The Carthaginians

by B D Hoyos

  Carthage’s fleets were certainly crewed by citizens, as ancient sources insist. All the same, the very large ship numbers reported at various times – for instance 100 triremes and 300 other craft during Himilco’s operations in the early 390s, 200 in 340 during the war with the Greek liberator Timoleon, 300 or more quinqueremes in 256 when the Romans threatened Libya – needed tens of thousands of oarsmen. As noted earlier, a trireme properly required 170 of these and a quinquereme no fewer than 300. Even a fleet of 100 triremes, then, would call for 17,000 crewmen – to say nothing of officers and any shipboard soldiers – while 220 quinqueremes (the total accommodated in the circular naval port of later times) required no fewer than 60,000. It is rather hard to see Carthage alone being able to provide them all, even supposing that inhabitants of the city’s chora were liable to serve as well as the city-dwellers. Moreover, her Libyphoenician allies such as Utica, Hippacra and Lepcis are never mentioned as providing ships for her fleets (a contrast with Rome’s maritime allies in Italy). In fact, when Scipio arrived in 203 and put Utica under siege, the only Carthaginian naval movements reported were made by ships coming from Carthage. It does look likely, therefore, that the Libyphoenicians (and maybe Libyan coastal communities too) contributed only manpower to her navy.

  The republic always had warships available, but the details of naval administration are not recorded. The forested mountains of Libya would provide plenty of wood, such as oak from the Mogod and Monts de la Méjerda uplands north of the Bagradas river. Numidia’s forests may have been an extra resource. Carthaginian shipbuilding is vividly illustrated by the remnants of two warships found in 1969 on the sandy shallow seabed off Marsala (ancient Lilybaeum). They probably sank, or rather were sunk, in some battle or storm of the First Punic War; whether they were biremes, triremes or even quinqueremes is debated. The ram of one survives, while there is enough of the other’s wooden hull to reveal that it was built by a standard ancient method: once a spine of keel, stern-post and bow-stem was put together, horizontal courses of interlocking planks were fixed to it to form the shell of the craft; then the internal timber ribs were fixed to these. The shell was constructed using mortise-and-tenon joints (as in skilled joinery), with carefully cut tongues projecting from one plank to fit into matching slots in the next. In turn, a wooden dowel was driven at right-angles through each of these joins for added strength, while other dowels and nails fastened the vertical internal timbers to the shell. The deck or decks were finally built into this completed frame.

  Such hulls were not only strong but required remarkable skill to construct. The skills of the workforce are further illustrated by the Punic lettering – in several differing hands – on the keel and planks of the ‘Marsala wreck’, for their purpose was to identify the positions of the timbers in precisely the pattern needed. Ships could be built to a virtual blueprint under the supervision of literate overseers; the ordinary workmen may have been literate too as sometimes thought, but in fact they needed only to learn and recognise the standard letters. With forests readily accessible, a large number of ships could be built very quickly. Diodorus, as it happens, mentions that fire destroyed the dockyards in 368 – fire was an ever-present risk in such places – yet the Carthaginians were soon able to launch 200 ships to crush a rash naval offensive by Dionysius of Syracuse.76

  Carthaginian ships must originally have been built beside the roadsteads on the eastern shore, but later in the dockyards south of the old city, using the channel from the lake of Tunis. When the circular artificial port was built, probably in Hannibal’s day, this became the headquarters of the navy (Map 1A), but its dimensions and Appian’s description suggest that the shipbuilding yards lay elsewhere. The Carthaginians did use the port in 149 for building 50 hasty warships, but this was because the city was surrounded by besiegers. Where the navy was housed during the winter and between expeditions, before the ports were built, is unknown (moorings in the lake of Tunis might be guessed). To build, maintain, refurbish and eventually replace these hundreds of warships demanded not only crewmen aboard ship, but also craftsmen ashore with every kind of skill, from sailmakers and joiners to potters, bronze-smiths and armourers. Not all, perhaps, worked full-time for the navy alone, for in peacetime – which was fairly frequent – and in winter it would make fewer calls on craftsmen and suppliers. On the eve of a major expedition, contrastingly, there would be heavy demand for them.

