Dreadful consternation was produced in Carthage by the news of this unexpected defeat. Hamil'car, who was vigorously pressing forward the siege of Sy'racuse, was surprised by the unexpected order to return home and defend his own country. He broke up the siege, and sent home five thousand of his best troops. Having supplied their place by hiring fresh mercenaries, he again invaded the Syracusan territories; but was unexpectedly attacked, defeated, and slain.

Ophel'las, king of Cyrene, had joined Agathoc'les with all his forces; but the Syracusan monarch, jealous of his influence, had him privately poisoned. Having thus removed his rival, he thought he might safely revisit Sicily, and intrust the command of the African army to his son. But, during his absence, the fruits of all his former labors were lost the army under a young and inexperienced general, threw aside the restraints of discipline; the Greek estates, indignant at the murder of Ophel'las, withheld their contingents; and the African princes renewed their allegiance to Carthage. Agathoc'les hearing of these disorders, hasted to remedy them: but finding all his efforts vain, he fled back to Sicily, abandoning both his sons and his soldiers. The army, exasperated by his desertion, slew their leaders, and surrendered themselves to the Carthaginians; and Agathoc'les died soon after, either from grief or poison.

After the death of this formidable enemy, the Carthaginians renewed their intrigues in Sicily, and soon acquired a predominant influence in the island. Finding themselves in danger of utter ruin, the Greek colonies solicited the aid of Pyr'rhus, king of Epirus, who had married a daughter of Agathoc'les, and was then in Italy endeavoring to protect the colonies of Magna Græ'cia from the increasing power of the Romans (B. C. 277). Pyrrhus made a very successful campaign in Sicily, every Carthaginian town, except Lilybæ'um, submitted to his arms. But he was soon induced to return to Italy; and the fruits of his victories were lost almost as rapidly as they had been acquired, notwithstanding the heroic exertions of Híero, king of Syracuse.

SECTION V.-From the Commencement of the Roman Wars to the Destruction of Carthage.

FROM B. C. 264 TO B. c. 146.

WHEN Pyrrhus was leaving Sicily, he exclaimed to his attendants, "What a fine field of battle we are leaving to the Carthaginians and Romans?" His prediction was soon verified, though the circumstances that precipitated the contest were apparently of little importance. A body of mercenaries in the pay of Agathoc'les, after the death of that monarch, treacherously got possession of Messína, and put all the inhabitants to the sword. Hiero, king of Sy'racuse, marched against the Mamertines, as the independent companies that had seized Messína were called, and defeated them in the field. Half the Mamertines invoked the aid of the Carthaginians, and placed them in immediate possession of the citadel, while the others sought the powerful protection of Rome. After much hesitation, the Romans consented to grant the required aid. The citadel of Messina was taken after a brief siege, and the Carthaginians were routed with great slaughter. Thus com

menced the first Punic war, which lasted twenty-three years, the details of which will be found in the chapters on Roman history.

In this war Carthage lost Sicily, and its supremacy in the western Mediterranean, which involved the fate of all its other insular possessions. The treasury was exhausted, and money was wanting to pay the arrears due to the soldiers. The mercenaries mutinied, and advancing in a body, laid siege to Túnis. Thence they marched against U'tica, while the light African cavalry that had joined in the rebellion ravaged the country up to the very gates of Carthage. The revolters were subdued; but not until they had reduced the fairest provinces of the republic to a desert. The mercenaries in Sardinia had also thrown off their allegiance; and the Romans, in violation of the recent peace, took possession of the island; an injury which Carthage was unable to

resent.

Hamil'car Bar'ca, grieved to see his country sinking, formed a project for raising it once more to an equality with its imperious rival, by completely subduing the Spanish peninsula. His son Han'nibal, then a boy only nine years of age, earnestly besought leave to accompany his father on this expedition; but before granting the request, Hamil'car led the boy to the altar, and made him swear eternal hostility to Rome.

During nine years Hamil'car held the command in Spain, and found means, either by force or negotiation, to subdue almost the entire country. He used the treasures he acquired to strengthen the influence of the Barcan family in the state, relying chiefly on the democracy for support against his great rival Han'no, who had the chief influence among the nobility.

Hasdrubal, the son-in-law of Hamil'car, succeeded to his power and his projects. He is suspected of having designed to establish an independent kingdom in Spain, after having failed to make himself absolute in Carthage. He built a new capital with regal splendor, which received the name of New Carthage; the richest silver-mines were opened in its neighborhood, and enormous bribes were sent to Carthage to disarm jealousy or stifle inquiry. Unlike other Carthaginian governors of provinces, he made every possible exertion to win the affections of the native Spaniards, and he married the daughter of one of their kings. The Romans were at length alarmed by his success, and compelled him to sign a treaty, by which he was bound to abstain from passing the Ibérus (Ebro), or attacking the territory of the Saguntines.

When Has'drubal fell by the dagger of an assassin, the Barcan family had sufficient influence to have Han'nibal appointed his successor, though he had barely attained his legal majority (B. c. 221). The youthful general having gained several victories over the Spaniards, boldly laid siege to Sagun'tum, and thus caused the second war with the Romans, for the details of which we must refer to the chapters on Roman history.

During the course of this war, the Carthaginian navy, the source of its greatness and the security of its strength, was neglected. The spirit of party also raged violently in Carthage itself. At the conclusion of the

Barca signifies "thunder" in the Phoenician language, and also in Hebrew, which is closely allied to Phoenician. The Hebrew root is P to thunder.

war, Carthage was deprived of all her possessions out of Africa, and her fleet was delivered into the hands of the Romans. Thenceforward Carthage was to be nothing more than a commercial city under the protection of Rome. A powerful rival also was raised against the republic in Africa itself by the alliance of the Numidian king Massinis'sa with the Romans; and that monarch took possession of most of the western Carthaginian colonies.

