common soldiers. Military service is sought only by rude and poor nations as a means of subsistence. The Samnites, the Iberians, the Gauls, and the Ligurians, and, among the Greeks especially, the Arcadians and the rest. of the Peloponnesians, served for hire, because they were needy or uncultivated. Love of the military service as a profession and occupation of life is never found in the mass of an advanced people where the value of labour ranks high. We must not on this account reproach such a nation with cowardice. The English are surpassed by no people of Europe in bravery; and yet in England, except the officers, none but the lowest classes adopt a soldier's life, because it is the worst paid. Of course in times of national enthusiasm or danger it is different. Then every member of a healthy state willingly takes up arms. So it was among the Carthaginians, and therefore we are not justified in crediting them with less capacity for war than the bravest nations of the old world. CHAP. I. dents and tributaries of Carthage. In speaking of the Carthaginian people we must strictly Depeninclude only the Punians, that is to say, the population of pure Phoenician descent. These were to be found only in the city of Carthage and in the other Phoenician colonies, and were very few in proportion to the mass of the remaining population. The aboriginal African race of the Libyans inhabited the fruitful region south of Carthage to the lake Tritonis; these the Phoenician settlers had reduced to complete dependence and made tributary.' They were now the subjects of Carthage, and their lot was not enviable. It is true that they were personally free; but they formed no part of the Carthaginian people, and they had no rights but those which the It is very improbable that, as Justin states (xix. 2), the Carthaginians, down to the time of Darius Hystaspis, paid a ground-rent to the Libyans for the land on which their town was built. (Compare Heeren, Ideen, ii. 1-34.) But granted even that this statement were true, it would not follow that (as Mommsen says, Rom. Gesch. i. 493) they were deficient in political capacity. No one will venture to accuse the English people of such a defect. Yet the East India Company continued up to the year 1827 to acknowledge the Great Mogul as the nominal sovereign of India, and allowed him to keep a mock court at Delhi until 1857. IV. BOOK generosity or policy of the Carthaginians granted them. The amount of the services which they had to render to the state was not fixed and determined by mutual agreement, by stipulation or law, but depended on the necessities of Carthage; and on this account they were always ready to join with foreign enemies whenever the soil of Africa became the theatre of war. The LibyPhoenicians. The Car state. During the 600 years of Carthaginian supremacy, a certain mingling of the races of the Libyans and Carthaginians naturally took place. A number of Carthaginians, citizens of pure Phoenician blood, settled among the Libyans, and thus arose the mixed race of the LibyPhoenicians, who probably spread Carthaginian customs and the Phoenician language in Africa in the same way as the Latin colonies carried the Latin language and Roman customs over Italy. From these Liby-Phoenicians were principally taken the colonists who were sent out by Carthage to form settlements, not only in Africa, but also in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and the other islands. We have no very accurate information about the Liby-Phoenicians. Whether they were more animated by the Phoenician spirit, or whether the Libyan nationality prevailed,.must remain undecided. It is, however, probable that, in course of time, they assumed more and more of the Phoenician character. The Carthaginian citizens, the native Libyans, and the thaginian mixed population of the Liby-Phoenicians constituted therefore, in strictness of speech, the republic of Carthage, in the same way as Rome, the Roman colonies, and the subject Italian population formed the body of the Roman state. But the wider Carthaginian empire included three other elements; the confederate Punic cities, the dependent African nomadic races, and the foreign possessions. Acknowledgment It is a sure sign of the political ability of the Carthaof Carthaginians that, so far as we know, no wars arising from ginian su- jealousy and rivalry took place between the different premacy. Phoenician colonies, like those which ruined the once flourishing Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily. It is true that the Phoenicians were careful to exclude other nátions from the regions where they had founded their trading establishments, and Carthage may also have endeavoured to concentrate the trade of her African possessions in Carthage itself. But there were no wars of extermination between different cities and the Phoenician All the Tyrian and Sidonian colonies in Africa, on the islands of the western Mediterranean Sea, and in Spain, which had in part been formed before Carthage, gradually joined themselves to her, and acknowledged her as the head of their nation. How this union was effected is hidden in the darkness of the early Carthaginian history. We may perhaps assume that the common national and mercantile interests prompted the isolated settlements of the far-sighted Phoenicians to a peaceful union and subordination to the most powerful state.2 Thus it was possible for a handful of men of a foreign race to establish in a distant part of the world an extensive