ABSTRACT
The Greeks, living in their groups of islands, were naturally sea-going people; they swept the shores of Palestine, and took the Phrenician and Philistine maritime cltIes. When they came over Jordan, in the wake of Alexander's conquests, they found the countryside in a much wilder and more dangerous state than it was in the west, and no doubt they felt that some more stringent rules were necessary, some more definite means of defending their commerce and their very existence from the inroads of the Bedawin.
