Thucydides, the Phoenicians and the Jews
Most educated people - and indeed most of those whose experience of history is confined to what they were taught at school - have heard of the father of historians - as opposed to the father of history (Herodotus) - Thucydides. The difference between the twin fathers of the historian's craft is the gulf that separates the standardised history that is taught to the majority of people and the critical history that the historian uses his or her intellectual tools and techniques of analysis and interpretation in order to create.
In a sense Herodotus and Thucydides represent the same kind of intellectual dualism in Western civilization represented by the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle. The former is traditionally identified as the founder of right-wing thought, while the latter is identified as the founder of left-wing intellectual discourse. Thucydides represents the tradition of the rational explanation of events by looking at the multitude of different factors which play into them, while Herodotus reflects a tradition of less critical and more simplistic belief in what must be because otherwise cherished beliefs are as dust.
Thucydides unlike Herodotus is not usually identified as having mentioned the jews and indeed he does not do so directly, but - as I have pointed out in my articles on Homer (1) and Euripides - (2) this is likely to because the jews at this time were not sufficiently distinct from their neighbours and their former religious confrères: the Phoenicians.
It is difficult to cast our minds back to a time before the jews were a people who were not particularly powerful or unusual, but do that we must in order to understand that the jews have evolved from a civilization which - even by Middle Eastern standards - was considered particularly barbaric.
Parents immolating their babes in arms in order to appease a bloodthirsty and vengeful god is something we find both in the (Written) Torah and also in Phoenician religious culture. The Romans in particular were horrified by this and recently it has become clear that we can no longer assign the Roman comments on this practice as being propaganda to discredit the Phoenicians, but rather that the awful reality is that the Romans were telling the truth.
Judaism - which borrows its all-powerful god Yahweh from Canaanite religion - then owes its origin to one of the most bloodthirsty and inhumane religions that the world has ever known comparable even to the mass orgies of human sacrifice engaged in by the Aztecs. This means in effect that we look at the Phoenicians before the fall of Alexander and the rise of the Hasmonean dynasty: we see the ancestors of the jews staring back at us.
We can then - with reasonable cause - take what ancient writers have to say about the Phoenicians before this time as being somewhat representative of what they believed about the ancestors of the jews and thus the jews themselves to a degree.
What does Thucydides have to say about the Phoenicians then?
Well the first thing he tells us is that while the Phoenicians are excellent sailors: they primarily use that skill for the purposes of piracy. (3) Indeed he tells us that where the Phoenicians settle piracy inevitably follows with the concomitant disruption of trade and movement around the area.
The Phoenicians also made a point of allying with the Persian empire against the Greeks: (4) much as the jews were later to do with the Parthians against the Romans, which in fact was the reason why the Emperors Hadrian and Trajan systematically massacred jews in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt and also made a brief attempt to completely eradicate the cult for good.
We should also remind ourselves that - as Homer pointed out in the 'Odyssey' - the Phoenicians were known to be slave-traders whose piracy served as a means of acquiring this lamentable human cargo. (5)
This then puts a different spin on what Thuydides says next regarding Sicily where the Phoenicians were already a significant presence on the island when the Hellenes began migrating there. Interestingly he tells us that the Phoenicians chose not to integrate with the Greeks and instead self-ghettoized themselves onto peninsulas and small islands: (6) much as the jews were later to do in Alexandria similarly exciting the ire of the Greeks.
The Phoenicians then proceeded to hold themselves aloof from the Greeks and only traded with; as opposed to socialized and inter-married, them as would have been more normal. Although in times of need the Phoenicians would cooperate with the Greeks only as much as was necessary for the preservation of their community. (7) Instead the Phoenicians behaved; and possibly believed, as if they were a people apart; a chosen people if you will, much as the jews do to this day.
We are also told - through necessary implication - by Thucydides that the Phoenicians of Sicily - much as the jews were later to be famous for - were very wealthy and had access to large amounts of silver and gold, which they had acquired through their trade with Greeks (8) as well as by piracy and slave trading.
We are also told that; at the height of the war between Sparta and Athens, the Spartans had been lead to believe that a Phoenician fleet - contracted by the Persian satrap Tissaphernes - would attacks Athens, but as Thucydides tells us this fleet never in fact existed. (9) This isn't quite true however as Thucydides later tells us that Tissaphernes did try to put together a Phoenician fleet, (10) but that the Phoenicians for unknown reasons did not wish to work with Tissaphernes for the expansion of the Persian Empire into Greece.
We cannot really know what precisely was in the calculation made by the Phoenicians, but it seems reasonable to suggest that their principle reason for not assisting Tissaphernes was because large numbers of their kin were resident in far away Sicily and were heavily outnumbered by the Greeks. Had the Phoenicians leant their fleets and sailors to the Persian invasion of Greece then it seems likely that - as occurred when the jews of Spain sided with the forces of Islam - they would have been subject to wholesale reprisals and the righteous anger of the Greeks leading to a large scale loss of Phoenician lives on Sicily and elsewhere.
Thus we can see that Thucydides viewed the Phoenicians in much the same way as his Greek intellectual descendants were to view the jews: as cliquish, money-orientated and generally perfidious people who would pretend to be your best friend, but then betray you at the drop of a hat if they thought that it served their interests to do so.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/homer-the-phoenicians-and-the-jews
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/euripides-the-phoenicians-and-the
(3) Thuc. 1:8; 8:46
(4) Ibid. 1:16; 110
(5) Hom. Ody. 8:265-293
(6) Thuc. 6:2
(7) Ibid. 6:46
(8) Ibid.
(9) Ibid. 8:78; 81
(10) Ibid. 8:87