ASHES OF EMPIRE
Just as we make the mistake of studying geography with the aid of
large-scale maps, so we are prone to use a magnifying-glass in the
study of ancient history. We envision the classic sites as being far
larger than they really were because we see them through the eyes of
the classical writers. To the stages on which the ancients enacted
those mighty dramas, which shook the world and shaped the course of
history, we have attributed a spaciousness they did not possess. We
think of them in the terms of our own far-flung, mushroom cities,
we measure them by modern municipal standards, when, as a matter of
fact, they were comparatively insignificant in extent according to
present-day ideas. Compared to Greater London, with its area of seven
hundred square miles, or to New York, with its three hundred, the famous
cities of antiquity—Troy, Tyre, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Palmyra, Babylon,
Athens, Rome—would be reckoned to-day as little more than medium-sized
communities and classified as cities of the second and third class by the
Post Office Department at Washington.
And Carthage, despite her wealth and world-power, was no exception, for
the Empress of the Seas never had as great a population as has Baltimore,
and her area, as delimited by the city walls, probably did not equal
that of Camden, New Jersey. The city, as has been said in the preceding
chapter, stood on the outer edge of a small, fan-shaped peninsula bounded
on the north by a large salt lake, the Sebkha en Rouan, on the east and
southeast by the Gulf of Tunis, and on the south and southwest by the
lagoon of El Bahira; while on the west a narrow isthmus, barely two
miles in width, afforded communication with the mainland. The entire
area of this peninsula does not exceed half a hundred square miles, if
that, and considerably less than a fourth of this was contained within
the ramparts, which are said to have measured twelve and a half miles in
circumference.
Of none of the famous cities of antiquity do we possess a more careful
description than that which Appian has given us of Carthage as she stood
at the outbreak of the Third Punic War. In its wealth of facts and
figures it is worthy of Herr Baedeker himself.
The side of the city toward the isthmus was defended by a wall forty-five
feet in height (Diodorus says sixty) and thirty-three in thickness,
interrupted at intervals of two hundred yards by lofty towers; the
“topless towers,” no doubt, for which the city was famous. The seemingly
unnecessary thickness of these tremendous ramparts is explained by
the fact that they were hollow and contained four floors of rooms or
casemates. On the ground floor were stables for three hundred elephants;
on the second, stalls for four thousand cavalry-horses, together with
space for the storage of vast quantities of fodder; while in the two
upper stories were quartered twenty-four thousand fighting-men, who had
with them supplies sufficient to last through a siege of several years’
duration. This single landward wall was, in short, a great fortress,
containing more men and animals than are comprised in two modern army
divisions.
Carthage within the walls—I am referring, of course, to the Punic
city—consisted of three distinct districts. Atop of a small hill, six
hundred feet in height, from which it dominated the entire city, stood
a vast walled inclosure, half-citadel, half-temple, known as the Byrsa.
From this, three broad thoroughfares and an imposing flight of marble
steps led down to the Cothon, or military harbor, which lent its name to
the entire mercantile quarter of the city. To the northward, climbing
part way up the mountain slopes, lay the vast suburb of Megara, where the
wealthy merchants had their villas.
Perhaps the most singular features of the most singular and interesting
city of its time were the two great harbors, both artificial, which
together covered an area of seventy acres. The outer, or commercial,
harbor, a long quadrilateral in shape, had direct access to the sea, or
rather to a sheltered bay, by a canal, the entrance to which was closed
by enormous chains. From the commercial harbor another cutting led into
the Cothon, or naval port, which was circular and fringed by 220 slips,
each large enough to accommodate a war-galley. Flanking the entrances to
these slips were massive Ionic columns, the effect produced being that
of a vast circular arcade. In the center of the Cothon, connected with
the shore by a narrow jetty, was a small round island, on which stood
the Admiralty Palace, surmounted by a lofty lookout tower from which
the grand admiral could obtain an unobstructed view of the harbors, the
city, and the sea. At the back of the slips lay arsenals, storehouses,
workshops, and the barracks of the marines and galley-slaves, the
whole encircled by a wall so high that no inquisitive eye in the outer
harbor or in the city could see what was going on within. In these two
great harbors were respectively fitted out the argosies which made
Carthage the greatest commercial power of her time and the armadas which
threatened Rome with destruction. When, in the seventh century, Carthage
was destroyed by the Arabs under Hassan, he filled up the harbors for
fear the city should rise from its ruins to rival his capital at Tunis.
