Meroe, the chief city, and fountain-head of the Ethiopians, was already fast declining, when Carthage fell, and from that time forward, the destiny of this people appeared to be downward. With the fall of Carthage, and the absorption of its territory by Rome, and its organization into a Roman province, the Carthaginian State ceased. Of the seven hundred and fifty thousand souls that Carthage contained at the time that the Romans laid siege to the city, only fifty thousand remained alive at its fall. The majority of these, hating Roman rule, bent their way towards the interior of Africa, following the thousands of their countrymen who had gone before.
After Carthage had been destroyed, the Romans did everything in their power to obliterate every vestige of the history of that celebrated people. No relics are to be seen of the grandeur and magnificence of ancient Carthage, except some ruins of aqueducts and cisterns.
In the language of Tasso:—
“Low lie her towers, sole relics of her sway;
Her desert shores a few sad fragments keep;
Shrines, temples, cities, kingdoms, states decay;
O’er urns and arch triumphal, deserts sweep
Their sands, and lions roar, or ivies creep.”
FOOTNOTES:
[12] “Famous Men of Ancient Times,” p. 154.