The Carthaginians

by B D Hoyos

  PEACE AND REVOLT

  The seemingly endless war was at last decided on the sea. The Romans raised a citizens’ loan in 242 to launch a brand-new fleet, again modelled on an up-to-date Carthaginian quinquereme (this one recently captured outside Lilybaeum). Somehow taken by surprise when the fleet arrived in west Sicilian waters unseasonally early in 241, the Carthaginians had a desperate scramble to resupply the blockaded ports with munitions and troops. In the first week of March a different Hanno sailed out with ill-prepared ships, poorly-trained crews, and laden transports. On the 10th, in rough seas, the consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus and his deputy, the praetor Marcus Valerius Falto, met the Carthaginians off the Aegates Islands just west of Drepana. Fifty of Hanno’s warships were sunk, 70 taken, and 10,000 prisoners captured. On his return to Carthage the authorities put him on a cross (ironically, the fate of the first Hanno at Messana twenty-three years earlier), while authorising Hamilcar at Eryx to negotiate peace.

  Unsurprisingly, the terms agreed on were painful. Carthage withdrew from western Sicily, three hundred years after the first campaigns by Mazeus. She paid Rome 1000 talents (6,000,000 Greek drachmas) at once, with another 2200 payable over ten years. Hiero was guaranteed against attack: that ancient rivalry, too, was done. Yet there was no ban on trade with Roman-dominated Sicily or Hiero, or any control over what the Carthaginians could do elsewhere. The implications for Rome of acquiring, in effect, the first province of a future empire took time to be realised: the subject Sicilians were lightly controlled until the 220s or even later, while Syracuse held on to a modest level of independence. The Romans were soon ready for business with Carthage once again, even ready to help their ex-foes when they fell into dire straits.

  Carthage had suffered rather fewer losses than Rome in ships and lives, but was financially desperate, especially after paying the 1000 talents. The war cost her a strategic and revenue-rich buffer in Sicily. It inflicted a severe blow to both her prestige and – more severely perhaps – her sense of security. The fleets had not in practice justified her reputation for unequalled naval skills, nor had most Carthaginian generals been any better than their Roman opposite numbers. Under the current Hanno the Great’s exacting supervision as general in Libya, countryside and towns had to pay the harsh taxes and levies described earlier: yet all that their rulers could show in return were losses and tragedies. It was not the first time that setbacks abroad caused a backlash in Africa, but this proved to be the worst.

  The republic misguidedly tried to bargain down the arrears of pay owed to Hamilcar Barca’s returned army. Hamilcar himself, no longer general, stayed in the background. The men – 20,000 foreign mercenaries and Libyan conscripts – were sent out with their families from Carthage to Sicca, nearly 200 kilometres inland, where Hanno tried but failed to negotiate reductions. The angry troops marched back to Tunes to force fresh talks. Then, just after the Carthaginians finally conceded their demands, a violent coup at Tunes late in 241 installed new and radical leaders who murdered the old commanders and instigated a revolt.

  The new generals were a Libyan, Mathos, a Campanian Roman deserter called Spendius, and Autaritus the leader of the Gallic mercenaries. What caused the revolt is not clear in Polybius’ narrative, the only detailed source. It may be that the radicals exploited Carthage’s current military weakness (she now had only Hanno’s small army in the countryside) and fears by the Libyan troops for their own fate once the foreign mercenaries were paid off and departed. Since most or all the Libyan communities promptly joined the revolt, the rebels no doubt hoped for a swift victory with plunder and the end of Carthage’s hegemony. The foreign mercenaries may well have looked forward to settling in Libya, on the lines of the Campanians at Entella and Messana in Sicily.

