Note: A compilation of all five volumes of this work is also available
individually in the Project Gutenberg library.
See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10706
The original German version of this work, Roemische Geschichte,
Drittes Buch: von der Einigung Italiens bis auf die Unterwerfung
Karthagos und der griechischen Staaten, is in the Project
Gutenberg E-Library as E-book #3062.
See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3062
THE HISTORY OF ROME, BOOK III
From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States
by
THEODOR MOMMSEN
Translated with the Sanction of the Author
By
William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow
A New Edition Revised Throughout and Embodying Recent Additions
Preparer's Note
This work contains many literal citations of and references to
foreign words, sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many
languages, including Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and
Greek. This English Gutenberg edition, constrained to the characters
of 7-bit ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:
1) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do
not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the
source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single
preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.
2) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic
equivalents, are rendered with a preceding and a following double-
dash; thus, --xxxx--. Note that in some cases the root word itself
is a compound form such as xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--
3) Simple unideographic references to vocalic sounds, single
letters, or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic
references are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x,
or -xxx.
4) Ideographic references, referring to signs of representation rather
than to content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picture based
on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, a word, or an
attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters. For example,
--"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form followed
by the form in lowercase. Some such exotic parsing as this is
necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol
may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages,
or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different
times. Thus, "-id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician
construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually
stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to one of
lowercase. Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase "E", but,
in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.
5) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be
753 B. C. The preparer of this document, has appended to the end
of each volume a table of conversion between the two systems.
CONTENTS
BOOK III: From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage
and the Greek States
CHAPTER
I. Carthage
II. The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily
III. The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries
IV. Hamilcar and Hannibal
V. The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae
VI. The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama
VII. The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close
of the Third Period
VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War
IX. The War with Antiochus of Asia
X. The Third Macedonian War
XI. The Government and the Governed
XII. The Management of Land and of Capital
XIII. Faith and Manners
XIV. Literature and Art
BOOK THIRD
From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States
Arduum res gestas scribere.
--Sallust.
Chapter I
Carthage
The Phoenicians
The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof from, the
nations of the ancient classical world. The true centre of the
former lay in the east, that of the latter in the region of the
Mediterranean; and, however wars and migrations may have altered the
line of demarcation and thrown the races across each other, a deep
sense of diversity has always severed, and still severs, the Indo-
Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations.
This diversity was no less marked in the case of that Semitic people
which spread more than any other in the direction of the west--the
Phoenicians. Their native seat was the narrow border of coast bounded
by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, and called Canaan,
that is, the "plain." This was the only name which the nation itself
made use of; even in Christian times the African farmer called himself
a Canaanite. But Canaan received from the Hellenes the name of
Phoenike, the "land of purple," or "land of the red men," and the
Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites Punians, as we
are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician or Punic race.
Their Commerce
The land was well adapted for agriculture; but its excellent harbours
and the abundant supply of timber and of metals favoured above all
things the growth of commerce; and it was there perhaps, where the
opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean
so rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all
its greatness upon man. The Phoenicians directed all the resources of
courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of commerce
and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and colonization,
and thus connected the east and the west. At an incredibly early
period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in
Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall
in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands
passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves,
ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa,
frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine
wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from
England, and iron from Elba. The Phoenician mariners brought to
every nation whatever it could need or was likely to purchase; and
they roamed everywhere, yet always returned to the narrow home to
which their affections clung.
Their Intellectual Endowments
The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the
side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a
fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the
development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided
character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of
intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong
primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith and knowledge in a certain
sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first
reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician
religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can
see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.
The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth,
and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to
restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in times
of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their
religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician
architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy,
to say nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient
seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical
purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It
was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it
was there that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the
sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time
and space and on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces
of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and
measures, point to that region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed
themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of
Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for
their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of
measures for their commerce, and distributed many an important germ
of civilization along with their wares; but it cannot be demonstrated
that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the
human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and
scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes
were scattered by them more after the fashion of a bird dropping
grains than of the husbandman sowing his seed. The power which
the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and
assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with
whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.
