CARTHAGE 



1205 



CARTHAGE 



again elected in 1903, and has served since 

 without interruption. Carter-Cotton was early 

 recognized as an authority on financial ques- 

 tions, and was provincial minister of finance 

 from 1898 to 1900. Sir Richard McBride ap- 

 pointed him chief commissioner of lands and 

 works, a position he held from 1904 to 1910. 

 His interest in higher education led him in 

 1906 to endow a chair of mathematics in Mc- 

 Gill University College of British Columbia, 

 and in 1912 he was elected first chancellor of 

 the University of British Columbia. 



CARTHAGE, kahr'thayj, one of the most 

 celebrated cities of ancient times, in the third 

 century before Christ the great commercial 

 rival of Rome. It was situated in North 

 Africa, near the site of the modern Tunis, on 



ANCIENT CARTHAGE 



a peninsula extending into a small bay of the 

 Mediterranean Sea. Carthage is famed in 

 legend and in history, and two stories are told 

 of its origin. In classic myths it was founded 

 by Dido, daughter of a Phoenician king of 

 Tyre, and under her kindly rule became a rich 

 and flourishing city. How Aeneas and his 

 company of Trojan exiles were driven by 

 storms to seek her hospitality, how the Car- 

 thaginian queen entertained the hero for many 

 months, and on his departure threw herself 

 in grief and despair upon the blazing funeral 

 pile all is vividly told in Vergil's story of the 

 wanderings of Aeneas. (See DIDO; AENEID.) 



The historical account of the city's founding 

 is that merchants from the neighboring col- 

 ony of Utica and from the mother city of 

 Tyre, in Phoenicia, established a trading post 

 on the site about 850 B. c., and called it Kart- 

 hadshat, or "New City." Because of its splen- 

 did location on the Mediterranean shore, Car- 

 thage became one of the greatest commercial 

 centers of antiquity, and its people early began 



to extend their dominions by colonization and 

 by conquest. In the third century B.C., when 

 it was at the height of its power, Carthage 

 was a magnificent city of about 700,000 people, 

 holding sway over the northern coast of Africa 

 from the Greater Syrtis (the 'modern Gulf of 

 Sidra) to the Strait of Gibraltar, and over 

 Sardinia and nearly all of Sicily, while tribute 

 was collected from the natives of Southern 

 Spain and of Corsica. All of the coasts and 

 islands of the Mediterranean were visited by 

 Carthaginian merchantmen, and these hardy 

 traders even ventured to the Azores, Britain 

 and the Baltic Sea. 



Historians and excavators have learned many 

 interesting facts about the great city, whose 

 site is now marked by two or three small ham- 

 lets and a few ruins. Across the peninsula on 

 which the city was built was a triple wall of 

 towers. The sides were likewise defended by 

 walls, and two harbors, connected by a canal, 

 served for the navy and for merchant vessels. 

 The military harbor was circular in shape and 

 provided with docks sixteen feet in width, 

 which were large enough to hold 220 vessels. 

 Less than a mile north of the harbors rose the 

 hill of Byrsa, the citadel of the city. Exca- 

 vators have unearthed the ruins of the ancient 

 walls and of public buildings and tombs. 



Nothing is known of Carthaginian history 

 before the sixth century B. c. The first wars of 

 importance were fought with the Greeks in 

 the fifth century over the control of Sicily, 

 which was abandoned by the Greeks in 275 

 B. c. The conquest of the southern part of 

 Italy by the Romans brought Rome and Car- 

 thage into close contact, and as the Romans 

 viewed the commercial supremacy of the Car- 

 thaginians as a grave menace to their own ris- 

 ing glory, war followed inevitably. The first 

 conflict began in 264 B.C. (see PUNIC WARS). 

 Two other wars were fought, and in 146 B. c. 

 Carthage was captured and destroyed after a 

 desperate siege of two years. The burning of 

 the city continued more than two weeks. 



The northern coast of Africa became a Ro- 

 man province, and Carthage, rebuilt by the 

 Emperor Augustus in 29 B. c., was accounted 

 one of the finest cities in the Roman Empire 

 in the second and third centuries of the Chris- 

 tian Era. The Vandal king, Genseric, made it 

 his capital in 439, and nearly a century later 

 it was wrested from the Vandals by Belisarius, 

 the great general of the Emperor Justinian. 

 In 647 Carthage was destroyed by the Arabs, 

 and was never rebuilt. a w.w. 



