still time to do so. This
opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm;
but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt
and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared
by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly
that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might
well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in
Carthage, the boys helped to make them.

Capital and Its Power in Carthage

From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect
the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the
Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony
of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all
the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the
great-king; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world.
The intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry--which, as was
the case subsequently in Rome, generals and statesmen did not disdain
scientifically to practise and to teach--is attested by the agronomic
treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by
the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational
husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also
in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended
to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close
connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of
capital: it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that
one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage.
The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats,
in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that
time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of
great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors
of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so
likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects; by
virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the "best
part of Europe," and of the rich--and in some portions, such as in
Byzacitis and on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive--region
of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage
as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which
commerce rendered flourishing, broug