tained in Athens the honour of the academic sect. Cicero says, that he was a more sensible man, and fonder of study, than the Carthaginians generally are.* He composed several books, in one of which was a treatise to console the unhappy citizens of Carthage, who, by the ruin of their city, were reduced to slavery.†

I might rank among, or rather place at the head of, the writers who have adorned Africa with their compositions, the celebrated Terence himself, being singly capable of reflecting infinite honour on his country by the fame of his productions; if, on this account, Carthage, the place of his birth, ought not to be less considered as his country than Rome, where he was educated, and acquired that purity of style, that delicacy and elegance, which have gained him the admiration of all succeeding ages. It is supposed that he was carried off when an infant, or at least very young, by the Numidians in their incursions into the Carthaginian territories, during the war carried on between these two nations, from the conclusion of the second to the beginning of the third Punic war. He was sold for a slave to Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator, who, after giving him an excellent education, freed him, and called him by his own name, as was then the custom. He was united in a very strict friendship with the second Scipio Africanus and Lælius; and it was a common report at Rome, that he had the assistance of these two great men in composing his pieces.

The poet, so far from endeavouring to stifle a report so advantageous to him made a merit of it. Only six of his comedies are extant. Some authors, according to Suetonius, (the writer of his life,) say, that in his return from Greece, whither he had made a voyage, he lost a hundred and eight comedies translated from Menander, and could not survive an accident which must naturally afflict him in a sensible manner; but this incident is not very well founded. Be this as it may, he died in the year of Rome 594, under the consulship of Cneius Cornelius Dolabella and M. Fulvius, aged thirty-five years, and consequently was born anno 560.

It must yet be confessed, notwithstanding all we have said, that there ever was a great scarcity of learned men in Carthage, since it hardly furnished three or four writers of reputation in upwards of seven hundred years. Although the Carthaginians held a correspondence with Greece and the most civilized nations, yet this did not excite them to borrow their learning, as being foreign to their views of trade and commerce. Eloquence, poetry, history, seem to have been little known among them. A Carthaginian philosopher was considered as a sort of prodigy by the learned. What, then, would an astronomer or a geometrician have been thought? I know not in what reputation physic, which is so advantageous to life, was held at Carthage; or jurisprudence, so necessary to society.

As works of wit were generally had in so much disregard, the education of youth must necessarily have been very imperfect and unpolished. In Carthage, the study and knowledge of youth were for the most part confined to writing, arithmetic, book-keeping, and the buying and selling of goods; in a word, to whatever related to traffic. But polite learning, history, and philosophy, were in little repute among them. These were in later years, even prohibited by the laws, which expressly forbade any Carthaginian to learn the Greek tongue, lest it might qualify them for carrying on a dangerous correspondence with the enemy, either by letter or word of mouth.§

Now, what could be expected from such a cast of mind? Accordingly, there was never seen among them that elegance of behaviour, that ease and compla

*Clitomachus, homo et acutus ut Poenus, et valde studiosus ac diligens.-Academ. Quest. 1. iv. n. 98. Tusc. Quæst. 1. iii. n. 54. Suet. in Vit. Terent.

Factum senatus-consultum ne quis postea Carthaginiensis aut literis Græcis aut sermoni studeret, ne aut loqui cum hoste, aut scribere sine interprete posset.-Justin. 1. xx. c. 5. Justin ascribes the reason of this law to a treasonable correspondence between one Suniatus, a powerful Carthaginian, and Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily; the former, by letters written in Greek, which afterwards fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, having informed the tyrant of the war designed against him by his country, out of hatred to Hanno the general, to whom he was an enemy.

VOL. I.

11

cency of manners, and those sentiments of virtue, which are generally the fruits of a liberal education in all civilized nations. The small number of great men which this nation has produced, must therefore have owed their merit to the felicity of their genius, to the singularity of their talents, and a long experience, without any great assistance from instruction. Hence it was, that the merit of the greatest men of Carthage was sullied by great failings, low vices, and cruel passions; and it is rare to meet with any conspicuous virtue among them, without some blemish; with any virtue of a noble, generous, and amiable kind, and supported by clear and lasting principles, such as is every where found among the Greeks and Romans. The reader will perceive, that I here speak only of the heathen virtues, and agreeably to the idea which the pagans entertained of them.

