The Carthaginians

by B D Hoyos

  The last two years of the war limited it to North Africa. After the Great Plains, the Carthaginians sought and accepted Scipio’s peace terms, which removed Carthage’s military and naval capabilities, annexed Spain, and exacted a large indemnity, but left her home territories intact. Peace was then confirmed at Rome, but meanwhile the Carthaginians had sent Hannibal and Mago a recall – and when Hannibal landed at Hadrumetum with his veterans, to be joined by the survivors of his brother’s army, he continued to act as though the peace did not apply to him. Nor, it seems, did his countrymen object, causing Scipio in turn to renew operations inland.

  It took Hannibal most of 202 to build up and train a new army, so that only in October did he set out to find Scipio. Before the last battle, the two leaders held a famous personal meeting near Naraggara, 40 kilometres west of Sicca, which resolved nothing but let each get to know the other. Next day, probably 19 October, Scipio defeated his opponent in the so-called battle of ‘Zama’ – a misnomer perpetrated by Nepos – by routing his elephant corps and cavalry, then beating down each of Hannibal’s three rather disconnected battle lines in turn. The battle was still in the balance, with Hannibal’s third line of mainly Bruttian veterans fighting Scipio’s legionaries (most of them survivors of Cannae), when the Roman and Numidian cavalry returned to strike the veterans in the rear, a reversal of Hannibal’s coup at Cannae. Hannibal got away with a few horsemen and told his countrymen to seek peace.

  Scipio’s new terms were rather harsher: no Carthaginian navy except ten ships, no overseas wars at all and none in Africa without Rome’s permission, an indemnity of 10,000 talents over fifty years (60,000,000 Greek drachmas or Roman denarii), and – a clause which would bring future trouble – Masinissa was entitled to the lands held by his ancestors. But Carthage remained intact, independent and in control of Libya: in fact Scipio surveyed and confirmed her existing borders. Hannibal was left untouched.

  In 201, as his last act in Africa Scipio anchored the navy of Carthage, large ships and small, in sight of the city and burned them: the symbolic end of Carthage as a great power. From then on she had to make her way in a changed world.

  HANNIBAL’S WAR: AN ASSESSMENT

  Could Carthage have won the Second Punic War? Rome’s military strength is often pointed to as the critical factor for victory – as a contest of Goliath versus David in which Goliath won. Another argument, less popular today though going back to Polybius, is that a nation of comfortable merchants who paid others to do their fighting had no chance against a tough farming people who each year went out to inflict massive damage on their foes. In reality, as mentioned above, Carthage’s military strength from the start was at least equal to Rome’s. Even in 207, when some 130,000 troops were still serving in Roman armies from Italy to Spain, Carthage’s armies as reported by Polybius and Livy totalled as much as 150,000. Moreover her revived navy grew to well over 100 quinqueremes. The unwarlike-merchants picture is just as flawed: the ruling élite was as much, or more, a landowning class accustomed to military as well as naval leadership. Roman society, in turn, was already commercially developed by 264 and still more so by 218, while the Roman authorities were alert to the importance of trade: so the fuss with Carthage in 240 over the arrested Italian traders showed, and then the war with the Illyrians in 229 over Illyrian piracy.

  The war might, arguably, have been won had Hannibal marched directly on Rome after his crushing victory at Lake Trasimene in 217, or after Cannae the year after. He might have retrieved the situation as late as 207, if he had made a better effort at leaving Apulia to join forces with his brother (as Hasdrubal was expecting). A less noticeable point, but just as important, is that large reinforcements sent to Italy by sea – not to Spain or Sicily, as they were – could have made the difference even as late as 212; Hannibal’s only reinforcements were 4000 men and 40 elephants in 215. Indeed, had Mago in 205 brought his 25,000 troops and elephant corps to Bruttium, the Romans might not have authorised Scipio to go to Africa, although by then the best that Carthage could hope for would be a compromise peace.