In the field of Roman conquest the Iberian and the Celtic languages
have disappeared before the Romanic tongue; the Berbers of Africa
speak at the present day the same language as they spoke in the times
of the Hannos and the Barcides.
Their Political Qualities
Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as
compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life
--the noble idea of self-governing freedom. During the most
flourishing times of Sidon and Tyre the land of the Phoenicians was
a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the
Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians,
sometimes to the Egyptians. With half its power Hellenic cities
would have made themselves independent; but the prudent men of Sidon
calculated that the closing of the caravan-routes to the east or of
the ports of Egypt would cost them more than the heaviest tribute, and
so they punctually paid their taxes, as it might happen, to Nineveh or
to Memphis, and even, if they could not avoid it, helped with their
ships to fight the battles of the kings. And, as at home the
Phoenicians patiently bore the oppression of their masters, so also
abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful career
of commerce for a policy of conquest. Their settlements were
factories. It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and
selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in
distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult work of
colonization. They avoided war even with their rivals; they allowed
themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of
Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles,
which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western
Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), it was the
Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the
struggle with the Greeks. If rivalry could not be avoided, they
compromised the matter as best they could; no attempt was ever made
by the Phoenicians to conquer Caere or Massilia. Still less, of
course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war.
On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on the
offensive--in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians
which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (274)--it
was simply as dutiful subjects of the great-king and in order to avoid
taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that
they entered the lists against the Hellenes of the west; just as their
Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share the
defeat of the Persians at Salamis(1).
This was not the result of cowardice; navigation in unknown waters
and with armed vessels requires brave hearts, and that such were to be
found among the Phoenicians, they often showed. Still less was it
the result of any lack of tenacity and idiosyncrasy of national
feeling; on the contrary the Aramaeans defended their nationality with
the weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the
allurements of Greek civilization and all the coercive measures of
eastern and western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-
Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals
seems to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human. It was the
result of that want of political instinct, which amidst all their
lively sense of the ties of race, and amidst all their faithful
attachment to the city of their fathers, formed the most essential
feature in the character of the Phoenicians. Liberty had no charms
for them, and they lusted not after dominion; "quietly they lived,"
says the Book of Judges, "after the manner of the Sidonians, careless
and secure, and in possession of riches."
Carthage
Of all the Phoenician settlements none attained a more rapid and
secure prosperity than those which were established by the Tyrians and
Sidonians on the south coast of Spain and the north coast of Africa--
regions that lay beyond the reach of the arm of the great-king and the
dangerous rivalry of the mariners of Greece, and in which the natives
held the same relation to the strangers as the Indians in America held
to the Europeans. Among the numerous and flourishing Phoenician
cities along these shores, the most prominent by far was the "new
town," Karthada or, as the Occidentals called it, Karchedon or
Carthago. Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians
in this region, and originally perhaps a dependency of the adjoining
Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, it soon
outstripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the
incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity
of its inhabitants. It was situated not far from the (former) mouth
of the Bagradas (Mejerda), which flows through the richest corn
district of northern Africa, and was placed on a fertile rising
ground, still occupied with country houses and covered with groves
of olive and orange trees, falling off in a gentle slope towards the
plain, and terminating towards the sea in a sea-girt promontory.
Lying in the heart of the great North-African roadstead, the Gulf of
Tunis, at the very spot where that beautiful basin affords the best
anchorage for vessels of larger size, and where drinkable spring water
is got close by the shore, the place proved singularly favourable for
agriculture and commerce and for the exchange of their respective
commodities--so favourable, that not only was the Tyrian settlement
in that quarter the first of Phoenician mercantile cities, but even
in the Roman period Carthage was no sooner restored than it became the
third city in the empire, and even now, under circumstances far from
favourable and on a site far less judiciously chosen, there exists and
flourishes in that quarter a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants.
The prosperity, agricultural, mercantile, and industrial, of a city
so situated and so peopled, needs no explanation; but the question
requires an answer--in what way did this settlement come to attain
a development of political power, such as no other Phoenician
city possessed?
Carthage Heads the Western Phoenicians in Opposition to the Hellenes
That the Phoenician stock did not even in Carthage renounce its policy
of passiveness, there is no lack of evidence to prove. Carthage paid,
even down to the times of its prosperity, a ground-rent for the space
occupied by the city to the native Berbers, the tribe of the Maxyes or
Maxitani; and although the sea and the desert sufficiently protected
the city from any assault of the eastern powers, Carthage appears to
have recognized--although but nominally--the supremacy of the great-
king, and to have paid tribute to him occasionally, in order to secure
its commercial communications with Tyre and the East.
But with all their disposition to be submissive and cringing,
circumstances occurred which compelled these Phoenicians to adopt a
more energetic policy. The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring
ceaselessly towards the west: it had already dislodged the Phoenicians
from Greece proper and Italy, and it was preparing to supplant them
also in Sicily, in Spain, and even in Libya itself. The Phoenicians
had to make a stand somewhere, if they were not willing to be totally
crushed. In this case, where they had to deal with Greek traders and
not with the great-king, submission did not suffice to secure the
continuance of their commerce and industry on its former footing,
liable merely to tax and tribute. Massilia and Cyrene were already
founded; the whole east of Sicily was already in the hands of the
Greeks; it was full time for the Phoenicians to think of serious
resistance. The Carthaginians undertook the task; after long and
obstinate wars they set a limit to the advance of the Cyrenaeans,
and Hellenism was unable to establish itself to the west of the desert
of Tripolis. With Carthaginian aid, moreover, the Phoenician settlers
on the western point of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks,
and readily and gladly submitted to the protection of the powerful
cognate city.(2) These important successes, which occurred in the
second century of Rome, and which saved for the Phoenicians the south-
western portion of the Mediterranean, served of themselves to give to
the city which had achieved them the hegemony of the nation, and to
alter at the same time its political position. Carthage was no longer
a mere mercantile city: it aimed at the dominion of Libya and of a
part of the Mediterranean, because it could not avoid doing so.
It is probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed
materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece
somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among
the Orientals and the Carians more especially it was far older, and it
was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it. By the system
of foreign recruiting war was converted into a vast pecuniary
speculation, which was quite in keeping with the character and
habits of the Phoenicians.
The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa
It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad,
that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their
occupation in Africa from a tenure of hire and sufferance to one of
proprietorship and conquest. It appears to have been only about the
year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent
for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the
natives. This change enabled them to prosecute a husbandry of their
own on a great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been
desirous to employ their capital as landlords as well as traders,
and to practise agriculture on a large scale by means of slaves or
hired labourers; a large portion of the Jews in this way served the
merchant-princes of Tyre for daily wages. Now the Carthaginians
could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil
by a system akin to that of the modern planters; slaves in chains
cultivated the land--we find single citizens possessing as many as
twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages
of the surrounding region--agriculture appears to have been introduced
among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the
Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt--were subdued by
force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into
fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the
soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting
for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were
constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (--nomades--)
on the borders; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory
enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the
deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian
supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents. About the
period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at
the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians. These
formed the "towns and tribes (--ethne--) of subjects," which appear in
the Carthaginian state-treaties; the former being the non-free Libyan
villages, the latter the subject Nomades.
