4.  The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was and is employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language —­one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean one—­certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its forms to the latter than is the Phoenician alphabet; but it by no means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from deriving these from the Greek.  We must rather assume that the Libyan alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician language that have reached us were written.

5.  II.  VII.  Decline of the Roman Naval Power

6.  II.  VII.  Decline of the Roman Naval Power

7.  II.  VII.  The Roman Fleet

8.  II.  IV.  Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

9.  The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap.  Varro, R. R. i. 17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture.  In the prologue of the “Poenulus” of Plautus, it is said of the hero of the title:-

-Et is omnes linguas scit; sed dissimulat sciens Se scire; Poenus plane est; quid verbit opus’t-?

10.  Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number, and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account the available space, has been reckoned at 250,000.  Apart from the uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is doubtless to be understood in a political, not in an urban, sense, just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other lands.  There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in the case of Carthage; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher number than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.

11.  II.  VII.  System of Government, note

CHAPTER II

The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

State of Sicily

For upwards of a century the feud between the Carthaginians and the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily.  On both sides the contest was carried on with the weapons of political proselytism, for, while Carthage kept up communications with the aristocratic-republican opposition in Syracuse, the Syracusan dynasts maintained relations with the national party in the Greek cities that had become tributary to Carthage.  On both sides armies of mercenaries