They were perhaps eighty thousand men.  The two Tyrian cities would offer no resistance, and they would return against Carthage.  Already there was a considerable army attacking it from the base of the isthmus, and it would soon perish from famine, for it was impossible to live without the aid of the provinces, the citizens not paying contributions as they did at Rome.  Carthage was wanting in political genius.  Her eternal anxiety for gain prevented her from having the prudence which results from loftier ambitions.  A galley anchored on the Libyan sands, it was with toil that she maintained her position.  The nations roared like billows around her, and the slightest storm shook this formidable machine.

The treasury was exhausted by the Roman war and by all that had been squandered and lost in the bargaining with the Barbarians.  Nevertheless soldiers must be had, and not a government would trust the Republic!  Ptolemaeus had lately refused it two thousand talents.  Moreover the rape of the veil disheartened them.  Spendius had clearly foreseen this.

But the nation, feeling that it was hated, clasped its money and its gods to its heart, and its patriotism was sustained by the very constitution of its government.

First, the power rested with all, without any one being strong enough to engross it.  Private debts were considered as public debts, men of Chanaanitish race had a monopoly of commerce, and by multiplying the profits of piracy with those of usury, by hard dealings in lands and slaves and with the poor, fortunes were sometimes made.  These alone opened up all the magistracies, and although authority and money were perpetuated in the same families, people tolerated the oligarchy because they hoped ultimately to share in it.

The societies of merchants, in which the laws were elaborated, chose the inspectors of the exchequer, who on leaving office nominated the hundred members of the Council of the Ancients, themselves dependent on the Grand Assembly, or general gathering of all the rich.  As to the two Suffets, the relics of the monarchy and the less than consuls, they were taken from distinct families on the same day.  All kinds of enmities were contrived between them, so that they might mutually weaken each other.  They could not deliberate concerning war, and when they were vanquished the Great Council crucified them.

The power of Carthage emanated, therefore, from the Syssitia, that is to say, from a large court in the centre of Malqua, at the place, it was said, where the first bark of Phoenician sailors had touched, the sea having retired a long way since then.  It was a collection of little rooms of archaic architecture, built of palm trunks with corners of stone, and separated from one another so as to accommodate the various societies separately.  The rich crowded there all day to discuss their own concerns and those of the government, from the procuring of pepper to the extermination