Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England

This other people dwelt in the city of Carthage, and were called Carthaginians. Their city was founded more than a hundred years before Romulus began the first settlement on the Palatine hill; and now Carthage was a larger and richer, as it was an older, city than Rome; and its people ruled a great part of the coast of Africa, of Spain, and of Sicily, and most of the islands of the western Mediterranean.

The people of Carthage were Phoenicians, and their mother country was along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. They were of the same race as the Jews, who dwelt near by the mother land in Palestine; and in speech and religion they were more different from the people of Rome than any other people that the Romans had ever come in contact with, except the Etruscans. They were a nation of sailors and traders, and their ships were the best then known to men. They were the first to discover that they could steer their vessels, when out of sight of land, by using the North Star to guide them; so, while other nations still kept safely in sight of the shores of the Mediterranean in their voyaging, the Phoenicians pushed boldly out into the broad Atlantic, and sailed as far as the island of Great Britain on the north, and on the south a good distance down the coast of Africa. They were the discoverers and traders of that long-ago time; and they made settlements, too just as the English, and French, and Spanish did in later days, wherever they could find a good harbor, with a fertile country around it, or with mines of gold or silver or tin to work. And they did more, even, than this. In order to keep their records and accounts, they invented the alphabet which we use to-day; and they taught these letters to the Greeks and the Romans, though the languages which these people wrote with them were different from that which the Phoenicians used.

So, when the Phoenicians left their old home to found a new city in the west, they brought with them much useful knowledge. Their children, too, and their children's children, made good use of what their fathers had brought. By the time this story begins, Carthage had become a great city, which was said to cover twenty-three miles of country; and the sails of its ships dotted the waters of the western Mediterranean. The Carthaginians were good builders, also, as well as good sailors and traders. They had protected their city on the land side by three great walls, one inside of the other, and these walls were far stronger and better built than the walls which surrounded Rome. The space between the walls was taken up with stables for the elephants and war horses, and here were kept three hundred of the one and four thousand of the other. And to shelter the many ships of the Carthaginians, two great harbors had been dug out, in addition to the natural bay on which the city was built, one for the trading vessels, and one for the ships of war.

The Carthaginians were not only a powerful people; they were also very jealous of their power, and wished to prevent any other people from sharing in it. They looked upon the sea, on which their many vessels came and went, as belonging to themselves alone; and when they found the ships of other nations sailing in their waters, they did not hesitate to capture the vessels and to drown the men that they found on them. They are even said to have boasted once that, without their permission, the Romans could not even wash their hands in the waters of the sea.

The struggle between the Romans and the Carthaginians began in Sicily. The Carthaginians had long had possession of the western part of the island, while the eastern part was ruled by a number of Greek cities. It was to take the part of these Greek cities against the Carthaginians that. Pyrrhus had gone to Sicily; so the Carthaginians were friendly to Rome until the Romans had driven Pyrrhus back to his eastern home. As soon as he was disposed of, however, the friendship between Rome and Carthage began to cool. Pyrrhus had foreseen that this would be so; and as he had left the island of Sicily he had looked back at its shores and exclaimed:

"What a field we are leaving for the Romans and the Carthaginians to contend in!"

Just across the strait which separates Italy from Sicily, was a Greek city which soon after this got into very serious trouble with one of its neighbors. The people in the city were divided as to what they should do for help; so one party sent to Rome for aid, while the other invited the Carthaginians in. Now, the Romans could not permit the Carthaginians to become settled so near to Italy as that was, and, rather against their will? the Romans were forced to send the aid which had been asked. The result was the first war between Rome and Carthage.

Although the Carthaginians were masters of the sea, they were not prepared to fight the Romans on land. They had no army of citizens to depend on, such as Rome had. They hired their soldiers, as you will remember the Tarentines did, and gathered them together from many different countries. So it took them a long time to get a strong army ready to fight in Sicily; and in the meantime the Romans won many victories and took many important towns from them.