Sidon
(
Σιδών, Old Test. Zidon). Now Saida; a city of
Phœnicia, long the most powerful of that country's towns. It stood in a plain about
a mile from the Mediterranean Sea, and some twenty miles north of Tyre, and with a double
harbour of considerable extent, now filled with sand. Until Tyre wrested from it the maritime
supremacy, it was the greatest commercial city of the Phœnicians. When Xerxes
invaded Greece, the people of Sidon furnished his expedition with the best ships in the whole
fleet, so that the king of Sidon had the chief place in the council of the Persian king. The
city was burned at the time of its revolt against Artaxerxes III. (B.C. 351), but was rebuilt,
and later fell with the whole of Phœnicia under the control of the Romans. See
Phœnicé.