WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
"Many generations must needs pass away before the struggle between the two races could be renewed; and the Arabs, that formidable rearguard of the Semitic world, dashed forth from their deserts. The conflict between the two races then became the conflict of two regions. Fortunate was it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chivalrous valor of Charles Martol and the sword of the Cid. The crusades were the natural reprisals for the Arab invasions, and form the last e poch of that great struggle between the two principal families of the human race." It is difficult amid the glimmering light supplied by the allusions of the classical writers, to gain a full idea of the character and institution of Rome's great rival. But we can perceive how inferior Carthage was to her competitor in military resources, and how far less fitted than Rome she was to become the founder of centralized and centralizing dominion, that should endure for centuries, and fuse into imperial unity the narrow nationalities of the ancient races, that dwelt around and near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage was originally neither the most ancient nor the most powerful of the numerous colonies, which the Phoenicians planted on the coast of Northern Africa. But her advantageous position, the excellence of her constitution (of which, though ill-informed as to its details, we know that it commanded the admiration of Aristotle), and the commercial and political energy of her citizens, gave her the ascendancy over Hippo, Utica, Leptis, and her other sister Phoenician cities in those regions; and she finally reduced them to a condition of dependency, similar to that which the subject allies of Athens occupied relatively to that once imperial city. When Tyre and Sidon, and the other cities of Phoenicia itself sank from independent republics into mere vassal states of the great Asiatic monarchies, and obeyed by turns a Babylonian, a Persian, and a Macedonian master, their power and their traffic rapidly declined, and Carthage succeeded to the important maritime and commercial character which they had previously maintained. The Carthaginians did not seek to compete with the Greeks on the northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, or in the three inland seas which are connected with it; but they maintained an active intercourse with the Phoenicians, and through them with Lower and Central Asia; and they, and they alone, after the decline and fall of Tyre, navigated the waters of the Atlantic.
It is indeed certain that the Carthaginians frequented the Cornish coast (as the Phoenicians had done before them) for the purpose of procuring tin; and there is every reason to believe that they sailed as far as the coasts of the Baltic for amber. When it is remembered that the mariner's compass was unknown in those ages, the boldness and skill of the seamen of Carthage, and the enterprise of her merchants, may be paralleled with any achievements that the history of modern navigation and commerce can produce. In their Atlantic voyages along the African shores, the Carthaginians followed the double object of traffic and colonization. The numerous settlements that were planted by them along the coast from Morocco to Senegal provided for the needy members of the constantly increasing population, of a great commercial capital and also strengthened the influence which Carthage exercised among the tribes of the African coast. Besides her fleets, her caravans gave her a large and lucrative trade with the native Africans; nor must we limit our belief of the extent of the Carthaginian trade with the tribes of Central and Western Africa by the narrowness of the commercial intercourse which civilized nations of modern times have been able to create in those regions.
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