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important and terrible battles, in which it was more than once on 
the cards, that Rome herself might perish, and Carthage become 
the leading state of the west, and the Mediterranean a Carthaginian 
lake. Then the civilization of the west would have been Phcenician 
in place of Roman, and we ourselves deriving the ground-work of 
our thought, language, and habits from a Carthaginian, instead 
of a Latin source. 
The fiat of Cato, however—de/enda est Carthago—Carthage 
must be destroyed—won its way. She succumbed before the 
arms of the younger Scipio, and both the Roman and the Greek 
historian, who have given us the particulars of her fall, and have 
narrated the cold-blooded treachery and cruelty displayed by her 
conqueror, incidentally give us also an extraordinarily grand idea 
of her size, prosperity, and magnificence. 
She perished utterly. Yet such were the unrivalled advantages 
of her situation, such»the resources of her inland country, that in 
less than thirty years Carthage was refounded by the Romans 
themselves. Again she rose to be one of the most important 
towns in the Roman empire; and lastly, when that empire was 
tottering to its fall beneath the assaults of the Barbarians of the 
north, by a strange destiny Carthage became the capital of the 
Vandals, and their ruler, Genseric, captured and sacked imperial 
Rome itself. From this time Carthage gradually decreased in 
importance, until in our own day, a few ruins, an aqueduct, and a 
series of magnificent vaulted reservoirs, are all that remain of this 
ancient splendour—all that remain of a city whose walls were 
twenty miles in circumference, and whose population numbered 
700,000. ‘Tunis, its modern representative, though the largest 
and most important of the towns on the Barbary coast, is never- 
theless a city of but very third-rate importance. 
To myself at any rate, it had ever been a matter of difficulty, 
on considering its modern condition, to account for the ancient 
prosperity of this region. Carthage, as a colony of Tyre, it is true, 
had some crumbs of that Indian commerce which has encouraged 
the enterprise and increased the riches of every nation which has 
conducted it, from the Tyrians to the English. But what could 
