About the year 850 B. C. the Phoenicians had founded the city of Carthage on the north coast of Africa, planting there a colony which was destined to have a remarkable career. The city was built upon a peninsula forty-five miles around, with a neck only three miles across. The land along the adjacent coast was fertile and well watered, producing wheat, barley, wine and oil in abundance. A small bay in the gulf of Tunis afforded an excellent harbor for the city's commerce. Endowed with Phoenician energy and skill, Carthage soon gained great wealth and power, conquering a portion of Sicily and the northwest coast of Africa, thereby securing complete control of the western half of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Carthaginians founded colonies in the South of Spain, and the riches of the Spanish peninsula were poured into the lap of Carthage. Her ships passed the strait of Gibraltar and continued the voyages formerly made by the Phoenicians to the north. They also turned southward, sailing along the west coast of Africa in search of tropical products. They sent caravans into the interior of Africa and Persia and as far east as the Persian Gulf. Hither were brought gold, ivory, slaves, ostrich feathers, ebony and dates, and in exchange the Carthaginian traders exported wheat, meal, wine, ornaments and gaudy clothes, much the same as worn by many of those peoples at the present day. After the Persian conquest, many of the merchant princes of Tyre and other Phoenician cities emigrated to Carthage, and thus the city grew in wealth and commerce. At one time she is said to have possessed territory having a sea line of 1,400 miles and containing 300 cities. In the silver mines of Spain she employed not less than 40,000 men. The Carthaginian merchants did not carry for hire, but dealt in their own commodities, thus requiring an extensive system of warehouses and shipping facilities. They inaugurated a system of marine insurance and made loans on bottomry. It has been supposed that their leathern money was in the nature of bank bills.

Thus we see that Greece controlled the commerce of the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea, while Carthage dominated that of the western half. Both of these nations reached their golden era of prosperity, their commercial zenith, about three hundred years before Christ; both declined and gave way to a stronger power about the same time, and to the same power. While these nations were thus dominating the commerce of the Mediterranean there was growing a power in Italy that was to conquer and supplant them both. Like the sturdy tree which grows slowly that it may knit its fibers closely, Rome required five hundred years before she was sufficiently strong to wrest the commercial and political supremacy of the Mediterranean from Greece and Carthage. She was founded about 750 B. C. and began her conquest against Carthage and Greece about 250 B. C.