Libyphoenicians
To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage over the other
Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby-phoenicians. These
included, on the one hand, the smaller settlements sent forth from
Carthage along the whole northern and part of the north-western coast
of Africa--which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic
seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists
--and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially
numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine
and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona),
Hadrumetum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa)--the second
city of the Phoenicians in Africa--Thapsus (in the same quarter), and
Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli). In what way all these
cities came to be subject to Carthage--whether voluntarily, for their
protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians,
or by constraint--can no longer be ascertained; but it is certain that
they are designated as subjects of the Carthaginians even in official
documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had
to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage. They were
not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but
contributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for
instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (90,000
pounds); moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with
the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms.(3)
Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence
preserved to it, less perhaps from its own power than from the pious
feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors;
in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations a remarkable
feeling of reverence presenting a thorough contrast to the
indifference of the Greeks. Even in intercourse with foreigners it is
always "Carthage and Utica" that stipulate and promise in conjunction;
which, of course, did not preclude the far more important "new town"
from practically asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the
Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North
-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the
Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and
Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of
a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present
districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the
interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the
south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly
expresses it, converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician
civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed
in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although
not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at
the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes
adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet;(4) to Phoenicise
them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor
the policy of Carthage.
The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital
of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because
the change doubtless took place gradually. The author just mentioned
names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno is meant who
lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded
as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which
presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.
The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline
in the great cities of the Phoenician mother-country, in Sidon and
especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by
internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities,
particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor
in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble
families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to
the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their
intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when
the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly
the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the
Latin communities.
Naval Power of Carthage
But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage; its
maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period,
a not less powerful development.
Spain
In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian
settlement at Gades (Cadiz). Besides this they possessed to the west
and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of
the silver mines; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and
Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces. They made no
effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they
were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for
traffic and for shell and other fisheries; and they had difficulty in
maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes.
It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian
but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned among the cities tributary to
Carthage; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was
under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage
to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of
Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades. Ebusus and
the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at
an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts
against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged
from these stations.
Sardinia
In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of the second
century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was
utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya. While the
natives withdrew into the mountainous interior of the island to
escape from bondage as agricultural serfs, just as the Numidians in
Africa withdrew to the borders of the desert, Phoenician colonies
were conducted to Caralis (Cagliari) and other important points, and
the fertile districts along the coast were turned to account by the
introduction of Libyan cultivators.
Sicily
Lastly in Sicily the straits of Messana and the larger eastern half of
the island had fallen at an early period into the hands of the Greeks;
but the Phoenicians, with the help of the Carthaginians, retained the
smaller adjacent islands, the Aegates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra--the
settlement in Malta especially was rich and flourishing--and they kept
the west and north-west coast of Sicily, whence they maintained
communication with Africa by means of Motya and afterwards of
Lilybaeum and with Sardinia by means of Panormus and Soluntum.
The interior of the island remained in the possession of the natives,
the Elymi, Sicani, and Siceli. After the further advance of the
Greeks was checked, a state of comparative peace had prevailed in
the island, which even the campaign undertaken by the Carthaginians
at the instigation of the Persians against their Greek neighbours on
the island (274) did not permanently interrupt, and which continued
on the whole to subsist till the Attic expedition to Sicily (339-341).
The two competing nations made up their minds to tolerate each other,
and confined themselves in the main each to its own field.
Maritime Supremacy
Rivalry with Syracuse
All these settlements and possessions were important enough in
themselves; but they were of still greater moment, inasmuch as they
became the pillars of the Carthaginian maritime supremacy. By their
possession of the south of Spain, of the Baleares, of Sardinia, of
western Sicily and Melita, and by their prevention of Hellenic
colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of
the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their
sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits. In the
Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to
admit the rivalry of other nations. This state of things might
perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served
to counterbalance each other in these waters; with the former, as the
less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against
the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power--a fall
which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had
hardly exerted all her power to avert--and after the miscarriage of
the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably
the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse
naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy
and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the
Carthaginians also were compelled to adopt a more energetic policy.
