For more than fifty years, Rome had no trouble from Carthage, nor can she really have been very seriously troubled when, in 149 B.C., she declared the Third Punic War. Carthage had existed during that half-century as an opulent and large city. She had made alliance with some of the African peoples. There {176} were certain of the Romans who deemed her power dangerous. A pretext for a quarrel was easily found. Rome had now become so powerful that there was no question as to where the battle-fields of this war would be. There was no prospect of a Punic force in Italy or Sicily. The war, which began in 149, lasted for three years, for the Carthaginians within their walls made a desperate resistance which was worthy of their splendid history; but at the last they had to yield. No mercy was shown; the city was destroyed. Carthage ceased to exist. {177} CHAPTER XIII ROME AT HOME AND IN THE EAST As we have seen, there was a moment in the Second Punic War, just after the Battle of Cannæ, when it seems marvellous that Rome escaped destruction. What is almost more marvellous still is that it was just during the same time that she was fighting so hard, and in the end so victoriously, against the Carthaginians that she was able to fight and to extend her power towards the East, over Macedon, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It is an extent of conquest which must seem most marvellous of all when we consider how quickly it was all done. It is only a few pages back that we have seen her coming into the great story at all, as an actor of any importance, and now she begins to take such a masterful part in it that all the rest become of little account when compared with her. How did that happen? We may be very sure that it could never have happened unless those Romans had been very uncommon people, unless they had possessed great courage and determination, and unless they had devised a very excellent form of government, both for themselves and also for the nations over whom their armies and their fleet got the mastery. The fighting forces had to be of splendid qualities in order to win that mastery, but the government had to be wonderfully wise in order to keep it. {178} It is a point that you should notice particularly, that all through the story of Rome, even from those days when the story is really so little known that you need not believe much more of it than you like--from the days of Romulus and Remus and of the mother-wolf--we are told that Romulus himself appointed a body of men called the Senate to manage the affairs of the city. What I want you to notice is that the name Senate comes from the Latin word "senex," meaning an old man. This governing assembly was an assembly of the old men, and they were thought likely to be the best rulers because they had lived long in the world and had been learning the lessons that it had to teach them longer than younger men. [Sidenote: The Senate]