CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF CARTHAGE
The city of Carthage was the culmination in history of the commerce, ambition, and military prowess of the Phœnician people. It was a city which never quite reached the first rank, yet always threatened to seize the supremacy. As a collaborator with the Persians in the great invasion of Greece, Carthage sent her forces against Sicily, only to meet an equal discomfiture. Later she wrought the great city of Rome to frenzies of terror, or hatred. Carthage appears constantly throughout Grecian and Roman history, but it seems well to place here a brief and consecutive story of her career as a city. The picturesque legends of the foundation will be found in Appendix A. The date to be accepted by historians was long uncertain, but seems now to be fixed at 818 B.C. Utica and Gades (now Cadiz) were founded earlier than Carthage, but the feverish ambition of the city of Dido soon told.[a]
Carthage so greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, as to acquire a sort of federal pre-eminence over all the Phœnician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumetum, and Leptis—all original Phœnician foundations, and enjoying probably even as dependents of Carthage a certain qualified autonomy—besides a great number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed population called Liby-Phœnicians. Three hundred such towns—a dependent territory covering half the space between the Lesser and the Greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile—a city said to contain 700,000 inhabitants, active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous—and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain,—all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.
[813-600 B.C.]
But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth century B.C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a foundation legend decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elissa, daughter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus [or Sicharbas] priest of Hercules [Melkarth] in that city—is said to have been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Hercules; a considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamours of her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Sichæus; a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new colour by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city: and it has been imagined with some probability that she is identical with Astarte, the divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally established, as Gades and Tarsus were founded under those of Hercules—the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns. Phœnician religion and worship were diffused along with the Phœnician colonies throughout the larger portion of the Mediterranean.
The Phocæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages westward established the colony of Massalia (as early as 600 B.C.), were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the Carthaginians—the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly known. In Greek authors the denomination Phœnicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians as well as the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is meant. But it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gades, and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa and without the Straits of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians. Many of the other Phœnician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seem to have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthage even at the period of her highest glory sent Theori with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Hercules; the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries before, when the Persian empire was in its age of growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Cambyses with their fleet in its plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably preserved their colony from subjugation.[b]
THE SITE AND EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE
The point of land still called Capo Cartagine, which projects from the eastern side of the Gulf of Tunis, near the entrance of the Goletta, was in ancient times more nearly a peninsula than it is now, and corresponds exactly with the description given by Thucydides of the sites selected for the purposes of commerce by the Phœnicians. Its height, which is still nearly five hundred feet above the sea, afforded a good lookout; and as a shelter for ships the qualities of the bay are familiar from the description of Virgil, Æn. 1, 160. It was in this way that all the principal colonies of Phœnicia arose, and in this sense Carthage may have owed its origin to the times when Sidon was predominant among the Phœnician cities. But its rapid rise to power was due to a colony from Tyre about the end of the ninth century B.C. The circumstances which led to the migration of Dido belong to the special history of that city. The colony first established itself on the hill called by the Greeks Byrsa, still recognised in the elevated ground which bears the name of St. Louis. It is now only about one hundred and ninety feet above the level of the sea; but its height above the neighbouring ground, on which its strength depended, has no doubt been diminished by the accumulation of ruins around its base. The name, which, from its resemblance to the Greek word for hide, gave rise to the story of Dido’s purchase of as much land as a hide would cover, is Phœnician, and denotes a fortress. Like the Cadmea at Thebes, which it resembled in name, it was the place of arms of the original settlers, the magalia of the civil population being gathered around the base, and gradually forming the New City, the signification of the name Carthage, by which both parts collectively are known, as Neapolis (Naples) has absorbed its older neighbour, Palæpolis. The work of excavating for themselves a dock, in which Virgil represents them as engaged at the arrival of Æneas, would soon follow their settlement; for, though they came with arms in their hands, they came rather as merchants than as warriors, and their first accessions of population were from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who flocked to them for the purpose of trade. It was probably in the same place, on the southern side of the peninsula, where we now see the remains of two basins, designed to hold the war navy of Carthage, in the day of its power. They have become a salt marsh; but under the Byzantine emperors, and after the Mohammedan conquest, they retained their ancient use.
We have much cause to regret the diffidence or vanity which made Sallust decline to speak of Carthage, because he had not space to do justice to such a theme. In the wreck which has taken place of ancient literature, even a few lines from his pen would have given us information which we now seek in vain. Its history naturally divides itself into three periods: from its foundation to the year 480 B.C., when its wars in Sicily began; from the year 480 to 265 when its wars with Rome began; and finally, from 265 to 146, when it was destroyed. We are entirely destitute of any continuous history for the first of these periods. The primary cause of its rapid increase is no doubt to be found in the fertility of the soil, and the fortunate selection of its site, midway between the seats of art and civilisation in Asia and the rich countries in the southwest of Europe,—within an easy distance also of the coasts of southern Italy and the islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. The richest portion of the traffic with these western regions, that with the south of Spain, was kept to itself by Phœnicia, during the time of its ascendency; but as a compensation for its exclusion from the mines of Tartessus, Carthage enjoyed ready access to the interior of Africa, by the caravans, in which the nomadic tribes conveyed the salt and the dates with which the north of Africa abounds, across the Sahara to the countries on the Niger, and brought back thence gold-dust, precious stones, and slaves. They had traffic with the natives of Ethiopia by a different channel. They had visited and colonised the western coast of Africa, as low down as Arguin, and dealt with the natives by dumb barter, receiving gold-dust from them in exchange for their own wares.
[600-520 B.C.]
