defensive.

While the Carthaginians were thus warmly attacked by their enemies,
ambassadors arrived to them from Tyre.(645) They came to implore their
succour against Alexander the Great, who was upon the point of taking
their city, which he had long besieged. The extremity to which their
countrymen (for so they called them) were reduced, touched the
Carthaginians as sensibly as their own danger. Though they were unable to
relieve, they at least thought it their duty to comfort them; and deputed
thirty of their principal citizens to express their grief that they could
not spare them any troops, because of the present melancholy situation of
their own affairs. The Tyrians, though disappointed of the only hope they
had left, did not however despond; they committed their wives,
children,(646) and old men, to the care of these deputies; and thus, being
delivered from all inquietude, with regard to persons who were dearer to
them than any thing in the world, they thought alone of making a resolute
defence, prepared for the worst that might happen. Carthage received this
afflicted company with all possible marks of amity, and paid to guests who
were so dear and worthy of compassion, all the services which they could
have expected from the most affectionate and tender parents.

Quintus Curtius places this embassy from Tyre to the Carthaginians at the
same time that the Syracusans were ravaging Africa, and had advanced to
the very gates of Carthage. But the expedition of Agathocles against
Africa cannot agree in time with the siege of Tyre, which was more than
twenty years before it.

At the same time, Carthage was solicitous how to extricate itself from the
difficulties with which it was surrounded. The present unhappy state of
the republic was considered as the effect of the wrath of the gods: and it
was acknowledged to be justly deserved, particularly with regard to two
deities, towards whom the Carthaginians had been remiss in the discharge
of certain duties prescribed by their religion, and which had once been
observed with great exactness. It was a custom (coeval with the city
itself) at Carthage, to send annually to Tyre (the mother city) the tenth
of all the revenues of the republic, as an offering to Hercules, the
patron and protector of both cities. The domain, and consequently the
revenues of Carthage, having increased considerably, the portion, on the
contrary, of the god, had been lessened; and they were far from