  As for the Romans, they may have thrown away their best chance for an early victory, saving tens of thousands of lives, by electing to abort the planned invasion of Africa in 218 while continuing the expedition into Spain. An African invasion would have met no Carthaginian general of Hannibal’s abilities (nor were Greek mercenaries in service by now), while there was as yet no navy able to prevent a Roman blockade of the city by sea as well as land. The Carthaginians’ greatest weakness – or inhibition – was over an invasion of their home territories, as both Agathocles and Regulus had shown and as Scipio proved. It took Scipio only two victories in one year to bring them to terms, even if Hannibal’s return then required a third before peace finally came.

  XII

  REVIVAL AND DESTRUCTION

  POLITICS AND REFORMS

  The loss of Spain’s mines and taxes, the seaborne raids during the war, and the ravaging of parts of Libya by Scipio all left Carthage in a poor state. An instalment of the indemnity, 200 talents in silver coin, paid to Rome in 199 was found to be one-fourth base metal, while a late Roman writer tells of Hannibal putting his ‘legions’ to work in Africa planting olive trees. All the same, a year after the peace, Carthage thought it best to send as a gift 200,000 bushels of grain to Rome and the same amount to the Roman troops operating in Greece once more against Philip V – gifts, incidentally, matched by Masinissa of Numidia. Politically the Barcids’ dominance was over. Carthage was governed by an anti-Barcid faction which Livy calls ‘the order of judges’, apparently a resurgent court of One Hundred and Four. For even if many of these judges were Barcid allies or at least appointees, most surely switched sides after 201, some even earlier as the Barcids’ prospects soured. Hanno the Great, their longest-lasting opponent and still active in 202, may soon have died as he is not heard of again, but his supporters – one of them is known, Hasdrubal ‘the Kid’ – probably belonged to, or were, the dominant element among the ‘judges’.

  The new faction was close-knit and intolerant, with the added advantage of judicial power, but the drawback of incompetence. By 197 or 196 it had landed the republic in strife with Masinissa and was proposing a new tax on citizens to fund the next war-indemnity instalment. This led to Hannibal being elected sufete, no doubt on a programme of reforming abuses and with an unknown but compliant colleague. Whether he openly promised to reform the One Hundred and Four, too, is less clear – but as soon as he was defied by the ‘quaestor’ allied with them – probably the rb , ‘head of the treasurers’ – the new sufete proposed successfully to the citizen assembly that judges be elected annually but not in two consecutive years. He next carried out a thorough investigation of public accounts and peculations, which enabled him to stabilise the public expenses, recover substantial embezzled funds, and cancel the personal tax measure. There may even have been enough funds recouped to pay for the urban building project of the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s southern slope, which dates to just about this time (Chapter VI). He could not settle the dispute with Masinissa, though.88

  How the reforms were applied in detail is not recorded, for Livy (our sole source) prefers to focus on how Hannibal was driven into exile. Even earlier his enemies had used their contacts with leading Romans to accuse him of intriguing with Rome’s latest opponent, Antiochus III the Seleucid ‘great king’ of the east. When the Romans – against Scipio’s urging – sent over envoys in 195, supposedly to settle the quarrel with Masinissa, Hannibal avoided arrest by taking ship to join the king, never to return. With his going, the revived Barcid faction lost its last taste of power.

  PEACE AND PLENTY

  The reforms seem to have endured, all the same. The Barcid group continued to be influential for some years: Hannibal sent a Tyrian friend, Aristo, to consult them in 193 in hopes – which proved unsuccessful – of securing his return. The ‘judges’ faction seems never to have regained its monopoly, though very likely its members
pursued politics under other colours, as perhaps did pro-Barcid Carthaginians.

  Nothing is recorded of who held office or influence over the next forty years but, whoever they were at any given time, they always showed submissive respect towards Rome as that state advanced to dominate the entire Mediterranean. Not only were the indemnity instalments now paid without trouble but in 191, when Rome was at war with Antiochus, the Carthaginian authorities sent an offer to repay – at once – the remaining forty years’ worth, meaning 8000 talents or 24,000,000 denarii, equal perhaps to nearly two years of Rome’s average revenues in the early 2nd Century. In practice it might have been a strain to fulfil the offer, had the Romans accepted it. But coming from a state that, just half a decade earlier, had been in dire straits over paying a single instalment, it indicates the impressive fiscal progress that Carthage had made. The Romans preferred to keep the symbolic dependence of year-by-year payments, and they also paid for – rather than accept as a gift – large quantities of grain (perhaps 800,000 bushels) and barley (500,000) at the same time. These suggest Carthage’s and Libya’s agricultural recovery too. Other offers of foodstuffs are reported in later decades, while Polybius’ glowing eyewitness description has already been quoted on how prosperous the countryside was in his time (Chapter V).

