8 Imagifiary Conversation. persuaded to the contrary, and that enormous wealth would enable them to committ another and a more flagitious act of treason against their country, in raising them above the people, and enabling them to become its taxers and oppressors. O Emilianus ! what a costly beacon here hath Rome be- fore her in this awful conflagration : the greatest (I hope) ever to be, until that wherin the world must perish. POLYBIUS. How many Sibylline books are legible in yonder embers ! The causes, O Panetius, which you have stated, of Car- thages former most flourishing condition, are also those why a hostile senate hath seen the necessity of her destruction, necessary not only to the dominion, but to the security, of Rome. Italy has the fewest and the worst harbours of any covmtry known to us: a third of her soil is sterile, a third of the remainder is pestiferous : and her inhabitants are more addicted to war and rapine than to industry and commerce. To make room for her few merchants on the Adriatic and Ionian seas, she burns Corinth : to leave no rival in traflic or in power, she burns Carthage. PANETIUS. If the Carthaginians had extended their laws and lan- guage over the surrounding states of Africa, which they might have done by moderation and equity, this ruin could not have been effected. Rome has been victorious by having been the first to adopt a liberal policy, which even in war itself is a wise one. The parricides who lent their money to the petty tyrants of other countries, would have found it greatly more advantageous to employ it in cultivation nearer home, and in feeding those as husbandmen whom else they must fear as enemies. So little is the Carthaginian language known, that I doubt whether we shall in our life- time see any one translate their annals into Latin or Greek : and within these few days what treasures of antiquity have been irreparably lost! The Romans will repose at citrean^ 1 I dare not translate the trdbs citrea, citron wood, to which (as we under- stand the citron) it has no resemblance. It was often of great dimensions : it appears from the description of its colour to have been mahogany. The trade
