ed with a strong hand
the scattered empire which had been planted by the Syrian tradesmen.
Carthaginian merchants and miners were in Tartessus, and were planting
cities and colonies throughout the peninsula, and a torrent of
Carthaginian life was thus pouring into Spain for many hundred years,
and the blood of the two races must have freely mingled.

There are memorials of this time now existing, not only in Phenician
coins, medals, and ruins, but in the names of the cities. _Barcelona_,
named after the powerful family of Barca in Carthage, to which
Hannibal belonged. _Carthagena_, a memorial of Carthage, which
meant "the city"; and even _Cordova_ is traced to its primitive
form,--Kartah-duba,--meaning "an important city." While _Isabella_,
the name most famous in Spanish annals, has a still greater antiquity;
and was none other than Jezebel--after the beautiful daughter of the
King of Sidon (the "_Zidoneans_"), who married Ahab, and lured him to
his downfall. And we are told that this wicked siren whose dreadful
fate Elijah foretold, was cousin to Dido, she who Virgil tells us
"wept in silence" for the faithless AEneas. With what a strange thrill
do we find these threads of association between history sacred and
profane, and both mingled with the modern history of Spain.

But Phenicia, for the "iniquity of her traffick," was doomed. The
roots of this old Asiatic tree had been slowly and surely perishing,
while her branches in the West were expanding. In the year 332 B.C.
the siege and destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred years before
by Isaiah, was accomplished by Alexander the Great, and the words
of the prophet found their complete fulfillment--that the people of
Tarshish should find no city, no port, no welcome, when they came back
to Syria!

But on the northern coast of the Mediterranean there was another power
which was waxing, while the Carthaginian was waning. The occupation of
the young Roman Republic was not trade, but conquest. A bitter enmity
existed between the two nations. Rome was determined to break this
grasping old Asiatic confederacy and to drive it out of Europe. The
Spanish Peninsula she knew little about, but the rich islands near her
own coast--they must be hers.

When, after the first Punic war (264-241 B.C.), the Carthaginians saw
Sardinia and Sicily torn from them, Hamilcar, their great general,
determined upon a plan of vengeance which should make of Italy a Punic
province. His peo