In recent years, under the direction of French archæologists, they have
been dug out, but only in part, so that to-day the sites, but not the
size, of the original ports are indicated by two insignificant-looking
ponds.
[Illustration: THE CITY OF THE MOLE-MEN
Far to the south, where the Tunisian Sahel runs down to meet the sands
of the Sahara, is the Matmata Plateau, a lofty ridge of limestone
rock honeycombed by the dwellings of a forgotten folk who have led a
troglodyte existence since the world was young]
A few paces to the west of the Cothon, between it and the Byrsa, lay
the Agora, or Forum, within whose precincts the legionaries of Scipio
bivouacked on the night preceding his final onslaught on the city. It
was one of the most important public buildings of Carthage, frequented
by orators, politicians, merchants, and bankers; a combination, as it
were, of the House of Representatives, the New York City Hall, the Law
Courts, and the Stock Exchange. In its spacious colonnaded courtyard
were crucified the admirals and generals who, in accordance with
Carthaginian custom, paid the price of defeat with their lives. From his
lofty watch-tower in the Cothon the grand admiral could look down upon
the scene, could see quite plainly the stark figure of his unfortunate
predecessor gasping out his life upon the cross.
In the Forum, under Roman rule, numerous Christian martyrs died by
torture, though the great amphitheater was probably the scene of the
wholesale executions of the followers of the Nazarene which took place in
the third century of the Christian era. And from the Forum started the
great trade-routes which led into the far interior.
Now it should be clearly understood that the meager remains which the
archæologists have thus far unearthed on the site of Carthage are
almost wholly Roman or Byzantine, and that, barring a number of archaic
Phenician tombs, some enormous blocks of stone which were probably
used in the construction of the Admiralty Palace, and a miscellaneous
collection of objects—vases, votive tablets, inscriptions, utensils,
sacred images, fragments of sculptures—which have been brought
together and arranged by the White Fathers in the little museum they
have established on the Byrsa, almost nothing which can positively
be identified with the Punic city has been found. This is scarcely a
matter for surprise, however, when it is remembered that the Carthage
of the Phenicians was literally wiped out—not merely laid in ruins, you
understand, but the ruins plowed under—upward of two thousand years ago,
and that the great Roman city which later rose upon the site was in its
turn razed to the ground, so that the remnants of Punic civilization must
be buried under many feet of débris, earth, and ashes.
These russet hill-slopes, patched with grass and sprinkled with wild
flowers, present, indeed, an epitome of human history, for they have been
built upon, over and over and over again, by Phenicians, Romans, Vandals,
Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, and French. To drive a shaft straight
downward through this blood-drenched soil to a depth of, say, a hundred
feet, would be equivalent to retracing the march of mankind for three
thousand years—from the Tunisia of the French to the Karthadasht of Queen
Dido.
* * * * *
It was a perfect spring morning—one of those mornings when one
congratulates one’s self on being alive—when we motored out to Carthage.
Fleecy clouds drifted lazily across the sky, like newly washed sheep
browzing on a hillside pasture. Under the brilliant African sun the
placid surface of the Mediterranean gleamed and glittered as though
strewn with diamonds. The weather was warm, but not too warm for comfort,
and the gentle land-breeze brought to us the fragrance of the wild
flowers which lay in bands of the most vivid colors—scarlet, purple,
bright blue, yellow—across the lower slopes of the encircling ranges.
