s, and presided over
the council and senate. The Carthaginian aristocracy, like that of Venice,
was a group of wealthy families whose fortunes, made in commercial
ventures, were handed down for generations in the same houses. From this
circle came the members of the council and senate, who directed the policy
of the state. The aristocracy itself was split into factions, struggling
to control the offices and through them the public policy, which they
frequently subordinated to their own particular interests.

*The commercial policy of Carthage.* The prosperity of Carthage depended
upon her empire and the maintenance of a commercial monopoly in the
western Mediterranean. This policy of commercial exclusiveness had caused
Carthage to oppose Greek colonial expansion in Spain, Sardinia and Sicily,
and had led to treaties which placed definite limits upon the trading
ventures of the Romans and their allies, and of the Greeks from Massalia
and her colonies in France and northern Spain.

*Carthaginian naval and **military** strength.* Such a policy could only
be maintained by a strong naval power, and, in fact, Carthage was the
undisputed mistress of the seas west of the straits of Messana. Unlike
Rome, however, Carthage had no organized national army but relied upon an
army of mercenaries recruited from all quarters of the Mediterranean,
among such warlike peoples as the Gauls, Spaniards, Libyans and Greeks.
Although brave and skillful fighters, these, like all troops of the type,
were liable to become dispirited and mutinous under continued reverses or
when faced by shortage of pay and plunder.

Such was the state with which Rome was now brought face to face by the
conquest of South Italy and which was the first power she was to challenge
in a war for dominion beyond the peninsula. As we have seen, Rome had long
ere this come into contact with this great maritime people.(4) Two
treaties, one perhaps dating from the close of the sixth century, and the
other from 348 B. C., regulated commercial intercourse between the two
states and their respective subjects and allies. A third, concluded in
279, had provided for military cooeperation against Pyrrhus, but this
alliance had ceased after the defeat of the latter, and with the removal
of this common enemy a feeling of coolness or mutual suspicion seems to
have arisen between the erstwhile allies.

II. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR: 264-241 B. C.

*The origins of