[870] A Carthaginian citizen wore as many rings as he had served campaigns (Aristotel. Politic. vii, 2, 6).
[871] Diodor. xx, 10.
[872] Appian, viii, 80. Twenty thousand panoplies, together with an immense stock of weapons and engines of siege, were delivered up to the perfidious manœuvres of the Romans, a little before the last siege of Carthage.
See Bötticher, Geschichte der Carthager, p. 20-25.
[873] Diodor. xvi, 8.
[874] See the striking description in Livy, of the motley composition of the Carthaginian mercenary armies, where he bestows just admiration on the genius of Hannibal, for having always maintained his ascendency over them, and kept them in obedience and harmony (Livy, xxviii, 12). Compare Polybius, i, 65-67, and the manner in which Imilkon abandoned his mercenaries to destruction at Syracuse (Diodor. xiv, 75-77).
[875] There were in like manner two suffetes in Gades and each of the other Phœnician colonies (Livy, xxviii, 37). Cornelius Nepos (Hannibal, c. 7) talks of Hannibal as having been made king (rex) when he was invested with his great foreign military command, at twenty-two years of age. So Diodorus (xiv, 54) talks about Imilkon, and Herodotus (vii, 166) about Hamilkar.
[876] See Movers, Die Phönizier, ii, 1, p. 483-499.
[877] Polybius, x, 18; Livy, xxx, 16.
Yet again Polybius in another place speaks of the Gerontion at Carthage as representing the aristocratical force, and as opposed to the πλῆθος or people (vi, 51). It would seem that by Γερόντιον he must mean the same as the assembly called in another passage (x, 18) Σύγκλητος.