Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/557

  (4.) Egypt and Ethiopia. — The relations of Cartilage with Egypt and Ethiopia were entirely commercial, and chiefly indirect, as will be seen presently. But that much was known of Carthage in Egypt may be inferred from the incidental notices of Herodotus, who no doubt obtained his information from Carthaginians in Egypt.

(5.) Tyrrhenians. — On the side of Europe, Carthage had relations with other peoples besides the Greeks. The Tyrrhenians appear as her allies in Corsica; and Aristotle alludes incidentally to well-known treaties between the two peoples. These treaties evidently arose out of the common interests of the two great maritime powers of the W. Mediterranean, and also from the desire of Carthage to protect herself by treaties against the piratical habits of the Tyrrhenians. (Anstot. Polit. iii. 5. §§ 10, 11, where the threefold description deserves attention: ).

(6.) Rome, — First Treaty. — Somewhat similar to these conventions was the treaty which furnishes the first instance of any relations between Rome and Carthage. This celebrated document is preserved by Polybius (iii. 22), who tells ns that it was made in the consulship of L. Junius Brutus and M. Horatius, the first consuls after the expulsion of the kings, and 28 years before the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, that is, in B.C. 509. It was still preserved, inscribed on tablets of bronze, among the archives of the aediles in the temple of Jove in the Capitol (c. 26), but its old Latin idiom was, in some passages, hardly intelligible to the most learned antiquarians. Its substance is as follows: — That there shall lie friendship between the Romans and their allies, and the Carthaginians and their allies, on these conditions : the Romans and their allies are restricted from sailing beyond (i. e. to the W. or S. of) the Fair Promontory, which seems here to indicate the Mercurii Pr., C. Bon, the E. headland of the Gulf of Carthage, rather than, as elsewhere in Polybius, Apollinis Pr., C. Farina, its W. headland, the object of this restriction being, in the opinion of Polybius, to keep foreigners from a share in the trade of the colonies on the coast of Byzacium and the Emporia on the Lesser Syrtis: if forced into the forbidden seas by weather or war, they are neither to buy nor take anything except necessaries for refitting the ship, and offering sacrifice, and they must depart within live days: but they are allowed to trade with Carthage herself, and the part of Africa immediately adjacent (at least this seems to be the meaning), with Sardinia, and with the part of Sicily possessed by Carthage, under certain conditions, the object of which was as much to give additional security to such commerce, as to impose restrictions on it, namely, the goods must be sold by public auction, and then the public faith was pledged to the foreigner for his payment: on the other hand, the Carthaginians are bound to refrain from injuring the cities of Ardea, Antium, Laurentum (or more probably Aricia), Circeii, and Terracina, or any other Latin cities which were subject to the Romans, and not to meddle with (i. e. not to make their own) the cities which were not under the Roman dominion, but if they shall have taken any of the latter, they are to restore such uninjured to the Romans: they are to build no fort in the Latin territory, nor, if they should land there in arms, to remain a single night. This treaty clearlyindicates the respective dominions, and the relative positions of the two states at the end of the sixth century B.C.; for it is ridiculous to suppose that it was designed to anticipate relations which might occur at some future time, and not to settle questions which had actually arisen. Rome, at the height of the prosperity which she attained in the regal period, and in possession of the chief cities on the Latin coast, even beyond the later limits of Latium, is beginning to extend her commerce over the W. parts of the Mediterranean; while Carthage is pushing hers to the very coasts of Latium, and is also carrying on military operations there for its defence. It is an interesting fact, as Polybius observes (c. 23), that the treaty is wholly silent respecting the parts of Italy beyond the Roman territory: the Tyrrhenians and the Greeks are not referred to, unless tacitly as among the enemies against whose interference with their commerce the Carthaginians may have to conduct military operations. With the Tyrrhenians we have seen that the Carthaginians dealt, as with Rome, by separate treaties, as the occasion arose: of their relations with Magna Graecia it is much to be regretted that history is almost silent; but we may fairly conjecture that any serious efforts of commerce or conquest in that quarter were postponed until Sicily should be made their own.

The genuineness of the first treaty with Rome has been disputed on the very ground which affords its strongest confirmation; the position, namely, to which it represents Rome as having already attained at this early period of her history. The only difficulty arises from the mis-statements of the Roman annalists, who refused to acknowledge the depression which Rome suffered as the first consequence of the revolution which made her a republic; and fr(»m which she was so long in recovering. (Niebuhr, History of Rome, vol. i. pp. 533, foll.) Accordingly, when, a century and a half later, B.C. 348, the Roman republic was sufficiently recovered from its long struggle for existence, to have a foreign commerce worth the protection of a second treaty with Carthage, we find, amidst a general similarity to the provisions of the first treaty, this important difference, that the Romans are excluded from Sardinia and Libya as rigidly as from the seas beyond the Fair Promontory, with the exception that their traders may expose their goods for sale at Carthage; and the same privilege is granted to the Carthaginians at Rome.

The date assigned to this treaty is on the authority of Livy (vii. 27), who only just refers to it. Polybius, who recites it in full (iii. 24), does not mention its date. Several of the best critics hesitate to assume the identity of the treaty in Polybius with that referred to by Livy. Grote (vol. x. p. 541) supposes that the former was made somewhere between 480—410 B.C. chiefly an the ground that it "argues a comparative superiority of Carthage to Rome, which would rather seem to belong to the latter half of the fifth century B.C. than to the latter half of the fourth." Niebuhr (vol. iii. p. 87), on the other hand, thinks that Polybius was not acquainted with the transaction mentioned by Livy, and that the treaty which he speaks of as the second, was the one of the year 447, B.C. 306. It is seldom fair to play off great authorities against each other; but it may be done in this case, for there is really no good ground for doubting that Livy and Polybius each meant by the second treaty that which really was the second and the same.