25 
Chapter - 4
Formative Influences to 1700
26
The attention of Phoenician sailors
was first drawn to Minorca by the many fires seen on it at night, on account
of which they gave the island its first known name - Nura
(fire).
The fires could have been a method of signalling between elevated points,
or simply heath fires during the dry hot summers caused by wind-blown embers
from domestic hearths.
The Phoenicians have left little
to remind us of their presence. A few bronze objects and fragments of Phoenician
coloured glass have been found in graves in the cliffs near Sanitja. They
are said to have introduced to Minorcans the classical long tunic of the
ancients, with its purple hem, and shown them how to extract the purple
dye from the tiny molluscs (murax) still found on its shores.
Greek traders began to arrive about
500 BC, gradually supplanting the Phoenicians. The location of their settlements
is not known, but they probably occupied many of the prehistoric sites.
As one looks today at the island's numerous herds of Friesian cattle, it
is interesting to note that the Greeks gave Minorca its second known name
- Meloussa (Island of Cattle). The Greeks came from Phocis in the Eastern
Mediterranean, probably by stages from Italy, Sardinia and Corsica. No
Greek building of any kind has survived, although the megaliths were nearly
a thousand years old when they came, and are still with us. A bronze statue
of the goddess Minerva, and a bronze figure of an athlete, have, however,
been found.
In addition Greek pottery and amphorae
have been raised from submarine wrecks around the island. Aqua and scuba
divers may try their luck.
The Carthaginians who followed a
century later were the first to carry out a military expedition against
Minorca. They occupied it as part of a wider conquest, which included not
only the other Balearic Islands but North Africa and Iberia. They coined
the name 'Baleares' for the island group, which has two possible derivations:
from Balein - 'to throw with a sling', or from 'Balari' -the name of a
tribe in Sardinia.
They also made Minorcan slingers
famous throughout the Mediterranean world by enlisting them as mercenaries
in the First and Second Punic Wars. Minorcans became widely travelled,
and some of the slingers probably accompanied Hannibal across the Alps
with his elephants. At Trebia they opened the attack against the Roman
armies. Classical writers tell us that when abroad the slingers preferred
to receive their pay in the form of wine and women, instead of foreign
currency in which they placed no trust. If any of the women were carried
off by the enemy, they offered three or four captured men of rank in exchange
for one of them.
The Carthaginians are said to have
founded the present town of Ciudadela, calling it Jamma ('the West Town'),
and Maghen, now Mao or Mahon. Although their relations with the islanders
were at first good, there is a tradition that Minorcans rebelled against
their masters in 252 BC, attacking them with knives and sinking many galleys
in Port Mahon. The uprising was put down ruthlessly by Hannibal Barca.
Mago, the last commander of the
Carthaginians, wintered at Port Mahon in 207 BC. From him the town took
the name Port Magonis.
|
....