It is rather less than a dozen miles from Tunis to Carthage, and during
nearly the whole distance the road runs within sight of the great Roman
aqueduct, whose rose-brown arches stride in an undeviating line across
the plain. This titanic work was constructed by the Emperor Hadrian
at a time when the country was threatened by a devastating drought in
order to bring water to Carthage from Zaghouan, eighty miles away. Some
idea of the immensity of the undertaking may be gained from the fact
that it delivered six million gallons a day, part of the way by means
of underground canals, and over the intervening valleys by thousands of
magnificent arches, hundreds of which are still standing. The aqueduct
was destroyed by the Vandals, who appear always to have justified the
modern significance of their name; was restored by the Byzantines; was
again destroyed by the Spaniards; and in 1859 was rebuilt by the reigning
bey in order to supply Tunis, as well as Carthage and the other suburbs,
with pure water. Though iron pipes were used to replace the arches which
had been demolished, the Roman route was followed, and wherever possible
the European builders utilized the ancient masonry channels constructed
by Hadrian’s engineers. They built well, the Romans. I wonder if two
thousand years hence the Croton Aqueduct will be utilized in some form to
supply water to New York.
Of all the famous sites of antiquity, save only Troy (and I speak as one
who has seen all, or nearly all, of them), Carthage is at first view
the most disappointing. It is not difficult to identify the principal
features at Nineveh and of Babylon, both of which probably antedated
the Phenician city by many centuries; but of Carthage literally nothing
remains above the level of the ground, its obliteration having been so
methodically carried out, first by Scipio and then by Hassan, that it is
only within very recent years that the archæologists have succeeded in
obtaining even a general idea of the ground-plan.
Particularly disappointing is the Byrsa, the six-hundred-foot hill on
which stood the citadel and the great temple of Eschmoun. Instead of
being an abrupt, clearly defined eminence, like those on which the
Italian hill-towns stand, it gives the impression, when approached from
the land side, of being not much more than a low ridge topped by a rather
insignificant knoll, so gradual is the ascent from the plain. Its seaward
face, however, falls away quite abruptly.
Looking down from the summit of the Byrsa, one’s attention is immediately
attracted by two small, curiously shaped ponds which lie within a few
yards of the shore. Seen from above, they bear a striking resemblance
to a sickle, the elongated lagoon corresponding to the handle of the
implement and the crescent-shaped one to the blade. And, in a manner
of speaking, a sickle, is what they were; the sickle with which the
Carthaginians reaped the sea-trade of the world and all but mowed
down the Roman sea-power. For the larger of the two ponds is the sole
remaining vestige of Carthage’s great commercial harbor; the smaller, of
the naval port, or Cothon.
It requires a sturdy and well-oiled imagination, however, to recreate on
the grassy shores of these two insignificant ponds the wharves, slips,
dockyards, workshops, storehouses, walls, and watch-towers which made
this now tranquil spot the greatest naval base of ancient times; to
realize that this was once the emporium of all the sea-borne trade of
the world from Syria to Cornwall; that here were launched those terrible
war-galleys, with their brazen prows and bristling banks of oars, which
enabled the Carthaginians to keep the Mediterranean for centuries a Punic
lake. But cross by the narrow isthmus to the little island—an island no
longer—on which the Admiralty Palace stood, and look down into the great
pit dug by the excavators, and any lingering doubts you may have as to
the authenticity of the site will disappear; for on the huge hewn blocks
which lie tumbled pell-mell in the bottom of the cavity is still plainly
discernible the _Tanith_ in red paint which was the Punic sign manual and
crest.
Of the excavated, or partly excavated, remains of Roman Carthage, the
most interesting are the Odéon, the Amphitheater, and the Circus. The
Odéon, or opera-house, a semicircular building with a roof, was erected
in A.D. 204, when the Carthaginians obtained permission to hold the
Pythian Games. Little of it now remains, but its ruins have yielded two
of the finest statues yet unearthed at Carthage, those of Juno Regia and
Venus.
