Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/174

162 the Romans, began the enterprize to which he devoted his life. His object was not so much to conquer Italian soil or Italian cities as to break up the confederacy on which the greatness of Rome depended, and to undo the fabric of its empire stone by stone. He sought, therefore, on the one hand to rouse Greeks and Orientals to a joint attack against the common foe, and on the other to sow dissension amongst the Latin, Sabellian, and Oscan tribes, and to urge them to reduce Rome to that position of comparative inferiority which she had occupied many centuries before. Both these plans failed. Hannibal was badly supported from home ; he found that to combine in unity the shifting policy of the East was to weave a rope of sand ; and he dis covered above all that Roman supremacy was established on a basis of complete security. How different was her position, seated among kindred peoples bound to her by affinities of blood and language as well as interest, governed by the wise policy of a patriotic senate, and restrained by the overpowering force of devoted legions, and that of the city of merchants, torn by factions, surrounded by alien and even hostile tribes, defended by mercenaries, and swayed by interest and passion. The defeat of Hasdrubal at the Metaurus in 207 B.C. crushed the last hope of the invader; Spain was recovered by the genius of Scipio, and in 203 B.C. Hannibal, not unwillingly, obeyed the order to embark from Italy to retard the ruin of his country which it was too late to save. The battle of Zama in 202 put an end to the war in the following year. It was due to the magnaminity of Scipio and Hannibal that peace was con cluded on such terms that, while Rome had no longer to fear Carthage as a rival, she was content to recognize her existence as a commercial community. For the next six years Hannibal governed the city which he had not been able to preserve. He reformed the con stitution in a democratical sense, and paid with surprising facility the enormous indemnity demanded by Rome. He was engaged in planning a combination against Rome with Antiochus of Syria, when he was driven from power, and forced to take refuge in the East. Shortly afterwards he fell a victim to Roman hatred. The interval between 183 and 150 B.C. contains little besides the history of internal dissensions, struggles between the Roman party, the democratical party, and the party of Masinissa. which tore the city in sunder by their quarrels. The so-called third Punic war (149-146 B.C.) is one of the saddest events in all history, and the greatest blot on the reputation of the Romans. Jealousy of their old antagonists had bee;. J.Dwn by constant acts of injustice, and at last the sight of the prosperity and riches of the city impressed upon the narrow mind of Cato the conviction that Carthage must be blotted out. A pretext for war was wantonly invented. The anxieties of the Carthaginians to secure peace at any sacrifice was made the instrument of their destruction. When they saw that their ruin was resolved upon, and that compromise was hopeless, they defended themselves with an energy which would have saved them at an earlier period. The sentence of the senate was ruthlessly carried out. The city burned for seventeen days, and concealed its very site under a heap of ashes. The plough was passed over it, and the ground was cursed for ever. In the words of Mommsen, &quot; where the industrious Phoenicians bustled and trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves henceforth pastured the herds of their distant masters.&quot; The history of Roman Carthage must be given in a few- words. In 122 B.C. Cains Gracchus led 6000 colonists to Africa, and founded the city of Junonia. The colony did not prosper. In 29 B.C. a second colony was sent out by Augustus in fulfilment of a design of Julius Caesar. This became so prosperous that Herodian states that it disputed with Alexandria the second place in the empire. In the middle of the 5th century it became, under Genseric, tho capital of the Vandal kingdom, and in 533 A.D. it was stormed by Belisarius. In 706 A.D. it was entirely destroyed by the general of the caliph Abdulmelek.

The constitution of Carthage was essentially aristocratical. The little we know of it is derived from a single chapter in the Politics of Aristotle (ii, 8), a few scattered passages in the same treatise, and in Polybius, Livy, Nepos, and other authors. The official heads of the Government w r ere the suft etes (Heb. Sophetim), who are compared to the Roman consuls and the Spartan kings ; they may only have been two in number, and probably held office for a year, but were capable of re-election. Under them was the senate, which may or may not have been divided into two houses. These offices were filled by popular election, determined by the joint claims of wealth and merit, but bribery was largely practised, and Aristotle goes as far as to say that the chief offices were objects of sale and purchase. The people had a voice in the conduct of affairs, but they were not consulted if the suffetes and the senate were agreed on a course of action. There is no reason to suppose with Grote that the public banquets mentioned by Aristotle were part of the machinery of bribery. The history of England (which by some writers is spoken of as the modern Carthage) supplies us with ample examples of an aristocratical government carried on under the forms of a democracy. By the side of the regular Government stood a controlling&quot; power which gradually absorbed into itself all the authority of the state. The pentarchies were probably bodies of commissioners chosen from the principal families, self-elected, and so con stituted that the outgoing members preserved their power for another year, and thus impressed a unity of policy on the institution. By these were elected the council of a hundred (or more strictly a hundred and four), who stood in the same relation to the suffetes as the ephors to the Spartan kings. By the gradual extension of judicial functions, like the parliaments of France, they usurped to themselves the authority of the state. To them is to be referred the cruel vengeance so often wreaked on unsuc cessful generals. It was the work of Hannibal to diminish the authority of this body, and to secure a more real share of pow r er to the people. The Carthaginians were, like the Phoenicians, a deeply religious people. Religion entered into every important action of their lives, and their priests were held in the highest honour, yet there was no special order of priests, and we have no proof that the office was by law or custom confined to any particular family. Aristotle, writing more than half a century before the first Punic war, gives great praise to the Carthaginian constitution on the score of its stability, and its success in securing the happiness and con tentment of the nation. It is, indeed, inconceivable that the Carthaginians should have attained such wealth and prosperity except under a good government ; and the picture of faction, dissension, and disturbance, which we are accustomed to associate with it, belongs rather to the decline of the Punic empire, and is known to us only through the representation of its enemies.

The general outline of the topography of Carthage is tolerably certain, but the details are involved in almost unavoidable obscurity. Two schools of topographers place the site of the city respectively on the north and south of the peninsula, which the territory of Carthage undoubtedly occupied. It seems now certain that the latter are in the right. The most important feature of the ancient city was the citadel Byrsa (Bozra), the hill now occupied by a church dedicated to St Louis, who died at Tunis. It was sur rounded by walls, and its summit was formerly crowned 