ers it is
always "Carthage and Utica" that stipulate and promise in conjunction;
which, of course, did not preclude the far more important "new town"
from practically asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the
Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North
-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the
Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and
Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of
a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present
districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the
interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the
south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly
expresses it, converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician
civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed
in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although
not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at
the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes
adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet;(4) to Phoenicise
them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor
the policy of Carthage.

The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital
of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because
the change doubtless took place gradually. The author just mentioned
names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno is meant who
lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded
as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which
presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.

The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline
in the great cities of the Phoenician mother-country, in Sidon and
especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by
internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities,
particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor
in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble
families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to
the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their
intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when
the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly
the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the
Latin