ess."
In memory of its Tyrian origin, Carthage paid an annual tribute to the
temple of Melkarth at Tyr, and under the Roman empire coins were struck
showing Dido fleeing in a galley, or presiding over the building of
Byrsa. On the Vatican _Virgil_ there is a representation in miniature of
workmen shaping marble blocks and columns for Dido's palace.

The early history of Carthage is very obscure. It is only in the 6th
century that real history begins. By this time the city is
unquestionably a considerable capital with a domain divided into the
three districts of Zeugitana (the environs of Carthage and the peninsula
of C. Bon), Byzacium (the shore of the Syrtes), and the third comprising
the emporia which stretch in the form of a crescent to the centre of the
Great Syrtis as far as Cyrenaica. The first contest against the Greeks
arose from a boundary question between the settlements of Carthage and
those of the Greeks of Cyrene. The limits were eventually fixed and
marked by a monument known as the "Altar of Philenae." The destruction
of Tyre by Nebuchadrezzar (q.v.), in the first half of the 6th century,
enabled Carthage to take its place as mistress of the Mediterranean. The
Phoenician colonies founded by Tyre and Sidon in Sicily and Spain,
threatened by the Greeks, sought help from Carthage, and from this
period dates the Punic[2] supremacy in the western Mediterranean. The
Greek colonization of Sicily was checked, while Carthage established
herself on all the Sicilian coast and the neighbouring islands as far as
the Balearic Islands and the coast of Spain. The inevitable conflict
between Greece and Carthage broke out about 550.

(2) _Wars with the Greeks._--In 550, the Carthaginians, led by the
suffetes Malchus, conquered almost all Sicily and expelled the Greeks.
In 536 they defeated the Phocaeans and the Massaliotes before Alalia on
the Corsican coast. But Malchus, having failed in Sardinia, was banished
by the stern Carthaginian senate and swore to avenge himself. He laid
siege to Carthage itself, and, after having sacrificed his son Carthalo
to his lust for vengeance, entered the city as a victor. He ruled until
he was put to death by the party which had supported him. Mago, son of
Hanno, succeeded Malchus, as suffetes and general-in-chief. He was the
true founder of the Carthaginian military power. He conquered Sardinia
and the Balearic Islands, where he founded Port Mahon (Portus Magonis),
and so increased the