CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.
(264-241 B.C.)


CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE.--Foremost among the cities founded
by the Phoenicians upon the different shores of the Mediterranean was
Carthage, upon the northern coast of Africa. The city is thought to have
had its beginnings in a small trading-post, established late in the ninth
century B.C., about one hundred years before the founding of Rome.
Carthage was simply another Tyre. She was mistress and queen of the
Western Mediterranean. At the period we have now reached, she held sway,
through peaceful colonization or by force of arms, over all the northern
coast of Africa from the Greater Syrtis to the Pillars of Hercules, and
possessed the larger part of Sicily, as well as Sardinia, Corsica, the
Balearic Isles, Southern Spain, and scores of little islands scattered
here and there in the neighboring seas. With all its shores dotted with
her colonies and fortresses, and swept in every direction by the
Carthaginian war-galleys, the Western Mediterranean had become a
"Phoenician lake," in which, as the Carthaginians boasted, no one dared
wash his hands without their permission.

CARTHAGINIAN GOVERNMENT AND RELIGION.--The government of Carthage, like
that of Rome, was republican in form. Corresponding to the Roman consuls,
two magistrates, called Suffetes, stood at the head of the state. The
Senate was composed of the heads of the leading families; its duties and
powers were very like those of the Roman Senate. So well-balanced was the