In the Forum, under Roman rule, numerous Christian martyrs died by torture, though the great amphitheater was probably the scene of the wholesale executions of the followers of the Nazarene which took place in the third century of the Christian era. And from the Forum started the great trade-routes which led into the far interior. Now it should be clearly understood that the meager remains which the archæologists have thus far unearthed on the site of Carthage are almost wholly Roman or Byzantine, and that, barring a number of archaic Phenician tombs, some enormous blocks of stone which were probably used in the construction of the Admiralty Palace, and a miscellaneous collection of objects—vases, votive tablets, inscriptions, utensils, sacred images, fragments of sculptures—which have been brought together and arranged by the White Fathers in the little museum they have established on the Byrsa, almost nothing which can positively be identified with the Punic city has been found. This is scarcely a matter for surprise, however, when it is remembered that the Carthage of the Phenicians was literally wiped out—not merely laid in ruins, you understand, but the ruins plowed under—upward of two thousand years ago, and that the great Roman city which later rose upon the site was in its turn razed to the ground, so that the remnants of Punic civilization must be buried under many feet of débris, earth, and ashes. These russet hill-slopes, patched with grass and sprinkled with wild flowers, present, indeed, an epitome of human history, for they have been built upon, over and over and over again, by Phenicians, Romans, Vandals, Greeks, Arabs, Spaniards, Turks, and French. To drive a shaft straight downward through this blood-drenched soil to a depth of, say, a hundred feet, would be equivalent to retracing the march of mankind for three thousand years—from the Tunisia of the French to the Karthadasht of Queen Dido. * * * * * It was a perfect spring morning—one of those mornings when one congratulates one’s self on being alive—when we motored out to Carthage. Fleecy clouds drifted lazily across the sky, like newly washed sheep browzing on a hillside pasture. Under the brilliant African sun the placid surface of the Mediterranean gleamed and glittered as though strewn with diamonds. The weather was warm, but not too warm for comfort, and the gentle land-breeze brought to us the fragrance of the wild flowers which lay in bands of the most vivid colors—scarlet, purple, bright blue, yellow—across the lower slopes of the encircling ranges.