e, while
the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common
fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated
his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men
in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful
proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general
Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the
Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the
Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage experienced in full measure
all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon
a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous
than her foes.

The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects
of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by
every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests
and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip
mercenaries. They bestowed great care on those elements which among
the ancients represented the modern artillery--the construction of
machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to
the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in
warfare the earlier war-chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there
were stalls for 300 elephants. They could not venture to fortify the
dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the
towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army
that landed in Africa--a thorough contrast to the state of Italy,
where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a
chain of Roman fortresses commanded the whole peninsula. But on the
fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money
and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of its
walls saved the state; whereas Rome held a political and military
position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege.
Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which
they lavished the utmost care. In the building as well as in the
management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks; it was at
Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars,
and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this period mostly quinqueremes,
were ordinarily better sailors than the Greek; the rowers, all of them
public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were