Public Men. Scipio Africanus, T. Quintius Flaminius, Scipio Asiaticus, Paulus Æmilius, Cato the Censor, Scipio (2d Africanus), Metellus, Mummius, the Gracchi, Marius, Sylla.

Poets and Dramatists. — Ennius, Plautus, Terence, Pacuvius.

Philosophers.- Apollonius, Eratosthenes, Carneades, Hipparchus.

Poets. Apollonius, Bion (?), Moschus (?), Nicander.

Historians and Orators. - Polybius, Apollodorus.

EGYPT.

SYRIA.

JUDÆA.

Priests and Patriots.— Mattathias, Judas Maccabæus, Jonathan, Simon, J. Hyrcanus.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

CONT

|ONTINUING her career of conquest, Rome completed the subjugation of Cisalpine Gaul about 191 B. C., and Macedonia was conquered and became a Roman province in 168 B. C.

THE THIRD PUNIC WAR.

THE close of the Second Punic War (treated in the preceding century) left Carthage a dependent ally of Rome, and was followed by an interval of fifty years, during which active hostilities between the two countries were suspended; but many at Rome were not satisfied with the submissive and dependent condition of Carthage, and were resolved to reduce her to a state of entire subjection.

The peace with Rome lasted for upwards of fifty years, during which the Carthaginians did not give the Romans a single reason for complaint, nor do the Romans themselves mention any. We must suppose that this interval was a time of prosperity for Carthage, for after it we find the city very rich and populous. — NIEBUHR.

To the later generations who survived the storms of the revolution, the period after the Hannibalic War appeared the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman statesman. It was in reality the calm before the storm and an epoch of political mediocrities, an age like that of the government of Walpole in England; and no Chatham was found in Rome to infuse fresh energy into the stagnant life of the nation. Wherever we cast our eyes, chinks and rents are yawning in the old building; we see workmen busy sometimes in filling them up, sometimes in enlarging them, but we nowhere perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding or renewing it, and the question is no longer whether, but simply when, the structure will fall. During no epoch did the Roman constitution remain formally as stable as in the period from the Sicilian to the third Macedonian war, and for a generation beyond it ; but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a sign of the health of the state, but a token of the incipient sickness and the harbinger of revolution. - MOMMSEN.

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Nay, he [Marcus Cato] never after this gave his opinion, but at the end he would be sure to come out with this sentence: "Also, Carthage, methinks, ought utterly to be destroyed." But Publius Scipio Nasica would always declare his opinion to the contrary, in these words: "It seems requisite to me that Carthage should still stand." For, seeing his countrymen to be grown wanton and insolent, and the people made, by their prosperity, obstinate and disobedient to the senate, and drawing the whole city whither they would after them, he would have had the fear of Carthage to serve as a bit to hold in the contumacy of the multitude; and he looked upon the Carthaginians as too weak to overcome the Romans and too great to be despised by them. On the other hand, it seemed a perilous thing to Cato, that a city which had been always great, and was now grown sober and wise by reason of its former calamities, should still lie, as it were, in wait for the follies and dangerous excesses of the overpowerful Roman people; so that he thought it the wisest course to have all outward dangers removed, when they had so many inward ones among themselves. - PLUTARCH.

In 149 B. C. a Third Punic War broke out, and resulted in the destruction of Carthage, in 146 B. C., by the Roman general Scipio (the younger). The city was fired

and destroyed, and the Carthaginian territory became the Roman province of Africa. "This great city, therefore, furnishes the most striking example in the annals of the world of a mighty power which, having long ruled over subject peoples, taught them the arts of commerce and civilization, and created for them an imperishable name, has left behind it little more than a name."

Where low the once victorious Carthage lay.

Then occurred that which has no parallel in history, - an entire civilization perished at one blow, vanished like a falling star. The "Periplus" of Hanno, a few coins, a score of lines in Plautus, and, lo! all that remains of the Carthaginian world. — MICHELET.

A state perished in which Rome lost what could never be restored to her, a noble rival. SCHMITZ.

The most shameful and fiendish perfidy of which any nation was ever the victim. -IHNE.

The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive traveller. - GIBBON.

Great Carthage low in ruins cold doth lie,

Her ruins poor the herbs in height can pass;

So cities fall, so perish kingdoms high,
Their pride and pomp lie hid in sand and grass.

TASSO. Tr. Fairfax.

I stand in Carthage. What! no humble town,
No village left to speak her old renown?
Not e'en a tower, a wall? O ruthless years!
To spare not these to pride and pity's tears;

Well was avenging Scipio's task performed,
The flames announced it, and the towers he stormed;
But yours hath been far better, desert land,
Where scarce a palm-tree crowns the heaps of sand,
Old mouldering cisterns, rude unshapen stones,
For e'en the graves are gone, and leave no bones, —
A half-choked stream, amid whose sedge is heard
The mournful cry of Afric's desert bird,
These, Carthage, terror once of earth and sea,
Are all dark time hath left to tell of thee.

Delenda est Carthago let the tear
Still drop, deserted Carthage, on thy bier;
Let mighty nations pause as they survey

The world's great empires crumbled to decay;

And, hushing every rising tone of pride,

Deep in the heart this moral lesson hide,

N. MICHELL.

Which speaks with hollow voice as from the dead,
Of beauty faded and of glory fled,

Delenda est Carthago.

Before the destruction of Carthage, the senate and people managed the affairs of the republic with mutual moderation and forbearance; there were no contests among the citizens for honor or ascendency, but the dread of an enemy kept the state in order. When that fear, however, was removed from their minds, licentiousness and pride, evils which prosperity loves to foster, immediately began to prevail; and thus peace, which they had so eagerly desired in adversity, proved, when they had obtained it, more grievous and fatal than adversity itself. The Patricians carried their authority, and the people their liberty, to excess; every man took, snatched, and seized what he could. There was a complete division into two factions, and the republic was torn in pieces between them. Yet the nobility still maintained an ascendency by conspiring together; for the strength of the people, being disunited and dispersed among a multitude, was less able to exert itself. Things were accordingly directed, both at home and in the field, by the will of a small number of men, at whose disposal were the treasury, the provinces, offices, honors, and triumphs, while the people were oppressed with military service and with poverty, and the generals divided the spoils of war with a few of their friends. The parents and children of the soldiers, meantime, if they chanced to dwell near a powerful neighbor, were driven from their