The Amphitheater, judging from what is left of it, must have been
a structure of enormous size—it measured a fifth of a mile in
circumference—and of extreme magnificence, for it was built when Rome was
intoxicated by her wealth and power. Here, during those blood-drenched
years when pagan Rome sought vainly to stamp out the steadily spreading
cult founded by the Man of Nazareth, that “white-robed multitude” of
martyrs died horribly—some on the cross, some at the stake, others
by the claws and fangs of snarling beasts. How little could their
executioners have dreamed that, in the fullness of time, one of the
dungeons in which the martyrs awaited death would be transformed into a
Christian chapel dedicated to two of the most illustrious of them, the
twenty-two-year-old Perpetua, who, accompanied by her friend Felicitas,
left her parents and her baby-in-arms behind, and walked unafraid into
the arena to meet the lions! No wonder that Tertullian of Carthage wrote,
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” For the simple,
loving faith preached by the humble peasant of Judea has spread around
the world and is to-day a living force, while the men who sought to stamp
it out are remembered only by virtue of that fact.
Doubtless because of its tragic associations with the early days of
Christianity, more excavating work has been done in the Amphitheater than
anywhere else in Carthage; the dens for the wild beasts, the dungeons in
which were confined the Christians who were sentenced to fight them, and
a portion of the vast arena in which these dreadful ordeals took place
have been laid bare. They were terribly unequal, those combats between
naked men and savage animals, but, despite the fearful odds, a Christian
occasionally emerged from them alive, as is testified by the inscription
found upon a marble column in one of the subterranean chambers, probably
a dungeon. It was scratched with some sharp instrument—perhaps the point
of a sword—and consists of the single pregnant word, “_Evasi_”—“I have
escaped.”
The Circus, of which only the outline remains, was an enormous structure,
twenty-three hundred feet in length and accommodating nearly a quarter
of a million spectators. The Yale Bowl, the Harvard Stadium, the stands
at the Polo Grounds, are insignificant in comparison. In the Circus were
held the chariot-races to which the Carthaginians were as whole-heartedly
devoted as Americans are to baseball; for if a passion for racing was
ingrained in the character of the European Romans, even more was such the
case with the peoples of their African possessions, where the love of
horses was indigenous.
The colorful and stirring scenes presented by these great race-meetings
need not be left to the imagination, for they are illustrated with a
wealth of detail in the mosaics which have been brought together in the
Musée Alaoui at the Palace of the Bardo, and are described at great
length by the writers of the period. How thoroughly human, how like a
similar event to-day, is the description given us by Ovid, who relates
how he took a girl to the races, how he shielded her face from the sun
with his race-card, how he admired the shapeliness of her leg, and how he
wished that he might see more.
The racing world was divided into four great parties or factions: the
Reds, the Whites, the Greens, and the Blues. The members of each party
regarded those of the others with deep-seated animosity and suspicion,
and, when they eventually developed into political factions, their
rivalries shook the Roman world. Four chariots, each of one color and
each drawn by four horses, raced in a heat. The “racing silks” of the
charioteers consisted of round vizorless caps with floating ribbons and
cloth jerkins in the colors of the faction for which they drove. Round
their bodies were tied the ends of the reins, an arrangement which added
greatly to the excitement of the races by insuring the death of any one
who was thrown, for no Roman holiday was considered complete without its
quota of fatal accidents.
Down the middle of the elliptical course ran the _spina_, a marble
barrier 330 yards in length, adorned with statues, carvings, and columns.
At either end of the _spina_ stood the _metæ_, the turning-points for the
chariots; on these were placed marble dolphins and eggs, seven of each,
corresponding in number with the laps of the race, one being removed by
the attendants as each circuit was completed, very much as signals are
hoisted for the information of the spectators at the conclusion of each
lap of an automobile race. Judging by this, and by the length of the
_spina_, each heat must have been close to three miles in length.
