by which we mean that which was
and is employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language
--one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean
one--certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its
forms to the latter than is the Phoenician alphabet; but it by no
means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not
from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the
partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from
deriving these from the Greek. We must rather assume that the Libyan
alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the
latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician
language that have reached us were written.

5. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

6. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

7. II. VII. The Roman Fleet

8. II. IV. Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

9. The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according
to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i.
17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the
prologue of the "Poenulus" of Plautus, it is said of the hero of
the title:-

-Et is omnes linguas scit; sed dissimulat sciens
Se scire; Poenus plane est; quid verbit opus't-?

10. Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number,
and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account
the available space, has been reckoned at 250,000. Apart from the
uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city
with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is
doubtless to be understood in a political, not in an urban, sense,
just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all
Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city
or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other
lands. There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in
the case of Carthage; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for
the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher number
than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.

11. II. VII. System of Government, note

Chapter II

The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

State of Sicily

For upwards of a century the feud between the Carthaginians and
the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily