The Carthaginians

by B D Hoyos

  In 182 Livy reports a new dispute, over unnamed territory, supposedly leading to a fierce military clash; but in reality Carthage was forbidden to make war unless Rome permitted, and the senate’s reportedly tepid reaction to the affair gives this episode too the suspicious look of later invention or (at best) gross exaggeration. Then Livy reports a third occurring in 174–172 and supposedly costing Carthage seventy towns and forts: so he has their envoys complain at Rome. If Masinissa did carry out such a land grab, he may have been forced by the Romans to hand it back, for Appian has him seize the Thusca region with its ‘fifty towns’ – a description which sounds similar – only in 153 or 152, a period for which Appian’s chief source seems to have been Polybius. It is rather likelier that the earlier episode is again an overblown exaggeration, involving details borrowed from the events of 153–152.

  But during the 160s Carthage lost the entire Emporia region in a royal grab which the Roman senate condoned. It looks as though the ageing king, now in his seventies, at last decided on a frankly expansionist programme. Maybe the barely-known rebellion (and escape to Cyrene) of Aphther a few years before had seriously hurt his resources and prestige. Some years before 162 he invaded and took over Emporia’s open country but could not capture the towns (Lepcis Magna and its sisters). When the dispute went before the Roman senate, however, he was awarded them as well – even though it is hard to see how he could have a genuine ancestral claim – with the Carthaginian envoys’ counter-arguments failing utterly. Carthage had to hand over not only Emporia but also 500 talents – supposedly the revenue which the king should have received from the towns since his original invasion.

  His incursions nine or ten years later took away a huge slice of her western lands, if Appian’s report is accurate. Both the pagus of Thusca and the Great Plains region further north, around Bulla and the upper Bagradas, were seized probably in 152. The Theveste region, too, must have gone now if not earlier. Geographically and ethnically these regions perhaps better fitted a claim that they had once been Massylian, or at any rate Numidian. These thefts pushed Carthage’s Libyan territories back to where they had been three hundred years before, and perhaps halved her agricultural and tax resources. Her reaction was drastic, and fatal.

  POLITICS AT HOME AND WAR WITH MASINISSA

  The course of events in the 150s is not at all clear, for the chief accounts are in an epitome of Livy’s lost books and the idiosyncratic history by Appian. Appian writes of three political factions at Carthage: a pro-Roman one led by ‘Hanno the Great’; a pro-Masinissa faction led by one Hannibal nicknamed ‘Starling’; the third a ‘democratic’ one, with Hamilcar ‘the Samnite’ and Carthalo at its head. These factions, plausible at first sight, look less so when scrutinised. How a pro-Roman faction would differ from the Masinissa-friendly one in practice is not clear, for by the 150s Rome’s attitude had become fairly pro-Masinissa. If the Masinissa faction simply urged complying with his demands, it cannot have been too popular, for the demands seemed endless. Nor is it obvious why a ‘democratic’ faction should be at odds with either of the others; the issue of popular rule was internal, not one of attitudes to foreign states.89

  The true basis of the mid-century factions was probably much the same as in the past: allegiances to powerful individuals through kinship or other ties. It is true that Hannibal Starling’s group were seen as favouring Masinissa, for after the king’s new success forty of them were exiled by the ‘democrats’, who had used the crisis to win the political upper hand – and the exiles fled to Cirta. Meanwhile Hamilcar the Samnite’s and Carthalo’s supposed people’s-rule platform may be simply a Greek view of the popular support which they earned by urging resistance to Numidia. As for the ‘Roman’ faction and this latest ‘Hanno the Great’, they played no recorded part in events and quite possibly are a mistaken hangover in Appian.

  Neither Carthage’s appeals to Rome about previous encroachments, nor a series of Roman embassies during the 150s, reversed Masinissa’s various hauls. She did not appeal again after losing her western territories, but Masinissa’s son Gulussa told the Romans that she was preparing both military and naval forces: a fairly obvious effort at arousing Roman hostility. The senate was not that interested (though the Carthaginians were indeed readying troops), since it took no action except perhaps to authorise yet another embassy. Livy’s epitome has the senate vote for war unless the Carthaginians undid the alleged preparations: an unconvincing claim, for no fleet existed nor did war follow when Carthage went on to use the new army.

