years; but on two occasions during that period the Carthaginians appeared in arms before the walls of Syracuse. The first was in the time of the best, the other of the worst of all its rulers.

Already the Carthaginians had gained possession of the whole of the town of Syracuse except its island citadel of Ortygia. It was the first time in their thousand conflicts that they had attained so nearly to the summit of their ambition; and every one believed, to quote the words of a patriotic Greek, that the long-talked-of and long-expected flood of barbarism had come at last, and had overwhelmed Sicily. But just when the horizon was at its darkest, light appeared. The younger Dionysius, a man as weak as he was wicked, abandoned the city he had misgoverned without striking a blow in its defence, and flying to Greece made way for the Corinthian Timoleon. Equally remarkable for his courage and his gentleness, for his ability to command and his readiness to obey, for the tenderness of his affections and the sternness of his sense of duty, above all for his absolute disinterestedness, Timoleon is the highest idea of one side, and that perhaps the noblest side, of the Greek character. He had saved his brother's life in battle at the risk of his own, and yet when that brother plotted against the lives and liberties of his fellow citizens he gave him over, in an access of sublime patriotism, to the death he had deserved. Such was the man who, summoned to an arduous post which he would never have sought but dared not decline, now appeared at Syracuse when its fortunes were at its lowest ebb (B.C. 344).

The Carthaginians vanished for a time, but reappeared a few years afterwards at the head of one of the most splendid armaments that they had ever put into the field. It consisted of seventy thousand infantry, of ten thousand cavalry, of a large number of war chariots drawn by four

• Plutarch, Timoleon, xvii. : ὥστε πάντας οἰέσθαι τὴν πάλαι λεγομένην καὶ προσδοκωμένην ἐκβαρβάρωσιν ἥκειν ἐπὶ τὴν Σικελίαν.

2 Ibid iv. and v.

horses each, of one hundred ships of war, and one thousand transports laden with supplies and ammunition of every kind.1 But the armament was not less remarkable for its composition than its size. The merchant princes of Carthage, so often content to look at war as a gigantic mercantile speculation, cared not, as a rule, to risk their own lives when there were plenty of barbarians who for a small sum of money were willing to throw away theirs instead. It was doubtless pleasanter for those who enjoyed life, as did the wealthy Carthaginians, when there was any risk to be run, to do so, as the Greek proverb expresses it, “in the person of a Carian." But when real danger threatened the State, it is a mere calumny to assert that they were not ready to do battle in their own persons and to fight, as their mercenaries hardly ever fought, in defence of their hearths and homes. In this pre-eminently patriotic armament there were, we are told, no less than ten thousand native Carthaginians, all clad in splendid panoplies, and all carrying white shields, conspicuous from afar, as if to mark them out as targets for the enemy. Amongst them was the famous "Sacred Band" of 2,500 chosen nobles in all the bravery of their gold rings, their costly raiment, and their drinking vessels of solid gold and silver.

The battle which ensued, the Battle of the Crimesus, is described with graphic detail by Diodorus 2 and Plutarch, who evidently had the testimony of eye-witnesses before them. We seem, as we read, to be moving in an atmosphere of poetry and of portent, of miracle and of religious enthusiasm. It is the Battle of Megiddo and the brook Kishon that we fancy that we see; it is the song of triumph of Deborah and of Barak that we fancy that we hear. The parallel is close indeed throughout. A tempest

1 Plutarch, Timoleon, xxv.; Diod. xvi. 77.

2 Diod. xvi. 80.

3 Plut. Tim. 27, 28.

4 It has been eloquently drawn out by Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, vol. i. chap. 14.

of rain and hail, accompanied by lightning and thunder, broke with extraordinary violence at the critical moment right in the faces of the advancing Carthaginians. The stars in their courses fought against Carthage, and the brook Crimesus, swollen in a few minutes to an angry torrent, swept away in its waters the war-chariots, and the plunging horses, and the heavy-armed foot soldiers of the Carthaginians. Then, as at Megiddo, "strength was broken down"; the Carthaginian citizens in their heavy panoplies, slipped in the mud and fell to rise no more. The Sacred Band stood their ground, by the confession of the Greeks themselves, in a manner worthy of their privileges and responsibilities, and died, fighting bravely, to a man. The camp and costly baggage fell into the hands of the victors, and Timoleon, laden with booty and with honour, returned to Syracuse to live there as a simple citizen, and after securing to his adopted country a period of twenty-two years of prosperity and liberty and peace, such as it had hardly enjoyed before, and certainly has not attained to since, to be regretted in his death as the "common father and benefactor" of all the Sicilians.1

Timoleon passed away, and Syracuse once more fell (B.C. 310) under the yoke of a tyrant as able and unscrupulous as the elder Dionysius. Bursting through the Carthaginian squadron, which was blockading him in his capital, with a heroism which is almost unparalleled in warfare, Agathocles made his way at the head of a few ships to Africa, and with a Carthaginian fleet following close behind him and a Carthaginian army ready to receive him on his landing, he made Carthage herself tremble for her safety. Once again the city poured forth, in its own defence, its hoplites and its horsemen, its war-chariots and its Sacred Band. it was not till after Agathocles had been for three years overrunning the open country, till he had occupied an almost fabulous number of Carthaginian towns, and had kindled into a mighty blaze the flame of discontent which was always

1 Plutarch, Timoleon, xxxix. лпер патHр ксIVOS.

smouldering among the African subjects of the imperial city, that he returned to Sicily to carry fire and sword into other regions from which their Greek blood might have been expected to protect them.1 The havoc which Agathocles had wrought in Africa might be repaired, and was soon repaired by the wealth and energy of the Carthaginians; but there was something which no efforts of theirs could now undo. By his invasion of Africa Agathocles had shown the way in which Carthage could be best assailed. He had probed the weakness of the Carthaginian empire to the very bottom, and mightier men than he, and a mightier people than the Greeks of Sicily, were, all too soon, to follow in his footsteps.

I Diod. xx. 3, 55 64 seq

CHAPTER III.

CARTHAGE AND ROME.

(753-278 B.C.)

Rome and Carthage compared-Contrasted-Origin and growth of Rome -Constitutional progress-Military progress-Conquest of Etruscans -Of Gauls-Of Latins-Of Samnites-Roman methods in warTheir moderation-War with Pyrrhus-Its character-Rome brought face to face with Carthage.

It is now time to take a glance at the origin and rise of the younger city on the banks of the Tiber, whose progress towards the dominion of the world Carthage, and Carthage alone of the states of antiquity, was able seriously to delay. The history of Rome is like, and yet unlike, that of Carthage. It is like it, for we see in each the growth of a civic community which, from very small beginnings, under an aristocratic form of government, and with slight literary or artistic tastes, acquired first, by the force of circumstances, the leadership of the adjoining cities, which were akin to her in blood, and subsequently, by a far-sighted policy, or by a strong arm, became mistress, not only of them, but, by their aid, of all the tribes whom Nature had not cut off from them by the sea, the mountains, or the desert.

But Roman history is intrinsically unlike the Carthaginian, for the greatness of Rome rested not, as did the greatness of Carthage, on her wealth, or her commerce, or her colonies, or her narrow oligarchy, but on the constitutional progress which, after a long struggle, obliterated the mischievous privileges of an aristocracy of birth, and raised the commonalty to a complete social and political equality