  Carthage’s earliest recorded sea battle was the clash against the Phocaeans around 535 with a fleet of 60 penteconters; though a tactical defeat, it was a success in the longer run. Towards the end of the same century, the trireme became the dominant ship of the line: so the 200 warships which Diodorus reports for the expedition to Sicily in 480 will have been mostly or entirely triremes. This was an attack craft with sleek hull, narrow width and bronze-clad ram. Each oarsman pulled his own oar, with the rowing-benches along each side of the hull arranged vertically in threes. Space even for water was minimal, which meant that like penteconters it could not spend more than one or two days at sea before having to put in to land for fresh water (and cleaning out). If supply ships accompanied the fleet, longer continuous trips may have been feasible, but resupplying like this is rarely recorded. A larger warship called a quadrireme, claimed by Aristotle to be a Carthaginian invention, came into use around 400 (others credited it to Dionysius of Syracuse). It must have had oarsmen grouped in fours, perhaps two per oar, but quadriremes played smaller recorded roles in warfare than triremes or the later quinqueremes.

  The next sea battle reported in Carthage’s history was not fought until 406, off Mt Eryx on the west coast of Sicily, against the Syracusans – again a defeat, though this time only of a squadron. Over the following century, naval honours were about even between the Carthaginians and the Sicilian Greeks: there were defeats and setbacks (like storm damage) in 396, 311 and 307, but victories in 396 again, 368 and 309. It proved impossible to stop Agathocles invading North Africa in 310, but by 307 Carthaginian control of her own waters cut off the abandoned remnants of his army from escaping abroad (they sensibly changed sides instead). These seesaws of fortune may surprise, for the predominant view is that Carthage enjoyed clear naval superiority over every other state in the western Mediterranean at least until she fought Rome. The Carthaginians themselves may well have believed the stereotype. A general in Sicily in 264 warned the Romans not to involve themselves there, lest Carthage prevent them even from washing their hands in the sea. The war that followed was to destroy this over-confidence.

  The era after Alexander the Great’s death brought incessant wars to the eastern Mediterranean both on land and at sea, which in turn made the quinquereme (in Greek, penteres, supposedly invented by Dionysius of Syracuse) the main naval warship. The quinquereme did not become dominant in the west until later, it seems, for as late as 307 Diodorus still records triremes as the standard warship in clashes between Carthaginians and Sicilians. The design and mechanics of a quinquereme remain debated. Its oarage probably consisted of rowers grouped vertically in fives along the hull – two on a top bench pulling one oar, two more beneath them pulling another, and the fifth man pulling a third on the lowest bench – for a total of three hundred men, with room on deck for soldiers too. It was obviously heavier and more difficult to manoeuvre than a trireme, but it had a massive ram: the main tactic was, it seems, to try for a head-on blow against an enemy ship to hole it, then back off and turn against another while the first one sank. As well as soldiers the quinquereme could carry archers and even catapults, making it a formidable war machine. Styles could vary, for an improved version was owned (and perhaps designed) by one Hannibal the Rhodian around 250. When he and it fell into the Romans’ hands, they used it as the prototype of a new fleet which they launched in 242 to win the First Punic War.77

  Carthage’s late adoption of the quinquereme may have unexpected extra significance for history. After Agathocles’ final defeat, she fought only one more war in Sicily before 264 – a
gainst Pyrrhus of Epirus in 278–276 – which involved little sea-fighting. When war with Rome broke out, therefore, the quinquereme navy had not had serious combat experience, nor indeed had that generation of crews. As a result, the gigantic naval battles of the First Punic War may not have been fought by opponents who were as dissimilar as usually thought (historic sea-warriors versus venturesome landlubbers).

  CARTHAGE’S ARMIES

  Another of Carthage’s naval paradoxes is that the sea was not normally the dominant or chief element in her wars. After the Carthaginian and Etruscan expedition against the Phocaeans around 535 and before the first war with Rome in 264, her fleets generally operated in support of land campaigns. This was inevitable, since campaigns took place as a rule in Sicily or Sardinia – and occasionally in Libya when an enemy invaded. In the Second Punic War the navy played an even more secondary role to the great military operations of Hannibal and other generals.

