Scipio Africanus the Younger completely destroys Carthage.

[Footnote 45: The story is that when Scipio captured Carthage he distributed the Punic libraries among the native allies, reserving only the agricultural works of Mago, which the Roman Senate subsequently ordered to be translated into Latin, so highly were they esteemed.

"No political necessity compelled modern Carthage to declare war on us, but merely the avowed aim to do a good piece of business by the war.

As Hannibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the contrary, Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as nothing when compared to the spirit and wisdom and power of Rome.

Your armies invest Saguntum, whence they are forbidden by the treaty: ere long the Roman legions will invest Carthage, under the guidance of those gods through whose aid they revenged in the former war the infraction of the treaty.

But pile Carthage on Tyre, Venice on Carthage, Amsterdam on Venice, and you will not make the equal, or anything near the equal, of London.

" [Footnote 24: Arnold, in his notes on this passage, well reminds the reader that Agathocles, with a Greek force far inferior to that of the Athenians at this period, did, some years afterward, very nearly conquer Carthage.]

5 Thus mighty in her ships, stood Carthage long, And swept the riches of the world from far; Yet stoop'd to Rome, less wealthy, but more strong:

AND SUBJUGATES CARTHAGE," ii, 224.

Scipio did never so hardly besiege Carthage, as these young gallants will beset thine house, one with wit or person, another with wealth, &c.

Certainly he would have accomplished something worthy of his aspirations: he would have either surrounded Carthage with his troops and have captured the place or he would have drawn Hannibal from as he later did, had not the Romans at home through jealousy of him and through fear stood in his way.