| outset, we meet with a striking deficiency in the chain even of Greek and Roman testimony. The great historian, whose design so fortunately for us embraced an account of all that was known of the great nations of his day, for some reason or other omitted Carthage from his plan; but yet his few incidental references to her are of great value. Aristotle's brief notice of the Carthaginian constitution (Polit. ii. 11), precious and trustworthy as it is, only makes the want of fuller information the more apparent, and compels us the more to regret the loss of his treatise on Governments, in which that of Carthage was discussed at length. Among the historians of the wars of Carthage with the Greeks of Sicily and the Romans, Polybius stands first, in authority and accuracy, as well as in time. Commanding all the means of knowledge which the Romans possessed up to his time, he used them in a spirit above the narrow and selfish patriotism of the Romans. He gives abundant proofs of careful research into the internal state of Carthage, and he has preserved some genuine Punic documents. The chief value of Diodorus, in this inquiry, consists in his narrative of the wars with Syracuse. Livy relates the wars with Rome in the worst spirit of partizanship, and with utter indifference to the internal state, or even the distinctive character of one of the peoples who contended to the death in that "bellum maxime omnium memorabile quae unquam gesta sint." (Liv. xxi. 1.) With less literary power, Appian is a more faithful annalist; but the carelessness of the mere compiler sorely damages his work. In spite of glaring faults, Justin deserves mention as the only writer who has attempted a continuous narrative of the early history of Carthage; which he abridged from Trogus Pompeius, whose account seems to have been founded chiefly on Theopompus. (Heeren, de Fontibus et Auctoritate Justini, in the Comment. Soc. Scient. Götting. vol. xv. pp. 225, foll.)
Among modern authorities, the following are the most important: — on the History, Constitution, and Commerce of the city, Böttiger, Geschichte der Carthager, Berlin, 1827; Campomanes, Antiguedad Maritima de la Republica de Cartago; Kluge, Aristoteles de Politia Carthaginiensium; Mövers, Geschichte der Phoenizier; Becker, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyklopädie; Barth, Ueber die friedlichen Verhältnisse zwischen den Karthagern und Hellenen, in the Rheinisches Museum, 3rd Series, vol. vii. p. 65, for 1850; Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome, vol. ii. lect. ii. 1st edition; Arnold, History of Rome, vol. ii. c. 39; Grote, History of Greece, vol. x. pp. 539, foll.; and the chief writers on general history: on its Mythology, Münter, Religion der Karthager, Kopenh. 1821; and Gesenius, in Ersch and Gruber's Encyklopädie; on the Geography and Topography, besides the general works of Mannert, Georgii, Forbiger, and others, Shaw, Travels in Barbary, &c., vol. i. pp. 150, foll., p. 80, 2nd ed.; Estrup, Lineae Topographicae Carthaginis Tyriae, Havn. 1821; Falbe, Recherches sur l'Emplacement de Carthage, Paris, 1835; Dureau de la Malle, Recherches sur la Topographie de Carthage, Paris, 1835; Chateaubriand, Itineraire, vol. iii. p. 186; Temple, Excursions on the Mediterranean, &c., Lond. 1835; Barth, Wanderungen durch die Küstenlander des Mittelmeeres, vol. i. pp. 80, foll., Berlin, 1849; Ritter, Erdkunde, vol. i. pp. 916, foll.; Ausland, 1836, Nos. 122, 124, 128, 1837, Nos. 110, 140 : and on the whole sub | ject, the admirable dissertation of Heeren, Ideen, vol. ii. pt. 1, or, in the English translation, Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Ancient Nations of Africa, vol. i. pp. 21 — 285, and Appendix.
III. Foundation. — No account of Carthage would be complete which should pass by in silence the legend related by the old chroniclers, and adorned by the muse of Virgil; how Dido, or Elissa, the daughter of a king of Tyre, escaped from the power of her brother Pygmalion, with the treasures for the sake of which he had murdered her husband, and with a band of noble Tyrians who shared her flight; how, having touched at Cyprus, and carried off thence eighty maidens to be the wives of her followers in their future home, she arrived at a spot on the coast of Africa marked out by nature for the site of a mighty city; how she entered into a treaty with the natives, and purchased from them, for an annual tribute, as much land as could be covered with a bull's hide, but craftily cut the hide into the thinnest strips possible, and so enclosed a space of 22 stadia, and on this ground built her city, which afterwards, as the place grew, became the citadel, and retained in its name Byrsa (Βύρσα, a bull's hide), the memory of a bargain which, however mythical, has many a counterpart for deceitfulness in later times; how, in the laying of the foundations of the city, its future power was presaged through the discovery, first of the head of a bull, and afterwards of that of a horse, a still better omen; how the city grew by the influx of colonists from the surrounding country, and by the friendship of the older Phoenician settlements, especially Utica; how its growing prosperity excited the envy of Hiarhas, king of the surrounding Libyans, who offered Dido the choice of war or marriage; how, debarred from the latter alternative by her vow of fidelity to her late husband, but urged to embrace it by the importunities of her people, she stabbed herself to death before their eyes on a funeral pyre which she had erected to her husband's honour; and how the Carthaginians enrolled her among their deities (Justin, xviii. 4, foll.; Virg. Aen. i. — iv., with the commentaries of Servius; Appian. Pun. 1; Sil. Ital. Pun. i. ii.; Proeop. B. V. ii. 10; Euseb. Chron. U. inf. cit.; et alii; the introduction of Aeneas into the story is Virgil's poetic version, without any foundation in the original legend as related by the historians). Based as this legend plainly is, in part at least, on old traditions, it contains some points worthy of notice. It testifies to the Tyrian origin of the city, and to its inferiority in point of time to Utica and other Phoenician cities on the coast: it indicates that the impulse which originated the colony was not merely commercial activity, but civil dissension: it describes the relations of the new colony to the natives and older colonists in a manner perfectly consistent with later history, as to the occupation of the country by a comparatively civilized race of Libyans (comp. Sallust. Jug. 21), from whom the land for the city was acquired not by conquest but by a peaceful bargain, the tribute for which continued to he paid in the time of recorded history; and as to the friendship and support of the older colonies. The part of the tale about the oxhide is a mere etymological legend arising from the hellenized form of the native Phoenician name, Bozra, a fortress. [Comp. Bostra, p. 425, b.] It may be worth while to mention another etymological legend, which ascribes the foundation of the city to Tyrian colonists led by Ezorus, Azoras, or |
