Carthage, of which we have already heard, was founded by
citizens of Phoenicia. The early inhabitants were from Tyre, that old
city of which we read in the Bible, which in the earliest times was
famous for its rich commerce. How long the people of Phoenicia had
lived in their narrow land under the shadow of great Libanus, we cannot
tell, though Herodotus, when writing his history, went there to find
out, and reported that at that time Tyre had existed twenty-three
hundred years, which would make its foundation forty-five hundred years
ago, and more. However that may be, the purple of Tyre and the glass of
Sidon, another and still older Phoenician city, were celebrated long
before Rome was heard of. It was from this ancient land that the people
of Carthage had come. It has been usual for emigrants to call their
cities in a new land "new," (as Nova Scotia, New York, New England, New
Town, or Newburg,) and that is the way in which Carthage was named, for
the word means, in the old language of the Phoenicians, simply new
city, just as Naples was merely the Greek for new city, as we have
already seen.
[Illustration: A PHOENICIAN VESSEL (TRIREME).]
Through six centuries, the people of Carthage had been permitted by the
mother-city to attend diligently to their commerce, their agriculture,
and to the building up of colonies along the southern coast of the
Mediterranean, and the advantages of their position soon gave them the
greatest importance among the colonies of the Phoenicians.
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