Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/555

 disset.") His sons, and, carried on the war both in Sardinia and in Africa. The cause of the latter war was the refusal of Carthage to continue the payment of tribute or ground-rent for their city; but the Africans were successful, and the Carthaginians had to purchase peace. In Sardinia the Punic arms were more fortunate: Hasdrubal fell in battle, after holding the chief military command in the republic (dictator) eleven times, and enjoyed four triumphs. He left the command to his brother Hamilcar, who afterwards fell in Sicily, B.C. 480. (Justin, xix. 1.) Each brother left three sons, who continued to lead the armies of the state, and, while striving to extend her foreign possessions, protected her at home against the Nomads, and compelled the Africans at length to remit the ground-rent for the city. Their names were , , and , the sons of Hamilcar; and , , and , the sons of HasdrubaL The details of their actions are not related further; and the chronology is uncertain, resting only on the probable identification of Justin's Hamilcar with the celebrated commander who fell in the battle of Himera. The following were the earliest foreign conquests of the Carthaginians: —

(1.) Sardinia was their earliest province. It belonged to them at the time of their first commercial treaty with Rome, B.C. 509. Its capital, (Cagliari), and  were founded by them. The island always ranked as the chief among their foreign possessions. It was the great emporium for their trade with W. Europe, and the chief source of their supply of corn, next to their own territory in Africa. There is reason to suppose that they worked gold and silver mines in the island, and that they obtained from it precious stones. They guarded all access to it with the greatest strictness. The Romans, it is true, were allowed to sail to it by the first treaty, under certain restrictions; but, by the second, even this limited permission was withdrawn, and Strabo (xvii. p. 802) informs us that the Carthaginians sank every foreign ship which ventured to touch at the island. It was occupied by a garrison, chiefly of mercenaries; and was governed, like the other foreign possessions of Carthage, by an officer called Boetharch, that is, the commander of the auxiliaries (mercenaries) in time of peace, and in war by a commander , specially sent out from Carthage. (Polyb. i. 79.) As the Carthaginian power declined, their possession of the island was frequently endangered by revolts of the mercenaries, and at length it fell into the hands of the Romans a little after the end of the First Punic War, B.C. 237. [.]

(2.) Corsica was early occupied, as Sardinia also is said to have been, by the Tyrrhenians; but the Carthaginians also obtained a footing in it very early; and the union of the two peoples to resist the enterprizes of other foreign settlers led to the first recorded collision of Carthage with a Greek state; when the combined fleets of the Tyrrhenians and Carthaginians yielded to the Phocaeans of Aleria a victory so dearly bought that the conquerors soon afterwards retired from the island, B.C. 536. [.] The power of the two occupants seems to have long been pretty evenly balanced, but that of Carthage at length prevailed. In B.C. 450, Corsica is spoken of as belonging to the Tyrrhenians, but in the Punic Wars it appears as a Carthaginian province, like Sardinia, together with which it fell into the hands of the Romans. This poor, rugged, and sterile island couldnot, however, be compared to Sardinia in point of its value to its possessors. [.]

(3.) Sicily, as we have seen, was one of the first objects of the military enterprize of Carthage. Phoenician colonies existed at an early period on all its coasts, especially on the commanding promontories; but many of them succumbed to the steadily advancing power of the Greek colonies; till the Phoenicians only retained their footing on the W. portion of the ishund, Uieir principal settlements being, , and. As the power of Tyre declined, and that of Carthage grew, these colonies, like others in the W. Mediterranean, came under the power of the latter (Thucyd. vi 2); but Carthage does not seem to have founded new colonies in Sicily. She appears to have obtained first those settlements which were nearest to her (Thucyd. l. c.); and their proximity to her resources enabled her to keep them from falling under the power of the Greeks. With this firm footing in the island, the Carthaginians proceeded to foment the dissensions of the Greek cities till they were prepared to venture on a great battle for the supremacy. They had already been engaged in war with Gelon, the tyrant of Syracuse, as we learn from Gelon's speech to the Greek envoys, who sought aid from him against the threatened Persian invasion (Herod, vii. 158); and, when they saw that that invasion was about to furnish the Greeks of the mother-country with full occupation, they determined on a grand effort against the Sicilian colonies. An occasion was furnished by the expulsion of Terillus, tyrant of Himera, a city in amity with Carthage, by Theron of Agrigentum, the ally of Syracuse, about B.C. 481. Terillus applied for aid to the Carthaginians, who sent over to Panormus a fleet of 3000 ships of war, which disembarked 300,000 men under the command of Hamilcar, B.C. 480. The list of the peoples who contributed to this army, given by Herodotus, is a remarkable testimony to the extent of the empire and alliances of Carthage at this epoch. They were Phoenicians, Libyans, Iberians, Ligyes (Ligurians from the Gulfs of Lyon and Genoa), Helisyci (which Niebuhr supposes to mean Volsci), Sardinians, and Corsicans. Hamilcar laid siege to Himera: Gelon advanced to raise the siege; and a battle ensued, in which Hamilcar was slain and his army was utterly defeated. (Herod, vii. 165—167; Diod. xi. 21—24.) This great battle of Himera was fought, according to Herodotus, on the very day of the battle of Salamis; according to Diodorus, on that of Thermopylae. The discrepancy may be taken as a proof that the Greeks, ignorant of the exact day of the battle, tried to improve on a coincidence which was sufficiently remarkable. For Himera, no less than Salamis, was one of "the decisive battles of the world;" and that in a sense of which no contemporary could form the least anticipation. Had the event of the day been different, there would seem to have been no obstacle to the establishment of a Carthaginian empire in Sicily and Italy, which might have advanced over all the shores of the Mediterranean. (See a similar observation, with reference to a later period, in Polyb. v. 104.) But, as it was, the Carthaginians were driven back upon their old limits in the W. part of the island, and they seem to have abandoned, for a time, further efforts there, and to have turned their attention to the complete establishment of their power in Africa, and to the extension of their colonies in the West. They did not resume their designs on Sicily till B.C. 410, and from that time the