the western frontier of
their territory, the town of Tusca and the great plains near the
Bagradas; no course was left to the Carthaginians but to commence
another hopeless process at Rome. After long and, beyond doubt,
intentional delay a second commission appeared in Africa (597);
but, when the Carthaginians were unwilling to commit themselves
unconditionally to a decision to be pronounced by it as arbiter
without an exact preliminary investigation into the question of
legal right, and insisted on a thorough discussion of the latter
question, the commissioners without further ceremony returned to Rome.

The Destruction of Carthage Resolved on at Rome

The question of right between Carthage and Massinissa thus remained
unsettled; but the mission gave rise to a more important decision.
The head of this commission had been the old Marcus Cato, at that
time perhaps the most influential man in the senate, and, as a
veteran survivor from the Hannibalic war, still filled with thorough
hatred and thorough dread of the Phoenicians. With surprise and
jealousy Cato had seen with his own eyes the flourishing state of
the hereditary foes of Rome, the luxuriant country and the crowded
streets, the immense stores of arms in the magazines and the rich
materials for a fleet; already he in spirit beheld a second
Hannibal wielding all these resources against Rome. In his honest
and manly, but thoroughly narrow-minded, fashion, he came to the
conclusion that Rome could not be secure until Carthage had
disappeared from the face of the earth, and immediately after his
return set forth this view in the senate. Those of the aristocracy
whose ideas were more enlarged, and especially Scipio Nasica,
opposed this paltry policy with great earnestness; and showed how
blind were the fears entertained regarding a mercantile city whose
Phoenician inhabitants were becoming more and more disused to warlike
arts and ideas, and how the existence of that rich commercial city
was quite compatible with the political supremacy of Rome. Even the
conversion of Carthage into a Roman provincial town would have been
practicable, and indeed, compared with the present condition of the
Phoenicians, perhaps even not unwelcome. Cato, however, desired not
the submission, but the destruction of the hated city. His policy,
as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were
inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate
dependence on Ro