  Early in 150 Masinissa besieged another Carthaginian town, ‘Horoscopa’ (perhaps Thubursicu near Thugga). The Carthaginians sent out the new army under one of the ‘democrat’ faction, Hasdrubal, but after a chequered campaign his force was trapped by the ninetyyearold warrior king, forced to surrender, and then mostly massacred – events which recall Hamilcar Barca’s dealings with the rebels at ‘the Saw’ in 238. Scipio Africanus’ grandson, Scipio Aemilianus, had been visiting the king and had offered to broker a compromise peace, but Hasdrubal had unwisely refused its terms. Whether a newly-arrived Roman embassy now arranged a truce is not known, but hostilities seem to have ended. Hasdrubal, still active, was condemned to death by the Carthaginians along with Carthalo and perhaps others in their faction like Hamilcar – though in fact the general lived to fight another day. The Carthaginians, however, found themselves in deadly danger. The Roman envoys went home to report that the peace of 201 had been broken, with the Carthaginians at war without Rome’s permission and against Rome’s ally.

  THE OUTBREAK OF THE THIRD PUNIC WAR

  Polybius, in a surviving excerpt, and Appian assert that Rome had decided on war long before declaring it in 149. Livy’s epitome is more nuanced: it reports Cato the Censor constantly demanding a pre-emptive war from 152 on because he had observed Carthage’s revival, the equally eminent Scipio Nasica (a cousin of Aemilianus) equally constantly urging restraint, and the Romans coming to no decision as a result. Whether or not to engage in a third Punic war was as debated at Rome as the previous two had been.

  The pace of events is not fully clear. Carthage now sent two embassies to Rome, one after the other, essentially to ask forgiveness and avert war. The first was told enigmatically that it would depend on ‘if the Carthaginians give satisfaction to the Romans’. The ensuing embassy received the still more delphic reply that ‘the Carthaginians knew very well’ what this meant. Was this a cat-and-mouse game to keep them from readying their defences? But the defences were already in excellent shape, with impressive stocks of military equipment available, as the recent Roman envoys could have reported. The opaque responses may hint that the debate over how to deal with the situation in North Africa had still not ended.

  All the same, Cato and his supporters were close to success. Now unexpectedly Utica, Carthage’s oldest sister colony, her loyal ally during Hannibal’s war, declared itself in Rome’s power. Utica not only had a safe harbour within a day’s sail of Carthage but, more important, was a signal that Carthage might lose the support of the other Libyphoenicians. With Masinissa already close to the city, the prospects of Rome forcing her immediate capitulation – and then unimpededly plundering her accumulated wealth – surely looked excellent, provided that impressive forces were sent. In winter 150–149 the Romans formally declared war.

  Why they wanted war, not just a capitulation, was debated at the time and has been ever since. Polybius in another surviving excerpt sets out different views that he found in Greece: some approved the war because of the violated treaty of 201, or because Carthage was Rome’s inveterate enemy; others ascribed it to Roman duplicity, arrogance and greed. Modern judgements are still more divided. That the Romans feared Carthage is no longer very widely believed, for after nearly half a century of being consistently submissive to Rome, as well as disarmed, she was utterly beaten by a Numidian army. Moreover the Romans expected a fairly easy victory or even a prompt surrender. Another once-influential view saw Rome acting
to prevent Masinissa from mastering all North Africa as well as Carthage’s maritime potential. Masinissa himself certainly seems to have been disappointed at their intervention. This explanation looks unlikely, all the same – the obvious way to keep Carthage out of the king’s hands would have been to ally with her against him, not to attack her (and expect him to help).

  Other suggested reasons are greed both for Carthage’s commercial advantages and more immediately for the huge plunder from a sack; and direct aggressiveness, since military successes supposedly were vital to a leading Roman’s success in politics. An economic motive is hard to judge; yet, if Carthage’s excellent site and hinterland were such objects of desire, it is strange that the Romans left the city a deserted wreck for a hundred years and gave privileges (notably tax-free status) to the towns like Utica and Hadrumetum which had defected to them during the war. A wish for military glory perhaps did lend impetus – but the strongest advocate for war was the eighty-four-year-old Cato, whose military career was long over; while its strongest opponent Scipio Nasica, if in no need of glory himself, had a son and a nephew who would surely have welcomed it (and did serve in the expedition). Again, the consuls who commanded the invasion of Africa in 149, Manilius and Marcius Censorinus, were neither of them particularly distinguished – surprising choices when many other Romans of grander status should have been fighting for the opportunity to crush the homeland of Hannibal.