As the Carthaginian fleet was defeated in 600 B.C. by the force of a single Greek city, Phocæa, its naval power was at that time not very great. Sixty years later they came again into conflict off Corsica with less advantage to the Phocæans, now expelled from their home by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. A great change had taken place in Asiatic history. Soon after the first conflict of these powers, Tyre underwent a siege by Nebuchadrezzar, in which, whether captured or not, it suffered so severely that it was never able to regain its former ascendency; and from this time we may date the entire independence of Carthage, and its succession to that dominion in the West which had hitherto belonged to Tyre. This increase of power is connected with the name of Hanno; not the same who commanded the expedition to the western coast of Africa, but of a generation earlier, and living about the middle of the sixth century B.C. According to Dio Chrysostom, “he made the Carthaginians to be Libyans instead of Tyrians, and to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia, and to acquire much wealth, and many emporia and harbours and triremes, and an extensive dominion both by land and sea.” These words plainly imply, that in the time, and by means of the measures of Hanno, Carthage, from being a dependency of Tyre, became a substantive state, having its seat in Africa; and that a great extension of its wealth and its power, both by sea and land, took place at the same time and under the same auspices. In an historian, we should have inferred from the phrase “that he had caused the Carthaginians to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia,” that he had been the leader of a large emigration from Tyre, to which this increase was owing; in a rhetorician it appears to mean nothing more than the preceding clause, namely, that before his time Carthage had been virtually a portion of Phœnicia, but henceforth was an independent African power. That such was the effect of the decline of Tyre after the siege by Nebuchadrezzar is certain; and even if no large part of its population migrated at once, during the siege and after it, the decay of its prosperity and the loss of its independence would naturally attract them towards Carthage, which was already powerful and able to protect itself. Such an increase, coupled with the decline of the Tyrian power throughout the western Mediterranean, would account for the sudden start which Carthage appears to have made in the sixth century B.C. The military talents of Mago, who lived between the middle and end of this century, contributed to the same result. He organised their military forces, and prepared the way for the extensive wars which the Carthaginians carried on in Sicily.
[480 B.C.]
Cambyses, after the conquest of Egypt, wished to have attacked Carthage, the submission of Cyrene and Barca having brought his frontier into contact with theirs; but the Phœnicians, who must have furnished the fleet for this purpose, refused to engage in hostilities against their own colony. Darius solicited the aid of Carthage in his projected invasion of the Greeks, but without success. When Xerxes renewed his father’s undertaking, he entered into a treaty with the Carthaginians, in virtue of which, in the same year in which he crossed the Hellespont, they poured a large army into Sicily, gathered from Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, as well as all their African territories. The battle of Himera was as fatal to the plans of Carthage as Salamis and Platæa to those of Xerxes; but Sicily continued for a long time to be the scene of struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks, till both were absorbed in the growing empire of Rome.[c]
MOMMSEN’S ACCOUNT OF CARTHAGE
The Semitic race stands amongst and yet apart from the peoples of the old classical world. The base of the former is the East, of the latter the Mediterranean; and as war and migration advanced the frontiers and threw the races amongst one another, a deep sense of dissimilarity still divided and yet divides the Indo-Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelitish, and Arabian nations. This is also true of that Semitic people which more than any other has extended itself westward; namely, the Phœnician or Punic race. Their first home is the narrow strip of coast between Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, which is called the plain—that is Canaan. This is the only name which the nation applied to itself—in Christian times the Libyan peasant still called himself a Canaanite; but to the Hellenes Canaan was the “Purple Country,” or the “Land of the Red Men,” Phœnicia, and in the same way the Italians were accustomed, as we are ourselves, to call the Canaanites Phœnicians.
The country is well adapted to agriculture; but above all the excellent harbours and the abundance of wood and metals are favourable to trade, which here, where the superabundance of the eastern continent stretches far into the Mediterranean Sea with its numerous islands and harbours, may have first started in all its importance to man. What courage, sagacity, and enthusiasm can contribute, the Phœnicians called into play to unite the East and West and give full development to commerce and what it involves, as navigation, manufacture, colonisation. At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The region of their commerce extends from Sierra Leone and Cornwall as far as the Malabar coast; through their hands pass the gold and pearls of the East, the Tyrian purple, slaves, ivory, lion and panther skins from the interior of Africa, Arabian incense, the linen of Egypt, clay pottery and wines from Greece, Cyprian copper, Spanish silver, English tin, the iron of Elba.
In contrast to the Indo-Germanic aptitude for political organisation, the Phœnicians, like all Aramaic nations, lacked the inspiring idea of self-governing freedom. In the best days of Sidon and Tyre, Phœnicia was the eternal apple of discord of the powers which ruled on the Nile and the Euphrates, and was subject now to the Assyrians, now to the Egyptians. With half their force the Hellenic cities would have made themselves independent; but the sharp-sighted men of Sidon calculated that the barring of the caravan routes towards the East or of the Egyptian harbours would be more costly than the heaviest tribute, and consequently they paid their taxes punctually to Nineveh or Memphis, as the case might be, and when nothing else would serve, even fought the kings’ battles with their ships.
And as at home the Phœnician placidly endured the oppression of their masters, so abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful ways of a commercial policy for one of conquest. Their colonies are factories; to them it was of more importance to take their wares from the natives and bring others to them than to acquire broad lands in distant countries and accomplish there the slow and difficult work of colonisation. They even avoided war with their competitors; almost without resistance they allowed themselves to be driven out of Egypt, Greece, Italy, and in the great sea fights which were fought in early days for the dominion of the western Mediterranean, at Alalia and Cyme it was the Etruscans, not the Phœnicians, who bore the brunt of the battle against the Greeks. If, on occasion, competition could not be avoided, the matter was compromised as well as might be; no attempt was ever made by the Phœnicians to conquer Cære or Massalia.
Still less, of course, were the Phœnicians inclined to wars of aggression. The sole instance in ancient times of their taking the offensive on the battle-field, was in the Sicilian expedition of the African Phœnicians, which ended with the defeat of Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (480), and then it was only as obedient subjects of the great king and in order to avoid taking a share in the campaign against the eastern Hellenes, that they took the field against the Hellenes of the west, as their Syrian kinsmen, in the same year, had to submit to joining with the Persians in the battle of Salamis.
This was not cowardice; the navigation of unknown waters in armed vessels demands brave hearts, and the Phœnicians have often shown that such were to be found among them. Still less was it the want of persistence and individuality in the sense of nationality; rather have the Aramæans, with an obstinacy to which no Indo-Germanic people ever attained, and which to us of the West appears as either more or less than human, defended their nationality against all the seductions of Greek civilisation, as well as against all the coercive force of both eastern and western despots, alike with the weapons of the spirit and with their blood. It is the want of a political sense which, though co-existing with the liveliest racial feeling and the most faithful adherence to the mother-city, still characterises the essential nature of the Phœnicians. Freedom had no attractions for them, nor did they possess any lust of rule; “they dwelt careless,” says the Book of Judges, “after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure,” and in possession of riches.
