The Carthaginians, be it understood, never fought if they could help it. Essentially a commercial-minded, luxury-loving people, they had no lust for empire, save that of the sea, mastery of which insured them control of the ports and markets which were necessary to their commercial supremacy. But as the city grew in wealth, power, and population, territorial expansion became imperative, and they pressed forward gradually until they occupied, more or less completely, a territory roughly corresponding to modern Tunisia plus the Algerian department of Constantine. This gradual expansion of Carthage’s sphere of influence was effected not so much by the sword, however, as by treaty with the warlike native tribes, from which she recruited her armies of mercenaries. Even in Carthage itself, whose inhabitants at one period numbered close to three quarters of a million, but a small minority of the population was of pure Phenician stock, the bulk of the people consisting of the native Libyans with a sprinkling of half-castes, negro slaves, and traders of all races. The Carthaginians might be said, indeed, to have occupied a position somewhat analogous to that held by the French in the Tunisia of to-day. The government of Carthage was a pure oligarchy, in which none save the old Punic families had any voice. All powers of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, were vested in the Council of One Hundred, whose decrees were carried out by officials known as “suffetes.” As these offices were for sale, the oligarchy eventually degenerated into a plutocracy, corrupt, vulgar, arrogant, and heartless, in which political dominance was exercised by one or another of the great families, as was the case in medieval Italy. Save in the single field of agriculture, which they developed scientifically and with remarkable success, the Carthaginians have to their credit no achievements in science, literature, or art, even their architecture showing the effect of Greek and Egyptian influence. As has been said, they were first, last, and always traders, money-makers, possessing to an exceptional degree that Semitic aptitude for business and banking which has made the Jews the financiers of the world.