  The ‘Truceless War’, as Polybius calls it, lasted over three years with abrupt changes of fortune and a grim level of brutality by both sides. It again brought out the dogged and resourceful side of the Carthaginians when faced with possible disaster. With Hanno achieving little, Hamilcar was reappointed general during 240. He organised a small army of citizens and others, sortied from Carthage in spite of the rebels’ blockade, and put fresh vigour into the fightback by defeating Spendius beside the Bagradas and then marching inland to begin reimposing control. His resources were limited and his strategy risky. At one point he was surrounded by Spendius’ and Autaritus’ troops and by a force of Numidian cavalry, actuated perhaps by sympathy for their Libyan kinfolk as well as hopes of booty – but persuaded Naravas the Numidians’ leader to change sides and help him defeat the rebels. Naravas looks like a son of the Massylian king Zilalsan mentioned earlier (Chapter VIII), for an inscription set up by a Numidian lord at Mactar in 128 names an ancestor as Nrwt son of Zilalsan (Zllsan). Hamilcar promised the young prince one of his daughters in marriage, a promise he seems to have kept.

  Hamilcar’s strategy focused on the Libyan heartland and largely ignored the coastlands. There Carthage was blockaded from Tunes, Hippacra and Utica besieged, and Hanno (it seems) able only to keep the rebels from doing worse. Other misfortunes occurred: the mercenaries in Sardinia seized the island, slaughtered all the Carthaginians they could, and won over a force sent to confront them. Probably during 239 Hippacra and Utica both changed sides. The war’s savagery intensified – the rebels mutilating and killing their prisoners, Hamilcar retaliating (he had his elephants trample captives, a method imitated from Alexander’s successor generals). He then had to call on Hanno to combine forces with him, but their disagreements paralysed their military efforts. The authorities at Carthage directed the soldiers themselves – no doubt the citizen troops and officers – to decide between them: Hamilcar was chosen by the men, resuming operations with Hanno’s more compliant replacement and with Naravas’ sterling cavalry. Nevertheless Carthage’s troubles encouraged Mathos at Tunes to tighten the blockade into a closer siege for several months, roughly from late summer 239 until early 238.

  The Libyans, or at any rate their military leaders, were emphasising the solidarity of their movement by striking coins (in some cases, overstriking Carthaginian coins) with the Greek word Libyon, ‘of the Libyans’ (Illustration 24h). This and the coins’ find-spots in Sicily, not North Africa, suggest that they were used to pay traders from the island who dealt in arms and other supplies. Roman and Italian traders took part in this commerce too at first, leading to hundreds being intercepted by Carthaginian warships. After a Roman protest they were freed: a sensible step, since the Romans then banned such trading and rendered Carthage valuable other help, like repatriating thousands of war-prisoners ransom-free. Hiero of Syracuse, aware of the peril of losing Carthage as a counter-balance to Rome, was another generous helper.

  Even so the tide was very slow to turn. Hamilcar cut off Mathos and his men from the interior so effectively that they gave up besieging Carthage to fall back on Tunes. Still too weak, it seems, to attack them directly, Hamilcar returned inland to continue reasserting Carthaginian control, shadowed by another large rebel army under Spendius and Autaritus. The climax of a lengthy campaign of manoeuvres, marches and clashes came when this army was trapped at a place that Polybius calls ‘the Saw’ (Prion), seemingly a mountain ridge somewhere in Libya. After holding out to the point of cannibalising their captives and slaves, the rebels tried to capitulate, only for Hamilcar to turn on them and wipe them out save for the two generals and their lieutenants. These he took with him back to Tunes to crucify on a hilltop (perhaps in today’s Parc du Belvédère) in full view of Mathos’ troops. Mathos revenged Spendius and the others by defeating Hamilcar’s colleague there – Hamilcar’s division was on the far side of Tunes – and crucifying him and other eminent prisoners on the same crosses.

  Politics and common sense intervened at Carthage to impose a temporary reconciliation on Hamilcar and Hanno, who from then on cooperated intelligently to force Mathos from Tunes out to Byzacium, where they were conclusively crushed. All Libya capitulated, as did Hippacra and Utica by early 237. T
he last scene of all, Polybius records, was the young men of Carthage leading Mathos in triumph through the streets while torturing him to death – much like the fate in 309 of the Hamilcar captured by the Syracusans. The punishments inflicted on the rebel communities are not reported. This time the Carthaginians may have acted with restraint: Utica at least did not lose its special relationship with Carthage and was stubbornly loyal under Scipio’s siege thirty-five years later, nor did Libyan communities defect to him during his marches through their lands. The resources to rebuild the shattered state would be found in Spain.