I meet with as few monuments of their skill in arts of a less noble and necessary kind, as painting and sculpture. I find, indeed, that they had plundered the conquered nations of a great many works in both these kinds, but it does not appear that they themselves had produced many.

From what has been said, one cannot help concluding, that traffic was the predominant inclination, and the peculiar characteristic, of the Carthaginians; that it formed in a manner the basis of the state, the soul of the commonwealth, and the grand spring which gave motion to all their enterprises. The Carthaginians in general were skilful merchants; employed wholly in traffic; excited strongly by the desire of gain, and esteeming nothing but riches; directing all their talents, and placing their chief glory, in amassing them, though, at the same time, they scarce knew the purpose for which they were designed, or how to use them in a noble or worthy manner.

SECTION VIII.

THE CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND QUALITIES OF THE CARTHAGINIANS.

IN the enumeration of the various qualities which Cicero* assigns to different nations, as their distinguishing characteristics, he declares that of the Carthaginians to be craft, skill, address, industry, cunning, calliditas; which doubtless appeared in war, but was still more conspicuous in the rest of their conduct; and this was joined to another quality, that bears a very near relation to it, and is still less reputable. Craft and cunning lead naturally to lying, hypocrisy, and breach of faith; and these, by accustoming the mind insensibly to be less scrupulous with regard to the choice of the means for compassing its designs, prepare it for the basest frauds and the most perfidious actions. This was also one of the characteristics of the Carthaginians ;t and it was so notorious, that to signify any remarkable dishonesty, it was usual to call it, Punic honour, fides Punica; and to denote a knavish deceitful mind, no expression was thought more proper and emphatical than this, a Carthaginian mind, Punicum ingenium.

An excessive thirst for, and an immoderate love of profit, generally gave occasion, in Carthage, to the committing of base and unjust actions. A single example will prove this. In the time of a truce, granted by Scipio to the earnest entreaties of the Carthaginians, some Roman vessels, being driven by a storm on the coast of Carthage, were seized by order of the senate and people, who could not suffer so tempting a prey to escape them. They were resolved to get money, though the manner of acquiring it were ever so scan

* Quam volumus licet ipsi nos amemus, tamen nec numero Hispanos, nec robore Gallos, nec calliditate Panos, sed pietate ac religione, &c. omnes gentes nationesque superavimus.-De Arusp. Resp. n. 19. Carthaginiensis fraudulenti et mendaces multis et variis mercatorum advenarumque sermonibus ad studium fallendi quaestus cupiditate vocabantur.-Cic. Orat. ii. in Rull. n. 94.

Magistratus senatum vocare, populus in curia vestibulo fremere, ne tanta ex oculis manibusque amis Leretur præda. Consensum est ut, &c.-Liv. 1, xxx. n. 24.

dalous. The inhabitants of Carthage, even in St. Austin's time, as that father informs us, showed, on a particular occasion, that they still retained part of this characteristic."

But these were not the only blemishes and faults of the Carthaginians.† They had something austere and savage in their disposition and genius, a haughty and imperious air, a sort of ferocity, which in its first starts was deaf to either reason or remonstrances, and plunged brutally into the utmost excesses of violence. The people, cowardly and grovelling under apprehensions, were proud and cruel in their transports; at the same time that they trembled under their magistrates, they were dreaded in their turn by their miserable vassals. In this we see the difference which education makes between one nation and another. The Athenians, whose city was always considered as the centre of learning, were naturally jealous of their authority, and difficult to govern; but still a fund of good nature and humanity made them compassionate the misfortunes of others, and be indulgent to the errors of their leaders. Cleon one day desired the assembly in which he presided, to break up, because, as he told them, he had a sacrifice to offer, and friends to entertain. The people only laughed at the request, and immediately separated. Such a liberty, says Plutarch, at Carthage, would have cosť a man his life.

Livy makes a like_reflection with regard to Terentius Varro. That general, on his return to Rome after the battle of Cannæ, which had been lost by his ill conduct, was met by persons of all orders of the state, at some distance from Rome, and thanked by them for his not having despaired of the commonwealth; who, says the historian, had he been a general of the Carthaginians, must have expected the most severe punishment: Cui, si Carthaginiensium ductor fuisset, nihil recusandum supplicii foret. Indeed, a court was established at Carthage, where the generals were obliged to give an account of their conduct; and they were all made responsible for the events of the war. Ill success was punished there as a crime against the state; and whenever a general lost a battle, he was almost sure at his return of ending his life upon a gibbet. Such was the furious, cruel, and barbarous disposition of the Carthaginians, who were always ready to shed the blood of their citizens as well as of foreigners. The unheard-of tortures which they made Regulus suffer, are a manifest proof of this assertion; and their history will furnish us with such instances of it, as are not to be read without horror.

