WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

Although essentially a mercantile and seafaring people, the Carthaginians by no means neglected agriculture. On the contrary, the whole of their territory was cultivated like a garden. The fertility of the soil repaid the skill and toil bestowed on it; and every invader, from Agathocles to Scipio Aemilianus, was struck with admiration at the rich pasture lands carefully irrigated, the abundant harvests, the luxuriant vineyards, the plantations of fig and olive trees, the thriving villages, the populous towns, and the splendid villas of the wealthy Carthaginians, through which his march lay, as long as he was on Carthaginian ground.

Although the Carthaginians abandoned Aegaean and the Pontus to the Greek, they were by no means disposed to relinquish to those rivals the commerce and the dominion of the coasts of the Mediterranean westward of Italy. For centuries the Carthaginians strove to make themselves masters of the islands that lie between Italy and Spain. They acquired the Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, stills bears the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their power. They repeatedly invaded that island, and nearly overran it: but the resistance, which was opposed to them by the Syrcusans under Gelon, Dionysius, Timoleon and Agathocles, preserved the island from becoming Punic, though many of its cities remained under the Carthaginian rule until Rome finally settled the question to whom Sicily was to b long by conquering it for herself.

With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth, with commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that insured A for centuries the blessing of social order, with an aristocracy singularly fertile in men of the highest genius. Carthage yet failed signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Home. One of the immediate causes of this may seem, to have been the want of firmness among her citizens, which made them terminate the first Punic war by begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonist had suffered far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second war from being properly reinforced and supported. But there were also more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants, of the country which she ruled and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars.

Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about Carthage is derived from Dioidorus Siculus. That historian enumerates four different races: first, he mentions the Phenicians who dwelt in Carthage; next, he speaks of the Liby-Phenicians: these, he tells us, dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by intermarriages with the Phenicians, which was the cause of their compound name; thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely on account of the oppressiveness of their domination; lastly, he names the Numidians, the nomadic tribes of the frontier.

It is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a subject class, without franchise, or political rights; and, accordingly, we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phenicians, seem to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred, from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs of one of this race being entrusted with authority, and that, too, not emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybins calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we find to have been a Liby-Phenician and it is expressly mentioned what indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that this half-caste should control their operations.