dominion over scattered tracts of land and wild barbarian populations. CHAP. I. northern The most important city of these Phoenician confederates Phoenician was Utica, situated at no great distance north of Carthage cities of at the mouth of the river Bagradas. In the public Africa. treaties which Carthage concluded, Utica was generally mentioned as one of the contracting parties.1 therefore rather an ally than a subject of Carthage, holding to her the same relationship which Præneste and some other Italian cities bore to Rome. We have We have very little information about the remaining Phoenician cities on the 1 Movers, Phönizier, ii. 2, 488. Yet it is not probable that the Carthaginians, as Movers suspects, destroyed the port of Great Leptis. If they had done so, the export of goods from Great Leptis to Carthage would have been confined to the long and tedious road by land, which of course would have resulted in a loss to the Carthaginian traders. Many of the famous ports of antiquity were silted up in the course of ages, and among them, no doubt, that of Great Leptis, without the interference of man. * At least nothing is known of a forcible subjection of the smaller Phoenician settlements to Carthage. The English dominion in India is to some extent analogous; but the Anglo-Indians have the whole power of the mother country to back them. Polybius, iii. 24. 4 BOOK The Numidians. Foreign north coast of Africa. None of them were of such importance as to be placed in the same rank with Carthage and Utica. They were bound to pay a fixed tribute and to furnish contingents of troops, but they enjoyed selfgovernment and they retained their own laws. On the south and west of the immediate territory of the Carthaginian republic lived various races of native Libyans, who are commonly known by the name of Numidians. But these were in no way, as their Greek name ("Nomads") would seem to imply, exclusively pastoral races. Several districts in their possession, especially in the modern Algeria, were admirably suited for agriculture. Hence they had not only fixed and permanent abodes, but a number of not unimportant cities, of which Hippo and Cirta, the residences of the chief Numidian princes, were the most considerable. Their own interest, far more than the superior force of the Carthaginians, bound the chiefs of several Numidian races as allies to the rich commercial city. They assisted in great part in carrying on the commerce of Carthage with the interior parts of Africa, and derived a profit from this forwarding trade. The military service in the Carthaginian armies had great attractions for the needy sons of the desert, who delighted above all things in robbery and plunder; and the light cavalry of the Numidians was equalled neither by the Romans nor by the Greeks. A wise policy on the part of Carthage kept the princes of Numidia in good humour. Presents, marks of honour, and intermarriage with noble Carthaginian ladies, united them with the city, which thus disposed of them without their suspecting that they were in a state of dependence. That, however, such an uncertain, fluctuating alliance was not without danger for Carthage-that the excitable Numidians, caring only for their own immediate advantage, would join the enemies of Carthage without scruple in the hour of need, Carthage was doomed to experience to her sorrow in her wars with Rome. Besides her own immediate territory in Africa, the CHAP. I. allied Phoenician cities, and the Numidian confederates, Carthage had also a number of foreign possessions and colonies, extending her name and influence throughout possesthe western parts of the Mediterranean Sea. A line of sions of Carthage. colonies had been founded on the north coast of Africa as far as the Straits of Gibraltar, and even on the western shore of the continent, i.e. on the coasts of Numidia and Mauritania; but these were intended to further the commerce of Carthage, not in any way to assist her in her conquests. In like manner, the earliest settlements in Spain and the islands of the Mediterranean, in Malta, the Balearic and Lipari Isles, in Sardinia, and especially in Sicily, were originally trading factories, and not colonies in the Roman sense. But where commerce required the protection of arms, these establishments were soon changed into military posts, like those of the English in the East Indies; and the conquest of larger or smaller tracts of land and of entire islands was the consequence. It is evident that for several centuries the Carthaginians in Sicily were not bent on conquest. They avoided encountering the Greeks, they gave up the whole south and east coast, where at first there had been numerous Phoenician colonies,' and they confined themselves to a few small strongholds in the extreme west of the island, which they required as trading and shipping stations. They appear only in the fifth century to have made an attempt to get military possession of the greater part of Sicily. But after the failure of this attempt by the defeat at Himera (480 B.C.) we hear of no further similar undertakings till the time of the Peloponnesian war. Sardinia, on the other hand, seems early to have come Sardinia. into the power of the Carthaginians, after the attempt of the Greeks of Phokaia to make a settlement there had been thwarted by the Carthaginian fleet. Sardinia was not, like Sicily, a land that attracted many strangers. It was not the eternal apple of discord of contending neigh 1 Movers, Phönizier, ii. 2, 324 ff. Thucydides, vi. 2. |