CARTHAGE; 265-201 B. C.

I. THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN 265 B. C.

*Rome a world power.* With the unification of the Italian peninsula Rome
entered upon a new era in her foreign relations. She was now one of the
great powers of the Mediterranean world and was inevitably drawn into the
vortex of world politics. She could no longer rest indifferent to what
went on beyond the confines of Italy. She assumed new responsibilities,
opened up new diplomatic relations, developed a new outlook and new
ambitions. At this time the other first-class powers were, in the east,
the three Hellenistic monarchies--Egypt, Syria, and Macedon,--which had
emerged from the ruins of the empire of Alexander the Great, and, in the
west, the city state of Carthage.

*Egypt.* The kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the dynasty of the Ptolemies,
comprised the ancient kingdom of Egypt in the Nile valley, Cyrene, the
coast of Syria, Cyprus, and a number of cities on the shores and islands
of the Aegean Sea. In Egypt the Ptolemies ruled as foreigners over the
subject native population. They maintained their authority by a small
mercenary army recruited chiefly from Macedonians and Greeks, and by a
strongly centralized administration, of which the offices were in Greek
hands. As the ruler was the sole proprietor of the land of Egypt, the
native Egyptians, the majority of whom were peasants who gained their
livelihood by tilling the rich soil of the Nile valley, were for the most
part tenants of the crown, and the restrictions and obligations to which
they were subject rendered their status little better than that of serfs.
A highly developed but oppressive system of taxation and government
monopolies, largely an inheritance from previous dynasties, enabled the
Ptolemies to wring from their subjects the revenues with which they
maintained a brilliant court life at their capital, Alexandria, and
financed their imperial policy.

[Illustration: The Expansion of Rome in the Mediterranean World 265-44
B. C.]

The aim of this policy was to secure Egyptian domination in the Aegean,
among the states of Southern Greece, and in Phoenicia, whose value lay in
the forests of the Lebanon mountains. To carry it into effect the
Ptolemies were obliged to support a navy which would give them the command
of the sea in the eastern Mediterranean. However, the occupation of their
outlying possessions brought Egypt into perpetual conflict with Maced