INTRODUCTION. I.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE AND THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE SECOND PUNIC WAR *.

IN the earliest times of which history can take account we find the traces of an active trade in the Mediterranean waters which was mainly in the hands of the Phoenician merchants. The enterprising race which peopled the narrow strip of Canaan hemmed in between the mountains and the sea, soon found out its vocation in the carrying trade of the prehistoric world. Its colonists pushed their way along the coast of Asia Minor, and through the isles of the Egean, planting their factories on every favoured spot, and opening up the mineral wealth or purple fisheries of the countries on their way; their interchange of national products gave the first stimulus to the energy of many a backward race, while their merchant navy probably supplied the wants of the great land

* Compare especially Polybius, Book 1.; Heeren, Carthaginians; Movers, Phænizier; Lenormant, Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne.

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power of Egypt, bringing together the scattered elements of tin and copper to be combined by the industrial arts of the early age of bronze. The course of these Phoenician adventurers was directed almost wholly by the interests of trade, but on the Northern coast of Africa their colonies assumed another character. There were indeed some early settlements from Sidon on the shore, as at Hippo and at Cambe, but these were probably of little note, till larger streams of immigrants appeared, who, unlike the rest, betook themselves to the interior, and lived an agricultural life. There is reason to believe that they were Canaanites from the inland, dispossessed perhaps by Israel under Joshua from the country on the North of Palestine, and guided from the ports of Sidon to their new homes by pilots already familiar with the country. Here they may have found some kindred races, peoples of the Hittite stock, who had spread from Egypt in the period known as that of the invasion of the Shepherd dynasties. The new comers mingled with the native Libyans, and from their union in the course of ages grew the numerous populations found in later times in Zeugitana and Byzacene, and known as a mixed race by the name of Liby-phoenicians.

When Sidon fell before a sudden onset of the Philistines in B.C. 1209, Tyre stepped into her place, as the chief power of the Phoenician league, which took up henceforth a more decided policy in the far West,