Justin Marozzi

Reconsider Phlebas

They were celebrated throughout the ancient world as fearless merchant adventurers — yet they remain as elusive as ever

issue 13 January 2018

So the Phoenicians never existed. Herodotus, that unreliable old fibber, made it all up in the Histories. Is this really what Josephine Quinn is saying, or is it just a cunning ruse to stir up a fuss and infuriate the dwindling band of Herodoteans out there?

Because Quinn, a professor of ancient history at Oxford University, declares that her mission is not so much to rescue the Phoenicians from their ‘undeserved obscurity’ so much as to argue that there were no such people.

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