The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between
them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius
of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the
intervening Sicilian states--a result which both parties had an
interest in accomplishing--and the division of the island between
the Syracusans and Carthaginians. The most flourishing cities in
the island--Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana--were
utterly destroyed by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy
conflicts: and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed
or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support on foreign
mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain, he might rule in
greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were
occupied by military colonies. The peace, which was concluded after
the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and
which subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae (the
ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus, and a part of the
territory of Agrigentum as far as the Halycus, was regarded by the two
powers contending for the possession of the island as only a temporary
accommodation; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their
attempts to dispossess each other. Four several times--in 360 in the
time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that of Timoleon; in 445 in
that of Agathocles; in 476 in that of Pyrrhus--the Carthaginians were
masters of all Sicily excepting Syracuse, and were baffled by its
solid walls; almost as often the Syracusans, under able leaders, such
as were the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally
on the eve of dislodging the Africans from the island. But more and
more the balance inclined to the side of the Carthaginians, who were,
as a rule, the aggressors, and who, although they did not follow out
their object with Roman steadfastness, yet conducted their attack with
far greater method and energy than the Greek city, rent and worn out
by factions, conducted its defence. The Phoenicians might with reason
expect that a pestilence or a foreign -condottiere- would not always
snatch the prey from their hands; and for the time being, at least at
sea, the struggle was already decided:(5) the attempt of Pyrrhus to
re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last. After the failure of
that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded without a rival the
whole western Mediterranean; and their endeavours to occupy Syracuse,
Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of their power and the
objects at which they aimed. Hand in hand with these attempts went
the endeavour to monopolize more and more the maritime commerce of
this region, at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own
subjects; and it was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from
any violence that might help forward their purpose. A contemporary
of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes, the father of geography (479-560),
affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards
the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians,
was thrown by them into the sea; and with this statement the fact
completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 (6) declared
the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading
vessels, whereas by that of 448,(7) it totally closed them, with
the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.
Constitution of Carthage
Council
Magistrates
Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the commencement of the
first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having
changed from a monarchy to an aristocracy, or to a democracy inclining
towards oligarchy, for he designates it by both names. The conduct
of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council of
Ancients, which, like the Spartan gerusia, consisted of the two kings
nominated annually by the citizens, and of twenty-eight gerusiasts,
who were also, as it appears, chosen annually by the citizens. It was
this council which mainly transacted the business of the state-making,
for instance, the preliminary arrangements for war, appointing levies
and enlistments, nominating the general, and associating with him a
number of gerusiasts from whom the sub-commanders were regularly
taken; and to it despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether by
the side of this small council there existed a larger one; at any rate
it was not of much importance. As little does any special influence
seem to have belonged to the kings; they acted chiefly as supreme
judges, and they were frequently so named (shofetes, -praetores-).
The power of the general was greater. Isocrates, the senior
contemporary of Aristotle, says that the Carthaginians had an
oligarchical government at home, but a monarchical government in
the field; and thus the office of the Carthaginian general may be
correctly described by Roman writers as a dictatorship, although the
gerusiasts attached to him must have practically at least restricted
his power and, after he had laid down his office, a regular official
reckoning--unknown among the Romans--awaited him. There existed no
fixed term of office for the general, and for this very reason he was
doubtless different from the annual king, from whom Aristotle also
expressly distinguishes him. The combination however of several
offices in one person was not unusual among the Carthaginians, and it
is not therefore surprising that often the same person appears as at
once general and shofete.
Judges
But the gerusia and the magistrates were subordinate to the
corporation of the Hundred and Four (in round numbers the Hundred),
or the Judges, the main bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy.
It had no place in the original constitution of Carthage, but, like
the Spartan ephorate, it originated in an aristocratic opposition to
the monarchical elements of that constitution. As public offices were
purchasable and the number of members forming the supreme board was
small, a single Carthaginian family, eminent above all others in
wealth and military renown, the clan of Mago,(8) threatened to unite
in its own hands the management of the state in peace and war and the
administration of justice. This led, nearly about the time of the
decemvirs, to an alteration of the constitution and to the appointment
of this new board. We know that the holding of the quaestorship gave
a title to admission into the body of judges, but that the candidate
had nevertheless to be elected by certain self-electing Boards of Five
(Pentarchies); and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen
from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer
period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called
"senators" by the Greeks and Romans. Obscure as are the details, we
recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board
constituted by aristocratic cooptation; an isolated but characteristic
indication of which is found in the fact that there were in Carthage
special baths for the judges over and above the common baths for the
citizens. They were primarily intended to act as political jurymen,
who summoned the generals in particular, but beyond doubt the shofetes
and gerusiasts also when circumstances required, to a reckoning on
resigning office, and inflicted even capital punishment at pleasure,
often with the most reckless cruelty. Of course in this as in every
instance, where administrative functionaries are subjected to the
control of another body, the real centre of power passed over from
the controlled to the controlling authority; and it is easy to
understand on the one hand how the latter came to interfere in all
matters of administration--the gerusia for instance submitted
important despatches first to the judges, and then to the people
--and on the other hand how fear of the control at home, which
regularly meted out its award according to success, hampered the
Carthaginian statesman and general in council and action.
