e constitution untouched, and the chiefs of the
government in full enjoyment of their exclusive privileges and of the
public property. It was merely proposed and carried, that of the two
commanders-in-chief, who at the end of the Libyan war were at the head
of the Carthaginian troops, Hanno and Hamilcar, the former should be
recalled, and the latter should be nominated commander-in-chief for
all Africa during an indefinite period. It was arranged that he
should hold a position independent of the governing corporations
--his antagonists called it an unconstitutional monarchical power,
Cato calls it a dictatorship--and that he could only be recalled and
placed upon his trial by the popular assembly.(2) Even the choice
of a successor was to be vested not in the authorities of the capital,
but in the army, that is, in the Carthaginians serving in the array as
gerusiasts or officers, who were named in treaties also along with
the general; of course the right of confirmation was reserved to the
popular assembly at home. Whether this may or may not have been a
usurpation, it clearly indicates that the war party regarded and
treated the army as its special domain.

The commission which Hamilcar thus received sounded but little
liable to exception. Wars with the Numidian tribes on the borders
never ceased; only a short time previously the "city of a hundred
gates," Theveste (Tebessa), in the interior had been occupied by the
Carthaginians. The task of continuing this border warfare, which was
allotted to the new commander-in-chief of Africa, was not in itself of
such importance as to prevent the Carthaginian government, which was
allowed to do as it liked in its own immediate sphere, from tacitly
conniving at the decrees passed in reference to the matter by the
popular assembly; and the Romans did not perhaps recognize its
significance at all.

Hamilcar's War Projects
The Army
The Citizens

Thus there stood at the head of the army the one man, who had given
proof in the Sicilian and in the Libyan wars that fate had destined
him, if any one, to be the saviour of his country. Never perhaps was
the noble struggle of man with fate waged more nobly than by him.
The army was expected to save the state; but what sort of army?
The Carthaginian civic militia had fought not badly under Hamilcar's
leadership in the Libyan war; but he knew well, that it is one thing
to lead out the merchants and artisans of a city, which is in