The genius of the Carthaginians was warlike as well as commercial, and affords undeniable proof, that those qualities are by no means incompatible to the same people. It is almost impossible indeed to discover the real character of this great people. The Roman historians, their implacable enemies, constantly paint them in the blackest colours, to palliate the perfidious and merciless behaviour of their own countrymen towards that unfortunate republick. A fact so notorious, that neither Livy, nor any other of their writers, with all their art, were able to conceal it. The Greek historians, whose countrymen had suffered so greatly by the Carthaginian arms in Sicily and all the other islands in the Mediterranean, betray as strong a prejudice against them as the Roman. Even the respectable Polybius, the only author amongst them who deserves any degree of credit, is plainly partial, when he speaks of the Carthaginian manners. The Romans continually charge them with the want of publick faith, and have handed down the Punica fides as a proverb. I shall take notice of this scandalous charge in another place, where I shall show how much more justly it may be retorted upon the Romans.
As the desire of gain is the chief spur to commerce, and as the greatest men in Carthage never thought it beneath them to engage in that lucrative employment, all the historians have represented the whole body of the people as so insatiably fond of amassing wealth, that they esteemed even the lowest and dirtiest means lawful, that tended to the acquisition of their darling object. “Amongst the Carthaginians,” says Polybius, when he compares the manners of that people with those of the Romans, “nothing was infamous that was attended with gain.[198] Amongst the Romans nothing so infamous as bribery,[199] and to enrich themselves by unwarrantable means.” He adds in proof of his assertion, that, “at Carthage all the dignities, and highest employments in the state were openly sold.[200] A practice, he affirms, which at Rome was a capital crime.” Yet but a few pages before, where he inveighs bitterly against the sordid love of money, and rapacious avarice of the Cretans, he remarks that, “they were the only people in the world to whom no kind of gain appeared either infamous or unlawful.”[201] In another place where he censures the Greeks for aspersing Titus Flamius the Roman general, as if he had not been proof against the gold of Macedon, he affirms, “that whilst the Romans preserved the virtuous manners of their forefathers, and had not yet carried their arms into foreign countries, not a single man of them would have been guilty of a crime of that nature.”[202] But though he can boldly assert, as he says, “that in his time many of the Romans, if taken man by man, were able to preserve he trust reposed in them inviolable as to that point, yet he owns he durst not venture to say the same of all.” Though he speaks as modestly as he can to avoid giving offence, yet this hint is sufficient to convince us, that corruption was neither new nor uncommon at that time amongst the Romans. But as I shall resume this subject in a more proper place, I shall only observe from Polybius’s own detail of the history of the Carthaginians, that unless when the intrigues of faction prevailed, all their great posts were generally filled by men of the most distinguished merit.
The charge of cruelty is brought against them with a very ill grace by the Romans, who treated even monarchs themselves, if they were so unhappy as to become their prisoners of war, with the utmost inhumanity, and threw them to perish in dungeons, after they had exposed them in triumph to the insults of their own populace.[203]
The story indeed of Regulus has afforded a noble subject for Horace, which he has embellished with some of the most beautiful strokes of poetry, and that fine ode has propagated and confirmed the belief of it, more perhaps than the writings of all their historians. But as neither Polybius nor Diodorus Siculus makes the least mention of such an event (though the Greeks bore an equal aversion to the Carthaginians) and as the Roman writers from whom we received it, differ greatly in their accounts of it, I cannot help joining in opinion with many learned men, that it was a Roman forgery.
The Greek writers accuse them of barbarism and a total ignorance of the belles lettres, the study of which was the reigning taste of Greece. Rollin contemptuously affirms, that their education in general amounted to no more than writing and the knowledge of merchants accounts; that a Carthaginian philosopher would have been a prodigy amongst the learned; and then asks, “what would they have thought of a geometrician or astronomer of that nation?” Rollin seems to have put this question too hastily, since it is unanimously confessed; that they were the best ship builders, the ablest navigators, and the most skilful mechanicks at that time in the world: that they raised abundance of magnificent structures, and very well understood the art of fortification; all which (especially as the use of the compass was then unknown) must of necessity imply a more than common knowledge of astronomy, geometry, and every other branch of mathematicks. Let me add too that their knowledge in agriculture was so eminent;[204] that the works of Mago the Carthaginian upon that subject were ordered to be translated by a decree of the senate for the use of the Romans and their colonies.
That the education of their youth was not confined to the mercantile part only, must be evident from that number of great men, who make such a figure in their history; particularly Hannibal, perhaps the greatest captain which any age has ever yet produced, and at the same time the most consummate statesman, and disinterested patriot. Painting, sculpture, and poetry, they seem to have left to their more idle and more luxurious neighbours the Greeks, and applied their wealth to the infinitely nobler uses of supporting their marine, enlarging and protecting their commerce and colonies. What opinion even the wiser part of the Romans had of these specious arts, and how unworthy they judged them of the close attention of a brave and free people, we may learn from the advice which Virgil gives his countrymen by the mouth of his hero’s father Anchises.[205] I have endeavoured here to clear the much injured character of this great people from the aspersions and gross misrepresentations of historians, by proofs drawn from the concessions and self-contradictions of the historians themselves.
