The Phoenicians were among the greatest traders of their time and owed much of their prosperity to trade. At first, they traded mainly with the Greeks, trading wood, slaves, glass and powdered Tyrian purple. Tyrian purple was a violet-purple dye used by the Greek elite to color garments.
The states wanted there own rules and didn’t want to follow what laws the government DID have. So they didn’t want the government to have any power so that they could run their own state how they wanted