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the natives. The product of these marriages was that numerous class of Libyphœnicians which proved to be so important in the history of the Carthaginian colonization and conquest; a class which, equidistant from the Berbers on the one hand, and from the Carthaginians proper on the other, and composed of those who were neither wholly citizens nor yet wholly aliens, experienced the lot of most half castes, and were alternately trusted and feared, pampered and oppressed, loved and hated, by the ruling state.
"The original monarchical constitution—doubtless inherited from Tyre—was represented (practically in Aristotle's time, and theoretically to the latest period) by two supreme magistrates called by the Romans Suffetes. Their name is the same as the Hebrew Shofetim, mistranslated in our Bible, Judges. The Hamilcars and Hannos of Carthage were, like their prototypes, the Gideons and the Samsons of the Book of Judges, and not so much the judges, as the protectors of their respective states. They are compared by Greek writers to the two kings of Sparta, and by the Romans to their own consuls. That they were in the earliest times appointed for life, and not, as is commonly supposed, elected annually, is clear from a variety of indications; and, like the 'king of the sacrifices' at Rome, and the 'king archon' at Athens, they seem, when the kingly office itself was abolished, to have retained those priestly functions which, according to ancient conceptions, were indissolubly united with royalty.
"Carthage was, beyond doubt, the richest city of antiquity. Her ships were to be found on all known seas, and there was probably no important product, animal, vegetable, or mineral, of the ancient world, which did not find its way into her harbours and pass through the hands of her citizens. But her commercial policy was not more far-sighted or more liberal than has been that of other commercial states, even till very modern times. Free trade was unknown to her; it would have seemed indeed like a contradiction in terms. If she admitted foreign merchantmen by treaty to her own harbour, she took care by the same document jealously to exclude them from the more important harbours of her dependencies. She allowed her colonies to trade only so far as suited her own immediate interests, and the precautions she took made it impossible for any one of them ever to become a great center of commerce, still less to dream of taking her place.