  XI

  THE NEW EMPIRE AND HANNIBAL

  THE SARDINIA CRISIS

  Hamilcar Barca had effectively saved Carthage, if with invaluable help from Naravas the Numidian and Hanno the Great. It was Hamilcar and his supporters who reaped the benefit: over the next thirty-five years their ‘Barcid’ group dominated the republic’s affairs. First Hamilcar, then his politically skilful son-in-law Hasdrubal, and finally his eldest son Hannibal were in turn elected generals and, in effect, the commanders-in-chief of Carthaginian armed forces, able to have their own choices appointed as subordinates. At Carthage their kinsmen and political supporters had similarly effective control of offices, though probably never a monopoly. Barcid generals commanded in all the important theatres of war (and some less important ones) from 237 to 201, while at Carthage the adirim and sufetes – whenever a glimpse of them occurs – are found seconding Barcid wishes and voting down rival arguments. Hanno the Great and his group were completely ineffectual (as they complained repeatedly), at least until the end of the Second Punic War.86

  Ironically, the Barcids’ dominance at Carthage was a fact that both they and their opponents wanted to deny by the end of the war. Their opponents, and Roman friends of these like the contemporary historian Fabius Pictor, argued that the Barcid generals in Spain had launched the war in the teeth of universal opposition at home. The Barcid side, Hannibal included, claimed that he lost because the home authorities had refused to support him properly. Both claims are still widely believed, though neither is convincing. The reality is that in the Barcids, as in the Magonids and the family of the first Hanno the Great, Carthage found a new ruling house, its success resting on military prowess and adept political skills until these assets collapsed.

  Hamilcar’s planned expedition to southern Spain in 237 made sound sense from Carthage’s point of view. The old Phoenician cities there, notably Gades, were suitable bridgeheads. Hamilcar had a veteran army that he could count on for success. The land was well developed, its towns and peoples long in close contact with Phoenician and Carthaginian civilisation, and its regions rich in mineral resources: silver above all. Spain was also on the opposite side of the western Mediterranean from Rome.

  Besides this expedition, another was readied to recover Sardinia where the rebel mercenaries had been thrown out by the native Sardinians and appealed to Rome for help. The Romans now made a sudden, this time unwelcome, return to Carthage’s affairs. Claiming that Italy and not Sardinia was the real target, they refused to negotiate but instead declared formal war on Carthage to get their way. In no condition to resist, she had to give up Sardinia and pay out no less than 1200 talents more. These extraordinary actions Polybius himself condemns as unjust, without trying to explain them. The Romans, however, surely knew that their renowned recent adversary Hamilcar was now effectively in power. With Sicily lost, Sardinia’s position and wealth would be invaluable in efforts to rebuild Carthage economically and militarily. The immediate payment exacted – larger than in 241 – strengthens the impression that the Romans sought to check a rapid Carthaginian recovery.

  Hamilcar felt the humiliation keenly. His son in later life told the famous story of how his father agreed to take him, aged nine, to Spain once Hannibal swore on the altar of ‘Zeus’ – Baal Hammon or Baal Shamim – ‘never to be friendly towards the Romans’ (often misrepresented as always to be the enemy of Rome, a very different attitude). Polybius and others, rightly or wrongly, judged the seizure of Sardinia to be the first of the causes of the next war.

  THE NEW EMPIRE IN SPAIN

  From 237 until his death in 229 Hamilcar extended Carthaginian domination over most of southern Spain, especially the lower and middle valley of the river Baetis (modern Guadalquivir). The Carthaginians, based at Gades, conquered some communities by force while winning over others as allies, though the excerpts and passing comments in Polybius, Diodorus and others give minimal details. As in the war in Libya, Hamilcar could use brutal methods when it suited him – for instance mutilating and crucifying Indortes, a defeated Iberian chieftain – but this seems to have been rare. By 228 the province extended across southern Spain, with military forces over 50,000 strong and a corps of 100 elephants from Africa. Hamilcar’s control of affairs over there is well illustrated by his despatch of his son-in-law Hasdrubal at one stage to put down a rising by a Numidian people, called by Diodorus the ‘Micatani’ (they may have been foes of Naravas’ Massyli).

