The Phoenician Cities get is from Josephus (C. Ap. , –): a report of a Phoenician record of
the kings of Tyre down to Cyrus’ time. None the less,eitherwhat Josephus
says is just false,orit was at least believed at Tyre that they possessed records
which went back to the tenth century..(Phoenician writing in fact went
back earlier than this). But in any case it does not matter, since what is rele-
vant for us is the sense of continuity with a pre-Greek past. Moreover, it was
certainly believed in the Graeco-Roman world that there was an indepen-
dent Phoenician historical tradition. So, in Athenaeus’Deipnosophistae,oneof
the diners, addressing Ulpian of Tyre, the main speaker, talks of ‘‘those who
write Phoenician histories, your compatriots, Sanchuniathon and Mochos’’
(A). Mochos was supposed to have been a Sidonian who had lived be-
fore the Trojan War; Posidonius alleged that he had discovered the theory
of atoms (Strabo,Geog. ); Josephus mentions him in support of biblical
reports of the longevity of the patriarchs (Ant. , ). More relevant, he was
one of three Phoenician writers whom one Laetus, an author of biographies
of philosophers, is said by Tatian (ad Gr. ) to have translated into Greek.
Sanchuniathon, from Berytus, was also said to have written in Phoenician
in the same period, and it was his work on Phoenician mythology which
Philon of Byblos claimed to have translated in the early second century. The
survival of some long extracts of this work in Eusebius’Praeparatio Evangelica
may be due to another Phoenician, Porphyry of Tyre (whose real name, Mal-
chus, was Semitic, ‘‘Porphyrios’’ being a pun on Malchus—Melech—king).
Nobody is going to reach agreement on the age or authenticity of the Phoe-
nician original, if indeed there was one, as a literary work. An unprecedented
volume of modern work on Philo’sHistoryhas concurred in the view that
its entire structure is Hellenistic.^44 Philo himself may have composed it de
novo; or perhaps there may have been an early Hellenistic original, a paral-
lel to the nationalistic expositions of Berosus and Manetho. It is also worth
noting that the point that what passed as an independent Phoenician reli-
gious view-point was actually Greek had already been made by Pausanias
(, , –). At Aegium, he reports, a Sidonian argued with him, saying that
Phoenician ideas of divinity were superior to Greek ones; they said that As-
clepius was air, and the son of Apollo, the Sun—Pausanias replied that this
account was no more Phoenician than Greek. But it seems beyond all ques-
tion that Philo’s materialdoescontain elements which are not derivable from
.FGrH. See for instance L. Troiani,L’opera storiografica di Filone da Byblos();
R. A. Oden, ‘‘Philo of Byblos and Hellenistic Historiography,’’PEQ– (): ; and
a monograph containing text, translation, and discussion, A. I. Baumgarten,The Phoenician
History of Philo of Byblos().