The charioteers received from their enthusiastic adherents the admiration
and adulation which is to-day accorded to a famous baseball player, a
champion prize-fighter, or, in Spain, to a successful matador. Though
they did not earn as much, perhaps, as a Babe Ruth, a Jack Dempsey, a Red
Grange, or even a Tod Sloan, they were lavishly rewarded according to the
standards of the time; for it is recorded that in ten years an African
driver named Crescens won prizes totaling upward of a million and a half
sesterces, or about seventy-one thousand dollars in our money. And one of
the handsomest residences unearthed at Carthage is that of Scorpianus,
one of the most famous charioteers of his time.
[Illustration: HOMES OF THE TROGLODYTES
The dwellings of the Matmata mole-men at Bled-Kebira consist of vaulted
rooms hewn from the living rock, even the bed being one with the floor
The windowless rooms open upon a court or well, the bottom of which is a
score or so of feet beneath the surface of the earth, thus providing the
troglodytes with light and air]
The Carthaginians were confirmed gamblers, and enormous sums were
frequently wagered on the outcome of a chariot-race. This, as might
have been expected, gave rise to the bitterest jealousy between the
adherents of the various factions and to demonstrations of hostility
toward a charioteer who was a favorite in the betting. Many curious
exemplifications of this spiteful spirit may be seen on the _tabulæ
execrationis_ which have been discovered at Carthage. These, as the
name implies, were tablets, usually thin sheets of lead, on which were
scratched execrations or curses directed against those to whom the
authors wished evil. In order that they might speedily gain the attention
of the gods of the underworld to whom they were addressed, they were
either tied by leathern thongs to the gravestones in the cemeteries,
or dropped down the funnel with which each grave was provided so that
libations could reach the ashes of the dead. Of the thousands of such
tablets, dealing with matters of love, lust, war, politics, and sport,
which have been found in the cemeteries of Carthage, one of the most
interesting, as it is one of the most venomous, runs, in part, as follows:
I invoke Thee, by the Great Names, to bind fast every limb and
every nerve of Biktorikos, whom Earth, the Mother of every
living soul, brought forth, the Charioteer of the Blues, and
his horses which he is about to drive.... Bind fast their legs
that they may not be able to start or to bound or to run.
Blind their eyes that they may not see. Rack their hearts and
their souls that they may not breathe.... Bind fast the legs
and hands and head and heart of Biktorikos, Charioteer of the
Blues, to-morrow, and his horses which he is about to drive....
Again I adjure Thee by the God of Heaven above Who sitteth upon
the Cherubim, Who divided the Earth and severed the Sea, Iao,
Abrico, Arbathiao, Sabao, Adonai, to bind fast Biktorikos,
Charioteer of the Blues, and the horses which he is about to
drive ... to-morrow in the Circus. Now! Now! Quickly! Quickly!
As a really polished and comprehensive example of high-class cursing, I
don’t know of anything which can compare with that effort unless it is
the outburst of the exasperated golfer, who, after spending ten strokes
in a sand-bunker, damned “everything over a minute old and an inch high.”
It is a curious and disappointing fact that the largest and most
conspicuous monument on the site of Carthage, the Cathedral of St.
Louis, is not even remotely associated with the great city of antiquity,
but was erected during the eighties to commemorate the achievements of a
French king, Louis IX, who, as has been remarked elsewhere, died in 1270
of the plague when encamped on the Byrsa plateau while leading the eighth
and last crusade. Louis who was canonized in the fullness of time, sleeps
in the church of Monreale, above Palermo, but some relics of the royal
crusader have been brought from Sicily and enshrined in the cathedral
which bears his name. Not far away a small and unimposing chapel, not
much better than the _koubba_ of some Arab marabout, built by Louis
Philippe in 1841, marks the spot where the monarch actually expired while
murmuring the words, “Jerusalem ... Jerusalem....”
But in a tomb under the high altar of the cathedral rests the body of
another fighter for the Faith, who, though as yet uncanonized, deserves
sainthood if the word has any meaning. I refer to Charles Martial
Allemand Lavigerie, cardinal-archbishop of Carthage and Algeria, primate
of all Africa, superior of the Order of White Fathers, successor to the
see of St. Cyprian, who at Algiers, in 1892, hung up his red hat forever.