Amongst all the Phœnician settlements none throve more quickly nor more securely than those which the Tyrians and Sidonians had founded on the south coast of Spain and in the north of Africa, in regions where neither the arm of the great king, nor the dangerous rivalry of the Grecian sailors had reached, but where the natives stood face to face with the foreigners as the Indians to the Europeans in America.
Amongst the numerous and flourishing cities on these shores one was pre-eminent, the “New City” of Karthada, or, as the westerns called it, Karchedon, or Carthage. Though not the earliest settlement of the Phœnicians in this region, and perhaps originally a city standing under the protection of the neighbouring Utica, the oldest Phœnician city in Libya, she soon outstripped her neighbour and even the mother-country, owing to the incomparable advantages of her position and the eager activity of her inhabitants. She stood not far from the (former) estuary of the Bagradas (Mejerda) which flows through the richest grain-bearing district of North Africa on a fertile elevation of the soil, which is even now set with villas and covered with olive and orange groves, and which sinking gently towards the plain ends on the sea side in a promontory encircled by the waves. Situated near the centre of the Gulf of Tunis, the greatest haven of North Africa, where that beautiful stretch of water offers the best anchorage for large ships and the most excellent springs gush close to the shore, this place is so peculiarly favourable to agriculture and commerce and the connection between the two, that not only did the Tyrian settlement there become the first commercial city of the Phœnicians, but in Roman times also, Carthage, though scarcely restored, became the third city in the empire, and even to-day under no very favourable conditions a flourishing town of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants still exists. The agricultural, mercantile, and industrial prosperity of a city in such a position and with such inhabitants explains itself; but we need some answer to the question as to how this settlement developed a political power such as no other Phœnician city possessed.
[450 B.C.]
Before the stream of Hellenic migration which was pouring itself westward in unrestrained flood, which had already thrust the Phœnicians from Greece itself and from Italy, and was preparing to do the like in Sicily, Spain, and even Libya, the Phœnicians were compelled to make some kind of stand if they did not wish to be utterly annihilated. Here, where they had to do with Greek merchants and not with the Great King, it was not enough for them to submit in order to be allowed to carry on their trade and industry in the old fashion, in return for the payment of a tax. Cyrene and Massalia had already been founded; already the whole east of Sicily was in the hands of the Greeks; it was high time for the Phœnicians to make resistance in earnest. The Carthaginians assumed the task; in long and obstinate wars they set a bound to the encroachment of the Cyrenæans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself west of the desert of Tripoli. Moreover, the Phœnician settlements in the west of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks with Carthaginian help, and gladly and voluntarily added themselves to the dependants of the powerful kindred city. These important successes, which belong to the second century of the town, and which saved the southwestern portion of the Mediterranean to the Phœnicians, of themselves gave the city which had won them the hegemony of the nation and at the same time an altered political position. Carthage was no longer a mere merchant city; she aimed at the supremacy over Lydia and over a portion of the Mediterranean Sea because she was compelled to do so.
It was probably the after effect of these foreign successes which first induced the Carthaginians to pass from the position of tenants and occupants by concession to that of actual owners and conquerors. In the 300th year of Rome the Carthaginians seem to have first freed themselves from the payment of ground-rent, which they had hitherto been obliged to deliver to the natives. Thus it became possible to cultivate the soil on a large scale for themselves. Even as landowners, the Phœnicians had always relied on making use of their capital and on cultivating the fields to a great extent, by means of slaves or hired workmen; thus a great part of the Jews were employed in this fashion for a daily wage by the Tyrian merchant princes. The Carthaginians could now exploit the rich Libyan soil to an unlimited extent through a system analogous to that of the planters of the present day. Chained slaves tilled the ground—we find that individual citizens possessed as many as twenty thousand of them. More than this. The agricultural towns in the neighbourhood were forcibly subdued, and the free Libyan peasants transformed into fellahs, who paid their masters a tribute of the fourth part of the produce, and were subject to a regular system of recruiting in order that Carthage might have an army of its own. Feuds with the wandering shepherd tribes (νομαδες) on the frontiers were constant; but a chain of fortified military posts secured the pacified districts and these tribes were slowly pushed back into the deserts and mountains, or compelled to recognise the Carthaginian supremacy, pay tribute, and furnish troops.
Besides this the dominion of Carthage was finally extended over the rest of the Phœnicians in Africa, the so-called Liby-Phœnicians. These consisted partly of the smaller bands of settlers which had been led from Carthage to places along the whole northern and part of the northwestern coast of Africa, and cannot have been without importance, since at one time thirty thousand such colonists were settled on the Atlantic shore alone; and partly of ancient Phœnician settlements, which were especially numerous on the coast of the modern province of Constantine and of the Beylik of Tunis, and included, for example, Hippo, later called Regius (Bonah), Adrumetum (Susa), the lesser Leptis (south of Susa),—the second city of the African Phœnicians,—Thapsus, and greater Leptis (near Tripoli). How it came about that all these towns placed themselves under the command of Carthage, and whether they did so voluntarily to shelter themselves from the attacks of the Cyrenæans and Numidians or under compulsion, cannot now be discovered; it is certain that they were described in official documents as subjects of the Carthaginians, were obliged to pull down their walls and had to pay taxes and render military service to Carthage.
Thus the Tyrian factory had become the capital of a powerful North African empire, which reached from the desert of Tripoli as far as the Atlantic sea, and though it is true that in the western half (Morocco and Algiers) it contented itself with a somewhat nominal occupation of the coast, on the other hand in the wealthier East it ruled over the modern districts of Constantine and Tunis, as well as over the interior and was continually advancing its southern frontiers; the Carthaginians, as an ancient author significantly remarks, had changed from Tyrians into Libyans.
The period in which this transformation of Carthage into the capital city of Libya took place is all the more difficult to determine since the change was doubtless effected by degrees. The author just referred to mentions Hanno as the reformer of the nation; if this is the same man who lived in the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as the perfecter of the new system, which was presumably worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries of the city of Rome.
