The Carthaginians

by B D Hoyos

  The clash between father and son, which interests Justin and Orosius quite as much as the political events, may be a moralistic fiction as sometimes suggested; or on another interpretation, dramatises symbolically a conflict at Carthage between rival power sources on the old Phoenician model, palace versus temple. This interpretation in effect keeps the name ‘Malchus’ and views him as a genuine king, while not explaining why the rivals should be father and son. If the story is fiction of any type, another puzzle would be why it is made an intrusion into a separate political affair. The report of the son being crucified, in his priestly garb and in sight of the city, is lurid but not inevitably suspect: if such an event occurred, it would remain vivid in people’s memory for a long time.

  A more prosaic explanation of the clash could be that Carthalo, once appointed priest of Melqart, did put religion ahead of filial duty (just as Thomas à Becket would put religious before royal duty seventeen centuries later). Instead of defending his absent father’s interests, he left for Tyre at a critical moment, so enabling Mazeus’ enemies to gain the upper hand; then made the further mistake of seeming to join them when he returned. If he next emerged in full priestly regalia to see his father, he may just possibly have been trying to act as a religious peace-broker – a final mistake. For a powerful and resentful father to put his son to death is not impossible to believe: other cultures have similar and better-recorded examples, like the emperor Constantine and tsar Peter the Great. Whether Mazeus’ enemies had also tried to harness Melqart in their support – thus compromising Carthalo – can only be guessed, though that might explain why Mazeus crucified the god’s priest with his symbols of sanctity.

  Even if shorn of these details, in outline Mazeus’ story is of a leader becoming pre-eminent through military achievements in Libya and the islands, provoking opposition at home and crushing it, then being himself crushed in a political turnaround. Carthage’s increasing prosperity, and her growing influence over her sister Phoenician colonies along North Africa’s coasts, would almost certainly lead to sharper differences in riches and political strengths among her leading families, and so to greater competitiveness. Was Mazeus the first leader to enjoy a lengthy dominance over her affairs? This cannot be known, but his rise was, more likely than not, the product of some decades (if not generations) of social and political jousting among the élite. He may have been also the prime mover of the vigorous projection of the city’s power which developed during the 6th Century, and which was popular enough with all Carthaginians to be carried on long after he was gone, by the next dominant group.

  THE MAGONID ASCENDANCY

  That group (Justin records) was led by Mago and then his two sons Hasdrubal and Hamilcar. Hamilcar’s mother, and so probably Hasdrubal’s too, was a Syracusan, just one of the many intermarriages known in Carthaginian society. (Herodotus calls Hamilcar’s father Hanno and knows nothing of a Magonid family; his ‘Hanno’ looks like a mistake.) It is not certain that Mago’s political dominance followed directly on Mazeus’ fall, but there was probably no great interval, especially if Mazeus’ end dates to the 530s. That in turn would give about half a century for the first two generations of Magonid leaders, as Hasdrubal died before Hamilcar, and the latter then perished at the battle of Himera in 480. Mago and his sons succeeded in consolidating a family ascendancy which was to last more than a century. It was based partly on astutely handling political relationships at home – more astutely than Mazeus had done – and partly on skilful, even though not always prosperous, military leadership.

  The struggle between Mazeus and his enemies had been politically disruptive, for it had climaxed with them trying to unseat an appointed general (who may also have been sufete) and with him then seizing the city by military means though not by actual violence. It would be interesting to know whether Mago was part of the opposition, though he was not one of the leaders executed by Mazeus. The dominance that he in his turn enjoyed until his death was due, Justin stresses, to hard work and personal merit as well as military ability, all qualities which created prosperity and territorial expansion for Carthage.

