of the material advantages which the
governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous
men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the
rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a
government to emerge; but at the time of the first Punic war it was
still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence
of the defeats which were sustained, its political influence appears
on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the
similar party at the same period in Rome; the popular assemblies began
to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down
the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination
of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of
Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office
for two consecutive years; and thereby a complete democracy was
introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only
means of saving Carthage, if there was 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