um supplicii foret._ Indeed,
a court was established at Carthage, where the generals were obliged to
give an account of their conduct; and they all were 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 The 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 parts. The
first, which is much the longest and the 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 Carthage, contains but a hundred and eighteen years.

Chapter I. The Foundation of Carthage and its Aggrandizement 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 into
that country another colony, which built Utica,(566) 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 aera of the foundation of
Carthage.(567) 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.(568) 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 in 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.(569) Ithobal, king of Tyre, and father of the
famous Jezebel, called in Scripture E