  Mago’s only specific measure to earn mention was ‘regulating military discipline’ or, rather differently translated, ‘setting in order the military system’ (ordinata militari disciplina) – the first Carthaginian leader to do so, says Justin. Since Carthage had been waging wars before his time, it is not clear what the regulation would amount to, but a good possibility is that he brought military service more firmly under the regular authorities’ control. That Mazeus’ army had been more loyal to their leader than to the republic, even to the point of insurrection, suggests that the business of recruiting and maintaining soldiers (citizen and foreign) had been left to a general’s unfettered discretion. If Mago curbed this, he did so probably more in principle than practice, for he and then his sons effectively controlled the state in any case as generals, sufetes or both. The city’s arrangements for recruiting and paying off soldiers, perhaps too for their training and equipment, are other matters that he may have regulated. Certainly one suggestion, unfortunately unprovable, has been that he introduced the Greek-style formation called the hoplite phalanx, a line or successive lines of well-drilled, heavily-armed and closely-ranked infantry.

  Nothing is said about Mago regulating the Carthaginian navy – ancient writers tell us very little, in fact, about Carthaginian naval organisation and equipment in any period – but it is at least conceivable that Mago or his successors kept the city’s war fleet up to date. The trireme was invented in their time in the eastern Mediterranean: a sleek, manoeuvrable warship armed with a powerful bronze ram and rowed by up to 170 oarsmen seated in three levels one above the other. A fleet that went on relying on the smaller penteconter would invite disaster; but on the other hand triremes were more expensive. Carthage therefore needed to add to her resources if she was to update both her navy and her land forces.

  This would account for the Magonids’ continuing wars which, Justin says, were waged by all three leaders. As shown earlier, the Carthaginians in their first treaty with Rome, around 509, implicitly claimed control over Sardinia and Sicily, with archaeological evidence pointing to their dominating at any rate Sardinia’s most productive regions. These advances were not easily won. Concise though he is, Justin records Mago’s son Hasdrubal dying in battle in Sardinia, and Hamilcar later perishing in Sicily (though he does not mention the defeat at Himera itself). There was a setback in Africa, too. During the brothers’ shared rule the Libyans confronted Carthage in arms with a demand for the arrears of annual tribute, and after at least one battle – which the Libyans seem to have won – the city (as noted earlier) agreed to pay up rather than fight on. This decision made sense if Hasdrubal and Hamilcar reckoned that the proceeds from annexing resources overseas outweighed the cost (and indignity) of paying the tribute to their Libyan neighbours, not to mention the risk of a war and more defeats.

  What official positions they and their father held are not clearly reported. Justin summarily says that ‘they carried out and at the same time decided all business themselves’. Greek and Latin authors’ habit of turning Carthaginian magistracies into what they thought or guessed were the Greek and Roman equivalents leads him to describe both Mazeus and the Magonids simply as imperatores, generals, although he does add that Hamilcar held eleven ‘dictatorships’ (dictaturae, at Rome a short-term emergency office with sweeping powers) and celebrated four triumphi (at Rome, victory parades with sacred rituals). But even if Pompeius Trogus perhaps explained what Carthaginian institutions these were, his abbreviator does not. Eleven repeated ‘dictatorships’ hardly look like emergency appointments; on the other hand Justin later writes of Hannibal the Barcid being ‘consul’ at Carthage, meaning sufete. If he is being consistent in terminology (not that this is certain), Hamilcar the Magonid’s ‘dictatorships’ may be the best that Trogus and he could offer as the name for a combined sufeteship and generalship. The word does not have to imply a del
iberate contrast with the term imperator. Hamilcar is the only Magonid whose official position Justin records, even in this Romanised form, whereas he terms all these leaders imperatores. The word, then, describes their effective dominance, which was based on military leadership – a quality that Justin stresses for Mago and implies for the rest.66

