The truth is that there was another Asiatic power which was scarcely less formidable to European civilisation than Persia itself. I speak of Carthage. Though locally situated in North Africa as an Asiatic power, she was Phœnician in origin, character, and institutions. Founded by emigrants from Tyre some time in the ninth century B.C., she had always kept up a close connection with her mother-country of Phœnicia. One of the traditions of the race was to regard the Greeks as rivals or as enemies. Sicily, where Greeks began to settle in the eighth century, just about the time when Carthage was beginning to expand, and which, at its nearest point, was not more than a hundred miles from that city, naturally became a battlefield between the two races. Phœnician traders had been in the habit of visiting the island long before the Greeks appeared upon the scene, and though they seem to have given up most of their scattered ports and factories, they continued to occupy three towns in the western division. Carthage therefore would find kinsfolk and friends when she sought to gain a foothold in Sicily. When this attempt was first made we do not know. The early history of the city is a blank. About 550 B.C. we hear of one of its leaders making conquests in Sicily, among other places. That there was a great effort to conquer the island in 480 we cannot doubt. Probably it was the result of an agreement with Persia. There is, it is true, no evidence forthcoming of any compact of the kind; but it is not likely that there would be such evidence. On the other hand, the Persian king may very easily have come to an arrangement with the Carthaginian government through Phœnician intermediaries. The Phœnician contingent was the largest in his fleet, and was high in his favour, at least until the disastrous defeat of Salamis.[8] The coincidence of time is, in itself, a strong argument for the existence of a common plan.