became subject to the king; on the coast also to the
east of Carthage he occupied the old Sidonian city
of Great Leptis and other districts, so that his kingdom
stretched from the Mauretanian to the Cyrenaean frontier,
enclosed the Carthaginian territory on every side by
land, and everywhere pressed, in the closest vicinity,
on the Phoenicians. It admits of no doubt, that
he looked on Carthage as his future capital; the Libyan
party there was significant. But it was not
only by the diminution of her territory that Carthage
suffered injury. The roving shepherds were converted
by their great king into another people. After
the example of the king, who brought the fields under
cultivation far and wide and bequeathed to each of
his sons considerable landed estates, his subjects
also began to settle and to practise agriculture.
As he converted his shepherds into settled citizens,
he converted also his hordes of plunderers into soldiers
who were deemed by Rome worthy to fight side by side
with her legions; and he bequeathed to his successors
a richly-filled treasury, a well-disciplined army,
and even a fleet. His residence Cirta (Constantine)
became the stirring capital of a powerful state, and
a chief seat of Phoenician civilization, which was
zealously fostered at the court of the Berber king—fostered
perhaps studiously with a view to the future Carthagino-Numidian
kingdom. The hitherto degraded Libyan nationality
thus rose in its own estimation, and the native manners
and language made their way even into the old Phoenician
towns, such as Great Leptis. The Berber began,
under the aegis of Rome, to feel himself the equal
or even the superior of the Phoenician; Carthaginian
envoys at Rome had to submit to be told that they
were aliens in Africa, and that the land belonged
to the Libyans. The Phoenico-national civilization
of North Africa, which still retained life and vigour
even in the levelling times of the Empire, was far
more the work of Massinissa than of the Carthaginians.
The State of Culture in Spain
In Spain the Greek and Phoenician towns along the
coast, such as Emporiae, Saguntum, New Carthage, Malaca,
and Gades, submitted to the Roman rule the more readily,
that, left to their own resources, they would hardly
have been able to protect themselves from the natives;
as for similar reasons Massilia, although far more
important and more capable of self-defence than those
towns, did not omit to secure a powerful support in
case of need by closely attaching itself to the Romans,
to whom it was in return very serviceable as an intermediate
station between Italy and Spain. The natives,
on the other hand, gave to the Romans endless trouble.
It is true that there were not wanting the rudiments
of a national Iberian civilization, although of its
special character it is scarcely possible for us to
acquire any clear idea. We find among the Iberians
a widely diffused national writing, which divides
itself into two chief kinds, that of the valley of