  Hamilcar’s triumphal parades would probably be ritual processions through the streets, perhaps from the agora up to Byrsa and the temple of Eshmun with its sixty-step stairway, to show off to citizens and to the gods the booty and chief captives from his campaigns – a practice common enough in eastern lands like Assyria and Egypt, and indeed not unlike the Roman triumph. As it happens, Polybius mentions a similar parade – which he calls a thriambos, Greek for triumphus – staged at the end of another great African revolt, two and half centuries later in 237, when the victorious Hamilcar Barca had the captured rebel leader led through the city by young Carthaginians ‘inflicting every torment’ on him. A story is told by Polyaenus about Gisco, a Carthaginian leader recalled from exile in 341, who humiliated his defeated political enemies by placing his foot on their necks as they lay prostrate in chains: a gesture perhaps imitated from Pharaonic Egypt. But the idea that this was also what a general did during his victory procession is just a guess. Gisco, Polyaenus adds, then forgave his foes (pharaohs usually had theirs flayed).67

  The Magonids must often have been absent from the city; yet despite this and their intermittent, but sometimes serious, military defeats, they remained in control for decade after decade. The family obviously had strength in numbers. Mago had his two sons, each of whom had three of their own, and after them came further descendants. Other kinsmen, like the relatives of their wives and the husbands of any daughters, and non-kin supporters – especially among the adirim – can be supposed. Interlocking relationships of blood, wealth and political benefits would help explain the strength of the dynasty and its ability to recover from setbacks. Both Hamilcar, who perished in 480, and his brother Hasdrubal who had died earlier left three sons each, all of whom (Justin tells us) together ran the affairs of Carthage from then on. If Justin does not exaggerate, this may have been achieved through sharing out, and taking turns in, the available appointments – as sufetes, generals, priests and heads of pentarchies (if these existed by then). In practice only five of them must have done so, for Diodorus mentions that one of Hamilcar’s three, another Gisco, was exiled as a punishment after Himera. Even so it was a remarkable achievement for the others to collaborate in seeming harmony over some decades, while at the same time placating the rest of the city’s leading families whose share of effective power was held back.

  The next generation of Magonid ascendancy was when Carthage finally cut off the yearly tribute to her Libyan neighbours and set about imposing a steadily growing hegemony over them instead. Justin claims a wide, and not entirely plausible, range of conflicts in Africa: the ‘Africans’ forced to give up receiving tribute, war waged with the Numidians, and hostilities even against the Mauri or Mauretanians (who dwelt in Morocco). Trouble with the lords and minor kings of eastern Numidia’s peoples was probably inevitable as Carthaginian dominance spread westward, for there was no firm or sharp border, ethnic or physical, between Libya and Numidia. By contrast, the only clashes feasible with any Mauri would be by sea, in defence of Carthaginian trading-posts or colonies. No other evidence exists for clashes, but it was noted earlier how Justin’s claim may connect with the expedition recorded in Hanno’s Periplus. Meanwhile conflict in Sicily was very sensibly avoided, whereas trade prospered. When Syracuse under Gelon’s brother and successor Hieron joined the Italian Greek city of Cumae, near Naples, in war against the Carthaginians’ old allies the Etruscans and beat them soundly in 474 in a sea battle off Cumae, Carthage stayed neutral.

  Magonid rule during the 5th Century thus developed Carthage’s strengths at home and over areas that she could dominate. It was pointed out above that the older view of stagnation and economic regress during the century has had to be revised. Indeed by 415, when Syracuse was menaced by Athens, one proposal put to the Syracusans was to seek help from the Carthaginians because ‘they have acquired great amounts of gold and silver’ – though the suggestion got nowhere and the Carthaginians not long after proved more than happy to enrich themselves some more with Sicilian plunder, on a massive scale.

  Inevitably there would be critics and opponents, led by men or families who failed to win the share of offices and other appointments (to priesthoods, pentarchies and military commands) that they felt they deserved. After Himera, even though the dead Hamilcar’s memory was revered, his son Gisco was exiled in punishment for the defeat, dying at Selinus in western Sicily, a city with strong Carthaginian connections at the time. All the same, with brothers and cousins at the head of affairs, Gisco’s fate seems puzzling. Perhaps he was the only other Magonid with Hamilcar at the defeat and was singled out to be the scapegoat, whom his kinsmen could reject so as to retain the family’s grip on the state. Certainly his son Hannibal did not suffer lasting damage: in the later part of the 5th Century first he and then his cousin Himilco (whose father Hanno ‘the rb’ was, it seems, Gisco’s brother) became the dominant figures leading the state and commanding its armies.

