either by stress of weather or hostile force. In this event, no traffic was allowed to take place with the shore, except for the purpose of obtaining victims to sacrifice, and of repairing damage occasioned by storms; and in any case the intruder was only allowed three clear days of intercourse with the natives. Roman merchants who came for the purpose of traffic to those parts of Sicily which were under Carthaginian control, were to be allowed to trade on the same terms as Carthaginians, but in Sardinia or Africa this was not the case. All sales there had to be made in the presence of a public functionary; and the payment of the value of the merchandise was publicly guaranteed. This arrangement appears to indicate a kind of traffic by guilds of merchants, such as was commonly practised throughout Europe in the middle ages, and prevails at this day in many parts of central Africa. It implies a very imperfect civilisation, and a want of power to enforce the performance of contracts between individuals, which necessitates the united action of a trading company. There are not wanting reasons for believing that a similar system prevailed with regard to the early Greek commerce in Egypt; and until very recently the same principle regulated the traffic between Russia and China at Kiakhta and Maimachin. The last provision in the treaty is perhaps, of all, the most worthy of note, from the indication it affords of the habitual practice of buccaneering on the part of the great commercial republic. The Carthaginians were forbidden to commit any injury upon the Latin cities which owned the Roman supremacy; but with regard to the others, the only way in which Roman jealousy exhibited itself was in an anxiety to prevent their rivals from obtaining a footing in the country under any pretext. Those who landed to pillage were not to capture towns, or, if they captured them, were to give them up to the Romans. The buccaneers were not to pass the night on shore; and, above all, no stronghold was to be erected on the soil. In a second treaty made a little more than a century later, the same principles of policy are even more distinctly manifest, while at the same time the extension of the Carthaginian power is exhibited, and apparently also the growth of popular influence on the internal administration of the govern

ment.

It is worth while to pause for a moment to give a glance on the condition of the civilised world at this time. Rome, her future career undreamed of, was anxiously struggling against the hordes of Gauls which still occupied the Alban hills, and plundered the plains of Latium. The shores of Antium, the marshy woods of Laurentium, and the mouths of the Tiber

resounded alternately with the war-cries of these barbarians, and of the Greek pirates who, issuing from the ports of Sicily and Southern Italy, harried the coasts of the peninsula wherever there appeared a prospect of impunity. So entirely had the original population been blotted out in some parts, that it is said on one occasion the sea-pirates on landing, encountered as adversaries their rival freebooters of the land. In Greece, the power of the Macedonian monarchy was beginning to consolidate itself amid the factions of the degenerate republics. Philip had just dismantled the towns of Phocis. The Persian empire, tottering to its fall, was in every direction giving signs of dissolution. Some of the small Asiatic commercial towns had united themselves in an independent confede racy under the auspices of Hermias of Atarna, and in this year the philosopher Aristotle crossed the seas to assist his friend in organising a government for them. For the moment, indeed, the gigantic Eastern monarchy succeeded in crushing the new forms of life springing up within its own perishing carcass; but its destiny was manifest, and only twelve years later Alexander crossed the Hellespont, and the empire of the world passed into new hands. In Sicily, a century of warfare, during which the balance of fortune continually oscillated, had to a great extent destroyed the material prosperity of the island, and proved fatal to the enterprising commercial spirit which had animated the Italian and Sicilian Greeks down to the time of Hiero, and produced results that made their wealth and luxury proverbial throughout Hellas.

Carthage in the meanwhile had been, it would appear, free from the internal dissensions which had proved fatal to Hellenic prosperity on both sides of the Adriatic. It is just at this time that the criticism of her constitution, which we read in the Political Treatise of Aristotle, must have been written. Commending the working of her institutions, which he selects together with those of Crete and Lacedæmon for special encomium, this sagacious observer remarks it as a proof of the excellence of the Carthaginian constitution, that although there is a powerful Commonalty, the form of government had remained unaltered, and neither any sedition worth speaking of taken place, nor any tyrant succeeded in establishing himself. In most of the aristocratic governments of Greece, commerce, being considered to corrupt the spirit, was prohibited for the ruling class; and yet,' says the philosopher, 'in Carthage, although 'democratically governed, commerce is the ordinary rule, and 'still there has been no revolution.' Yet he would not deny it the character of an aristocratic republic; for wealth, and