  Trade seems to have been busy, too. Besides Plautus’ comically versatile merchant Hanno the ‘Poenulus’ in the 190s, pottery vessels and figurines identified as Carthaginian-made occur at plentiful sites along western Mediterranean shores as late as the mid-2nd Century. At Carthage in turn, Campanian-made pottery products (bowls and dishes, for instance) were imported at a steadily growing rate from the early years of the century until 149. Second-Century Carthaginian and Numidian coins have been discovered in the Balkans; while a late-era Carthaginian coin found in the Azores may suggest that a Carthaginian – or Gaditane? – trader sailed even that far (of course this is no proof of regular trade).

  As noted earlier, archaeological work on Carthage’s circular port has turned up very few items datable before the mid-2nd Century; but rather than showing that she was now rebuilding a navy and so breaking the peace terms, this suggests that the port had substantial work done on it then. The likeliest reason for the overhaul would be that merchant shipping had outgrown the capacity of the outer commercial port. The reported claim by Roman envoys to Carthage in 153, that they had seen quantities of wood stored for building a war fleet, may misrepresent this project; similarly Masinissa’s son Gulussa’s allegation to the Roman senate in 151 that the Carthaginians were evilly scheming a fleet – a claim he had already wrongly made over twenty years earlier. The senate, it is worth noting, treated all these assertions with remarkable sang-froid, probably aware that there were no such plans.

  One dissident aspect of the picture is the monetary quality of Carthaginian coinage, which had not been very high for a long time but grew worse after 201 (Illustration 24j). This needs a cautious appraisal. By itself it might seem to show economic decline, but it is not a compulsory explanation. Carthage’s coins had been struck primarily to pay mercenary troops or subsidise allies in war. After 201 neither existed. At Carthage and in Libya the other, traditional means of exchange – weighed pieces of precious metal, barter, and even foreign coins – should have continued. Masinissa struck coins, too, but his kingdom’s economy did not use or need them as a necessary engine for development.

  It was in this last period that the city’s population, according to Strabo, numbered 700,000. So great a throng could never have lived within the walls, while Megara was mostly a garden suburb, but Strabo may have mistaken a credible figure representing both city and chora as applying to just the city (or expressed himself badly). Where he found the number he does not say, but it would seem most likely to be from a census of citizens and resident Libyphoenicians, for Libyphoenician cities shared some political rights with Carthage (Chapter IV). If so, the physical city’s inhabitants, excluding slaves but counting in resident Libyphoenicians and Libyans, may be estimated at around 200,000 or a little more – for they had to fit into two or at most three hundred hectares, the built-up ‘New City’ area of Megara included. Adult male Carthaginians, who alone could vote, hold office, or serve in war, would probably not number above 180,000 in city and chora together. The Libyphoenician cities and the Libyan peoples must have had a much larger population all told – up to two or three million – but not even an ancient guess survives.

  Carthage continued to be a cosmopolitan centre, open to comers from around the Mediterranean. Numidia was a close social and cultural neighbour. Masinissa had been educated there before 218, while a niece of Hannibal’s, probably during the war, had married an elderly uncle of his (and so briefly became queen of the Massyli). One of Masinissa’s daughters in turn married a Carthaginian sometime in the 190s or 180s, no doubt an eminent citizen: they had a son Hasdrubal who was to be elected a general in 149. By the 150s he was a member of the faction that vigorously supported good relations with the king at whatever cost. Other Numidians too had Carthaginian connections. For instance, two high-ranking Numidian officers chose to desert to Carthage in the war between the two states in 150 (Appian names them Hagasis and Subas). Still later, in 148 during the Roman siege when the city’s prospects were already dimming, so did another lord named Bithyas (was this the Phoenician name Bitias or Pdy ?).