  THE END OF THE MAGONIDS

  What prompted the renewed aggressiveness in Sicily from 409 on is not clear. Diodorus puts it down to Hannibal son of Gisco’s thirst for revenge against the Greeks who had defeated his grandfather at Himera – a rather limited motive, even if shared by his fellow citizens. The damage recently inflicted on Syracuse by the disastrous Athenian invasion of 415–413 may have made eastern Sicily look attractively weak. Still, Acragas, which had a thriving trade with Carthage, was mercilessly sacked and razed in 406 (Acragas’ tyrant too had fought at Himera). The inscription about the sack has already been quoted (Chapter VII). Possibly too Hannibal and Himilco, descendants of three generations of military high achievers, had as yet no military successes of their own, a problem for a dynasty much of whose claim to leadership relied on distinction in warfare.

  The Sicilian wars of 409–405 and 397–396 were the last led by Magonids, though only the first in a long series fought against Syracuse and her allies over a century and a half. The victories won by the cousins had their costs – the most notable and ironic of them being the end of Magonid power itself. Hannibal, after unusually ferocious campaigns that included destroying temples and tombs, perished of the plague in 406. Similar sacrileges a decade later supposedly brought about the ruin of Himilco’s expedition against Syracuse and its allies, forcing him to make a shameful peace, abandon his non-citizen troops, and return to Carthage with the citizen remnants of his disease-stricken army. There, shunned by all, he starved himself to death.

  It was most likely after his spectacular downfall that the court of One Hundred and Four was established (cf. Chapter III). An earlier start is just possible; since its purpose was to discipline generals who had misbehaved on campaign, the court could conceivably date to the 470s following Himera. Gisco’s exile as punishment for his father’s debacle at Himera might seem to support this; but his brothers and cousins were still in power then. Arguably they might feel they had to accept the creation of the One Hundred and Four to placate their fellow citizens, but Gisco could be exiled by other methods (as Mazeus had been), whereas such a court would have remained a standing threat to the family. It is hard to see them agreeing to it, and in fact it would have had nothing much to do for the next eighty years.

  Although Justin announces the court before Himilco’s catastrophe, his epitome is oddly wilful at this stage. He does not report how the Sicilian Greeks defeated Gisco’s father in 480 but merely that he was killed in battle, then claims that ‘Himilco’ succeeded him in Sicily. Having thus got Himilco’s time wrong, Justin entirely ignores his and Hannibal’s campaigns from 409 to 405 even though their most notable act was the sack of the greatest city in Greek Sicily apart from Syracuse. He is equally mute about
the resulting rise to power of Dionysius I at Syracuse, a tyrant who proved to be one of Carthage’s most enduring adversaries. Later on he claims that Dionysius was finally murdered by his own supporters – confusing him with his son-in-law Dion, who later ended the tyranny of Dionysius’ son but fell victim to treacherous friends.

  These errors and omissions are Justin’s own doing. A separately surviving contents list of the books of Trogus’ history shows that Trogus did narrate the sack of Acragas and other cities, followed by Dionysius’ rise. Justin’s erratic presentation here is a warning that his seemingly early start for the new court does not prove such a date. Carthage’s avoidance of overseas wars for decades after 480, and her successful imposition of hegemony over her Libyan neighbours, would hardly account for a court being established to try failed generals. Even the disgraced Himilco was not prosecuted in 396, though he would have been a prime candidate and he lived some miserable weeks, even months, at home before taking his own life. It seems likeliest that the court of One Hundred and Four was set up at some point after this, but still long enough before Aristotle’s time for the philosopher to be impressed by its status, powers and range.68