rried to Rome and
deposited in the temples.

(M905) Such was the fate of Carthage--a doom so awful, that we can not but
feel that it was sent as a chastisement for crimes which had long cried to
Heaven for vengeance. Carthage always was supremely a wicked city. All the
luxurious and wealthy capitals of ancient times were wicked, especially
Oriental cities, as Carthage properly, though not technically, was--founded
by Phoenicians, and a worshiper of the gods of Tyre and Sidon. The Roman
Senate decreed that not only the city, but even the villas of the nobles
in the suburb of Megara, should be leveled with the ground, and the
plowshare driven over the soil devoted to perpetual desolation, and a
curse to the man who should dare to cultivate it or build upon it. For
fourteen days, the fires raged in this once populous and wealthy city, and
the destruction was complete, B.C. 146. So deep-seated was the Roman
hatred of rivals, or States that had been rivals; so dreadful was the
punishment of a wicked city, of which Scipio was made the instrument, not
merely of the Romans, but of Divine providence.

(M906) All the great cities of antiquity, which had been seats of luxury
and pride, had now been utterly destroyed--Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and
Carthage. Corinth was already sacked by Mummius, and Jerusalem was to be
by Titus, and Rome herself was finally to receive a still direr
chastisement at the hands of Goths and Vandals. So Providence moves on in
his mysterious power to bring to naught the grandeur and power of
rebellious nations--rebellious to those mighty moral laws which are as
inexorable as the laws of nature.

The territory on the coast of Zeugitana and Byzantium, which formed the
last possession of Carthage, was erected into the province of Africa, and
the rich plain of that fertile province became more important to Rome for
supplies of corn than even Sicily, which had been the granary of Rome.

(M907) Scipio returned to Rome, and enjoyed a triumph more gorgeous than
the great Africanus. He also lived to enjoy another triumph for brilliant
successes in Spain, yet to be enumerated, but was also doomed to lose his
popularity, and to perish by the dagger of assassins.

(M908) Rome had now acquired the undisputed dominion of the civilized
world, and with it, the vices of the nations she subdued. A great decline
in Roman morals succeeded these brilliant conquests. Great internal
changes took place. The old distinction of