Tyrus

, or Tyros , a very ancient city of Phœnicia, built by the Sidonians, on a small island at the south of Sidon, about 200 stadia from the shore, and now called Sur . There were, properly speaking, two places of that name, the old Tyros, called Palætyros , on the sea-shore, and the other in the island. It was about 19 miles in circumference, including Palætyros, but, without it, about four miles. Tyre was destroyed by the princes of As syria, and afterwards rebuilt. It maintained its independence till the age of Alexander, who took it with much difficulty, and only after he had joined the island to the continent by a mole, after a siege of seven months, on the 20th of August, B.C. 332. The Tyrians were naturally industrious; their city was the emporium of commerce, and they were deemed the inventors of scarlet and purple colours. They founded many cities in different parts of the world, such as Carthage, Gades, Leptis, Utica, . , which on that account are often distinguished by the epithet Tyria . The buildings of Tyre were very splendid and magnificent; the walls were 150 feet high, with a proportionate breadth. Hercules was the chief deity of the place. It had two large and capacious harbours, and a powerful fleet, and was built, according to some writers, about 2760 years before the christian era. Strabo , bk. 16 .— Hero dot us , bk. 2 , ch. 44 .— Mela , bk. 1 , ch. 12 .— Curtius , bk. 4 , ch. 4 .— Virgil , Æneid , bk. 1 , lis. 6, 339, . — Ovid , Fasti , bk. 1 , . Metamorphoses , bks. 5 & 10.— Lucan , bk. 3 , . ――A nymph, mother of Venus, according to some.