Side by side with the rise of Carthage went the decline of the great Phœnician cities in the mother-country, of Sidon and especially of Tyre, whose prosperity was ruined partly as the result of internal commotions, partly by pressure from without, in particular the sieges by Shalmaneser in the first century of Rome, by Nebuchadrezzar in the second, and by Alexander in the third. The noble families and the ancient commercial houses of Tyre removed for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city and brought thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. When the Phœnicians came into touch with Rome, Carthage was emphatically the first Canaanite city as Rome was the first Latin community.
But the dominion over Libya was only one-half of the Carthaginian power; their maritime and colonial supremacy had, at the same time, developed not less formidable proportions. In Spain the chief seat of the Phœnicians was the ancient Tyrian settlement in Gades (Cadiz); west and east of the latter they also possessed a chain of factories, and in the interior the territory of the silver mines, so that they occupied the modern Andalusia and Granada, at least their coasts. Ebusus and the Balearic Isles the Carthaginians had themselves colonised at an early period, partly for the sake of the fisheries, partly as advance posts against the Massaliots with whom, from this base, they carried on an eager war. Similarly by the end of the second century of Rome the Carthaginians had established themselves in Sardinia, which they exploited in exactly the same way as Libya.
[450-350 B.C.]
In Sicily, finally, it is true that the roads from Messana and the eastern and larger half of the island had early fallen into the hands of the Greeks; but by help of the Carthaginians the Phœnicians maintained themselves, some in the smaller islands in the neighbourhood, the Ægates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra, of which the colony in Malta was especially flourishing; some on the western and northwestern coasts of Sicily, where, from Motya, and later from Lilybæum, they kept up relations with Africa and from Panormus and Solœis with Sardinia. The interior of the island remained in possession of the native Elymi, Sicani, and Sicels.
All these settlements and possessions were considerable enough in themselves; but they were of still greater importance as the pillars of the Carthaginian dominion of the sea. By the possession of the south of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the west of Sicily and Melita, in union with the prevention of Hellenic colonisation on the eastern Spanish coast, as well as on Corsica and in the neighbourhood of the Syrtis, the lords of the North African coast closed their seas against the foreigner and monopolised the western waters. The Phœnicians had indeed to share the Tyrrhenian and Gallic seas with other nations; but this might be tolerated so long as the Etruscans and Greeks counterbalanced each other there, and with the former as the less dangerous rival, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks.
But after the downfall of the Etruscan power, which, as is usually the case in alliances entered into under stress of circumstances, Carthage had probably not exactly used all her strength to avert, and after the frustration of the schemes of Alcibiades, when Syracuse was indisputably the first Greek naval power, this system of balance could no longer be maintained. As the rulers of Syracuse began to aim at the dominion over Sicily and lower Italy, and over the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas, the Carthaginians had perforce to pursue an energetic policy. The first result of the long and obstinate struggle between them and their opponent, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367), a prince as powerful as he was infamous, was the annihilation or reduction to impotence of the central Sicilian states, in the interest of both parties, and the partition of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians. But each party constantly renewed the attempt to dislodge its rival. Four times the Carthaginians were masters of all Sicily, save Syracuse, and were baffled by its strong walls; almost as often the Syracusans under able leaders, such as the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, appeared to be almost as near success. But gradually the balance became more and more in favour of the Carthaginians. Meantime the struggle on the sea was already decided. Pyrrhus’ attempt to restore the Syracusan fleet was the last. When it had failed the ships of the Carthaginians ruled the whole western Mediterranean without a rival; and their attempts to occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum showed what they could do and what was their object. Side by side with this went the endeavour to gradually monopolise the maritime trade of these regions against both foreign countries and their own subjects; and it was not a Carthaginian practice to shrink forever from the violence required to further an object. A contemporary of the Punic war, Eratosthenes, the father of geography, testifies that any foreign sailor, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians on his way to Sardinia or the Straits of Gades, was thrown by them into the sea.
[350-283 B.C.]
Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the first Punic war, describes the Carthaginian government as having passed from a monarchy into an aristocracy or a democracy inclining towards oligarchy; for he calls it by both names. The conduct of business lay first of all with the council of Elders, which like the Spartan Gerusia consisted of two annually appointed kings and twenty-eight Gerontes, who also, as it appears, were elected year by year by the citizens. It was this council which to all intents and purposes carried on the business of the state; for example, it took the steps necessary for war, gave orders for levies and recruiting, appointed the general, and gave him a number of Gerontes as colleagues, from amongst whom the subordinate commanders were as a rule taken; to it the despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether a larger council stood side by side with this small one; in no case was it of much importance, nor does it appear that any special influence appertained to the kings; their chief function was that of supreme judges, as they are not unfrequently styled (suffets, prætores). The general’s power was greater; Isocrates, an elder contemporary of Aristotle, says that at home the Carthaginians obeyed an oligarchical government, but in the field a monarchical one, and so the office of the Carthaginian general is described by Roman authors as that of a dictator, although the Gerontes joined with him must have, practically at least, limited his power, as must also the regular account which was unknown to the Romans and which he had to render on laying down his office. Above the Gerusia and the officials stood the body of the hundred and four, or, more briefly, the hundred, or judges, the chief bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. This was not part of the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, took its rise in the aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements in that constitution. Owing to the system of purchasing offices and the small number of the members of the highest court, a single Carthaginian family, that of Hago, which was pre-eminently distinguished for its wealth and military glory, threatened to unite the administration in war and peace, with the charge of justice, in their own hands; this led, about the time of the decemvirs to a change in the constitution and the establishment of this new authority.
It appears that although the Carthaginian citizens were not expressly limited to a passive assistance at the discussion of questions concerning the state, as was the case in Sparta, yet practically their influence in such matters was very slight. At the elections to the Gerusia a system of open bribery prevailed; at the appointment of a general the people were indeed consulted, but probably only when in reality the appointment had already been made on the suggestion of the Gerusia; and in other matters the people were only referred to when the Gerusia thought good or could not agree. Popular tribunals were unknown in Carthage. The impotence of the citizens was probably an essential condition of their political organisation; the Carthaginian messes, which are mentioned in this connection and compared to the Spartan pheiditia, may have been fraternities conducted on an oligarchical basis. We even hear of a distinction between “citizens” and “manual workers,” which leads us to suppose a very degraded position for the latter, and perhaps no rights at all.
