Carthage, which was a city of warriors as well as of merchants, had despoiled all the towns that she had conquered of their artistic wealth, in order to adorn her temples and palaces. This systematic depredation was so great a scandal in antiquity that when Scipio took possession of Rome’s haughty rival, he invited the inhabitants of the Sicilian towns to come and point out their artistic property, and resume their ownership of it; all that was not reclaimed was carried away to Rome, and a nation of statues was seen passing along in procession behind the triumphal car. Besides these Græco-Roman works, the fruit of pillage, which adorned the public places of Carthage, there were those which were the work of the Greek artists whom Carthage was pleased to summon to her bosom; there were also those of Carthaginian craftsmen educated at the school of the Greeks: these last alone interest us here, and the scanty specimens which exist of them confirm us in the opinion that the Carthaginians were not more artistic than the Phœnicians. [Illustration: Fig. 211.--Votive stela from Carthage. (_Corpus inscript. Semitic_.)] These monuments consist almost exclusively of votive stelæ anterior to the taking of Carthage by the Romans in B.C. 146. These boundary stones, from 11¾ in. to 19½ in. long by about 5¾ in. broad, were intended to be fixed in the ground, and therefore the lower part is still in the rough; the upper part, trimmed on its four sides, is particularly well smoothed on one of its larger faces; on this side alone is found a votive inscription addressed to the goddess Tanit, the Punic Astarte, and to Baal-Hammon. Above the inscription various symbols are represented in engraved lines, rarely in relief. The stela terminates in an imitation of a gabled roof, often provided with two acroteria. The decoration of these Punic stelæ is, however, still Greek, as is proved by the design of the acroteria, ovals, triglyphs, volutes, pediments, and even Ionic columns which figure in it. The symbols, carved in the most barbarous fashion by workmen who could not claim the title of artists, are borrowed from the Punic religion and from the fauna and flora of Africa. The commonest is the open hand, raised towards the sky and generally set at the point of the gable; the Arab still paints it in black on the white lime with which he plasters his house: it averts the evil eye. We find also the Egyptian uræus; the solar disk with the crescent, a symbol of Tanit; the ram, the symbol of Baal-Hammon; the caduceus, the horse, the elephant, the bull, the rabbit, fish, the palm, the rudder, the anchor, the hatchet, the lotus-flower, vases of various shapes, ships and fruit. We also meet with the Divine Mother holding her child in her arms; a young child standing or crouching with an apple in its hand; or a funeral banquet, as on Greek stelæ. [Illustration: Fig. 212.--Stela from Lilybæum. (_Corpus inscript. Semit._)]