Accounts are preserved of several very peculiar cus toms which prevailed among the Carthaginians. In any great public calamity, the city was hung with black ; this took place more than once. Its inhabitants fed on the flesh of dogs till the time of Darius Hystaspes, who interfered to prevent the continuance of this practice, and stipulated that their compliance in this point should be a condition of his entering into alliance with them ; as also, that they should cease to offer human sacrifices, and that they should burn instead of burying their dead. The magistrates in office, and the soldiers in the field, were forbidden to drink wine. The generals were held. personally responsible for the success of their undertak ings, and several instances are recorded in which they were punished for their failure with death. The popu lace and senators had distinct baths ; this is mentioned by Valerius Maximus (lib. ix. c. 5.) in proof of the extreme arrogancy of the senate ; but he gives no further particu lars relating to it. Like the Greeks and Romans, they had no public inns, but strangers were entertained in pri vate houses ; and, like them, they paid uniform respect to soothsayers of all descriptions.
It would appear that the religious worship of the Car thaginians was taken entirely from the Phoenicians ; but as their frequent intercourse with the Greeks, especially those of Sicily, induced them to adopt many of their re ligious ceremonies, and even some of their deities, and, as the Greek and Roman writers invariably apply the names of their own deities to the gods of foreign nations, the subject is involved in very great obscurity.
The principal deity worshipped at Carthage, as Dio dorus informs us, was Chronius, who, according to Quin tus Curtius, (lib. iv. c. 3.) was the same with Saturn. Though the Punic name of this deity is not known, there seems good reason to conclude, from the similarity of rites, and other circumstances, that he was the same as Moloch, or Milchom, the famous idol of the Ammonites, Canaanites, and other neighbouring nations. (Levit. xviii. 21. xx. 2, 3, 4.) The deity next in estimation was Urania, called, in the Phoenician, Bellis, or Belthes. It is not easy to de termine whether she most resembled the Venus or the Juno of the Greek mythology. St Austin seems to have considered her as the first, but Virgil distinctly asserts that she was the second. (See iEn. i. and Heyne not. in loc.) Of the subordinate deities little is known, and that little is unsatisfactory. The most celebrated was the Tyrian Hercules, whose worship extended over the coasts of Africa as far as Cadiz, where he had a temple :1- he was supposed to preside over gold and silver, and all sorts of treasures. /Esculapius, also, was a very popu lar deity, and had a temple on the summit of the liy rsa. A list of several other names is given, but little is known concerning them ; some are supposed to have been cele brated persons, to whom divine honours were paid. III the preamble to a treaty made with Philip of Macedon, (Polyb. lib. vii.) there is an enumeration or many deities; among the rest the Aaq.usip, or genius of Carthage. We
cannot determine who is meant by this title : it is suffi cient only to notice the fact, and to add, that the heathen world looked upon these dxmons as intelligences of a middle nature between gods and men, as beings to the administration of the affairs of the world was com mitted.
Originally, the Carthaginian language was the same as the Phcenician or I I ehrew ; and notwithstanding some little variations, caused by the distance from the toothier country, and the incorporation with the neighbouring nations, it ever continued in substance the same. An attempt has been made in modern times, to trace in the Maltese dialect the remains of the ancient Punic, and with some appearance of probability. As to the A isions or the antiquarians of our own day, they are much too fanciful, and founded on much too narrow a basis, to detain us with a consideration of them.
Literature and science appear, during every period of their history, to have been at a very low ebb among the Carthaginians. Even the names of their writers have perished with their works.` However, it should be remembered, that the Romans exercised the most severe cruelty, in destroying not only the public archives, but almost every thing which the Punic writers had pro duced, which bore any appearance of general literature or history. But though this is sufficient to account for the total disappearance of the works of Carthaginian writers, we arc not authorised to conclude, on the other hand, that they ever were very numerous, or very cele brated. In fact, it does not appear that the Carthaginians at any time were a refined or a literary people. In the first ages of their history, their character is stained by traits of the grossest barbarism ; and this was afterwards modified, rather than subdued, by commerce and its attendant luxury. Plutarch represents them as uni formly of a morose and saturnine disposition, utterly averse to any thing which had the appearance of wit, raillery, or refinement. They seem to have been deeply tinctured with all the worst vices of a trading nation. They were tyrannical and cruel ; sordid, and prover bially faithless ; and though we must be inclined to receive with caution the accounts which their implaca ble enemies, the Romans, have left us. yet the whole tenor of their history is so uniform in this representation or them, that we are compelled to believe it, or to sup pose the historians guilty of incredible malice, united with the most successful ingenuity. In turning to the bi ighter parts of their character, we are first attracted by their acknowledged skill in the mechanical arts. This, in all probability, they derived from their Tyrian ancestors ; and we require no farther proof of their very great excellence, than the fact that, even at Rome. any singular invention, or curious piece of ‘vorkmansl ip, was called, by way of eminence, Punic. Thus we find Valerius Maximus (lib. vii. c. 5.) speaking of the Lee lull Punicani, Plautus of the Lawns Pinata., and Cato (de Re' Rutilica)applks the cpithut to a great number of things.