The existing geographical conditions also had their effect. In their old home they were between the two empires which had their seats by the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates. They had been accustomed to the idea of others ruling the land, while they traded by land and sea. In their new surroundings they were the superior people. There were no overlords on whom they could look even as equals. The natives on whose land they had settled, and with whom they traded, exercised no rule over men. These geographical con ditions reacted on the history. Not only did one city take the lead, as Tyre and Sidon had done in Phcenicia, but Carthage did more, she actually set up an empire and subdued these other cities to herself, and extended a direct rule over what is almost exactly the modern Tunis.
Across the seas the result was the same. In the eastern Mediterranean the Phoenicians had given way with scarcely a struggle to the Greeks. In the west Carthage refused to withdraw from trade when the Greeks endeavoured to extend their colonies westward. Secure on land, or on as much land as they wished, the Carthaginians set up a sea empire based on trade, over all the western Mediterranean. The north coasts of Africa, western Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and southern Spain were all under Carthaginian rule, and into the seas between no foreign merchantman dared venture.
The character of the rule, too, was due to geographical controls. Because of the unbroken coast and the lack of small islands, there was in the western Mediterranean a want of that spirit of individual independence which was at once the strength and weakness of the Hellenic civilization, so that once the rule was set up the empire of Carthage was by so much the more stable. Carthage
had the advantage, too, of its insular position, in that there was less danger of attack from the land, and, as a matter of fact, attacks were made on Carthage only from overseas.
But the position had its weakness also. Largely owing to geographical conditions the people over whom the Carthaginians ruled had not reached such an ad vanced stage of civilization. They were thus looked on as inferior, and were ruled as Assyria had ruled her con quests, with a high hand. As the Carthaginian Empire grew, the friendly feeling between natives and traders gave place to dislike and hatred of conquerors. When the time came for Carthage to meet another empire which had learned another lesson of government, of how to use men's energies to better advantage, Carthage fell, because, though other conditions were nearly equal, though fleets and armies were intelligently used by each, the Carthaginians were still at a disadvantage. Their armies were composed of men who were not in sympathy with their masters, and who supported the Carthaginian power only so long as they were paid. The money to do this was obtained as the profits of trading : it represented energy saved by the Carthagin ians ; but when the profits of their trading disappeared, when they lost the command of the sea, they were deserted by their mercenary soldiers, and they had no patriotism to fall back on. When Carthage lost her sea-power and fell, she fell utterly, and the Phoenicians disappeared from the scene.