Regarded as a whole, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a government by capitalists, such as is conceivable in a citizen community without a well-to-do middle class, and consisting on the one hand of a crowd owning no property and living from hand to mouth, on the other of great merchants, estate owners and noble magistrates. Nor was Carthage without that infallible token of a corrupt city oligarchy: the system of enriching the impoverished masters at the cost of the subjects by sending them to the subordinate communities as treasurers and superintendents of forced labour. Aristotle describes this as the main cause of the tried stability of the Carthaginian constitution. Down to his time no revolution worth mentioning had been effected in Carthage, either from above or beneath; the crowd remained leaderless in consequence of the material advantages which the ruling oligarchy was in a position to offer to all ambitious or distressed members of the upper class, and were compensated by the crumbs which fell to them from the master’s table in the form of bribes at elections or in some other fashion.
Of course with such a government there could not fail to be a democratic opposition; yet even at the time of the first Punic war this was completely powerless. Later on, partly under the influence of the defeats suffered, their political influence is seen rapidly increasing, and far more rapidly than that of the similar and contemporary Roman party; the popular assembly began to give the final decision in political questions and broke the all-powerful influence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. A patriotic and reforming energy prevailed in the opposition; still we cannot overlook the fact that it rested on a corrupt and rotten foundation. The Carthaginian citizenhood, which well-informed Greeks have compared to the Alexandrian, was so corrupt that in this respect it deserved to be powerless, and it might well be asked what good could come from revolutions where, as in Carthage, the scamps were instrumental in making them.
From a financial standpoint Carthage maintained in all relations the first place among the cities of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phœnician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all Greek states, and her revenues are compared to those of the Great King. Polybius calls her the richest city in the world. The close relation between Phœnician agriculture and capital is characteristic. The idea of never acquiring more land than could be properly cultivated is quoted as a leading principle of Phœnician agriculture. The Carthaginians also made their profit out of the wealth of the country in horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, in which, according to the testimony of Polybius, Libya at that time surpassed all other countries on earth by reason of her nomad tribes.
As in the exploitation of the soil, so also in the exploitation of their subjects the Carthaginians were the instructors of the Romans; through them was poured into Carthage the ground-rent “of the best part of Europe” and of the fertile North-African districts, which in some regions, for instance in Byzakitis and on the lesser Syrtis, was superabundantly favoured. In Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, learning and art seem to have been generally dominated by Hellenic influence, but were not neglected; a considerable Phœnician literature existed, and at its conquest the city was found to contain valuable libraries and many treasures of art, though it is true that these had not been produced in Carthage but carried off from the Sicilian temples. But intellect also was here at the service of capital; even the general distribution of certain kinds of knowledge and in particular of an acquaintance with foreign languages, in which Carthage may at this period have stood almost on a line with imperial Rome, shows the thoroughly practical direction which was given to Hellenic culture in Carthage.
The superiority of Carthage is not expressed merely in the amount of her revenue; amongst all the important states of antiquity it is here alone that we find the economical principles of a later and more advanced period; we hear of foreign government loans, and in the money system we find, besides gold coins, a piece of money of a material in itself worthless, a thing elsewhere unknown to antiquity. In fact, if the state were a speculation, none would ever have fulfilled its task more brilliantly than Carthage.
WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE
[283-264 B.C.]
For more than a century the feud between the powers of Carthage and Syracuse had ravaged the beautiful Sicilian island. The war was carried on on both sides partly by political propaganda, Carthage maintaining relations with the aristocratic-republican opposition party in Syracuse, and the Syracusan dynasties with the national parties in the Greek cities that paid tribute to Carthage, and partly by means of mercenary armies with the aid of which Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as the Phœnician generals, had fought their battles. As both sides used the same methods, the contest was carried on with a disregard for truth and honour unknown in the history of occidental peoples. The Syracusans were finally defeated. In 314, before the breaking out of the war, Carthage claimed only a third of the island, that lying west of Heracleia Minoa and Himera, and had recognised the hegemony of the Syracusans over several of the eastern states. The expulsion of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (276) left the greater part of the island, especially Acragas, in the possession of Carthage, only Tauromenium and the southeastern end remaining to Syracuse. About 283 a Campanian troop that had served under Agathocles, and had continued marauding on their own account since his death, had established themselves in Messana, the second largest city on the eastern coast, and seat of the anti-Syracusan party. They massacred or drove out the citizens, divided the women, children, and houses among themselves, and settling down to complete possession of the city soon became the third power in the island. The Carthaginians witnessed these proceedings by which the Syracusans received a powerful adversary as neighbour instead of a kindred or friendly people, without displeasure; with the support of Carthage the new-comers, or Mamertines (Sons of Mars), arranged themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely withdrawal of this king restored to the Carthaginians all their powder.
A young Syracusan officer Hiero, son of Hierocles, who had drawn attention to himself by reason of his close kinship to Pyrrhus and the bravery with which he had fought in the battles of that king, was appointed head of the Syracusan army (274). By his moderation and wise generalship he won the confidence of all his supporters, dismissing the mercenaries, reorganising the citizen-militia, and trying first as general, later as king, at the head of civic troops to restore the vanished power of Hellas. With the Carthaginians, who in conjunction with the Greeks had driven Pyrrhus from the island, the Syracusans were at that time at peace; their nearest enemy being the Mamertines, kinsmen of the hated mercenaries. In alliance with the Romans, who about this time sent their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium, Hiero turned towards Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero was made king of the Siceliotes (269), he succeeded in confining the Mamertines within the limits of their own city, and after the siege had lasted several years they were reduced to extremity—finding themselves unable longer to defend the city unaided against Hiero. A conditional surrender was impossible, the axe of the executioner that had been used upon the Rhegium Campanians was surely awaiting those of Messana in Syracuse, and their only hope of safety lay in delivering over the city either to the Carthaginians or the Romans, to both of whom the conquest of the important position must be of equal moment.
Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender to the Phœnicians or to the lords of Italy was doubtful; after long hesitation the majority of the Campanian citizens finally decided to give over possession of their fortress to the Romans. Rome was striving for the possession of Italy as Carthage was for that of Sicily; but the plans of neither power could proceed further at that time. Just here lay a reason for the wish of each that a neutral power should permanently establish itself on its frontier—Rome looking to Tarentum, Carthage to Syracuse and Messana. Failing this, each preferred to occupy the cities itself rather than let them fall into the hands of its rival.
[264 B.C.]
As Carthage had tried in Italy,—Rome being on the point of taking Rhegium and Tarentum,—to acquire these cities for herself, her purpose being frustrated by a mere accident, so Rome now saw in Sicily an opportunity of bringing Messana into her symmachy; should this design fail, the city could not hope to remain independent or turn Syracusan, she would be thrown into the arms of Phœnicia. Would it be justifiable to let an opportunity, that would certainly never return, escape, of taking possession of the natural bridge-head between Sicily and Italy and by securing it to themselves by a firm and, for very good reasons, reliable occupation; was it also justifiable to sacrifice, in renouncing all hopes of Messana, dominion over the last free passage between the eastern and western seas and Italy’s free trade? Other objections than those of sentiment and justice arose to the occupation of Messana. That it must lead to a war with Carthage was the least among them, Rome having nothing to fear from such a war, however serious it might be. It was far more important that she should, by the crossing of the sea, depart from the purely Italian and continental policy she had formerly pursued; so the system founded by the authors of Rome’s greatness was relinquished for another, the consequences of which no one could foresee. It was one of those moments when reflection and calculation cease, and faith in a personal star and that of the fatherland alone gives courage to grasp the hand that beckons out of the future, and follow wherever it may lead. Long and earnestly the Senate deliberated upon the offer of the councillors to send the legions to the assistance of the Mamertines, yet came to no decision. But among the citizens to whom the matter was finally referred, there was alive that consciousness of strength of a power that has come to greatness through its own efforts. The conquest of Italy gave to the Romans, as that of Macedonia had given to the Greeks, courage to blaze a new political path for themselves; support of the Mamertines was warranted by the power of protection claimed by Rome over various Italian states. The Italians from over seas were taken into the Italian confederation, and on the proposition of the citizens’ council it was decided to send them aid (264).
ROME AND CARTHAGE
[264-241 B.C.]
Let us compare the powers of Rome and Carthage. Both were agricultural and commercial states with no other claim to greatness; the subordinate and eminently practical position held by the arts and sciences was in both virtually the same, the balance being perhaps a trifle in favour of Carthage. But in Carthage commercial industries led those of agriculture, while in Rome they occupied second place, so that at a time when the Carthaginian farmers were leaving their fields to become large slave and property owners the great mass of the Roman citizens were still at the plough. In Carthage was to be seen the opulence peculiar to great commercial centres, but Rome still displayed in her customs and police regulations old-fashioned strictness and economy.
When the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome they represented the parsimony of the Roman councillors as exceeding all accounts, alleging that a single silver service did duty for the entire council, and confronted its members anew in every house to which they were invited. In all else the systems of both states were alike, the judges of Carthage and the senators of Rome rendering decision according to the same code. The strict dependence in which the Carthaginian governing bodies held their officials, their orders to the citizens not to learn the Greek language and to hold no intercourse with any Greek save through the medium of an interpreter, reveal the same spirit as that that inspired the Roman laws, but in contrast to the cruel and stupid severity of these Carthaginian regulations, the Roman fines and censure laws appear mild and reasonable. The Roman Senate which opened its doors to the highest ability worthily represented the nation and had no reason to fear her or her officials. The Carthaginian Senate, on the contrary, represented only the aristocratic families and was held under the most jealous governmental control; an institution founded on mistrust above and below it could be sure neither of the support of the people nor of security from usurpation by officials. To their freedom from these defects may be ascribed the steadily onward course of Roman politics that never retreated a step because of disaster, and did not forfeit fortune’s favour through indolence or irresolution. Carthage on the other hand would frequently retire from the contest that one last rally might have won, and weary or unmindful of her great national undertakings would let the structure she had half erected tumble to the ground only to commence her work anew after a little time. Between the capable Roman official and the governing board existed a perfect understanding, whereas at Carthage these two classes were at constant war, the officials often being forced to take stand against their superiors and make common cause with their political opponents.
Both Carthage and Rome had dominion over people of many races besides their own. Rome admitted to citizenship district after district of these aliens, even leaving a legal way of entrance open to the Latins themselves; whereas Carthage shut herself off entirely from all her dependencies, extending to them not the slightest hope that she would ever admit them to such equality. Rome permitted the communities that were of kindred race to have a share in the spoils of war, and sought by specially favouring the rich and influential of tributary states to reconcile them to Roman dominion. Carthage not only kept for herself all the fruits of victory, but deprived tributary cities of their most useful privilege—free trade. Rome never entirely denied independence to even the weakest of her subject states, and never burdened them with heavy taxes; Carthage sent representatives far and wide and laid even the ancient Phœnician cities under exorbitant toll, treating their inhabitants little better than they would slaves. In the African-Carthaginian alliance there was thus not a single commonalty, with the exception of Utica, which did not aspire to bettering its political and material condition through the fall of Carthage, whereas in the Roman-Italian alliance there was not one which by rebelling against a rule that promoted its material welfare, without directly challenging the political opposition party, would not have lost more than it gained. When the Carthaginian statesmen thought to have linked to Carthage Phœnician dependencies by arousing their fear of a Libyan revolt, and the dominant states by the payment of oracle money to their temple, they were carrying mercantile practices over into a field where these did not belong. Experience showed that the Roman symmachy, despite the less solid front it opposed to Pyrrhus, held together like a wall of rock; while that of Carthage fell apart like a spider-web as soon as a hostile power set foot on the soil of Africa. This was evidenced at the landing of Agathocles and Regulus, and also in the war against the mercenaries, while the spirit that prevailed in Africa is shown by the fact that the Libyan women voluntarily sacrificed their jewels to the mercenaries to carry on the war against Carthage. In Sicily she appears to have acted with greater moderation, hence to have obtained better results. Her dependencies there were allowed relative freedom in their trade with other lands, using metal money exclusively from the first in their domestic commerce, and enjoying in every respect greater liberty of action than was accorded to Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into her hands, all this would have soon been changed; but no such thing occurred, and under the wise moderation of Carthaginian rule, favoured by the unfortunate disarray of the Sicilian Greeks, a distinctly Phœnician party arose in Sicily; Philinus of Acragas, for example, writing the history of the great war after the loss of the island to the Romans entirely from a Phœnician point of view. Still, on the whole, the Sicilians, as subjects and as Hellenes, must have borne an aversion to their Phœnician masters equal to that shown by the Tarentians and the Samnitians towards Rome.
