It seems probable, nevertheless that a few buildings began to spring up among the ruins. Julius Cæsar determined on rebuilding it, in consequence of having beheld, in a dream, a numerous army, weeping at the fate of Carthage. His death prevented the fulfilment of his purpose. Augustus, however, sent three thousand Romans thither, or rather, within a short distance of it, who were joined by the inhabitants of the neighbouring country.
From this time it appears to have increased in beauty, convenience, and the number of its inhabitants.
In the early part of the fifth century, however, Genseric having invaded Africa, the whole of the fruitful provinces, from Tangier to Tripoli, were in succession overwhelmed, and Carthage was surprised, five hundred and eighty-five years after its destruction by the younger Scipio.
At this time, we are told[182], Carthage was considered as the "Rome" of the African world. It contained the arms, the manufactures, and the treasures of six provinces; schools and gymnasia were instituted for the education of youth; and the liberal arts were publicly taught in the Greek and Latin languages.
The buildings were uniform and magnificent; a shady grove was planted in the midst of the city; the new port, a secure and capacious harbour, was subservient to the commercial industry of citizens and strangers; and the splendid games of the circus and the theatre were exhibited.
After Genseric had permitted his licentious troops to satiate their rage and avarice, he promulgated an edict, which enjoined all persons to deliver up their gold, silver, jewels, and valuable furniture and apparel, to the royal officers; and the attempt to secrete any part of their patrimony was punished with torture and death, as an act of treason against the state.
Carthage never recovered this blow, and it fell gradually into such insignificance, that it disappeared altogether from the records of history.
We now select a few passages from Mons. Chateaubriand and Sir George Temple, in respect to its present condition.
"The ship in which I left Alexandria," says the former, "having arrived in the port of Tunis, we cast anchor opposite to the ruins of Carthage. I looked at them, but was unable to make out what they could be. I perceived a few Moorish huts, a Mahommedan hermitage at the point of a projecting cape; sheep browsing among the ruins—ruins so far from striking, that I could scarcely distinguish them from the ground on which they lay—this was Carthage. In order to distinguish these ruins, it is necessary to go methodically to work. I suppose then that the reader sets out with me from the port of Goltetha, standing upon the canal by which the lake of Tunis discharges itself into the sea. Riding along the shore in an east-north-east direction, you come in about half an hour to some salt-pits of the sea. You begin to discover jetties running out to a considerable distance under water. The sea and jetties are on your right; on your left you perceive a great quantity of ruins upon eminences of unequal height, and below these ruins is a basin of circular form and of considerable depth, which formerly communicated with the sea by means of a canal, traces of which are still to be seen. This basin must be, in my opinion, the Cothon or inner port of Carthage. The remains of the immense works, discernible in the sea, would, in this case, indicate the site of the outer mole. If I am not mistaken, some piles of the dam, constructed by Scipio, for the purpose of blocking up the port, may still be distinguished. I also observed a second inner canal, which may have been the cut, made by the Carthaginians when they opened a new passage for their fleet."
At the foot of the hill at Maallakah[183] are the foundations of an amphitheatre, the length of which appears to have been about three hundred feet by two hundred and thirty, and the dimensions of the arena one hundred and eighty by one hundred.