was there ever a more admirable people than the Phoenicians? They knitted together not only the entire Mediterranean, but bits of the Atlantic, the Red Sea and the overland routes to Asia, yet they never had an emperor, had comparatively little time for religion and fought no memorable battles – unless you count Cannae, fought by a mercenary army paid by Carthage. I do not mean they were necessarily nice: they traded in slaves, sometimes resorted to war and did deals with the piratical Philistine ‘sea peoples’ who destroyed coastal cities around 1200 BC, but the Phoenicians seem to have
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