Note 967 — Chapter XCVII · SICILIAN AND ITALIAN GREEKS. — AGATHOKLES.

Diodor. xx. 17. The Roman consul Regulus, when he invaded Africa during the first Punic war, is said to have acquired, either by capture or voluntary adhesion, two hundred dependent cities of Carthage (Appian, Punica, c. 3). Respecting the prodigious number of towns in Northern Africa, see the very learned and instructive work of Mövers, Die Phönikier, vol. ii. p. 454 seqq. Even at the commencement of the third Punic war, when Carthage was so much reduced in power, she had still three hundred cities in Libya (Strabo, xvii. p. 833). It must be confessed that the name cities or towns (πόλεις) was used by some authors very vaguely. Thus Posidonius ridiculed the affirmation of Polybius (Strabo, iii. p. 162), that Tiberius Gracchus had destroyed three hundred πόλεις of the Celtiberians; Strabo censures others who spoke of one thousand πόλεις of the Iberians. Such a number could only be made good by including large κῶμαι.