s masters
of the islands that lie between Italy and Spain. They acquired the
Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, still bears
the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the
greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their
power. They repeatedly invaded that island, and nearly overran it; but
the resistance which was opposed to them by the Syracusans under Gelon,
Dionysius, Timoleon, and Agathocles preserved the island from becoming
Punic, though many of its cities remained under the Carthaginian rule
until Rome finally settled the question to whom Sicily was to belong by
conquering it for herself.

With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth, with
commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a
capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that
insured for centuries the blessing of social order, with an aristocracy
singularly fertile in men of the highest genius, Carthage yet failed
signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Rome. One of the
immediate causes of this may seem to have been the want of firmness
among her citizens, which made them terminate the First Punic War by
begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens
caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonists had suffered
far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of
faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second
war from being properly reenforced and supported. But there were also
more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her
position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants of the country which
she ruled, and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars.

Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about
Carthage is derived from Diodorus Siculus. That historian enumerates
four different races: first, he mentions the Phoenicians who dwelt in
Carthage; next, he speaks of the Liby-Phoenicians: these, he tells us,
dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by
intermarriage with the Phoenicians, which was the cause of their
compound name; thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most
ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely on
account of the oppressiveness of their domination; lastly, he names the
Numidians, the nomad tribes of the frontier.

It