se _Histoire Romaine_ would have been
invaluable if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any
degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It
is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the
Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere
struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but it was a
strife on the event of which depended the fate of two races of mankind,
whether the dominion of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or
to the Semitic family of nations. Bear in mind that the first of these
comprises, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Germans. In the other are ranked the Jews and the Arabs, the
Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. On the one side is the genius of
heroism, of art, and legislation; on the other is the spirit of
industry, of commerce, of navigation.

"The two opposite races have everywhere come into contact, everywhere
into hostility. In the primitive history of Persia and Chaldaea, the
heroes are perpetually engaged in combat with their industrious and
perfidious neighbors. The struggle is renewed between the Phoenicians
and the Greeks on every coast of the Mediterranean. The Greek supplants
the Phoenician in all his factories, all his colonies in the East: soon
will the Roman come, and do likewise in the West. Alexander did far more
against Tyre than Shalmaneser or Nebuchadnezzar had done. Not content
with crushing her, he took care that she never should revive; for he
founded Alexandria as her substitute, and changed forever the track of
the commerce of the world. There remained Carthage--the great Carthage,
and her mighty empire--mighty in a far different degree than Phoenicia's
had been. Rome annihilated it. Then occurred that which has no parallel
in history--an entire civilization perished at one blow--banished, like
a falling star. The _Periplus_ of Hanno, a few coins, a score of lines
in Plautus, and, lo, all that remains of the Carthaginian world!

"Many generations must needs pass away before the struggle between the
two races could be renewed; and the Arabs, that formidable rear-guard of
the Semitic world, dashed forth from their deserts. The conflict between
the two races then became the conflict of two religions. Fortunate was
it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the
impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chi