professions regarded as infamous by some, were freely tolerated or honoured amongst others; the laws of property and of inheritance were completely various. It is not then to be wondered at that Thucydides, when speaking of a city founded jointly by Dorians and Ionians, should have thought it right to add that "the prevailing institutions of the place were the Ionian ;" for, according as they were derived from one or the other of the two races, the whole character of the people would be different. And therefore the mixture of persons of the same race in the same commonwealth, unless one race had a complete ascendency, tended to confuse all the relations of life, and all men's notions of right and wrong; or, by compelling them to tolerate in so near a relation as that of fellow-citizens, differences upon the main points of human life, led to a general carelessness and scepticism, and encouraged the notion that right and wrong have no real existence, but are the mere creatures of human opinion. But the interests of ambition and avarice are ever impatient of moral barriers; when a conquering prince or people had formed a vast dominion out of a number of different nations, the several customs and religions of each were either to be extirpated, or melted into one mass, in which each learnt to tolerate those of its neighbours, and to despise its own. And the same blending of races, and consequent confusion and degeneracy of manners, was favoured by commercial policy; which, regarding men solely in the relation of buyers and sellers, considered other points as comparatively unimportant, and in order to win customers, would readily sacrifice or endanger the purity of moral or religious institutions. So that in the ancient world, civilization which grew chiefly out of conquest or commerce, went almost hand in hand with demoralization.'

Carthage was one of the numerous colonies scattered by the Phoenicians on the northern coast of Africa, from the lesser Syrtes to the shores of the great ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The origin of these settlements may be found in the civil broils and dissensions of the Mother State, in the alluring fertility of the soil, and its commodious position for the maintenance of a communication with the mines of Spain.

History,' says Heeren, has not preserved to us the means by which Carthage first raised herself so much above the other Phoenician colonies. It certainly might have been effected by a conflux of favourable circumstances; but the excellent situation of the city, which at the same time afforded it every convenience for navigation, and protected it from foreign attack, was certainly one of the principal. Carthage was built in the interior of a large bay, formed by the projection of Cape Bon in the East, and Cape Zebid in the West, now called the Gulf of Tunis. At the bottom of this bay is a peninsula which was formerly connected with the mainland by an isthmus about three miles broad. Upon this peninsula was Carthage built, about midway between Utica and Tunis, both of which might have been seen from the walls of the city, as the former was only nine, and the latter only six miles distant. A very narrow piece of land, projecting westward into the sea, formed a double harbour for the vessels of commerce and war, and also separated the lake behind from the Mediterranean. On the side towards the sea it was only protected by a single wall; while upon the isthmus, upon the contrary, it was guarded from foreign attack by the citadel Byrsa, and a threefold wall, thirty yards high and thirty feet broad. There was thus an outer and an inner harbour, so arranged that vessels were obliged to sail through the first to arrive at the other. An

entrance, seventy feet wide, which might be barred with a chain, led to the outer, appropriated solely to merchant vessels, which could here safely ride at anchor. On one side of this a broad bank or quay, ran along, upon which the merchandise was unladen, and delivered to purchasers; and a gate opened from it into the city without passing the inner harbour. This latter was separated from the outer one by a double wall, andwas destined to receive only vessels of war. In its centre arose a lofty island, from which the open sea could be plainly seen. The station of the commander of the fleet was upon this isle, where signals were made and watches kept, and from which could be seen all that was going on at sea without those at sea being able to look into the interior of the harbour. The island as well as the harbour was strongly fortified, and surrounded with high banks, along which the docks, or dépôts for the war galleys, two hundred and twenty in number, were situated. Above these, in an equal number of divisions, were the magazines, containing everything necessary for the outfit of the ships. At the entrance of each dock stood two Ionic columns, which as they were ranged around the island and the harbour, gave the whole the appearance of a magnificent portico.'

Necessity enjoined upon the Tyrian colonists, at the outset of their national existence, conciliation as their policy towards the native tribes. They came, not as conquerors, but as peaceful settlers, who bought the land for their city, and its territory, for a yearly ground-rent or tribute; but with the growing strength of the city were developed views of conquest and commercial aggrandizement, which could only be carried out by the subjugation and civilization of the native tribes. Her policy towards the original inhabitants was everywhere varied in adaptation to the physical peculiarities of the soil. From the greater to the lesser Syrtes there extended an expanse of sterile sand, intractable to agriculture, over which a Normal population roamed, attached to Carthage by a general sense of political dependence, a tie of allegiance far slenderer than that which bound to her the Libyan subjects of her own territory. Nevertheless, they constituted an important link in the Carthaginian system. Interposed between the Phoenician territory and the frontiers of Cyrene, they presented an effective barrier to the encroachments of that rival power; and also offered to Carthage an easy medium of commercial intercourse, by means of the caravan routes, with the tribes on the banks of the Niger, and with Upper Egypt and Ethiopia. The names and pastoral occupations of these tribes,-the Lotophagi, Psylli, Maco, and Nasamônes, are familiar to us in the narrative of Herodotus ; they do not appear to have vanished from the earth, but merely to have been pressed back by the Bedouin Arabs, from whom they are distinguished by descent and manners, though intermixed with them by marriage. It is curious to observe how closely the narrative in Herodotus of the disaster which overwhelmed the Psylli, coincides with the accounts of modern

travellers. The south wind,' says Herodotus, having dried ' up their water-springs, they came to the resolution of advanc'ing further towards the south; but when they came to the 'sand, the south wind buried them.' The south wind,' says Della Cella, drives the sand out of the great desert like moving clouds, which bury whole caravans.'

But between the Syrtes and the walls of Carthage, the nature of the soil, and with it the occupation of its inhabitants, entirely alters. 'Immediately beyond the river Triton,' says Herodotus, 'we first find nations who cultivate their lands.' The Maxyes, and the other tribes which he mentions as nearest the river, had not long abandoned their Nomad life; and there were still many customs prevalent among them characteristic of their former state. They suffered the hair on the right side of their 'heads to grow, but shaved the left; they painted their bodies 'with red lead.' 'Both these,' adds Heeren, are still Nomad 'customs. That of painting the body is expressly mentioned by 'Herodotus, as existing among other Nomades; and the man'ner of cutting the hair was the mark by which the clans were distinguished from one another; according to the fashion in 'which it was done, or the side of the head which was cropped.'

A third tribe, that of the Gyzantes, or Byzantes, occupied the province of Byzacium, 1,000 stadia, or 227 miles in circumference; a tract of great fertility, and the most important granary of Carthage. It contributed to swell the muster-roll of the Carthaginian army; and in the unfortunate contest carried on by the republic against the mercenary troops after the first war with Rome, 70,000 of them were under arms at one time; and numbers equally considerable occur on other occasions, (p. 38.) Their subjugation had been effected under circumstances which left a lasting impression of hatred in the vanquished; and the Carthaginian system of administration, unlike the Roman, was carried out in the same purely commercial spirit which had originally dictated their conquest. They disdained to convert their subjects into friends, or to incorporate them into the body of their empire by a communion of language and institutions; and the alienation thus produced, combined with the oppressions of the provincial governors, who not unfrequently exacted half of their produce in the shape of tribute, made them regard the approach of every enemy as the signal of revolt. Those only who occupied the tract along the coast from the capital to Byzacium, had, from their very neighbourhood, intermingled with the Carthaginians; the tribes above-mentioned did not even know the Carthaginian tongue, but seem to have spoken many different languages among themselves, (p. 38.) They were governed by colonies composed of Carthaginian citi

