It is probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among the Orientals and the Carians more especially it was far older, and it was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it. By the system of foreign recruiting war was converted into a vast pecuniary speculation, which was quite in keeping with the character and habits of the Phoenicians.

It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad, that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their occupation in Africa from a tenure of hire and sufferance to one of proprietorship and conquest. It appears to have been only about the year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the natives. This change enabled them to prosecute a husbandry of their own on a great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been desirous to employ their capital as landlords as well as traders, and to practise agriculture on a large scale by means of slaves or hired labourers; a large portion of the Jews in this way served the merchant-princes of Tyre for daily wages. Now the Carthaginians could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil by a system akin to that of the modern planters; slaves in chains cultivated the land - we find single citizens possessing as many as twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages of the surrounding region - agriculture appears to have been introduced among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt - were subdued by force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (nomades) on the borders; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents. About the period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians. These formed the "towns and tribes (ethne) of subjects", which appear in the Carthaginian state-treaties; the former being the non-free Libyan villages, the latter the subject Nomades.

To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage over the other Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby-phoenicians. These included, on the one hand, the smaller settlements sent forth from Carthage along the whole northern and part of the north-western coast of Africa - which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists - and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona), Hadrumetum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa) - the second city of the Phoenicians in Africa - Thapsus (in the same quarter), and Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli). In what way all these cities came to be subject to Carthage - whether voluntarily, for their protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians, or by constraint - can no longer be ascertained; but it is certain that they are designated as subjects of the Carthaginians even in official documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage. They were not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but contributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (90,000 pounds); moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms[3]. Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence preserved to it, less perhaps from its own power than from the pious feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors; in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations a remarkable feeling of reverence presenting a thorough contrast to the indifference of the Greeks. Even in intercourse with foreigners it is always "Carthage and Utica" that stipulate and promise in conjunction; which, of course, did not preclude the far more important "new town" from practically asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North - African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly expresses it, converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet[4]; to Phoenicise them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor the policy of Carthage.

The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because the change doubtless took place gradually. The author just mentioned names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno is meant who lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome. The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline in the great cities of the Phoenician mother-country, in Sidon and especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities, particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the Latin communities.

But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage; its maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period, a not less powerful development.

In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian settlement at Gades (Cadiz). Besides this they possessed to the west and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of the silver mines; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces. They made no effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for traffic and for shell and other fisheries; and they had difficulty in maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes. It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned among the cities tributary to Carthage; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades. Ebusus and the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged from these stations.