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'personal excellence, as well as the will of the people, are re'garded by the spirit of the institutions.' Public opinion required that none should be chosen to the highest offices, who were not wealthy; a poor man, it was thought, could not afford to give up his whole time to the public service. This,' says the critic, is a deviation from aristocratic principles; it is oligarchal "in its character. It makes wealth the only passport to distinc❝tion, and vulgarises the feelings of the whole people. It may 'be expected, too, that they who thus in a manner buy their 'offices, will be quite as much tempted to malversation in office, 'as a poor man selected only on the strength of his character.' In England we can certainly understand the feeling of the Carthaginians, even if we acknowledge the argument of the Greek. Another oligarchal feature, too, the latter finds in the existence of a very peculiar office, the Pentarchies, which were not only self-elective, but possessed the right of selecting the Council of the Hundred,'- -a body in which more power seems to have resided than any other. The functionaries in question appear to have been Commissioners distributed in Boards of five members, which were sent to the several colonies and subject towns, and in them represented the authority of the metropolis. The office was not paid by a salary, and the appointment was only for a time; but immediate re-election was allowed. Perhaps what appeared so anomalous to a Greek philosopher, will be intelligible enough to an ordinary Englishman who is familiar with the operations of an imperial government in relation to its colonies. The skilful management of these dependencies constituted nine-tenths of the whole policy of the great trading commonwealth of the Old World. We may conceive at least the younger members of these "Pentarchies' to have been going through their apprenticeship as Carthaginian statesmen,-just as the unpaid attachés of our own embassies, or the private secretaries to eminent public men, do at the present day. During the discharge of their duties, they learned how the commerce of the then known world was carried on; by what channels it reached the ports to which Carthaginian ships found access; what were the products of this region and what the demands of that; and what alliances with native chiefs were necessary for the purpose of maintaining the monopoly of carrying and distributing. This class, therefore, almost monopolised the knowledge and administrative ability required in the traditional policy of the Commonwealth and so completely does this principle appear to have been kept in view, that in all matters of foreign policy, if the council of the Hundred' and the Suffetes (the offi

cers corresponding to the consuls at Rome) were agreed, the matter was not brought before the Commonalty at all, although where such unanimity was wanting, the whole details of the question were fully debated by the latter.

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Another peculiar institution prevailed at Carthage, which is noticed with approbation by the Greek critic, as exercising great influence in maintaining a good feeling between the rich and poor among the citizens. Certain societies appear to have existed there, for what purpose Aristotle does not say,-but he notices the fact that the members of them dined at common tables; and it is in reference to this circumstance that he compares them with the public messes' of Lacedæmon and Crete. In these latter cases, the institutions in question, if not originating solely in a reference to military organisation, had lost all other significance in the times in which one hears of them. But undoubtedly the parallel institutions of Carthage were based upon some principle altogether different. In our opinion, they were substantially identical with the guilds of the commercial towns of the Middle Ages, and in some respects similar to the collegia and sodalitia of Rome. If we go back to the condition of the city of London in the thirteenth century, we find what will serve to start the imagination in the matter. The several companies' (collegia or Taipiai) have each an independent organisation; they are governed by officers of their own election, who inflict fines, imprison, and otherwise have jurisdiction over the members of their own body. The aggregate of these companies constitutes in its turn a new corporation, inclusive of the minor guilds, and governed by members of them; and its officers are naturally individuals of importance in the minor guilds, although elected by the whole commonalty. If now we suppose London, as it was in the twelfth or thirteenth century, to be transformed from a single important city in an existing kingdom, to the sole seat of civilisation in a country inhabited partly by a rude peasantry, partly by large flock-masters, we shall have no very bad image of the early days of Carthage, with the savage Kabyle population in the recesses of the hill-country between Tunis and Bona, and the nomad tribes spreading over the plateaux of Numidia with their sheep and camels. With a change of circumstances such as we have imagined, the civic offices would grow into imperial functions. The viscount' of the thirteenth century, instead of dwindling into the modern sheriff,' would have expanded into the Carthaginian suffete;' the aldermen into something analogous to the • Council of One Hundred and Four,' - judges of all cases

springing out of contracts, who probably sat two in each week; and the mayor would have been transmuted by the necessities of the case into a oтparnyòs or prætor. The guilds would have also assumed a different character. Instead of d being confined to the distribution of the articles of commerce brought by foreign merchants, and mainly deriving their names from such functions, they would doubtless have comprised many associations organised for the purpose of trading with special localities, either at home or abroad. In the latter case, there would soon arise a necessity for factories and agencies; in many instances the association would, like our own East India Company, acquire territorial possessions abroad, and its leading members become rich and powerful to an extent to excite the jealousy and even the fears of their countrymen. In this way it is not difficult to understand how the Magos, the Hannos, and the Hamilcars of Carthage may have acquired enormous wealth and influence; and that in Spain, or the Balearic Islands, or Sardinia, such powerful chiefs should have been popularly regarded as possessing kingly authority in the mother-state. There is no portion of the genuine history of Carthage-for we must decline to accept as such Dr. Davis's biographical sketch of Dido and her relations--which is not perfectly explicable, and capable of illustration from other countries, when we thoroughly grasp the idea of a trading settlement-trading as alone is possible in early times-becoming gradually converted into an imperial city without losing its character in the process.

The site which this original trading settlement pitched upon for its fortified factory, its Bosra (or Byrsa of the Didonic legend) was most admirably chosen. Polybius describes the locality as it existed at the time he himself was there. The 'city of Carthage,' he says, lies in a bay, on a site projecting 'out and forming a peninsula. It is pretty nearly surrounded, 'either by the sea, or-as is the case to some extent-by a 'salt-lake. The isthmus which connects it with the main is ' about twenty-five stades (5000 yards) in breadth; and on the 'side of this which looks seaward, there lies Utica at no great 'distance, while on the other side, by the salt-lake, is Tunis.' The bay to which Polybius refers, is that of which the western boundary is the headland called Cape Farina on English charts, and which with the Romans of the empire went by the name of Apollinis Promontorium. Its local name now is Ras Sidi el Mekhi. The Hermæum Promontorium, which was regarded as the corresponding eastern horn, is perhaps identical with Ras el Amar, which seems to preserve a trace of the name, but