Citizens
The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as
in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of
the state, appears to have had but a very slight amount of practical
influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open
corruption was the rule; in the nomination of a general the people
were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by
proposal on the part of the gerusia; and other questions only went to
the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree.
Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in
Carthage. The powerlessness of the citizens probably in the main
resulted from their political organization; the Carthaginian mess-
associations, which are mentioned in this connection and compared
with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical
management. Mention is made even of a distinction between "burgesses
of the city" and "manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the
latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.
Character of the Government
On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian
constitution appears to have been a government of capitalists, such as
might naturally arise in a burgess-community which had no middle class
of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble
without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand
of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of
repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the
subjects, by despatching them as tax-assessors and taskwork-overseers
to the dependent communities--that infallible token of a rotten urban
oligarchy--was not wanting in Carthage; Aristotle describes it as the
main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution.
Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in
Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained
without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the
governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous
men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the
rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a
government to emerge; but at the time of the first Punic war it was
still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence
of the defeats which were sustained, its political influence appears
on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the
similar party at the same period in Rome; the popular assemblies began
to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down
the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination
of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of
Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office
for two consecutive years; and thereby a complete democracy was
introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only
means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This
opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm;
but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt
and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared
by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly
that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might
well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in
Carthage, the boys helped to make them.
Capital and Its Power in Carthage
From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect
the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the
Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony
of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all
the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the
great-king; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world.
The intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry--which, as was
the case subsequently in Rome, generals and statesmen did not disdain
scientifically to practise and to teach--is attested by the agronomic
treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by
the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational
husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also
in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended
to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close
connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of
capital: it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that
one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage.
The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats,
in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that
time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of
great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors
of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so
likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects; by
virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the "best
part of Europe," and of the rich--and in some portions, such as in
Byzacitis and on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive--region
of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage
as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which
commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of
things golden harvests annually to the settlers there; and we have
already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and evergrowing
system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland
commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade
between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that
single harbour.
Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been
mainly dependent on Hellenic influences, but they do not appear to
have been neglected. There was a respectable Phoenician literature;
and on the conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of
art--not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from
Sicilian temples--and considerable libraries. But even intellect
there was in the service of capital; the prominent features of its
literature were chiefly agronomic and geographical treatises, such
as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral
Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was
originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and
which is still extant in a translation. Even the general diffusion of
certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign
languages,(9) as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood
almost on a level with Rome under the empire, forms an evidence of the
thoroughly practical turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage. It
is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital
accumulated in this London of antiquity, but some notion at least may
be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in
spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and
in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state
property, the contributions of its subjects and the customs-revenue
completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were
levied from the citizens; and further, that even after the second
Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current
expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of 48,000
pounds could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat
stricter management of the finances, and fourteen years after the
peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six
remaining instalments. But it was not merely the sum total of its
revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration
at Carthage. The economical principles of a later and more advanced
epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable
states of antiquity. Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in
the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a
token-money having no intrinsic value--a species of currency not used
elsewhere in antiquity. In fact, if government had resolved itself
into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved
the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.
Comparison between Carthage and Rome
In Their Economy
Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome.
Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art
and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and
altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect
Carthage had made greater progress than Rome. But in Carthage the
moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this
time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while
the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords
and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the
burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the
population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative; the
majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible
to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for
reform. In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which
marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome
still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of
the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,
they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the
Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver
plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house
to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant
token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.
In Their Constitution
In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in
Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of
police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing
board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction
to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language
and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public
interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government
at Rome; but in comparison with the cruel harshness and the absolute
precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-
tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and
reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent
capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able
also to trust it, and had no need to fear the magistrates.
The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on a jealous
control of administration by the government, and represented
exclusively the leading families; its essence was mistrust of all
above and below it, and therefore it could neither be confident that
the people would follow whither it led, nor free from the dread of
usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course
of Roman policy, which never receded a step in times of misfortune,
and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or
indifference; whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle
when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or
forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed
building to fall to pieces, only to begin it in a few years anew.
Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on a good
understanding with his government; in Carthage he was frequently
at decided feud with his masters at home, and was forced to resist
them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the
opposing party of reform.
In the Treatment of Their Subject
Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of lineage kindred with
their own, and over numerous others of alien race. But Rome had
received into her citizenship one district after another, and had
rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities; Carthage
from the first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the
dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some day placed
upon an equal footing. Rome granted to the communities of kindred
lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired
domains; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and
noble, to gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other
subject states. Carthage not only retained for herself the produce
of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of
their freedom of trade. Rome, as a rule, did not wholly take away
independence even from the subject communities, and imposed a fixed
tribute on none; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and
loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her
subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves. In this way
there was not in the compass of the Carthagino-African state a single
community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been
politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the
Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than
to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid
injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme
measures challenged political opposition to conflict. If Carthaginian
statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage
her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt
and all the landholders by means of token-money, they transferred
mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply.
Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwithstanding its
seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus
like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a
gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil. It
was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in
the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated
by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their
ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage. In
Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule,
and to have attained on that account better results. They granted to
their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade,
and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the
outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency; far greater freedom
of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the
Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands,
their policy would doubtless soon have changed. But that result did
not take place; and so, owing to the well-calculated mildness of the
Carthaginian government and the unhappy distractions of the Sicilian
Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to
the Phoenicians; for example, even after the island had passed to the
Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in
a thoroughly Phoenician spirit. Nevertheless on the whole the
Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at
least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites
and Tarentines were to the Romans.
In Finance
In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless
far surpassed those of Rome; but this advantage was partly neutralized
by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue--tribute
and customs--dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed)
than those of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war
was far more costly than the Roman.
In Their Military System
The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians were very
different, yet in many respects not unequally balanced. The citizens
of Carthage still at the conquest of the city amounted to 700,000,
including women and children,(10) and were probably at least as
numerous at the close of the fifth century; in that century they were
able in case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites.
At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome had in similar
circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army equally strong;(11)
after the great extensions of the burgess-domain in the course of that
century the number of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at
least have doubled. But far more than in the number of men capable of
bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condition of the burgess-
soldier. Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its
citizens to take part in military service, it could neither furnish
the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the
husbandman, nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to
warfare. In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian
armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians as a guard for the
general; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted,
was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain.
The Roman farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-
roll, but also in the field of battle. It was the same with the
cognate races of both communities; while the Latins rendered to
the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Liby-
phoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and,
as may easily be supposed, still less desirous of it, and so they too
disappeared from the armies; the towns bound to furnish contingents
presumably redeemed their obligation by a payment of money. In the
Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only a
single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of
Liby-phoenicians. The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by
the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained
under able officers into good infantry, and whose light cavalry was
unsurpassed in its kind. To these were added the forces of the more
or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of
the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between
allied contingents and mercenary troops; and finally, in case of need,
the hired soldiery enlisted abroad. So far as numbers were concerned,
such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired
strength; and in the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with
arms, and in courage it might be capable of coping with that of Rome.
