of the nation, and to
alter at the same time its political position. Carthage was no longer
a mere mercantile city: it aimed at the dominion of Libya and of a
part of the Mediterranean, because it could not avoid doing so.
It is probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed
materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece
somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among
the Orientals and the Carians more especially it was far older, and it
was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it. By the system
of foreign recruiting war was converted into a vast pecuniary
speculation, which was quite in keeping with the character and
habits of the Phoenicians.

The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad,
that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their
occupation in Africa from a tenure of hire and sufferance to one of
proprietorship and conquest. It appears to have been only about the
year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent
for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the
natives. This change enabled them to prosecute a husbandry of their
own on a great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been
desirous to employ their capital as landlords as well as traders,
and to practise agriculture on a large scale by means of slaves or
hired labourers; a large portion of the Jews in this way served the
merchant-princes of Tyre for daily wages. Now the Carthaginians
could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil
by a system akin to that of the modern planters; slaves in chains
cultivated the land--we find single citizens possessing as many as
twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages
of the surrounding region--agriculture appears to have been introduced
among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the
Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt--were subdued by
force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into
fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the
soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting
for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were
constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (--nomades--)
on the borders; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory
enclosed by them,