  In 149 there were Italians residing in the city, no doubt mostly merchants. Leading Carthaginians continued to have social contacts with their Roman opposite numbers, too. They used these to whip up suspicions at Rome against Hannibal in the 190s, as we have seen. Four decades on, one of the best commanders in the Third Punic War was a dashing cavalryman named Himilco, always called by his nickname Phameas (a Greek version of Pumay?) who – like Hannibal’s officer Carthalo the ancestral guest-friend of Fabius’ family – had a family friendship first formed with Scipio Africanus’ father nearly a century before. In the end Phameas too went over to the besieging Romans, whose most vigorous officer was Africanus’ grandson Scipio Aemilianus. Among Romans of the time, one Decimus Iunius Silanus had so complete a grasp of the Punic language that he was put in charge of translating Mago’s agricultural encyclopaedia after 146; he too surely had close Carthaginian contacts.

  Dealings with the Greek world remained strong. In Hannibal’s lifetime (he died in Bithynia in 183) there appeared the histories of Philinus on the First Punic War, and Silenus’ and Sosylus’ on the Second. Hannibal’s own war memoir, inscribed in Punic and Greek in the temple of Hera at Cape Lacinium in Italy, has been mentioned too, and his pamphlet twenty years later about improper Roman activities in Asia Minor. Again as noted earlier, by the middle years of the century there was enough interest in Greek philosophy at Carthage to enable a young thinker named Hasdrubal to give Platonist lecture courses in his own language.

  CARTHAGE AND NUMIDIA

  Carthage’s gifts and offers to Rome, as well as her instant decree of exile against Hannibal after he sailed away and the Roman envoys denounced him, showed how well the authorities realised that the world had changed. Between 200 when the Romans went to war again with Philip V and humbled him, and 188 when they imposed peace on the beaten Great King in the east, meanwhile strengthening their hold over southern and eastern Spain, Carthage could only watch as her former foes imposed an entirely unprecedented hegemony across the Mediterranean’s countless states and peoples. The eastern kingdoms, once-fractious successors to Alexander’s empire, now performed all their circumscribed actions under a thoughtful, if sometimes uninterested, Roman gaze. The middling and minor eastern states – such as Athens, Sparta, the Aetolian and Achaean leagues, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Hannibal’s last refuge Bithynia – treated Rome frankly as their new hegemonial lord. Nearer home, Carthage’s ancient rival and sometime equal Syracuse was a tribute-paying component of the Roman province of Sicily. Worst of all from the Carthaginians’ point of view, Numidia was now a single kingdom under the ambitious, wily and ostentatiousl
y Rome-friendly Masinissa.

  Masinissa was determined to make his kingdom a state to be reckoned with. He encouraged economic life, with great benefit to his revenues, made his capital Cirta an impressive and populous city, and gave his royal court (if nowhere else) a solid veneer of Greek as well as Carthaginian culture. One son, Mastanabal, is commemorated in an inscription at Athens as taking part in sacred chariot races, another – the king’s eventual successor Micipsa – as a student of philosophy. Maybe he attended some of Hasdrubal Cleitomachus’ early lectures. Masinissa predictably eyed Carthage’s prosperous Libyan hinterland with interest. He could argue that because the peace of 201 allowed him to recover ancestral lands, he was entitled to parts of Libya, for the region or much of it must have belonged to his (very distant) ancestors. His dispute with Carthage in the 190s was over territory, though our information is confused and contradictory. Livy offers implausible details: a Numidian rebel named Aphther fleeing through Emporia, Masinissa later attacking the same region. Polybius more convincingly dates these to the 160s. Whatever the dispute was, it fizzled out after Scipio led an embassy in 193 to mediate. Appian, not always a reliable authority, has the quarrel ended by a treaty which – he writes – ceded territories to the king but also established unbroken peace for fifty years, all of which looks exaggerated if not made up.