The state of Carthage bears so near a resemblance to that of our own nation, both in their constitution (as far as we are able to judge of it) maritime power, commerce, party divisions, and long as well as bloody war which they carried on with the most powerful nation in the universe, that their history, I again repeat it, affords us, in my judgment, more useful rules for our present conduct than that of any other ancient republick. As we are engaged in a war (which was until very lately unsuccessful) with an enemy, less powerful indeed, but equally rapacious as the Romans, and acting upon the same principles, we ought most carefully to beware of those false steps both in war and policy, which brought on the ruin of the Carthaginians. For should we be so unhappy as to be compelled to receive law from that haughty nation, we must expect to be reduced to the same wretched situation in which the Romans left Carthage at the conclusion of the second Punick war. This island has been hitherto the inexpugnable barrier of the liberties of Europe, and is as much the object of the jealousy and hatred of the French as ever Carthage was of the Romans. As they are sensible that nothing but the destruction of this country can open them a way to their grand project of universal monarchy, we may be certain that delenda est Britannia will be as much the popular maxim at Paris, as delenda est Carthago was at Rome.... But I shall wave these reflections at present, and point out the real causes of the total ruin of that powerful republick.
Carthage took its rise from a handful of distressed Tyrians who settled in that country by permission of the natives, like our colonies in America, and actually paid a kind of rent, under the name of tribute, for the very ground on which their city was founded. As they brought with them the commercial genius of their mother country they soon arrived at such a state of opulence by their frugality and indefatigable industry, as occasioned the envy of their poorer neighbours. Thus jealousy on the one hand, and pride naturally arising from great wealth on the other, quickly involved them in a war. The natives justly feared the growing power of the Carthaginians, and the latter feeling their own strength, wanted to throw off the yoke of tribute, which they looked upon as dishonourable and even galling to a free people. The contest was by no means equal. The neighbouring princes were poor and divided by separate interests, the Carthaginians were rich and united in one common cause. Their commerce made them masters of the sea, and their wealth enabled them to bribe one part of their neighbours to fight against the other, and thus by playing one against the other alternately, they reduced all at last to be their tributaries, and extended their dominions near two thousand miles upon that continent. It may be objected that the conduct of the Carthaginians in this case was highly criminal. I grant it: but if we view all those master strokes of policy, and all those splendid conquests which shine so much in history, in their true colours, they will appear to be nothing more than fraud and robbery, gilded over with those pompous appellations. Did not every nation that makes a figure in history rise to empire upon the ruin of their neighbours? did not France acquire her present formidable power, and is she not at this time endeavouring to worm us out of our American settlements by the very same means? but though the motives are not to be justified, yet the conduct of the Carthaginians upon these occasions, will afford us some very useful and instructive lessons in our present situation.
It is evident that the mighty power of these people was founded in and supported by commerce, and that they owed their vast acquisitions, which extended down both sides of the Mediterranean quite into the main ocean, to a right application of the publick money, and a proper exertion of their naval force. Had they bounded their views to this single point, viz. the support of their commerce and colonies, they either would not have given such terrible umbrage to the Romans, who, as Polybius observes, could brook no equal, or might safely have bid defiance to their utmost efforts. For the immense sums which they squandered away in subsidies to so many foreign princes, and to support such numerous armies of foreign mercenaries, which they constantly kept in pay, to complete the reduction of Spain and Sicily, would have enabled them to cover their coasts with such a fleet as would have secured them from any apprehension of foreign invasions. Besides ... the Roman genius was so little turned for maritime affairs, that at the time of their first breach with Carthage they were not masters of one single ship of war, and were such absolute strangers to the mechanism of a ship, that a Carthaginian galley driven by accident on their coasts gave them the first notion of a model. But the ambition of Carthage grew as her wealth increased; and how difficult a task is it to set bounds to that restless passion! thus by grasping at too much, she lost all. It is not probable therefore that the Romans would ever have attempted to disturb any of the Carthaginian settlements, when the whole coast of Italy lay open to the insults and depredations of so formidable a maritime power. The Romans felt this so sensibly in the beginning of the first Punick war, that they never rested until they had acquired the superiority at sea. It is evident too, that the Romans always maintained that superiority: for if Hannibal could possibly have passed by sea into Italy, so able a general would never have harrassed his troops by that long and seemingly impossible march over the Alps, which cost him above half his army; an expedition which has been, and ever will be, the wonder of all succeed ing ages. Nor could Scipio have landed without opposition so very near the city of Carthage itself, if the maritime force of that people had not been at the very lowest ebb.
The Carthaginians were certainly greatly weakened by the long continuance of their first war with the Romans, and that savage and destructive war with their own mercenaries, which followed immediately after. They ought therefore, in true policy, to have turned their whole attention, during the interval between the first and second Punick wars, to the re-establishment of their marine; but the conquest of Spain was their favourite object, and their finances were too much reduced to be sufficient for both. Thus they expended that money in carrying on a continental war, which would have put their marine on so formidable a footing, as to have enabled them to regain once more the dominion of the sea; and the fatal event of the second Punick war convinced them of the false step they had taken, when it was too late to retrieve it.