    38

    The Carthaginians soon started colonies, planting settlements

    straight across Africa's northern lip, and bringing distant Spain into the

    Carthaginian sphere of influence.  In the barnyard of Europe's central

    sea, the Carthaginian superorganism was soon at the top of the pecking

    order.

    Though the population of Carthage was small, its power was

    vast.  Why?  On those rare occasions when Carthaginians went to war,

    their armies were accompanied by mobs of foreign troops.  Their

    astonishingly flexible cavalry came from one north African tribe--the

    Numidians.  Their slingers--slingshot-wielding equivalents of today's

    sharpshooters--came from yet another North African nation: the

    Balearics.  And their infantry was supplied by the peoples of Libya.73

    Since the Carthaginians were on top of the heap,  everyone wanted to

    share in their good fortune.

    Then a tribe that had been in diapers when Kart-Hadasht's first

    buildings went up decided to challenge Carthage's supremacy.  At first

    the idea seemed like a joke.  The Carthaginians were the most skillful

    sailors in the world.  The upstarts, on the other hand, had no idea of

    how to rig a sail or work an oar.  In fact, they didn't even know how to

    build a ship.

    All that soon changed.  The shore-bound challengers were

    Romans.  What they didn't know, they were more than willing to learn.

    In 260 B.C. the enterprising citizens of the Italian city state managed to

    find the wreck of a Carthaginian warship that had run aground.

    Roman military engineers pored over the battered vessel, examining

    every detail.  They took it apart and noted each trick of the boat's

    construction.  Then they built a copy of their own.  When the Roman

    technicians tested their imitation warship, it worked as well as the

    original.  So the Romans rapidly hammered together an entire fleet,

    turning out a startling 220 ships in only three months.74  These

    traditional landlubbers were now the proud possessors of a navy.

    The soldiers of the seven-hilled city set out on the seas for

    conquest.   Rome attacked Carthage's central base for Mediterranean

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