Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/44

 36 CAETHAGE later in history something of her successes and reverses in war, less is known of Carthage than of any other nation of antiquity. She has left no literature, no monuments, no traces of her people or her language, with the exception of a few inscriptions on coins, and a few verses in one of the comedies of Plautus. Even among the writers of nations with whom she carried on commercial business and waged wars, the notices of her polity, population, religion, man- ners, and language are few and far between ; and the Romans are charged with destroying tlie Punic archives for three centuries. Al- though the waters of every sea were white with her sails, and the shores of every land, hospitable or inhospitable, civilized or savage, were planted with her colonies or frequented by her mariners, no relic of her laws, language, or blood remains. Were it not for the wars which terminated her existence as a nation and a people, we should scarcely be aware of the existence of a city the inhabitants of which had visited the Western isles, the Canaries, and the Cape Verds ; had braved, if they had not actually crossed, the waters of the Atlantic ; and had excavated the tin mines of Cornwall. Even of the Carthaginians in their wars we know little, and this is by the names and the deeds of her generals, several of whom were among the greatest of antiquity, not by the constitution, composition, or character of her armies. Through Aristotle and Polybius we have learned something of her political system and her government, and a little of her reli- gion. Of her civic customs, social habits, do- mestic institutions, amusements, and industry, with the exception of some few hints in rela- tion to her navigation, commerce, and agricul- ture, we are ignorant. No writer has so con- cisely and ably brought together what is known of the great commercial republic of antiquity as Dr. Thomas Arnold, in his "History of Rome," from which a portion of the following is condensed. In the middle of the 4th cen- tury B. C. the Carthaginians possessed the northern coast of Africa, from the middle of the Greater Syrtis to the pillars of Hercules, a country reaching from Ion. 19 E. to 6 W., and a length of coast which Polybius reckoned at above 16,000 stadia. In that part where the coast runs nearly N. and S. from the Iler- maean headland or Cape Bon to the Lesser Syrtis was one of the richest tracts to be found ; and here the Carthaginians had planted their towns thickly, and had Covered the open country with their farms and villas. This was their irepioude, the immediate domain of Car- thage, where fresh settlements were continually made as a provision for the poorer citizens; settlements prosperous, indeed, and wealthy, but politically dependent. Distinct from these settlements of the Carthaginians were the sis- ter cities of Carthage, founded by the Phoeni- cians of Tyre and Sidon. Among these colo- nies were Utica, Hadrumetum, the two cities known by the name of Leptfe (situated the one near the western extremity of the Greater Syrtis, and the other on the coast, between the Lesser Syrtis and the Hermrean headland) and Hippo. These were the allies of Car- thage, and some of them were at the head of small confederacies of states. In the beginning the Phoenicians in Africa occupied their forts and domains by sufferance, and paid tribute to the natives, as an admission that they did not own the soil. Subsequently the settlers became sovereigns. The natives were driven back from the coasts and confined to the interior, where they became mere tillers of the soil, and were subject to despotic rule, to severe taxation, and to conscription for service in the Carthaginian armies. Intermarriage of the settlers with the native women resulted in a race of half-castes, known as Liby-Pho?nicians, or Afro-Phceni- cians ; and colonies of them were sent to the Atlantic coast of Africa, and probably of Spain also, beyond the pillars of Hercules. It is tra- ditional that one voyage from Carthage was undertaken mainly to settle 30,000 Afro-Phoe- nicians on the African coast S. of the straits of Gibraltar. So early as the 7th century B. C. the trade of Carthage began with the Spanish seaports, especially with Tartessus or Tarshish. At the beginning of the 4th century B. C. the whole coast of Spain, both Atlantic and Mediterranean, was full of Carthaginian tra- ding posts and settlements, mostly of small size and of little if any political importance. Sardinia and Corsica were both subject to Car- thage, while on the shores of Sicily she had also strong fortresses, trading posts, seaports, and dockyards. From the natives of all these countries, as well as mercenaries from Gaul, Liguria, and the coasts of the Adriatic, were recruited the large and effective armies by which the Carthaginians maintained the quiet of their provinces, and pushed their foreign conquests. The political constitution of Car- thage is said to have resembled that of Sparta, in that it combined the elements of monarchy, of aristocracy, and of democracy. But it is difficult to ascertain exactly how they were combined, or which predominated, during the greater period of her existence. During her struggle with Rome the aristocratic element prevailed, and appears to have been an aris- tocracy mainly of commercial wealth, not of birth; although there was to a certain ex- tent a hereditary nobility which furnished the two chief magistrates, variously called kings and suffetes, who formed originally the supreme and nearly despotical execu- tive, as well as being leaders in war, but were reduced by successive usurpations of the no- bility to functions and powers not differing essentially from those of the doges of Venice. Then there was a senate of 104 members, and also a council of 100 members. There seems to have been besides a pentarchy, who formed the highest magistracy. Davis conjectures that the senate had periodically five outgoing and five incoming members, and that those