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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