Civic Culture Life in ancient Phoenicia seems to have been centered on a king chosen from amongst divinely blessed royal houses. However, the king was far from all-powerful. Since Phoenicia was essentially a merchant power, the leading merchant families were a counterbalance to royal meddling. In the earliest days of Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, there was also a council of elders that stood between the king and the public merchant families. As foreign renegades swept through Levantine Phoenicia, new forms of government were imposed. For a short time in the 6th century BC, Tyre was even a republic. However, it appears that, for the most part, starting in the 6th century, civil administration was generally managed by suffetes, or judges. These were appointed or elected offices with limited terms. Since Carthage and many of the Western colonies were the result of expansion led by Tyre, this system of suffete-led governance appears to have been carried afield. Nevertheless, despite cultural ties and a sense of Phoenician identity, no large-scale federation was either possible or ever even attempted. If there were great similarities between the governments of the Phoenician homeland and the distant colonies, it was more a function of common heritage than the rigors of imposed uniformity.