The revenues of Carthage undoubtedly exceeded those of Rome, but this was offset by the greater likelihood of her sources of supply, tributes, and toll, running dry at the moment when she needed them most, and by the far greater expense entailed by her system of warfare. From a military point of view the resources of both states, though differing in kind, were fairly equal. At the conquest of Carthage her population (including women and children) numbered seven hundred thousand, and must have remained about the same up to the end of the fifth century of Rome. At this time Carthage could, in case of necessity, place a force of forty thousand hoplites in the field. But, desirable as it seemed to her that the great body of her citizens should be trained to military service, she could not bestow upon artisans and factory-workers the rugged physical strength of the countryman, nor could she overcome in the Phœnician his inborn aversion to the work of war. In the fifth century of Rome there fought in the Sicilian army a general’s guard or “sacred body” of twenty-five hundred Carthaginians; a century later with the exception of the officers there was to be found in all the Carthaginian forces, notably in her Spanish army, not a single Carthaginian. The main body of the Carthaginian army was formed of Libyans, this people furnishing recruits, who, in the hands of capable officers, developed into unequalled foot-soldiers and light cavalry-men. To these were added soldiers from all the dependent states of Libya and Spain, the celebrated sling-shooters of the Balearic Isles who seemed to have occupied a position between that of allied troops and mercenaries, and lastly the soldiery gathered in, in case of necessity, from other lands. Such a military force could be increased to almost any strength, and in courage, skill in handling weapons, and in the ability of its officers could compare favourably with that of the Romans. But when mercenaries had to be employed, a long time must elapse before it could be got in readiness, whereas the Roman militia could at any moment be sent into the field. There was further nothing to hold the Carthaginians together but the hope of gain and loyalty to the flag, in contrast to the Romans who were united by all the ties that bound them to the fatherland. To the Carthaginian officer of the usual type, the hired troops fighting under him, yes, even the Libyan peasants, were of no more account than are cannon balls in our day; hence shameful deeds were committed, as for example the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their commander Himilco, which had for result a serious Libyan revolt. The term “Punic faith” as used thereafter in connection with the Carthaginians came to be a standing reproach that injured them not a little. All in all, Carthage experienced every ill that fellah and mercenary armies can bring into a land, finding on more than one occasion that paid allies were more dangerous than sworn foes.
The faults of such a military system could not be overlooked by the Carthaginian rulers who were constantly trying to amend them; treasuries were kept filled and arsenals stocked that more mercenaries might be hired at any moment; and particular attention was given that branch of the service that corresponded in ancient times to our modern artillery—war-machines in the use of which Carthaginians were more expert than the Siceliotes, and elephants there having superseded the ancient war-chariots. But the chief bulwark of the nation, the navy, was the object of special pride and care. In the construction, as in the navigation of ships, the Carthaginians far surpassed the Greeks. In Carthage were built the first ships having three banks of oars, and the rigging of their sailing ships mostly quinqueremes rendered them as a rule swifter than those of the Greeks; the rowers, slaves belonging to the state, who never left the galleys, were admirably drilled, and the captains were skilled and fearless. In this respect Carthage was decidedly superior to Rome, who with her own few ships and those of allied Greece could not think of measuring forces on the open sea with a power that at that time ruled supreme over the western Mediterranean. If we summarise the knowledge gained by a close comparison of the resources of the two great powers, we find that at the beginning of their conflict they stood on very nearly equal ground. To this, however, we feel obliged to add that Carthage, though exerting all her powers of genius and wealth to provide herself with artificial means of offence and defence, could not yet make good her lack of native troops, or compensate the need of an independent alliance. That Rome could be endangered only in Italy, Carthage only in Libya, was not to be denied, and equally undeniable was it that Carthage could not long escape such a peril.[d]
[241-195 B.C.]
The inevitable conflict between such neighbouring rivals as Rome and Carthage, came soon and lasted long. It brought forth great figures and impressive events on both sides.[9] In the first Punic war the Carthaginians, after the defeat of their fleet in the Ægates, lost their possessions in Sicily, and the groups of islands belonging to it, and were obliged to pledge themselves to the payment of thirty-two hundred talents. Immediately afterwards the bloody war, of more than four years’ duration (241-237), against the rebellious mercenaries broke out, in which the Libyan cities also took part, and in which Hamilcar’s generalship finally won the victory over the mutineers. In the meantime the Romans had taken possession of Sardinia, and the Carthaginians, who did not yet feel strong enough for a fresh war, had not only to relinquish formally the possession of that island, but also to pay an additional tribute of twelve hundred talents. Corsica was also snatched from them at the same time with Sardinia. After the suppression of the revolt Hamilcar crossed to Gades (Cadiz) with the army, to begin a war of conquest on the Pyrenæan peninsula. For nine years he fought successfully against the Spanish tribes, until in 229 he met death in battle. His son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who succeeded him, was able by peaceful means, rather than by war, to extend further the bounds of Carthaginian sovereignty. In 221, when Hasdrubal had fallen by the hand of a Gaul, the army chose Hamilcar’s famous son Hannibal commander-in-chief, a choice no one in Carthage dared oppose.
