also the
case with the newly-founded community of deserters. The territory
of the city of Carthage--with the exception of a tract presented to
Utica--and that of the other destroyed townships became Roman domain-
land, which was let on lease. The remaining townships likewise
forfeited in law their property in the soil and their municipal
liberties; but their land and their constitution were for the time
being, and until further orders from the Roman government, left to
them as a possession liable to be recalled, and the communities paid
annually to Rome for the use of their soil which had become Roman a
once-for-all fixed tribute (stipendium), which they in their turn
collected by means of a property-tax levied from the individuals
liable. The real gainers, however, by this destruction of the
first commercial city of the west were the Roman merchants, who, as
soon as Carthage lay in ashes, flocked in troops to Utica, and from
this as their head-quarters began to turn to profitable account not
only the Roman province, but also the Numidian and Gaetulian regions
which had hitherto been closed to them.

Macedonia and the Pseudo-Phillip
Victory of Metellus

Macedonia also disappeared about the same time as Carthage from
the ranks of the nations. The four small confederacies, into which
the wisdom of the Roman senate had parcelled out the ancient kingdom,
could not live at peace either internally or one with another.
How matters stood in the country appears from a single accidentally
mentioned occurrence at Phacus, where the whole governing council
of one of these confederacies were murdered on the instigation of
one Damasippus. Neither the commissions sent by the senate (590),
nor the foreign arbiters, such as Scipio Aemilianus (603) called in
after the Greek fashion by the Macedonians, were able to establish
any tolerable order. Suddenly there appeared in Thrace a young man,
who called himself Philip the son of king Perseus, whom he strikingly
resembled, and of the Syrian Laodice. He had passed his youth
in the Mysian town of Adramytium; there he asserted that he had
preserved the sure proofs of his illustrious descent. With these
he had, after a vain attempt to obtain recognition in his native
country, resorted to Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, his mother's
brother. There were in fact some who believed the Adramytene or
professed to believe him, and urged the king either to reinstate
the prince in his hered