He had a temper that grew worse as he grew older.
<span>He was cruel to the Russian nobility. </span>
<span>He was cruel to the boyars. </span>
<span>He became like that when his wife died of a fever </span>
<span>When Ivan became a complete autocrat he tortured and executed nobles and clergy alike without trial if he thought they were against him. He created an elite military force who wore all black, rode black horses and used the symbols of a broom and a dog's head to show that they were there to sweep out all the dogs, meaning everyone who they considered disloyal to Ivan. </span>
<span>This militia, called the oprichniki, tortured and executed thousands in Ivan's name and at his direction. The worst of this group's actions was the massacre of tens of thousands of Russians in Novgorod in 1569 because Ivan thought they were plotting with Poland against him. </span>
<span>Ivan later began executing members of that militia as well. </span>
In one incident while in a rage killed his own son. Source: http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_was_Ivan_IV_called_the_Terrible
The role that tradition especially assigns to the Phoenicians as the merchants of the Levant was first developed on a considerable scale at the time of the Egyptian 18th dynasty. The position of Phoenicia, at a junction of both land and sea routes, under the protection of Egypt, favoured this development, and the discovery of the alphabet and its use and adaptation for commercial purposes assisted the rise of a mercantile society. A fresco in an Egyptian tomb of the 18th dynasty depicted seven Phoenician merchant ships that had just put in at an Egyptian port to sell their goods, including the distinctive Canaanite wine jars in which wine, a drink foreign to the Egyptians, was imported.<span>
Read more: Phoenicia, Phoenician Trade & Ships <span>http://phoenicia.org/trade.html#ixzz4OlpKoYqB</span></span>