PART SECOND.

THE HISTORY OF THE CARTHAGINIANS.

THE interval of time between the foundation of Carthage and its ruin, included seven hundred years, and may be divided into two chapters. The first, which is much the longest, and is least known, as is ordinary with the beginnings of all states, extends to the first Punic war, and takes up five hundred and eighty-two years. The second, which ends at the destruction of Car thage, contains but a hundred and eighteen years.

*A mountebank had promised the citizens of Carthage, to discover to them their most secret thoughts, in case they would come, on a day appointed, to hear him. Being all met, he told them they were desirous to buy cheap and sell dear. Every man's conscience pleaded guilty to the charge; and the mounte bank was dismissed with applause and laughter.-Vili vultis emere, et care vendere; in quo dicto levissimi scenici omnes tamen conscientias invenerunt suas, eique vera et tamen improvisa discenti admirabili favore plauserunt.-S. August. 1. xiii. de Trinit, c. 9.

† Plut de Gen. Rep. p. 799.

Lib. xxii. n. 61.

CHAPTER I.

THE FOUNDATION OF CARTHAGE, AND ITS PROGRESS TILL THE TIME OF THE

FIRST PUNIC WAR.

CARTHAGE, in Africa, was a colony from Tyre, the most renowned city at that time for commerce in the world. Tyre had long before transplanted another colony into that country, which built Utica,* made famous by the death of the second Cato, who for this reason is generally called Cato Uticensis.

Authors disagree very much with regard to the era of the foundation of Carthage. It is a difficult matter, and not very material, to reconcile them; at least, agreeably to the plan laid down by me, it is sufficient to know, within a few years, the time in which that city was built.

Carthage existed a little above seven hundred years. It was destroyed under the consulate of Cn. Lentulus and L. Mummius, the 603d year of Rome, 3859th of the world, and 145 before Christ. The foundation of it may therefore be fixed at the year of the world 3158, when Joash was king of Judah, 98 years before the building of Rome, and 846 before our Saviour.

The foundation of Carthage is ascribed to Elisa, a Tyrian princess, better known by the name of Dido. Ithobal, king of Tyre, and father of the famous Jezebel, called in Scripture Ethbaal, was her great-grandfather. She married her near relation Acerbas, called otherwise Sicharbas and Sichæus, an extremely rich prince, and Pygmalion, king of Tyre, was her brother. This prince having put Sichæus to death, in order that he might have an opportunity of seizing his immense treasures, Dido eluded the cruel avarice of her brother, by withdrawing secretly with all her dead husband's possessions. After having long wandered, she at last landed on the coast of the Mediterranean, in the gulf where Utica stood, and in the country of Africa, properly so called, distant almost fifteen miles from Tunis,|| so famous, at this time, for its corsairs; and there settled with her few followers, after having purchased some lands from the inhabitants of the country.¶

Many of the neighbouring people, invited by the prospect of lucre, repaired thither to sell to these foreigners the necessaries of life, and shortly after incorporated themselves with them. These inhabitants, who had been thus gathered from different places, soon grew very numerous. The citizens of Utica, considering them as their countrymen, and as descended from the same common stock, deputed envoys with very considerable presents, and exhorted them to build a city in the place where they had first settled. The natives of the country, from the esteem and respect frequently shown to strangers, made them the like offers. Thus all things conspiring with Dido's views, she built her city, which was appointed to pay an annual tribute to the Africans for the

* Utica et Carthago ambæ inclytæ, ambæ a Phoenicibus condita; illa fato Catonis insignis, hæc suo.— Pompon. Mel. c. 67. Utica and Carthage both famous, and both built by Phoenicians; the first renowned by Cato's fate, the last by its own.

Our countryman Howel endeavoured to reconcile the three different accounts of the foundation of Carthage in the following manner. He says, that the town consisted of three parts, viz. Cothon, or the port and buildings adjoining to it, which he supposes to have been first built; Megara, built next, and in respect of Cothon called the New Town, or Karthada; and Byrsa, or the citadel, built last of all, and probably by Dido.

