corruption was the rule; in the nomination of a general the people
were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by
proposal on the part of the gerusia; and other questions only went to
the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree.
Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in
Carthage. The powerlessness of the citizens probably in the main
resulted from their political organization; the Carthaginian mess-
associations, which are mentioned in this connection and compared
with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical
management. Mention is made even of a distinction between "burgesses
of the city" and "manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the
latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.

Character of the Government

On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian
constitution appears to have been a government of capitalists, such as
might naturally arise in a burgess-community which had no middle class
of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble
without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand
of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of
repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the
subjects, by despatching them as tax-assessors and taskwork-overseers
to the dependent communities--that infallible token of a rotten urban
oligarchy--was not wanting in Carthage; Aristotle describes it as the
main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution.
Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in
Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained
without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the
governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous