The History of Rome, vol 3 | Page 7

the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of the Syrtes,
the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their sea a closed one,
and monopolized the western straits. In the Tyrrhene and Gallic seas
alone the Phoenicians were obliged to admit the rivalry of other nations.
This state of things might perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans
and the Greeks served to counterbalance each other in these waters;
with the former, as the less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered
into an alliance against the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the
Etruscan power--a fall which, as is usually the case in such forced
alliances, Carthage had hardly exerted all her power to avert--and after
the miscarriage of the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth
as indisputably the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of
Syracuse naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower
Italy and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the
Carthaginians also were compelled to adopt a more energetic policy.
The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between them
and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius of
Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the
intervening Sicilian states--a result which both parties had an interest in
accomplishing--and the division of the island between the Syracusans
and Carthaginians. The most flourishing cities in the island--Selinus,
Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana--were utterly destroyed by the
Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy conflicts: and Dionysius
was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed or suppressed there, so
that, leaning for support on foreign mercenaries enlisted from Italy,
Gaul and Spain, he might rule in greater security over provinces which

lay desolate or which were occupied by military colonies. The peace,
which was concluded after the victory of the Carthaginian general
Mago at Kronion (371), and which subjected to the Carthaginians the
Greek cities of Thermae (the ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa,
Selinus, and a part of the territory of Agrigentum as far as the Halycus,
was regarded by the two powers contending for the possession of the
island as only a temporary accommodation; on both sides the rivals
were ever renewing their attempts to dispossess each other. Four
several times--in 360 in the time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that
of Timoleon; in 445 in that of Agathocles; in 476 in that of
Pyrrhus--the Carthaginians were masters of all Sicily excepting
Syracuse, and were baffled by its solid walls; almost as often the
Syracusans, under able leaders, such as were the elder Dionysius,
Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally on the eve of dislodging the
Africans from the island. But more and more the balance inclined to the
side of the Carthaginians, who were, as a rule, the aggressors, and who,
although they did not follow out their object with Roman steadfastness,
yet conducted their attack with far greater method and energy than the
Greek city, rent and worn out by factions, conducted its defence. The
Phoenicians might with reason expect that a pestilence or a foreign
-condottiere- would not always snatch the prey from their hands; and
for the time being, at least at sea, the struggle was already decided:(5)
the attempt of Pyrrhus to re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last.
After the failure of that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded
without a rival the whole western Mediterranean; and their endeavours
to occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of
their power and the objects at which they aimed. Hand in hand with
these attempts went the endeavour to monopolize more and more the
maritime commerce of this region, at the expense alike of foreigners
and of their own subjects; and it was not the wont of the Carthaginians
to recoil from any violence that might help forward their purpose. A
contemporary of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes, the father of geography
(479-560), affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia
or towards the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the
Carthaginians, was thrown by them into the sea; and with this statement
the fact completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 (6)
declared the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman

trading vessels, whereas by that of 448,(7) it totally closed them, with
the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.
Constitution Of Carthage Council Magistrates
Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the commencement of the
first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having
changed from a monarchy to an aristocracy, or to a democracy
inclining towards oligarchy, for he designates it by both names. The
conduct of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council
of Ancients, which, like the Spartan