, slavery was not a despised condition amongst races, accustomed to it from the earliest times, whose gods like Sandon, Marna, Semiramis, and Astarte, whose forefathers like Jacob and Joseph, and whose heroes like Samson had been slaves, or servants. Thus it was quite a common custom in Palestine for parents to sell their children as slaves, or for persons willingly to enter slavery. The Greeks and Romans, therefore, long regarded the Syrians and Jews as born to slavery, as the Europeans once considered the negroes.

The Syrians seem to have been very popular as slaves, but being rather a delicate race, not accustomed to hard work, they distinguished themselves in their devotion to their masters, and their deftness in handiwork, hence their value as house and body slaves. They were also excellent bakers and cooks, and gardeners, for horticulture was unequalled in Syria, and in these respects they were in great demand in western Asia, Europe, and Africa. The women slaves from Syria were equally popular,—pretty, musical, and song-loving,—the Syrians acted as ladies’ maids and hairdressers, and we find them taken to Greece and Italy as dancers, and flute and zither players, where they were a profitable investment to their owners.

Hebrew slaves were a most important branch of the trade, although there is no express mention of it. In the time of the judges when the northern Jewish races were subjugated by the Phœnicians, and when they were at times at the mercy of the Philistines’ raids in the prosecution of their slave trade, the traffic assumed great proportions, and continued until the reigns of Solomon and David, when the political and commercial relations of the Phœnicians and Israelites were put on a proper footing, and a treaty was made forbidding the Phœnicians to take Hebrew slaves out of the country. But after the decline of the David and Solomon kingdom, and the consequent change of the political and commercial relations of both countries, we find complaints of the Phœnicians breaking the old contract and transporting Hebrew slaves both eastward and westward. The Assyrian wars subsequently led to the Hebrews being taken as slaves into both neighbouring and distant countries.

In the Maccabæan wars, we find Phœnician slave dealers crowding the battle-fields, where they bought the Jews at a low price. This period and that following the wars of Pompey in Syria and Judea were the palmy days of Phœnicia’s slave trade. Delos was the great seat of this trade, as it was then the chief resort of Phœnician merchants. Thousands of slaves were imported and sold there on the same day, and the great Dispersion of the Jews in the West dates from this time, which consisted less of merchants than of liberated slaves. But the Phœnician trade in Jewish slaves went on till the latest times, when we find Phœnician merchants in the much frequented slave market at the Terebinth of Hebron buying four Jews for a measure of barley after the war of Hadrian in Judea.

The beautiful women and boys of Greece had from early times been introduced into the East as slaves. In Homeric times they commanded a higher price than any other commodity, and they were brought by Phœnician pirates as prisoners of war to Egypt and Palestine.

The prices at which slaves were bought were uncommonly low, whereas the prices at which they were resold were very high. The greatest profits were made by the slave dealers, who were often pirates, and frequently gained large sums in ransom money for wealthy or princely captives. In Pontus, which was the chief depot for most of these slaves, Lucullus tells us that a slave could be bought for 4 drachmæ, which in English money would be about 17s. 8d. ($4.25). When the slave dealers had an opportunity of buying prisoners of war on battle-fields, or when soldiers put up for sale their booty of women and children, the prices were equally low. The Punic soldiers were sold by the Romans for 3 thalers 18 gr. In Amos we read of the needy being sold for a pair of shoes. In Isaiah lii. 3, reference is made to the Jews being “sold for nought.” The price given by the Phœnicians for slaves was high in comparison with that of other countries; and even those mentioned in the Mosaic Law are rather lower than the Phœnician market prices of the time. Female children from 1 month to 5 years were estimated at 3 shekels, a male child of the same age 5 shekels. The price rose from 5 to 20 years of age; boys and youths were estimated at 20 shekels, girls were worth half as much. The highest price was between 20 and 60 years of age; for men 50 shekels, for women 30. At the fourth stage of 60 years and over, the price went down with men three-fourths, i.e., to 15 shekels, and with women to two-thirds, or to 10 shekels.