There is no justice in the assertion that Carthage ever exhibited a lust of conquest. Throughout her whole career she seems to have acted in the spirit of her Tyrian ancestors; as long as her merchants were free to trade, her neighbours were not disturbed, her naval reputation in later days having been mainly caused by the necessity of protecting her commerce and her colonies from the piratical attacks of other nations. With Spain, for instance, she maintained for centuries extensive and peaceful commercial relations: nor was it till the Greeks and Romans had become the most daring marauders in the Mediterranean, that Carthage, in self-defence, fitted out a navy, and thus became a great naval power. That these peaceful employments were crowned with success, we learn from the universal testimony of antiquity, it being generally admitted that, in the manufactures she had transplanted from Tyre and Sidon, she greatly surpassed in excellence whatever reputation the parent state had acquired. Moreover, we have still extant a series of coins of extraordinary beauty, struck for her no doubt, in many instances, by Greek artists of Sicily and Magna Græcia, yet which could hardly have been intended, as some numismatists have thought, for only her colonial cities of Panormus, Segesta, &c.[119] Acknowledged by Polybius[120] to have possessed hereditary pre-eminence in nautical matters, with the undisputed dominion of the sea for a long period, it may be fairly assumed that her ships were then unrivalled. Indeed Aristotle states that the Carthaginians were the first to increase the size of their galleys from three to four banks of oars. [Sidenote: Trade with Spain.] As the Carthaginians followed in the wake of the Phœnicians, it is impossible to ascertain the exact period of their colonization of Spain; but it is well known that Gades (Cadiz) was one of their earliest and most important commercial entrepôts, and that thence they sent expeditions to the south and to the north, along the western shores of Africa and Europe, securing for themselves the most favourable positions as marts for their merchandise. Their first expedition to the western shores of Africa was that of Hanno, it is said, with sixty ships, of fifty oars each, and an incredible number of emigrants. Though all traces of their settlements have long since been obliterated, there is no reason to question the fact that such a voyage was really made, that Hanno did reach the small island of Cerne (probably the modern Arguin in N. Lat. 20.5), that he laid the foundations of six towns, or trading stations, and that he proceeded farther along a coast, inhabited by negro races, for a period of twenty-six days, in all probability passing Cape Verde, even if he did not visit the islands of that name.[121]