Han'nibal, notwithstanding his late reverses, continued at the head of the Carthaginian state, and reformed several abuses that had crept into the management of the finances and the administration of justice. But these judicious reforms provoked the enmity of the factious nobles who had hitherto been permitted to fatten on public plunder; they joined with the old rivals of the Barcan family, and even degraded themselves so far as to act as spies for the Romans, who still dreaded the abilities of Han'nibal. In consequence of their machinations the old general was forced to fly from the country he had so long labored to serve ; and, after several vicissitudes, died of poison, to escape the mean and malignant persecution of the Romans, whose hatred followed him in his exile, and compelled the king of Bithynia to refuse him protection. The mound which marks his last resting-place is still a remarkable object.

But the Carthaginians had soon reason to lament the loss of their champion the Romans were not conciliated by the expulsion of Han'nibal; and Massinis'sa, relying upon their support, made frequent incursions into the territories of the republic. Both parties complained of each other as aggressors before the Roman senate (B. c. 162); but though they received an equal hearing, the decision was long previously settled in favor of Massinis'sa. While these negotiations were pending, Carthage was harassed by political dissension; the popular party -believing, and not without reason, that the low estate of the republic was chiefly owing to the animosity that the aristocratic faction had shown to the Barcan family, and especially to Han'nibal, on account of his financial and judicial reform-convened a tumultuous assembly, and sent forty of the pricipal senators into banishment, exacting an oath from the citizens that they would never permit their return. The exiles sought refuge with Massinis'sa, who sent his sons to intercede with the Carthaginian populace in their favor. The Numidian princes were not only refused admittance to the city, but ignominiously chased from their territory. Such an insult naturally provoked a fresh war, in which the Carthaginians were defeated, and forced to submit to the most onerous conditions.

The Roman senate, continually solicited by the elder Cato, at length came to the resolution of totally destroying Carthage; but it was difficult to discover a pretext for war against a state which, conscious of its weakness, had resolved to obey every command. The Carthaginians gave up three hundred of their noblest youths as hostages, surrendered their ships-of-war and their magazines of arms; but when, after all these concessions, they were ordered to abandon their city, they took courage from despair, and absolutely refused obedience. War was instantly proclaimed; the Romans met with almost uninterrupted success; and at the close of the four years that the war lasted, Carthage

was taken by storm, and its magnificent edifices levelled with the ground.

SECTION VI.-Navigation, Trade, and Commerce of Carthage.

THE colonial and commercial policy of the Carthaginians was far less generous than that of their ancestors, the Phoenicians; the harbors of the capital were open to the ships and merchants of foreign nations, but admission was either wholly refused to all the remaining ports in the territory of the republic, or subjected to the most onerous restrictions. This selfish system, which has been imitated by too many modern commercial states, was forced upon the Carthaginians by peculiar circumstances. Their trade with the barbarous tribes of Africa was carried on principally by barter; the ignorant savages exchanged valuable commodities for showy trifles; and the admission of competition would at once have shown them how much they lost in the exchange. Had the Carthaginians, under such circumstances, permitted free trade, they would, in fact, have destroyed their own market.

The principal commerce of the Carthaginians in the western Mediterranean was with the Greek colonies in Sicily and the south of Italy, from which they obtained wine and oil, in exchange for negro slaves, precious stones, and gold, procured from the interior of Africa, and also for cotton cloths manufactured at Carthage and in the island of Malta. Corsica supplied honey, wax, and slaves; Sardinia yielded abundance of corn; the Balearic islands produced the best breed of mules; resin and volcanic products, such as sulphur and pumice-stone, were obtained from the Lipari islands; and southern Spain was, as we have already said, the chief source whence the nations of antiquity procured the precious metals.

Beyond the pillars of Hercules the Carthaginians succeeded the Phoenicians in the tin and amber trade with the south British islands and the nations at the entrance of the Baltic. After the destruction of Carthage, this trade fell into the hands of their earliest rivals, the Phocæans of Marseilles, who changed its route; they made their purchases on the north shore of Gaul, and conveyed their goods overland to the mouth of the Rhone, in that age a journey of thirty days.

On the west coast of Africa the Carthaginian colonies studded the shores of Morocco and Fez; but their great mart was the island of Cer'ne, now Suána, in the Atlantic ocean (29° 10′ N. lat., 10° 40′ W. long.). On this island was the great depôt of merchandise; and goods were transported from it in light barks to the opposite coast, where they were bartered with the native inhabitants. The Carthaginian exports were trinkets, saddlery, linen, or more probably, cotton webs, pottery, and arms; for which they received undressed hides and elephants' teeth. To this trade was added a very lucrative fishery: the tunny fish (thynnus scomber), which is still plentiful on the northwestern coast of Africa, was deemed a great luxury by the Carthaginians. There is every reason to believe that these enterprising merchants had some intercourse with the coast of Guinea, and that their navigators advanced beyond the mouths of the Senegal and Gambia; but the caution with which everything respecting this trade was concealed, renders it impossible to determine its nature and extent with accuracy.

It is very difficult to discover any particulars respecting the caravantrade which the Carthaginians carried on from their southern settlements with the interior of Africa. From the districts bordering on the desert the chief articles obtained were dates and salt; but from beyond the desert, the imports were negro slaves and gold-dust. The nature of this lucrative commerce was the more easily concealed, as the caravans were formed not at Carthage, but at remote towns in the interior, and all the chief staples were situated on the confines of the Great Desert.

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