  Carthage’s wars were primarily waged on land, to take and control territory or to repel attackers. It was noted earlier that down to the 6th Century her armies were probably small and already included hired contingents (Chapter IV). Citizen soldiers, all the same, were regularly involved too. They may be the ‘Phoenicians’ in the army sent to Sicily in 480, or some of that contingent. For the great expeditions from 409 on, citizen troops were recruited along with Libyans and mercenaries at least until the last years of the 4th Century. We meet other evidence too: Carthaginians arming themselves and sallying from their homes during a false alarm that Libyan rebels had broken into the city (this was around 379), and their descendants doing the same in 308 to defeat Bomilcar’s coup. Aristotle had been told that Carthage encouraged military valour by allowing citizens to wear decorative armbands to show how many campaigns they had fought; he plainly found no surprise in the report. Polybius’ dismissive claim about Carthaginians neglecting military service, except perhaps as cavalry, would apply at most to the 3rd Century, when their armies did consist largely of subjects and mercenaries. Yet even in his own account, citizen troops still appear from time to time: notably when the city’s mercenaries and Libyan subjects together revolted in 241, nearly forty years later when Hannibal recruited citizens as well as others to enlarge the army which he led to Zama, and in the city’s last wars when her forces were formed, of necessity, chiefly from Carthaginians defending their homeland.

  Just how many Carthaginian citizens served in an army is seldom reported, but we have a few indications. When the humiliated Himilco was forced to terms in 396 and sailed home with only his surviving citizen soldiers, 40 triremes were enough to carry them. Even if the decks were packed to danger point, not more than forty to fifty men can have travelled aboard each besides the oarsmen. Since a disastrous plague had killed thousands of the original expedition, both military and naval personnel, maybe some of the surviving Carthaginian soldiers plied the oars as well, but hardly more than 8–9000 citizens in all (seamen and soldiers) can have sailed for home. The original contingent of soldiers probably totalled between 5000 and 10,000.

  This would match the other figures recorded. Ten thousand Carthaginian citizen infantry, distinctively equipped with white shields, were part of the army defeated at the river Crimisus by Timoleon in 341, with 2500 of them forming a body called the Sacred Battalion (in Greek hieros lochos), recruited from wealthy aristocrats and expensively and showily accoutred. In the disaster, out of 10,000 dead from the Carthaginian army no fewer than 3000 were citizens. How many more were among Timoleon’s 15,000 prisoners is not known.

  When war with Agathocles broke out thirty years later, Hamilcar son of Gisco’s expeditionary army of 14,000 included 2000 citizen troops, ‘among whom’ (writes Diodorus) ‘were many of the aristocracy’. Agathocles’ arrival on Carthage’s doorstep the following year brought forth a uniquely large army of citizen troops, if Diodorus can be believed: 40,000 foot including once more the Sacred Battalion, along with 1000 horse and 2000 chariots (a war vehicle sometimes used by Carthaginian armies in this century). This meant perhaps some 45,000 men altogether, all of them citizens because ‘they did not wait for the soldiers from the countryside (chora) and the allied cities’. Such numbers, if closely or even roughly accurate, must have accounted for most Carthaginians of military age available in the city. (They suffered a humiliating defeat, partly through the treachery of the plotter Bomilcar.) In turn, ‘the soldiers from the chora’ may mean not solely, or mainly, rural citizens but also Libyan levies, while those from ‘the allied cities’ would be Libyphoenician contingents. Three years later three separate armies, totalling 30,000, were again ‘sent out from the city’ against the invaders, who had vulnerably split up their own forces. Many in these three armies must have been citizens again, but Diodorus specifically notes that Carthage was now so crowded with refugees from the countryside that sending out so many men relieved the pressure there. The armies probably then included Libyan and Libyphoenician soldiers as well, and maybe even mercenaries brought in from overseas, so the citizen elements cannot be estimated.

  Sixty years were to pass before another mention occurs of citizen forces. Even though the Romans’ first invasion of Libya in 256 almost brought Carthage to her knees, citizen combatants are not reported at any stage. Quite likely they were fully involved in the very large fleets of the time – up to 350 ships fought at Cape Ecnomus against the Roman invasion fleet, and 200 a year later off Cape Bon (the Hermaea Acra to Polybius) trying vainly to repel another. But in 240, with the city blockaded from Tunes by some rebel mercenaries and Libyans, while a small army operated rather fruitlessly in the countryside against others, Hamilcar Barca was elected general to lead out a second force of about 10,000 troops, made up of citizens, loyal mercenaries and even some deserters. Since he cannot have left Carthage herself undefended and there was still a navy of sorts in being, his citizen contingent (perhaps 6–7000 strong) would not represent anything like the total number of military-age Carthaginians at the time, but what that was cannot be guessed.