In the years 221 and 220 Hannibal completed the conquest of Spain as far as the Ebro; in 219 he took Saguntum, in spite of an alliance existing between it and Rome. This was the cause of the second Punic war (218-201), in which the Carthaginians, under the spirited leadership of Hannibal, who made his way across the Pyrenees and the Alps even into Italy, at first achieved great successes, but at last were overcome by the inexhaustible military resources and the marvellous endurance of the Romans, who carried on the war in four places at once.
After the defeat at Zama (202) peace was granted in 201 to Rome’s humbled rival under the following hard conditions: surrender of all but ten ships of war and of all elephants, the payment of ten thousand talents, the indemnification of Massinissa, and the promise not to take up arms again without the consent of the Romans. By wise measures Hannibal sought gradually to uplift his oppressed fatherland; but in this way prejudiced the interests of the aristocracy, who before this had been unfavourable to him, and who, with the help of the Romans, exiled him from Carthage (195).
[195 B.C.-697 A.D.]
After that Carthage was ruined within by controversies between the aristocratic and the popular parties, and threatened from without by Massinissa who, set at the side of the Carthaginians by the Romans to watch them, and relying on his protectors, took from them one piece of their territory after another. The Romans, to be sure, from time to time sent commissioners to the spot, but only to give either no decision at all, or one unfavourable to the Carthaginians. Marcus Cato came there in 157 as one of these commissioners, and because the Carthaginians declined his offer to deliver an arbiter’s judgment (presumably an unfavourable one), he was from that time on extremely embittered against them, and consequently closed every speech in the senate with the words, “Censeo ceterum, Carthaginem esse delendam” (“Moreover, I think Carthage must be destroyed”).
When the Carthaginians at last, after the expulsion of the party of Massinissa (151) resisted the latter and were defeated, the Romans declared this a breach of peace, and in 149 sent the consuls, Manius, Manilius, and Lucius Marcius Censorinus, with eighty-four thousand men to Sicily. The Carthaginians begged for peace, but were required first to give three hundred children of the nobility as hostages, and to surrender all arms and munitions of war. When the Romans thereupon gave them the further command to abandon their city and settle again further inland, all classes and ranks united for the most desperate defence.
Thus began a last fearful conflict (third Punic war, 149-146), which ended with the conquest of Carthage by Publius Cornelius Scipio. Fire raged in the city seventeen days. A large portion of the inhabitants perished, the survivors were led into slavery. The city was razed to the ground, and the whole Carthaginian territory, with the exception of a few tracts that were given to the cities in alliance with the Romans, especially to Utica and Hippo, was made into the Roman province of Africa.
In 122, it was decided, on the proposal of Gaius Gracchus, to rebuild the city under the name of Junonia, and to plant there a colony of six thousand Roman citizens. However, the fall of Gracchus prevented the execution of the project. Julius Cæsar took it up again, but was not able to carry it out. The restoration did not begin, then, until under Augustus, who populated the city with three thousand Roman colonists and numerous natives from the vicinity.
The new city reached a high prosperity in the time of the empire, so that it took the second position, after Alexandria, among the cities of the empire outside of Rome. It was the seat of the Roman proconsul and of most of the other Roman officials, later also of a Christian bishop, and by reason of its favourable situation it soon became once more a rich seat of commerce, in which, however, there was no lack of schools of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and the other liberal arts.
LAST DAYS OF CARTHAGE
In 439 A.D. it was taken by the Vandals under Genseric, and was for almost a century the capital of the Vandal kingdom, until in 533 it was incorporated in the eastern Roman Empire by Justinian’s general, Belisarius. The latter restored the ruined fortifications, and called the city in honour of his emperor, Justiniana.[e]
The western conquests of the Saracens were suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed by the establishment of the house of Omayya; and the caliph Moawiya was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed, as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount. The ears of the Byzantine ministers were shut against the complaints of their poverty and ruin; their despair was reduced to prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiya acquired a just renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and Egypt. But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due to his successor Okbaben Nafi [Akbah]. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary, to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab, or Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry; and a circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known cities of Bugia and Tangier define the more certain limits of the Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the commodious harbour of Bugia, which in a more prosperous age is said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence.
[697 A.D.]
The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier, have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and opulence. The province of Mauritania Tingitana, which assumed the name of the capital, had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the more southern parts were seldom explored by the agents of luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citronwood, and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish. The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country, traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco, and at length penetrated to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert.
The river Sus descends from the western sides of Mount Atlas, fertilises, like the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate distance from the Canary, or Fortunate, Islands. Its banks were inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages without laws, or discipline, or religion; they were astonished by the strange and irresistible terrors of the oriental arms; and as they possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterwards sold for a thousand pieces of gold. The career though not the zeal of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship any other gods than thee.” Yet this Mohammedan Alexander, who sighed for new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes left him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene was dignified by an example of national virtue. An ambitious chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt, was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general. The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival. Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their scimitars, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate combat till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa, Zuhair, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of Carthage.
It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the faith, and to revolt to their savage state of independence and idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this view, and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its present decay, Kairawan still holds the second rank in the kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to the south; its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets. When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain. The vegetable food of Kairawan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs a precarious supply of rain-water. These obstacles were subdued by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of thirty-six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick wall; in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite, porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Kairawan became the seat of learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of Akbah and Zuhair, and the western expeditions were again interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son of the valiant Zobair maintained a war of twelve years, a siege of seven months, against the house of Omayyah. Abdallah was said to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox; but if he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity of his father.
The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph Abdul-malik to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was delivered to Hassan, governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to the important service. In the vicissitudes of war the interior provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But the seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder and more fortunate; he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of Africa; and the mention of scaling ladders may justify the suspicion that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian succours. The prefect and patrician John, a general of experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of the Eastern Empire; they were joined by the ships and soldiers of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of the Goths was obtained from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch. The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Kairawan, or Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost; the zeal and resentment of the commander of the faithful prepared in the ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the neighbourhood of Utica: the Greeks and Goths were again defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart of their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to the flames, and the colony of Dido and Cæsar lay desolate above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the old circumference was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century the second capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a college without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles V had stationed in the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive traveller.[f]
FOOTNOTES
[9] For a detailed account of the Punic wars, see Vol. V.
Phœnician Terracotta Chariot
Phœnician Bottle in Form of a Gourd