d ought accordingly
to keep the unhappy city constantly oppressed and apprehensive of
a declaration of war suspended over it by Rome like the sword of
Damocles. The stipulation in the treaty of peace, that the
Carthaginians should retain their territory undiminished, but
that their neighbour Massinissa should have all those possessions
guaranteed to him which he or his predecessor had possessed within
the Carthaginian bounds, looks almost as if it had been inserted not
to obviate, but to provoke disputes. The same remark applies to the
obligation imposed by the Roman treaty of peace on the Carthaginians
not to make war upon the allies of Rome; so that, according to the
letter of the treaty, they were not even entitled to expel their
Numidian neighbours from their own undisputed territory. With such
stipulations and amidst the uncertainty of African frontier questions
in general, the situation of Carthage in presence of a neighbour
equally powerful and unscrupulous and of a liege lord who was at once
umpire and party in the cause, could not but be a painful one; but
the reality was worse than the worst expectations. As early as 561
Carthage found herself suddenly assailed under frivolous pretexts,
and saw the richest portion of her territory, the province of Emporiae
on the Lesser Syrtis, partly plundered by the Numidians, partly
even seized and retained by them. Encroachments of this kind were
multiplied; the level country passed into the hands of the Numidians,
and the Carthaginians with difficulty maintained themselves in the
larger places. Within the last two years alone, the Carthaginians
declared in 582, seventy villages had been again wrested from them in
opposition to the treaty. Embassy after embassy was despatched to
Rome; the Carthaginians adjured the Roman senate either to allow them
to defend themselves by arms, or to appoint a court of arbitration
with power to enforce their award, or to regulate the frontier anew
that they might at least learn once for all how much they were to
lose; otherwise it were better to make them Roman subjects at once
than thus gradually to deliver them over to the Libyans. But the
Roman government, which already in 554 had held forth a direct
prospect of extension of territory to their client, of course at the
expense of Carthage, seemed to have little objection that he should
himself take the booty destined for him; they moderated perhaps at
times the too great impetuosi