A King of Tyre: A Tale of the Times of Ezra and Nehemiah

A King of Tyre - A Tale of the Times of Ezra and Nehemiah by James M. Ludlow. The island city of Tyre lay close to the Syrian coast. It seemed to float among the waves that fretted themselves into foam as they rolled in between the jagged rocks and spread over the flats retiring again to rest in the deep bosom of the Mediterranean. The wall that encircled the island rose in places a hundred cubits and seemed from a distance to be an enormous monolith. It was therefore called Tsur or Tyre which means The Rock. At the time of our narrative about the middle of the fifth century B.C. the sea-girt city contained a dense mass of inhabitants who lived in tall wooden houses of many stories; for the ground space within the walls could not lodge the multitude who pursued the various arts and commerce for which the Tyrians were of all the world the most noted. The streets were narrow often entirely closed to the sky by projecting balconies and arcades—mere veins and arteries for the circulation of the city's throbbing life.. For recreation from their dyeing-vats looms and foundries the artisan people climbed to the broad spaces on the top of the walls where they could breathe the sweet sea air except when the easterly wind was hot and gritty with dust from the mainland a few bow-shots distant. The men of commerce thronged the quay of the Sidonian harbor at the north end of the island or that of the Egyptian harbor on the south side—two artificial basins which were at all times crowded with ships; for the Tyrian merchantmen scoured all the coast of the Great Sea even venturing through the straits of Gades and northward to the coasts of Britain and southward along the African shore; giving in barter for the crude commodities they found not only the products of their own workshops but the freight of their caravans that climbed the Lebanons and wearily tracked across the deserts to Arabia and Babylon. The people of fashion paraded their pride on the Great Square in the heart of the city—called by the Greeks the Eurychorus—where they displayed their rich garments in competition with the flowers that grew almost as artificially in gay parterres amid the marble blocks of the pavement.. But one day a single topic absorbed the conversation of all classes alike in the Great Square on the walls and along the quays. Councillors of state and moneyed merchants debated it with bowed heads and wrinkled brows. Moulders talked of it as they cooled themselves at the doorways of their foundries. Weavers in the excitement of their wrangling over it forgot to throw the shuttle. Seamen lounging on the heaps of cordage gave the subject all the light they could strike from oaths in the names of all the gods of all the lands they had ever sailed to. Even the women as they stood in the open doorways piloting their words between the cries of the children who bestrode their shoulders or clung to their feet pronounced their judgment upon the all-absorbing topic.