With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth with commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that ensured for centuries the blessings of, social order, with an aristocracy singularly fertile in men of the highest genius, Carthage yet failed signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Rome. One of the immediate causes of this may seem to have been the want, of firmness among her citizens, which made them terminate the first Punic war by begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonists had suffered far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second war from being properly reinforced and supported. But there were also more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants of the country which she ruled, and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars. Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about Carthage is derived from Diodorus Siculus. [Vol. ii. p. 447, Wesseling's ed.] That historian enumerates four different races: first, he mentions the Phoenicians who dwelt in Carthage: next, he speaks of the Liby-Phoenicians; these, he tells us, dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by intermarriages with the Phoenicians, which was the cause of their compound name: thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely, on account of the oppressiveness of their domination: lastly, he names the Numidians, the nomad tribes of the frontier. It is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a subject class, without franchise or political rights; and, accordingly, we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; [See the "Periplus" of Hanno.] but it may be inferred, from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right of the citizenship of Carthage: and only a solitary case occurs of one of this race being entrusted with authority, and that, too, not emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer sent by Hannibal to Sicily, after the fall of Syracuse; whom Polybius [Lib. ix. 22.] calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we find to have been a Liby-Phoenician [Lib. xxv. 40.] and it is expressly mentioned what indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that this half-caste should control their operations.