158 BELISARIUS AND THE VANDALS. 



Rome, and to pray for mercy to the churches and the 

 captives. Doubtless, in that army of Germans and 

 Moors, by whom they were received, there were men 

 of Phoenician descent who had read in history of a 

 similar scene. Rome was more fortunate than ancient 

 Carthage : the city was sacked, but it was not destroyed. 

 Not long afterwards it was taken by the Goths. Kings, 

 dressed in furs, sat opposite each other on the thrones 

 of Carthage and of Rome. 



The Emperor of the East sent the celebrated Beli- 

 sarius against the Carthaginian Vandals who had be- 

 come corrupted by luxury, and whom he speedily 

 subdued. Thus Africa was restored to Rome : but it 

 was a Greek-speaking Rome ; and the citizens of 

 Carthage still felt themselves to be under foreign rule. 

 Besides, the war had reduced the country to a wilder- 

 ness. One might travel for days without meeting a 

 human being in those fair coast lands which had once 

 been filled with olive groves, and vineyards, and fields 

 of waving corn. The savage Berber tribes pressed 

 more and more fiercely on the cultivated territory 

 which still remained. It is probable that, if the 

 Arabs had not come, the Moors would have driven the 

 Byzantines out of the land, or at least have forced 

 them to remain as prisoners behind their walls. 



With the invasion of the Arabs, the proper history 

 of Africa begins. It is now that we are able for the 

 first time to leave the coasts of the Mediterranean and 

 the banks of the Nile, and to penetrate into that vast 

 and mysterious world, of which the ancient geographers 

 had but a faint and incorrect idea. 



It is evident enough from the facts which have 

 been adduced in the foregoing sketch, that Egypt and 

 Carthage contributed much to the Human Pro- 



