No market of the ancient world could be compared with that of Carthage, to which men of all nations crowded. Greeks, Gauls, Ligurians, Spaniards, Libyans, came in multitudes to serve under her standard;[252] the Numidians lent her a redoubtable cavalry.[253] Her fleet was formidable; it amounted at this epoch to five hundred vessels. Carthage possessed a considerable arsenal;[254] we may appreciate its importance from the fact, that, after her conquest by Scipio, she delivered to him two hundred thousand suits of armour, and three thousand machines of war.[255] So many troops and stores imply immense revenues. Even after the battle of Zama, Polybius could still call her the richest town in the world. Yet she had already paid heavy contributions to the Romans.[256] An excellent system of agriculture contributed no less than her commerce to her prosperity. A great number of agricultural colonies[257] had been established, which, in the time of Agathocles, amounted to more than two hundred. They were ruined by the war (440 of Rome).[258] Byzacena (_the southern part of the regency of Tunis_) was the granary of Carthage.[259] This province, surnamed _Emporia_, as being the trading country _par excellence_, vaunted by the geographer Scylax[260] as the most magnificent and fertile part of Libya. It had, in the time of Strabo, numerous towns, so many magazines of the merchandise of the interior of Africa. Polybius[261] speaks of its horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, as forming innumerable herds, such as he had never seen elsewhere. The small town of Leptis alone paid to the Carthaginians the enormous contribution of a talent a day (5,821 francs [£232 16s.]).[262] This fertility of Africa explains the importance of the towns on the coast of the Syrtes, an importance, it is true, revealed by later testimonies, because they date from the decline of Carthage, but which must apply still more forcibly to the flourishing condition which preceded it. In 537, the vast port of the isle Cercina (Kirkeni, in the regency of Tunis, opposite Sfax) had paid ten talents to Servilius.[263] More to the west, Hippo Regius (_Bona_) was still a considerable maritime town in the time of Jugurtha.[264] Tingis (_Tangiers_), in Mauritania, which boasted of a very ancient origin, carried on a great trade with Bætica. Three African peoples in these countries lay under the influence and often the sovereignty of Carthage: the Massylian Numidians, who afterwards had Cirta (_Constantine_) for their capital; the Massæsylian Numidians, who occupied the provinces of Algiers and Oran; and the Mauri, or Moors, spread over Morocco. These nomadic peoples maintained rich droves of cattle, and grew great quantities of corn.