Tea at Trianon: Phoenicians: The First Rulers of the Mediterranean

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, April 21, 2025

Phoenicians: The First Rulers of the Mediterranean

From The Greek Reporter:

The ancient Greeks named the Phoenicians the “purple people” because of the rare purple dye they made out of snail shells, but they were much more than that: they were the Mediterranean seafarers who created the first alphabet

It was the Greeks who named the Mediterranean civilization Phoenicia (Φοινίκη) in the Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 BC). It was located in modern-day Lebanon and locals called their land Canaan and themselves Canaanites.

Herodotus described the Phoenicians as avid sailors, skilled merchants, technological innovators, and naval warriors. Homer’s literary depiction of them is that they were famous skilled sailors in the Mediterranean with posts reaching to modern-day Portugal and Spain and that they made beautiful textiles which they traded. (Read more.)