Not only, however, did a dangerously long interval elapse, in the
event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready,
while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but
--which was the main matter--there was nothing to keep together the
armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while
the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common
fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated
his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men
in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful
proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general
Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the
Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the
Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage experienced in full measure
all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon
a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous
than her foes.
The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects
of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by
every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests
and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip
mercenaries. They bestowed great care on those elements which among
the ancients represented the modern artillery--the construction of
machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to
the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in
warfare the earlier war-chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there
were stalls for 300 elephants. They could not venture to fortify the
dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the
towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army
that landed in Africa--a thorough contrast to the state of Italy,
where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a
chain of Roman fortresses commanded the whole peninsula. But on the
fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money
and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of its
walls saved the state; whereas Rome held a political and military
position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege.
Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which
they lavished the utmost care. In the building as well as in the
management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks; it was at
Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars,
and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this period mostly quinqueremes,
were ordinarily better sailors than the Greek; the rowers, all of them
public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were excellently
trained, and the captains were expert and fearless. In this respect
Carthage was decidedly superior to the Romans, who, with the few ships
of their Greek allies and still fewer of their own, were unable even
to show themselves in the open sea against the fleet which at that
time without a rival ruled the western Mediterranean.
If, in conclusion, we sum up the results of this comparison of
the resources of the two great powers, the judgment expressed by a
sagacious and impartial Greek is perhaps borne out, that Carthage and
Rome were, when the struggle between them began, on the whole equally
matched. But we cannot omit to add that, while Carthage had put forth
all the efforts of which intellect and wealth were capable to provide
herself with artificial means of attack and defence, she was unable in
any satisfactory way to make up for the fundamental wants of a land
army of her own and of a symmachy resting on a self-supporting basis.
That Rome could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only
in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to
perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such
an attack. Fleets were not yet in those times of the infancy of
navigation a permanent heirloom of nations, but could be fitted out
wherever there were trees, iron, and water. It was clear, and had
been several times tested in Africa itself, that even powerful
maritime states were not able to prevent enemies weaker by sea from
landing. When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general
could follow the same course; and while in Italy the entrance of an
invading army simply began the war, the same event in Libya put an
end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special
accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage
must finally succumb.
Notes for Chapter I
1. II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects
2. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes
3. The most precise description of this important class occurs in
the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the
Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other,
they are called --ol Karchedonion uparchoi osoi tois autois nomois
chrontai--. Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied
(--summachides poleis--, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62;
Justin, xxii. 7, 3). Their -conubium- with the Carthaginians is
mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55; the -commercium- is implied in the
"like laws." That the old Phoenician colonies were included among
the Liby-phoenicians, is shown by the designation of Hippo as a
Liby-phoenician city (Liv. xxv. 40); on the other hand as to the
settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, it is said in the
Periplus of Hanno: "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail
beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Liby-phoenicians."
In substance the word "Liby-phoenicians" was used by the Carthaginians
not as a national designation, but as a category of state-law. This
view is quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name
denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to
the text of Polybius); in reality, at least in the institution of very
exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians
(Diod. xiii. 79; Cic. pro Scauro, 42). The analogy in name and legal
position between the Latins of Rome and the Liby-phoenicians
of Carthage is unmistakable.
4. The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was
and is employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language
--one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean
one--certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its
forms to the latter than is the Phoenician alphabet; but it by no
means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not
from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the
partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from
deriving these from the Greek. We must rather assume that the Libyan
alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the
latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician
language that have reached us were written.
5. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power
6. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power
7. II. VII. The Roman Fleet
8. II. IV. Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy
9. The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according
to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i.
17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the
prologue of the "Poenulus" of Plautus, it is said of the hero of
the title:-
-Et is omnes linguas scit; sed dissimulat sciens
Se scire; Poenus plane est; quid verbit opus't-?
10. Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number,
and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account
the available space, has been reckoned at 250,000. Apart from the
uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city
with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is
doubtless to be understood in a political, not in an urban, sense,
just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all
Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city
or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other
lands. There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in
the case of Carthage; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for
the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher number
than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.
11. II. VII. System of Government, note