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Tyre

Phoenician island city, mother of Carthage, second in the King's fleet, 6th-5th century BCE

Tyre was a Phoenician city built on an island off the coast of Lebanon. It founded Carthage and was famous for its purple dye and its temple of Melqart, whom the Greeks called Heracles. Under the Persians its king sat second in Xerxes' council of war, after the king of Sidon.

In the game: Tyre is named with Sidon in the Phoenicians' notes and in sailors' and merchants' chatter.

The temple of Heracles

Ancient account

Herodotus says he sailed to Tyre to learn about Heracles and saw a richly furnished temple with two pillars, one of pure gold and one of an emerald stone that shone at night. The priests told him it was founded with the city, 2,300 years before.

Herodotus 2.44

Second in the council

Ancient account

Before Salamis the commanders sat as Xerxes had assigned them, first the king of Sidon and then the king of Tyre. Herodotus names Matten son of Siromus as the Tyrian commander in the fleet.

Herodotus 7.98, 8.67

Mother of Carthage

Ancient account

When Cambyses planned to send his fleet against Carthage, Herodotus says, the Phoenicians refused to fight their own children, and without them the rest of the fleet was too weak. Carthage was a colony of Tyre, founded by tradition in 814.

Herodotus 3.19

The island city

In the record

Tyre stood on an island until Alexander built a mole to it during his siege of 332, which Arrian describes. The silting of that mole has joined it to the mainland ever since. Tyre's coins of the later fifth century show a dolphin and a murex shell.

Arrian, Anabasis 2.16-24