Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/70

5O HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIKS. tlieir own existence to mislead their rival. Strabo tells us of the Phoenician captain who, seeing himself followed by a Roman ship along the western coast of Spain, deliberately steered upon a shoal, where his ship perished and with it the Roman galley. The Phoenician captain managed to swim ashore, and on his return to his own country he was rewarded for his heroism and ready resource with the full value of his lost ship and cargo. 1 Such proceedings would not do in Italian waters. There the Carthaginians had to be content with admission to the ports on equal terms with Greeks and Etruscans. At a very early hour they had been compelled to renounce all idea of retaining a footing on the soil of the peninsula, and to content themselves with taking up positions which gave them ready access to it, as, for instance, on the island of Lipari, whence they could keep a watch upon the Straits of Messina and the whole coast of Southern Italy. These advanced posts they could make the bases both of trade and piracy. From the former very large profits were still to be won, as Carthage had a practical monopoly in the supply of African and oriental objects to European markets. They entered into commercial treaties. Aristotle had heard of treaties concluded between the Etruscans and the Carthaginians, 2 and Polybius has preserved for us the text of the first convention signed between Carthage and Rome, the latter signing for her Latin allies, and the former for her own metropolis ; this was in 509, the year of the expulsion of the Tarquins. 3 The excavations made in Etruria and Latium are continually affording evidence in support of these historical statements. In the cemeteries of both countries a large number of objects have been found which, speaking figuratively, bear the stamp of Carthage. It was at about this period that the wealth and greatness of Carthage were at their zenith, and that her affairs were most skilfully managed. We shall not follow her into her wars against the Greeks of Sicily, which went on at the same time as the Medic wars in the East ; still less shall we dwell upon that long duel with Rome in which she at last succumbed. Long before the day of her fall, long before the day of that great 1 STRABO, iii. v. n. 2 ARISTOTLE, Politics, iii. v. 10. 3 POLYBIUS, iii. 22.