Cothon, to agree with Appian, was built fifty years before the taking of Troy; Megara, to correspond with Eusebius, was built a hundred and ninety-four years later; Byrsa, to agree with Menander, cited by Josephus, was built a hundred and sixty-six years after Megara.

Liv. Epit. 1. li.

Justin 1. xviii. c. 4, 5, 6. App. de Bello Pun. p. 1. Strab. 1. xvii. p. 832. Paterc. 1. ic. 6.

One hundred and twenty stadia.-Strab. 1. xiv. p. 687.

Some authors say, that Dido put a trick on the natives, by desiring to purchase of them, for her intended settlement, only so much land as an ox's hide would encompass. The request was thought too moderate to be denied. She then cut the hi le into the smallest thongs; and with them encompassed a large tract of ground, on which she built a citadel, called Byrsa, from the hide. But this tale of the hide is generally exploded by the learned; who observe, that the Hebrew word Bosra, which signifies a fortification, gave rise to the Greek word Byrsa, which is the name of the citadel of Carthage.

ground it stood upon, and called it Carthada,* or Carthage, a name that in the Phoenician and Hebrew tongues, which have a great affinity, signifies the New City. It is said that, when the foundations were dug, a horse's head was found, which was thought a good omen, and a presage of the future warlike genius of that people.†

This princess was afterwards courted by Iarbas, king of Getulia, and threatened with a war in case of refusal. Dido, who had bound herself by an oath not to consent to a second marriage, being incapable of violating the faith she had sworn to Sichæus, desired time for deliberation, and for appeasing the manes of her first husband by sacrifice. Having, therefore, ordered a pile to be raised, she ascended it; and drawing out a dagger she had concealed under her robe, stabbed herself with it.

Virgil has made a great alteration in this history, by supposing that Æneas, his hero, was contemporary with Dido, though there was an interval of near three centuries between the one and the other the era of the building of Carthage being fixed three hundred years later than the destruction of Troy. This liberty is very excusable in a poet, who is not tied to the scrupulous accuracy of a historian; we admire, with great reason, the judgment he has shown in his plan, when, to interest the Romans for whom he wrote, he has the art of introducing the implacable hatred which subsisted between Carthage and Rome, and ingeniously deduces the original of it from the very remote foundation of those two rival cities.

Carthage, whose beginnings, as we have observed, were very weak, grew larger by insensible degrees, in the country where it was founded. But its dominion was not long confined to Africa. The inhabitants of this ambitious city extended their conquests into Europe, by invading Sardinia, seizing a great part of Sicily, and reducing almost all Spain; and having sent powerful colonies every where, they enjoyed the empire of the seas for more than six hundred years; and formed a state which was able to dispute pre-eminence with the greatest empires of the world, by their wealth, their commerce, their numerous armies, their formidable fleets, and above all, by the courage and ability of their captains. The dates and circumstances of many of these conquests are little known; I shall take but a transient notice of them, in order to enable my readers to form some idea of the countries, which will be often mentioned in the course of this history.

.

CONQUESTS OF THE CARTHAGINIANS IN AFRICA.

THE first wars made by the Carthaginians, were to free themselves from the annual tribute which they had engaged to pay the Africans, for the terri

The story, as it is told more at large in Justin. I. xviii. c. 6. is this.-Iarbas, king of the Mauritanians, sending for ten of the principal Carthaginians, demanded Dido in marriage, threatening to declare war against her in case of a refusal. The ambassadors being afraid to deliver the message of Iarbas, told her, with Punic honesty, that he wanted to have some person sent him, who was capable of civilizing and polishing himself and his Africans; but that there was no possibility of finding any Carthaginian, who would be willing to quit his native place and kindred, for the conversation of barbarians, who were as savage as the wildest beasts. Here the queen, with indignation, interrupting them, and asking if they were not ashamed to refuse living in any manner which might be beneficial to their country, to which they owed even their lives? they then delivered the king's message, and bade her set them a pattern, and sacrifice herself to her country's welfare. Dido being thus ensared, called on Sichæus with tears and lamentations, and answered that she would go where the fate of her city called her. At the expiration of three months, she ascended the fatal pile; and with her last breath told the spectators, that she was going to her hus band, as they had ordered her.