property, and was therefore accessible
to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for
reform. In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which
marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome
still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of
the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,
they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the
Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver
plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house
to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant
token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.

In Their Constitution

In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in
Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of
police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing
board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction
to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language
and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public
interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government
at Rome; but in comparison with the cruel harshness and the absolute
precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-
tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and
reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent
capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able
also to trust it, and had no need to fear the magistrates.
The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on a jealous
control of administration by the government, and represented
exclusively the leading families; its essence was mistrust of all
above and below it, and therefore it could neither be confident that
the people would follow whither it led, nor free from the dread of
usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course
of Roman policy, which never receded a step in times of misfortune,
and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or
indifference; whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle
when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or
forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed
building to fall to pieces, only to begin it in a few years anew.
Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinaril