2. The total want of money at the end of the war kd to the Revolt of the Mercenaries, who were joined by most of the subject Libyans and allied cities in Africa, and carried on for three years and a half a civil war which reduced the city to the brink of ruin (B.C. 240 — 237), and, extending to Sardinia, it gave the Romans a pretext for taking possession of that island, and soon afterwards of Corsica and the smaller islands. 3. From the very source, whence Carthage obtained her salvation in this war, sprang the baneful feud which infected all her subsequent being; that of the house of Hamilcar Barca and Hanno. In this great party struggle we first trace the breaking up of Carthage into an aristocratic and democratic faction, which not only distracted her councils, but exposed her to the danger, which a divided state always incurs in presence of a powerful enemy, of her intestine parties either strengthening themselves by the foreign influence, or determining their relations of war or peace by selfish, instead of patriotic, considerations. The influence of these factions on the fate of Carthage is admirably traced by Heeren, in his chapter on her Decline and Fall. 4. Closely connected with these party contests is the event which gives a deceitful appearance of prosperity to the period between the First and Second Punic Wars, the Conquest of Spain by Hamilcar Barca and his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, B.C. 237 — 221. [Hispania.] This great enterprise, while advancing the power of the Bardne family, was acceptable to the people as a compensation for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia; but it committed them, as Hamilcar desired, to a final struggle for the mastery with Rome. 5. The Second Punic War was a decisive conflict which, like the war of 1793 between England and France, may have been the inevitable consequence of the relative positions of the states, but of which, as of that war, the immediate occasion was the supposed interest of one of the two parties in the state; and the same motives which led Hannibal to plunge into it, induced him to prolong it to the utmost. It lasted seventeen years, B.C. 218 — 201 , and resulted in the utter prostration of Carthage before her rival. She lost her fleet and all her possessions out of Africa, and even there Masinissa was planted as a thorn in her side, at the head of a powerful new state, and restlessly eager to pick a new quarrel, which might give Rome a pretext for her destruction. [Africa, Numidia]. 6. Still the Administration of Hannibal shed one ray of hope upon the dark prospects of the devoted state. He overthrew the despotism of the Ordo Judicum, notwithstanding that its undue power had been the creation of the democratic party which supported his family, by confining to a year the term of office, which had before been for life; and he introduced such order Into the finances, that ten years sufficed to pay the tribute imposed by the peace with Rome. Meanwhile, a new rival of Rome was rising in the East; and if, as Hannibal meditated, Carthage could have brought what force she yet had to the aid of Antiochus the Great, the career of the triumphant republic might perhaps yet have been checked. But, denounced by the opposite faction, and proscribed by Rome, Hannibal was compelled to fly to Antiochus, |
7. After this it could not be doubted that the tongue of Cato uttered the decree of fate as much as the voice of hatred, in the celebrated sentence Carthago delenda est. Amidst the conflicts which Rome had yet before her in the East, Carthage, fallen as she was, and though daily suffering more and more from the encroachments of Masinissa [Africa], might yet be troublesome if not formidable. The chance of such a danger was exaggerated in the reports carried back to Rome by Cato from his embassy to settle the disputes with Masiniswa, his failure in which added the stimulus of personal resentment to the hatred which his party bore to Carthage; and the pretext of the armed resistance, to which Masinissa at length drove the Carthaginians, was eagerly seized for commencing the Third Punic War. The affecting story of that heroic struggle almost obliterates the memory of the faults for which Carthage was now doomed to suffer. It lasted three years, B.C. 150 — 146, and ended with the utter destruction of the city, in the very same year in which the fall of Corinth completed the conquest of Greece. Thus the two peoples who had so long contended on the plains of Sicily for the dominion of the Mediterranean, fell at once before the rival, whose existence they had then hardly recognised. It is not within the province of this work to meditate on such a fall. The statistics given by Strabo (xvii. pi 833; comp. Polyb. xxxvi. 4; Appian. Pun. 80), of the resources and efforts of Carthage at the time of this war are very valuable. At the commencement of the war, she had 300 subject cities in Libya, and the population of the city was 700,000. When, in the first instance, she accepted the terms imposed by the Romans, in the vain hope of their being satisfied with this submission, she gave up 200,000 stand of arms and 3000 (or 2000) catapults. When war broke out again, manufactories of arms were established, which turned out daily 140 shields, 300 swords, 500 spears, and 1000 missiles for catapults, while the female servants gave their hair to make strings for the catapults. Though, as bound by the treaty at the end of the Second Punic War, they had for fifty years possessed only twelve ships of war, and though they were now besieged in the Byrsa, they built 120 decked vessels in the space of two months, from the old stores of timber remaining in the dockyards; and, as the mouth of their harbour was blockaded, they cut a new entrance, through which their fleet suddenly put to sea. VI. Roman Carthage — The final destruction of the city, the curse pronounced upon her site, the constitution of her territory as the new Roman province of Africa, and the history of that province down to its final conquest by the Arabs, are treated of under Africa. It remains to state a few facts relating specifically to the city. Notwithstanding the prohibition of any attempt to rebuild Carthage, its admirable site and the fertility of the surrounding country rendered its remaining long desolate unlikely; and its restoration seems to have been a favourite project with the democratic party in Rome. Only twenty-four years had elapsed, B.C. 122, when C. Gracchus sent out a colony of 6000 settlers to found on the site of Carthage the new city of Junonia, a name to which dd traditions would seem to give a peculiar significance. But |
Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/565
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