CARTHAGE

AND

THE CARTHAGINIANS.

CHAPTER I.

CARTHAGE.

Characteristics of Phoenicians-Their defects-Size of their territory-Their relations to Israelites-Early commerce in Mediterranean-Pre-eminence of Phoenicians-Origin of Carthage-Legend of Dido-Elements of truth contained in it-Its treatment by Virgil-Position and population of Carthage-Its relation to Sicily-Our knowledge of Carthage, whence derived-Its early history-Rapid growth of its empire-Its dealings with the native Africans--with the Phoenician cities in Africa -with Tyre-with Sicilian Greeks-Constitution of Carthage-The Suffetes-The Senate-Anomalous character of the Constitution--Its deterioration-The "Hundred Judges "-Close oligarchy-General contentment-Greek and Roman views of Carthaginian constitution Causes of its stability-Social life of Carthaginians-Their luxury, fine arts, architecture, wealth-Their commercial principles-Their agriculture-Merits of Mago's work on agriculture-Carthagenian religion -Worship of Baal-Moloch-of Tanith or Astarte-Deeply-rooted character of this worship-Inferior divinities-Worship of Melcarth---Carthaginian literature-The army-The mercenaries and the Numidian cavalry-Condition of the masses-Colonisation-Periplus of Hanno-" Dumb trade with the Niger-Gold dust-Periplus of Himilco "Mago's" harbour-Disaffection of subject races---Was Rome or Carthage best fitted for empire?

It was well for the development and civilization of the ancient world that the Hebrew fugitives from Egypt were not able to drive at once from the whole coast of Syria its old inhabitants; for the accursed race of the Canaanites

whom, for their licentious worship and cruel rites, they were
bidden to extirpate from Palestine itself, were no other
than those enterprising mariners and those dauntless
colonists who, sallying from their narrow roadsteads, com-
mitted their fragile barques to the mercy of unknown
seas, and, under their Greek name of Phoenicians, explored
island and promontory, creek and bay, from the coast of
Malabar even to the lagunes of the Baltic. From Tyre
and Sidon issued those busy merchants who carried, with
their wares, to distant shores the rudiments of science and
of many practical arts which they had obtained from the far
East, and which, probably, they but half understood them-
selves. It was they who, at a period antecedent to all
contemporary historical records, introduced written charac-
ters, the foundation of all high intellectual development,
into that country which was destined to carry intellectual
and artistic culture to the highest point which humanity has
yet reached. It was they who learned to steer their ships
by the sure help of the Polar Star,1 while the Greeks still
depended on the Great Bear; it was they who rounded the
Cape of Storms, and earned the best right to call it the
Cape of Good Hope, two thousand years before Vasco de
Gama. Their ships returned to their native shores bring-
ing with them sandal wood from Malabar, spices from
Arabia, fine linen from Egypt, ostrich plumes from the
Sahara, ebony and ivory from the Soudan. Cyprus gave
them its copper, Elba its iron, the coast of the Black Sea
its manufactured steel. Silver they brought from Spain,
gold from the Niger, tin from the Scilly Isles, and amber
from the Baltic. Where they sailed, there they planted.
factories which opened a caravan trade with the interior of
vast continents hitherto regarded as inaccessible, and which
became inaccessible for centuries again when the Phoenicians
1 Ovid, Fasti, iii, 107 :—

Esse duas Arctos, quarum Cynosura petatur
Sidoniis, Helicen Graia carina notet?

2 Herod. iv. 42.

Cf. Tristia, iv. 3. I.