Marseilles, Ancient Massillia

Marseilles, founded by Phoenician refugees from the Ionian Islands during the Persian wars, under Cyrus the Great, is the oldest town in France, dating from about 600 B. C. This is the first authentic date in the history of France. When these early sea-wanderers, seeking refuge, entered this noble harbor, now Marseilles, and founded the first European settlement in Gaul, they brought with them the Greek religion and something of Greek civilization. By a wise and prudent policy they made friends with the Celtic tribes, or Gauls, who inhabited the country. For about four hundred years the Greeks extended their colonies east and west of Marseilles, along the coast of the Mediterranean, but made no effort to conquer the interior. During the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage, the Marseillans favored Rome, and when they got into trouble with their unruly neighbors, 154 B. C., Rome willingly came to their rescue. There is little in Marseilles now to prove its great antiquity. The Phoenicians are supposed to have been the Canaanites, a people dispossessed by the Hebrews when they conquered the "promised land." The exiled people first settled on a narrow strip of land along the Mediterranean, north of Palestine, and called it "Phoenicia," a settlement. As the clearance of the Holy Land proceeded the refugees increased, until excess of population, as well as a spirit of enterprise, brought about emigration by sea, and the founding of settlements at various points on the sea coast. The Phoenicians are said to have ventured even as far as the British Isles. They founded Tyre and Sidon and Carthage, and in the days of Solomon penetrated the Red sea and brought him gold from Ophir. As a great commercial nation the Phoenicians disappear from history after the conquests of Alexander the Great, in the third century B. C., when they became absorbed in the rising glories of the commercial Greek cities of Athens, Corinth, and Argos.