  The final appearance of citizen troops – before the special conditions of the Third Punic War – was in Hannibal’s army at Zama in 202. There they formed its second line together with Libyan infantry, while a corps of recently recruited foreign mercenaries stood in front of them and Hannibal’s own veterans from Italy behind. One wing of the army, too, consisted of Carthaginian (apparently citizen) cavalry. Unfortunately, and even though Hannibal had spent nearly a year training them, all these compatriots proved to be poor fighters against Scipio’s veterans.78

  Until the Punic Wars, or the later 4th Century at earliest, the total strengths reported for armies are not very plausible. Hamilcar’s expedition in 480 supposedly involved nearly one-third of a million troops – half of whom, the victors claimed equally implausibly, were killed at Himera. His grandson Hannibal’s army in 409 was reckoned at 200,000 foot and 4000 horse by Ephorus, one of Diodorus’ sources; by another, the Sicilian Timaeus of Tauromenium, at the more modest but not much more convincing total of 120,000. Diodorus then claims a death toll of 150,000 in Himilco’s plague-stricken army in 396 (no doubt the fanciful guess of Ephorus or Timaeus again). Half a century later, in 344, Mago the general in Sicily had a rather more credible 50-60,000 troops, with 300 war chariots, while three years later at the river Crimisus the army, including the Sacred Battalion and other citizen troops, supposedly numbered 70,000 foot and several thousand cavalry.

  If these mid-4th-Century army figures represent not just the troops operating in the field but an estimate of all Carthaginian forces in the island – field army and garrisons together – they may be rather more realistic than the colossal totals alleged for the 5th Century. Even so the estimates look more than a little exaggerated. There are, in fact, hints that the army at the Crimisus was smaller than claimed. Timoleon with at most 11,000 troops first crushed the Sacred Battalion and the other citizen infantry – 10,000 Carthaginians in all – as they forded the fast-flowing river; then the ensuing rout of
the rest of the army would be easier to understand if originally it numbered fewer than 60,000 (though it is possible that even 60,000 Libyan conscripts and foreign mercenaries might dissolve into simple panic when the citizen forces were smashed). Again, after losing 10,000 dead and 15,000 captured, the army ceased so completely to be a fighting force that at Carthage there were fears of an immediate Greek invasion.

  The forces reportedly ranged against Agathocles in Libya thirty years later – 40,000 in 310, 30,000 in 307 – look rather more reliable, facing invaders who never numbered more than 20,000. Over in Sicily in the same period, Hamilcar son of Gisco started operations with 2000 citizen troops, 10,000 Libyans, and 2000 Balearic and Etruscan mercenaries (the only appearance, incidentally, of Etruscans in Carthaginian service). On the other hand, his supposed 120,000-strong army later besieging Syracuse unsuccessfully is plainly another ludicrous exaggeration.

  The wars with Rome in turn involved armies rarely more than 60,000 or 70,000 strong, at any rate according to our chief sources. For instance, the army sent in 262 to relieve Acragas is given as 50,000 foot and 6000 horse, while two decades later the strains of the war reduced Hamilcar Barca’s to barely 20,000. His son Hannibal at Cannae in 216, on the other hand, commanded 40,000 foot and 10,000 horse, and at Zama fourteen years later an army rather smaller. Whether the Carthaginian army that Scipio defeated at Ilipa in Spain in 206 really numbered 74,000 (as Polybius states), or 54,500 (as Livy writes), or neither, is a moot question.

  As Polybius’ remarks show, the Carthaginians were famous – or notorious – for using mercenaries in their armies, whereas citizen and Libyphoenician soldiers and Libyan conscripts were forgotten in the stereotype. It was noted earlier that conscripts and foreign professionals are recorded at least from 480 on, when Hamilcar the Magonid recruited not only Carthaginians and Libyans but also Iberians (that is, Spaniards), Ligurians (from northern Italy), Gauls, Sardinians and Corsicans. His grandson Hannibal’s forces seventy years later consisted of Carthaginian citizens, Libyans and Iberians; then Diodorus reports the enrolment three years after that, in 407, of Libyphoenicians, Numidians, Mauri, and Campanians from Italy to serve alongside the citizen and Libyan divisions.79