As to publick virtue or love of their country, the Carthaginians were no way inferior to the Romans. The intrepid behaviour of the Philæni,[345] two Carthaginian brothers, who consented to be buried alive to enlarge the boundaries of their country, equals the most heroick instance of that kind of enthusiasm, which the Roman story can boast of. The fate of Macheus, Bomilcar, Hanno, and others, afford undeniable proof, that neither birth, dignity, nor the greatest services, could screen that man from the most ignominious death, who made the least attempt to subvert the liberty of his country. I have before taken notice of the _punica fides_, or that proverbial want of sincerity, which has been so often objected by the Roman historians: but I cannot help observing with the more impartial Montesquieu,[346] “that the Romans never made peace with sincerity and good faith, but always took care to insert such conditions as, in the end, proved the ruin of the people with whom they treated: that the peace they granted was no more than a politick suspension of arms, until an opportunity offered of completing their conquests: that it was their invariable maxim to foment divisions among the neighbouring powers, and by siding alternately with either party, as they found it most conducive to their own interest, play one against the other, until they had reduced all equally into provinces: that they frequently employed the subtilty and ambiguity of terms in their own language, to finesse and chicane in their treaties.” Thus they cheated the Ætolians by the ambiguous phrase of yielding themselves up to the faith of the Roman people.[347] The poor Ætolians imagined, that the term implied only alliance. But the Romans soon convinced them, that what they meant by it, was absolute subjection. They destroyed Carthage under sanction of the most vile equivocation,[348] pretending, “that though they promised that deluded people to preserve their state, they did not mean to grant them their city, which word they had purposely omitted.” Maxims which the French have steadily and too successfully pursued, and are still pursuing!... Montesquieu very judiciously observes “... that the Romans were ambitious from the lust of domination: the Carthaginians from the lust of gain.” This accounts for the different reception which commerce met with in the two nations. At Carthage commerce was esteemed the most honourable of all employments. At Rome commerce was held in contempt. It was there looked upon as the proper occupation of slaves only, and disgraceful to a free citizen. Thus the one loved war for the sake of glory and acquiring dominion; the other looked upon war as a means of acquiring wealth, and extending commerce. The Romans plundered the vanquished enemy to make a parade with their wealth in the triumphal procession. The Carthaginians fleeced not only their enemies, but their tributary provinces, and oppressed their allies, to feed their own