History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2. Napoleon III

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n244" type="note">244 Its monuments were worthy of its greatness: among its remarkable buildings was the temple of the god Aschmoun, assimilated by the Greeks to Æsculapius;245 that of the sun, covered with plates of gold valued at a thousand talents;246 and the mantle or peplum, destined for the image of their great goddess, which cost a hundred and twenty.247 The empire of Carthage extended from the frontiers of Cyrenaica (the country of Barca, in the regency of Tripoli) into Spain; she was the metropolis of all the north of Africa, and, in Libya alone, possessed three hundred towns.248 Nearly all the isles of the Mediterranean, to the west and south of Italy, had received her factories. Carthage had imposed her sovereignty upon all the ancient Phœnician establishments in this part of the world, and had levied upon them an annual contingent of soldiers and tribute. In the interior of Africa, she sent caravans to seek elephants, ivory, gold, and black slaves, which she afterwards exported249 to the trading places on the Mediterranean. In Sicily, she gathered oil and wine; in the isle of Elba, she mined for iron; from Malta, she drew valuable tissues; from Corsica, wax and honey; from Sardinia, corn, metals, and slaves; from the Baleares, mules and fruits; from Spain, gold, silver, and lead; from Mauritania, the hides of animals; she sent as far as the extremity of Britain, to the Cassiterides (the Scilly Islands), ships to purchase tin.250 Within her walls industry flourished greatly, and tissues of great celebrity were fabricated.251

      No market of the ancient world could be compared with that of Carthage, to which men of all nations crowded. Greeks, Gauls, Ligurians, Spaniards, Libyans, came in multitudes to serve under her standard;252 the Numidians lent her a redoubtable cavalry.253 Her fleet was formidable; it amounted at this epoch to five hundred vessels. Carthage possessed a considerable arsenal;254 we may appreciate its importance from the fact, that, after her conquest by Scipio, she delivered to him two hundred thousand suits of armour, and three thousand machines of war.255 So many troops and stores imply immense revenues. Even after the battle of Zama, Polybius could still call her the richest town in the world. Yet she had already paid heavy contributions to the Romans.256 An excellent system of agriculture contributed no less than her commerce to her prosperity. A great number of agricultural colonies257 had been established, which, in the time of Agathocles, amounted to more than two hundred. They were ruined by the war (440 of Rome).258 Byzacena (the southern part of the regency of Tunis) was the granary of Carthage.259

      This province, surnamed Emporia, as being the trading country par excellence, vaunted by the geographer Scylax260 as the most magnificent and fertile part of Libya. It had, in the time of Strabo, numerous towns, so many magazines of the merchandise of the interior of Africa. Polybius261 speaks of its horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, as forming innumerable herds, such as he had never seen elsewhere. The small town of Leptis alone paid to the Carthaginians the enormous contribution of a talent a day (5,821 francs [£232 16s.]).262

      This fertility of Africa explains the importance of the towns on the coast of the Syrtes, an importance, it is true, revealed by later testimonies, because they date from the decline of Carthage, but which must apply still more forcibly to the flourishing condition which preceded it. In 537, the vast port of the isle Cercina (Kirkeni, in the regency of Tunis, opposite Sfax) had paid ten talents to Servilius.263 More to the west, Hippo Regius (Bona) was still a considerable maritime town in the time of Jugurtha.264 Tingis (Tangiers), in Mauritania, which boasted of a very ancient origin, carried on a great trade with Bætica. Three African peoples in these countries lay under the influence and often the sovereignty of Carthage: the Massylian Numidians, who afterwards had Cirta (Constantine) for their capital; the Massæsylian Numidians, who occupied the provinces of Algiers and Oran; and the Mauri, or Moors, spread over Morocco. These nomadic peoples maintained rich droves of cattle, and grew great quantities of corn.

      Hanno, a Carthaginian sea-captain, sent, towards 245, to explore the extreme parts of the African coast beyond the Straits of Gades, had founded a great number of settlements, no traces of which remained in the time of Pliny.265 These colonies introduced commerce among the Mauritanian and Numidian tribes, the peoples of Morocco, and perhaps even those of Senegal. But it was not only in Africa that the possessions of the Carthaginians extended; they embraced Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia.

      Spain.

      III. Iberia or Spain, with its six great rivers, navigable to the ancients, its long chains of mountains, its dense woods, and the fertile valleys of Bætica (Andalusia), appears to have nourished a population numerous, warlike, rich by its mines, its harvests, and its commerce. The centre of the peninsula was occupied by the Iberian and Celtiberian races; on the coasts, the Carthaginians and the Greeks had settlements; through contact with the Phœnician merchants, the populations of the coast districts attained a certain degree of civilisation, and from the mixture of the natives with the foreign colonists sprang a mongrel population, which, while it preserved the Iberic character, had adopted the mercantile habits of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians.

      Once established in Spain, the Carthaginians and Greeks turned to useful purpose the timber which covered the mountains. Gades (Cadiz), a sort of factory founded at the extremity of Bætica by the Carthaginians, became one of their principal maritime arsenals. It was there that the ships were fitted out which ventured on the ocean in search of the products of Armorica, or Britain, and even of the Canaries. Although Gades had lost some of its importance by the foundation of Carthagena (New Carthage), in 526, it had still, in the time of Strabo, so numerous a population that it was in this respect inferior only to Rome. The tables of the census showed five hundred citizens of the equestrian order, a number equalled by none of the Italian cities, except Patavium (Padua).266 To Gades, celebrated for its temple of Hercules, flowed the riches of all Spain. The sheep and horses of Bætica rivalled in renown those of the Asturias. Corduba (Cordova), Hispalis (Seville), where, at a later period, the Romans founded colonies, were already great places of commerce, and had ports for the vessels which ascended the Bætis (Guadalquivir).267

      Spain was rich in precious metals; gold, silver, iron, were there the object of industrial activity.268 At Osca (Huesca), they worked mines of silver; at Sisapo (Almaden), silver and mercury.269 At Cotinæ, copper was found along with gold. Among the Oretani, at Castulo (Cazlona, on the Guadalimar), the silver mines, in the time of Polybius, gave employment to 40,000 persons, and produced daily 25,000 drachmas.270 In thirty-two years, the Roman generals carried home from the peninsula considerable sums.271 The abundance of metals in Spain explains how so great a number of vessels of gold and silver was found among many of the chiefs or petty kings of the Iberian nations. Polybius compares one of them, for his luxury, with the king of the fabulous Phæaces.272

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