Chapter 17 THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.

264-240.

We are now come to the time when Rome became mixed up in wars with nations beyond Italy. There was a great settlement of the Phoenicians, the merchants of the old world, at Carthage, on the northern coast of Africa, the same place at which Virgil afterwards described ?neas as spending so much time. Dido, the queen who was said to have f