Of all that remarkable company of courageous men who have entered the
Dark Continent on missions of exploration, civilization, colonization,
or proselytism, none rendered a greater service to suffering humanity
than this devoted missionary-statesman. He founded the Pères Blancs, that
remarkable order of African missionaries whose humanitarian activities
extend from Morocco to Mozambique; in his relentless war against the
slave-trade he established a chain of missions right across the Sahara
and the Sudan; his tactful and statesmanlike handling of native problems
so raised the prestige of France in North Africa as to draw from Gambetta
the celebrated declaration, “_L’anticlericalisme n’est pas un article
d’exportation_.” Though he has been dead these thirty years and more,
the name of Cardinal Lavigerie is still one to conjure with among
those strange and barbarous peoples who inhabit that vast region which
stretches from the Mediterranean to the Congo, from the Atlantic to the
Nile.
The scientific researches on the site of Carthage, though under the
official supervision of the Department of Antiquities and Arts of the
beylical government, are being mainly conducted by a small group of White
Fathers under the personal direction of the celebrated archæologist and
explorer, Père Delattre. With his powerful frame, his ruddy cheeks, his
twinkling eyes, and snowy, patriarchal beard, Father Delattre is one
of the most picturesque and interesting figures whom I met in Africa.
In accordance with the highly sensible custom of the order, he wears a
modified form of the native costume—a flowing burnous of creamy white and
the red _chéchia_ with its long blue tassel—so that he resembles a jolly
old Moslem _mollah_ rather than a Christian priest. An octogenarian, he
is as robust and agile as most men of half his years, and I must confess
that as he strode across the rugged terrain where the work of excavation
is being carried on it taxed my endurance to keep pace with him.
Father Delattre’s chief interest is the Lavigerie Museum, housed in a
modest building on the Byrsa, where, thanks to his indefatigable effort,
there has been brought together an absolutely unique collection of
columns, statues, sarcophagi, mosaics, amphoræ, stellæ, inscriptions,
bas-reliefs, jewelry, and utensils of various kinds illustrative of the
various phases of the city’s long and varied history. Here, brought from
the early Punic tombs behind the Byrsa, are tear-glasses of Phenician
glass, fragile and iridescent as the wing of a butterfly, in which the
great ladies of Dido’s time carried their cosmetics just as American
women carry “compacts” to-day. In this glass case is a necklace of as
exquisite design and workmanship as anything that Tiffany or Cartier
could show; perhaps—who knows?—it once encircled the white neck of
Sophonisba. Over there is an extraordinary collection of lamps, the
finest and most complete in existence: cheap little lamps of terra-cotta
which gleamed from the windows of humble dwellings; elaborately carved
lamps which shone on the sumptuous dinner-tables of great nobles and rich
merchants; lamps of porphyry and marble which guttered on the altars
of the gods. And there are thousands and thousands of bas-reliefs and
inscriptions, on which appear such familiar religious symbols as the
fish, the lamb, the anchor, and the crown, associated with the worship,
persecution, and martyrdom of the early Christians.
[Illustration: THE VOICE FROM THE MINARET
As the sun sinks behind the rim of the Sahara the shrill voice of the
muezzin quavers across the housetops and palm-groves in the call to
evening prayer, the Moslem profession of faith—_Ash hadu illa illaha ill
Allah, wa ash haduinna Mohammed an rasool Allah_....]
The most interesting objects in the museum, however, according to my way
of thinking, are three or four sarcophagi, some of them dating back to
seven hundred years before the Christian era, which have been brought
here from the ancient tombs. Their immense significance to the student
of history lies not so much in their great age, or in the tolerable
state of preservation of the bodies which they contain, but rather
in the recumbent figures of the dead which are carved upon the lids
and which enable us to know how they looked in life. For, as careful
comparison with the bodies has shown, they are unquestionably portraits
of the deceased. One of them represents a priest of Eschmoun, a man with
serene and dignified features, an abundance of curling hair, luxuriant
mustaches and beard. So benign is his expression that it is difficult to
conceive of him as having laid the quivering bodies of little children
on the brazen, white-hot arms of Baal. Another, judging by the richness
of the dress and the extreme refinement of the features, is evidently
that of a lady of the aristocracy, her hair combed back from her brow
and braided into two long plaits which fall down to frame her face, her
slender figure clad in a girdled robe of some soft, diaphanous material
which sweeps down in stately lines to her little sandaled feet, half
concealing, half revealing, her exquisitely proportioned figure. A third,
which has been identified as that of a priestess of Tanith and is the
finest of all, shows a grandly modeled woman in the prime of life clad in
a semi-transparent garment of rose-color. In one hand she holds a dove,
in the other a bowl of offerings; the Egyptian head-dress which enframes
her graciously beautiful face is surmounted by a vulture, the symbol
of Isis. They must have been, on the whole, a fine-looking race, these
people of Punic Carthage, the innate dignity which stamps their faces
causing one to overlook the over-prominent Semitic noses and the sensual
Eastern lips.
Throughout our visit to Carthage we had been pestered almost beyond
endurance by a horde of Arab ragamuffins who clamorously besought us to
purchase coins of bronze and silver of whose authenticity I was more than
a little doubtful, but which they claimed to have picked up on the site.
One of these importunate youngsters, bolder than his fellows, followed us
into the museum garden. I was about to purchase his wares in order to get
rid of him when Father Delattre intervened.
“Would you care,” he asked, “to have a genuine Carthaginian coin?”
I assured him earnestly that few things would give me greater
satisfaction, whereupon he presented me with a sesterce of the Roman
period bearing on its face in high relief a portrayal of a chariot drawn
by four horses; one of the very sesterces, it pleases me to think, which
were flung into the arena of the Circus to reward the famous charioteer
Scorpianus, the Pop Geers of his time. I carry it in my purse, along
with a coin of Alexander the Great which I picked up in Macedonia, and
another, minted during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, which I acquired in
Babylon. They serve to remind me, these tiny pieces of silver, that there
have been other civilizations than those epitomized by Fifth Avenue and
Piccadilly and the Rue de la Paix; that there were great cities, mighty
empires, culture, luxury, in those dim and far-off days when history was
beginning and the world was very young.
Before he would say good-by Father Delattre insisted on presenting us
with his picture, to obtain which he ran as nimbly as a boy up the steep
Byrsa Hill on which the monastery of the Pères Blancs stands. With my
fountain-pen he wrote his name across it; then we shook hands with the
grand old man and stepped into the waiting car.
“Just a moment,” I said to Harvey, as we breasted the brow of the plateau
and the road to Tunis unrolled its twenty kilometers like a lariat tossed
idly upon the ground. “Stop the car. I wish to take a final look.”
Standing in the tonneau, I looked down upon that stage on which has
been enacted so much of the history of the world—the little bay where
Dido landed; the harbor in which the galleys of Hamilcar were moored;
the slopes up which the legionaries of Scipio fought their bloody way;
the site of the Amphitheater in which the martyrs died; the traces of
the Forum which was turned into a stable by Genseric’s Vandal horsemen;
the rolling plain across which surged behind their green standards the
Moslem hordes of Hassan; the little knoll on which St. Louis pitched his
final camp.... “_Sic transit gloria mundi_,” I thought.
But my reflections were rudely interrupted as, with a great wheezing and
puffing, a little covered motor-van came rocking toward us. It was driven
by a fresh-faced, blue-eyed youngster in khaki trousers and a flannel
shirt, bare of head and neck and arm. Beside him on the narrow seat sat
two other youngsters similarly clad. They waved their hands in friendly
fashion and shouted greetings to us in our own language. As the car
plunged past on its way to Carthage we could see the legend, painted in
staring black on its gray sides:
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHÆOLOGY
CARTHAGINIAN SECTION
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ANN ARBOR, U. S. A.