is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a
subject class, without franchise or political rights; and, accordingly,
we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political
office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem
to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred,
from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right
of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs
of one of this race being intrusted with authority, and that, too, not
emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer
sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybius
calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we
find to have been a Liby-Phoenician; and it is expressly mentioned what
indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that
this half-caste should control their operations.

With respect to the composition of their armies, it is observable that,
though thirsting for extended empire, and though some of her leading men
became generals of the highest order, the Carthaginians, as a people,
were anything but personally warlike. As long as they could hire
mercenaries to fight for them, they had little appetite for the irksome
training and the loss of valuable time which military service would have
entailed on themselves.

As Michelet remarks: "The life of an industrious merchant, of a
Carthaginian, was too precious to be risked, as long as it was possible
to substitute advantageously for it that of a barbarian from Spain or
Gaul. Carthage knew, and could tell to a drachma, what the life of a man
of each nation came to. A Greek was worth more than a Campanian, a
Campanian worth more than a Gaul or a Spaniard. When once this tariff of
blood was correctly made out, Carthage began a war as a mercantile
speculation. She tried to make conquests in the hope of getting new
mines to work or to open fresh markets for her exports. In one venture
she could afford to spend fifty thousand mercenaries, in another rather
more. If the returns were good, there was no regret felt for the capital
that had been sunk in the investment; more money got more men, and all
went on well."

Armies composed of foreign mercenaries have in all ages been as
formidable to their employers as to the enemy against whom they were
directed. We know of one occasion--between the Fi