zens, who served the double purpose of maintaining the authority of the state, and of relieving the destitution of the lower orders, and thinning a redundant population at home. 'In this way,' says Aristotle, Carthage preserves the love of her people. She 'sends out continually colonies of her citizens into the districts ' around her, and by this means makes them men of property.' To provide against extreme poverty in the people, he adds, should be a main object of the truly popular statesman (ó aλnows EnμOTIKòs); and it is a proof of a mild and intelligent government, that it assists the poor by accustoming them to labour. But this policy, sound and equitable as it was, supposes a nation still sufficiently uncorrupted to enjoy agriculture; and Heeren remarks, that in the later history of Carthage we hear no more of such settlements. The effects of the discontinuance of this system were terribly felt in the later epochs of their annals, when an overflowing population, estimated at 700,000 at the lowest, even after the exhaustion of the Roman war in Africa, dependent upon sources which, after the interruption of their commerce by the maritime ascendancy of Rome, proved disastrously precarious, became the venal tool of every ambitious demagogue, impeded the machine of government, and thwarted the efforts of patriotism, as much as it incensed the rage of faction.

Very alien from the spirit of the Roman conquests was the Carthaginian career of aggrandization. Every shore, every region of the habitable world, where he could dart a spear, or wave a sword, was to the imperial Roman the legitimate prize of an ambition that knew no bounds-the imperium sine fine.' Curius embodied the spirit of his country in his noble reply to the Samnite deputies; that he thought it honourable not to be the master of gold, but to be the master of those who possessed it. Everywhere he consolidated conquest, and half reconciled the vanquished, by the impartial communication of the laws under which Latium had flourished; while the Carthaginians, mere political pedlars in comparison, scorned the loftier ends of empire, hesitated long upon the threshold of invasion, and before they resolved upon it, deliberately weighed the cost and gain of every acquisition; testing its desirability, not by the mere extent of country to be annexed to the invader's sceptre, but by the fertility of the soil, its mineral wealth, and its advantages as a station for trade. Behind her proper territory she saw spreading itself out the immeasurable Africa, alluring her to conquest, and seemingly waiting for a ruler. Yet she confined her own possessions to those limits, within which the nature of the soil rewarded agriculture, invited civilization, and made dominion valuable.

Western Europe offered her the same temptation. But even the rich country of Spain, known to them so minutely, although they had several settlements therein, could not invite them to a regular conquest of it, until it offered them, in time of need, when their political power had lost its balance, a compensation for Sicily, during the last struggle with Rome.'Heeren, p. 63.

While the promotion of agriculture was the object of their inland settlements, the extension of commerce was no less exclusively that of their foreign colonies. Their favourite aim, and one which they pursued with that consistency and unity of plan so often seen in the policy of hereditary governments, was to engross the trade of the Western Mediterranean; and they early discovered how important was the possession of its isles for making them masters of its commerce. 'Here,' says Heeren, no troublesome rivals were to be feared; or if any 'showed themselves they were easily restrained; here com'mercial activity, unperceived could exert itself; here no loss was to be apprehended in an age when there were no great 'maritime powers as rivals.' The earliest and most valuable of her foreign possessions was Sardinia; the resources of which (less familiar to the moderns than those of any country in Europe), were no less important to the Carthaginians than its position, which gave them a command of the Mediterranean; on the dominion of which almost their very existence depended. Its fertile plains and valleys grew corn as abundantly as those of Sicily; and it seems probable that mines were worked there, which yielded a rich produce of metals and of precious stones. Mineral wealth had always a peculiar charm for Phoenicians; and in the consciousness of its existence may have originated their jealous exclusion of Roman commerce with the island, and their interdicts against strangers sailing to its shores, under penalty of death by drowning. From Corsica, though at different periods under the dominion of Carthage, the republic never derived any considerable advantages; its soil was rugged and sterile, and its inhabitants savage; and Carthaginian policy was too profound to place much value upon a possession 'that would have been more expensive than useful.' But for the dominion of Sicily she struggled with a pertinacity fully justified by the character and position of that island relatively to the Carthaginian system-the importance of its possession for the dominion of the Mediterranean, the provisioning of her fleets, and for her trade in oil and wine-its moderate extent, and the ease with which, once conquered, it might have been retained. The remaining smaller islands in the western Mediterranean-the Balcaric Isles, fertile in wine, oil, and fine wool; Gaulos, Cercina, and Melita, the last a principal mart for the Carthaginian manufactures, covered with large manufactories