  Hamilcar made Carthage more of a land power than ever before. While the Spanish territories expanded, the navy contracted. While in the first war with Rome Carthaginian fleets numbered between 120 and 350 ships, on the outbreak of the second the quinqueremes and triremes at Carthage and in Spain totalled just over 100 – with nearly 20 of them unfit to fight. His successes had the desired impact at home. According to Cornelius Nepos’ brief biography, ‘with horses, weapons, men and money he enriched all Africa’. The horses and men (probably war-prisoners) may have been sent over to work in towns and the countryside like the enslaved men from Agathocles’ army after 307, while the weapons would include highly-regarded swords and javelins, all of iron. The money of course came from booty, tribute, and increasingly from mines – old ones like the workings in the Río Tinto region by the Atlantic, newer ones in the mountains north of the Baetis and around Mastia, the later New Carthage.

  How the new province was governed is obscure. The Phoenician cities such as Gades, Malaca and Abdera must have been formal allies, tribute-free but perhaps required to provide ships and crews for transport, even maybe a few warships. The Iberian and Celtic communities allied with Carthage would provide stated contingents of infantry and cavalry, while those subdued by force probably had to supply both soldiers and tribute. Some, if not all, of the mines were state-owned, though in practice leased to contractors, as was done in Greece and by the Romans. Pliny the Elder’s report of 300 pounds of silver mined daily in Hannibal’s time at a place (unknown) called Baebelo may really be a misunderstanding of the yield – equivalent to some 9,000,000 drachmas or 1440 talents a year – from all the mines in Barcid Spain by then. The silver coins, shekels and other denominations, struck by the Barcid authorities in strongly Greek styles, were products of this wealth (Illustration 24i).

  Hamilcar’s constructive activities included founding a new city which Diodorus calls Akra Leuke – White Cape or White Fort. It may be the Lucentum of Roman times, today’s Alacant (Alicante) on the south coast, though other identifications are possible. Akra Leuke, if it was Lucentum, was both a good port linking Barcid Spain with North Africa and also advertised the growing grandeur of Hamilcar himself as leader of his state. The Carthaginians had not been noted city-founders like the Phoenicians, with Lilybaeum and Thermae Himeraeae their only creations in centuries. Hellenistic rulers on the other hand were enthusiastic about it, starting with Alexander whose Egyptian Alexandria was only his most famous foundation.

  In winter 229–228, campaigning somewhere in mountainous country above Mastia, Hamilcar lost his life, attacked by a supposedly allied king from further north. He saved his sons Hannibal and Hasdrubal, but perished on horseback in a torrential river. His son-in-law Hasdrubal was acclaimed general in his place by the troops and confirmed by the citizens at Carthage. A winning though not always mild personality, the new leader consolidated the province as well as extending its borders up to the river Tagus. Perhaps by now a widower (or
perhaps not), he married the daughter of a Spanish king, encouraged his brother-in-law Hannibal to take a Spanish wife too, and convened a gathering of Spanish leaders, no doubt carefully chosen, to declare him their supreme general: strategos autokrator, according to Diodorus, though what term the Spaniards used is not known.

  In 227 or 226, Hasdrubal in his turn founded a city, transforming or entirely replacing the old Iberian town Mastia with a grandly conceived creation which he named Qart-hadasht, New City: a ‘Carthage’ for Spain. Sited between a safe harbour along its south side and a salt-water lagoon along the other, on its many hills stood the temples mentioned earlier of Baal Hammon, Eshmun, perhaps Kusor and the perhaps Iberian deity Aletes (Chapter VII), while the splendid palace of the generalissimo himself crowned another. That Hasdrubal thus declared his independence from his native land is an idea going back to his contemporary Fabius Pictor, who passed on accusations from Carthaginian anti-Barcids. This ignores the other Carthages in the Mediterranean such as the even older one in Cyprus (Chapter I); a possible one in Sardinia; Neapolis, as the Greeks called the Qart-hadasht on the gulf of Hammamet; and Carthage’s own outer suburb the ‘New City’. Rather, Spanish Carthage – with its striking hilltop – announced the renewed strength of the Carthaginian state to the Mediterranean at large and also to the Spanish peoples whose loyalty Hasdrubal was working to win.