e having
Carthage tributary than to the sums of money themselves, naturally
declined, and only deduced from it the conviction that, in spite of
all the trouble they had taken, the city was not ruined and was not
capable of ruin. Fresh reports were ever circulating through Rome as
to the intrigues of the faithless Phoenicians. At one time it was
alleged that Aristo of Tyre had been seen in Carthage as an emissary
of Hannibal, to prepare the citizens for the landing of an Asiatic
war-fleet (561); at another, that the council had, in a secret
nocturnal sitting in the temple of the God of Healing, given audience
to the envoys of Perseus (581); at another there was talk of the
powerful fleet which was being equipped in Carthage for the Macedonian
war (583). It is probable that these and similar reports were founded
on nothing more than, at most, individual indiscretions; but still
they were the signal for new diplomatic ill usage on the part of Rome,
and for new aggressions on the part of Massinissa, and the idea gained
ground the more, the less sense and reason there was in it, that the
Carthaginian question would not be settled without a third Punic war.

Numidians

While the power of the Phoenicians was thus sinking in the land of
their choice, just as it had long ago succumbed in their original
home, a new state grew up by their side. The northern coast of Africa
has been inhabited from time immemorial, and is inhabited still, by
the people, who themselves assume the name of Shilah or Tamazigt, whom
the Greeks and Romans call Nomades or Numidians, i. e. the "pastoral"
people, and the Arabs call Berbers, although they also at times
designate them as "shepherds" (Shawie), and to whom we are wont to
give the name of Berbers or Kabyles. This people is, so far as its
language has been hitherto investigated, related to no other known
nation. In the Carthaginian period these tribes, with the exception
of those dwelling immediately around Carthage or immediately on the
coast, had on the whole maintained their independence, and had also
substantially retained their pastoral and equestrian life, such as the
inhabitants of the Atlas lead at the present day; although they were
not strangers to the Phoenician alphabet and Phoenician civilization
generally,(2) and instances occurred in which the Berber sheiks had
their sons educated in Carthage and intermarried with the families of
the Phoenician nobility. It was not the poli