  The Romans’ motives were no doubt varied. The attractions of easy Carthaginian booty (which did draw in plenty of ordinary recruits), a push by perhaps some participants to earn war -renown, and a vengeful bitterness among those like Cato who remembered Hannibal’s invasion may all have influenced Romans for war. Just conceivably some leaders may have worried, too, that the nonagenarian Masinissa would leave behind a fragile kingdom which Carthage would dominate, thereby becoming a real danger to Rome’s Mediterranean dominance. On the surviving information, all the same, the full reasons for the war will always remain elusive.

  THE THIRD PUNIC WAR

  The consuls of 149 had no problem in assembling large forces because, unlike the wars then being waged in Spain, this one was expected to be short, easy and profitable. The armament that crossed to Sicily in the spring is reported as having 80,000 foot and 4000 horse, with 50 quinqueremes and 100 smaller warships. Another desperate embassy from Carthage, arriving meanwhile at Rome with full powers to negotiate, could only match Utica by offering unconditional surrender. The Roman concept (deditio in fidem) was much like the one applied to Germany and Japan in 1945. The surrendering side put itself absolutely into the other’s power and must submit to whatever the victors imposed. The Carthaginians certainly knew this standard Roman practice, nor had their own habits been very different in their Greek Sicilian wars.

  Now the Romans did start a cat-and-mouse game. The consuls in Sicily first required three hundred children of the city’s leading families to be handed over to them as hostages. They then sailed over to Utica in full strength, where the Carthaginians at their demand delivered all their military stores – no fewer than 200,000 sets of armour, 2000 pieces of artillery, and other weapons. Then came a last demand: the citizens must leave their city and settle 80 stadia, about 16 kilometres, inland. The figure was not realistic, for it would have placed a quarter of a million Carthaginians along the difficult range of heights stretching from Tunes to the Bagradas. It really meant any distance that the Romans would judge convenient, leaving the city to be plundered and demolished.

  Carthage exploded with anger and outrage, vividly recorded by Appian. The unfortunate envoys who came back to report the ultimatum were lynched by furious crowds, as were senators who had urged appeasement. Resident Italians were manhandled or killed. On the same day, the adirim declared war, freed the slaves in the city, and sent an appeal for aid to the recently-condemned Hasdrubal – now commanding 30,000 troops in the countryside and probably shadowing Masinissa. The other Hasdrubal, Masinissa’s grandson, was elected general too and took command in the city. Temples and squares became ad hoc weapons workshops; women cut off their hair to make cords for catapults. The Romans meanwhile marched down from Utica to open the siege. Masinissa, it seems, retired to Cirta to watch.

  The siege of Carthage lasted three years. Her 23 Roman miles (34 kilometres) of walls – including the triple line across the flat isthmus outside Megara – defeated repeated assaults from the isthmus, the sea and the lakeshore. The citizens within the walls were not completely alone. The forgiven Hasdrubal operated in the countryside with his army, while Hippacra, Nepheris and Clupea-Aspis near Cape Bon held out too. According to Appian, the Romans were supported locally only by Utica and (on the east coast) Hadrumetum, Leptis, Thapsus and Acholla. Hasdrubal was able to send supplies in to the besieged, and until the summer of 147 foreign merchants could still reach the city despite the Roman blockade. Parts of Megara itself were probably cultivated for food.

  In 149 and 148 the Carthaginians kept the besiegers at bay. Attacks on the walls were met by counter-attacks; early on, much of the Roman fleet was set ablaze by fire-ships, and Censorinus’ troops on the lakeshore were hit by an epidemic in the hot summer. Hasdrubal moved to Nepheris near the coast and could not be dislodged. Even after Himilco Phameas changed sides following a conversation with his friend Scipio Aemilianus, now an officer with the army, Carthage’s situation largely held firm. Piso, the consul in command in 148, spent that summer failing to capture Hippacra, while on Masinissa’s death the Numidian lord Bithyas with his 800 horsemen joined Hasdrubal’s army. Carthaginian spokesmen moved around Libya encouraging resistance. By now discipline in the besieging army was badly deteriorating due to setbacks and poor leadership. What had promised to be a straightforward and profitable expedition was now a war as strenuous, expensive and long-lasting as those in Spain.

  The situation began, nevertheless, to worsen for the Carthaginians. The army at Nepheris could not seriously harass Carthage’s besiegers. Sometime in 148 its general Hasdrubal, now in the city and suspicious or merely jealous of his namesake the grandson of Masinissa, convinced the Carthaginians that this general – despite his vigorous leadership – was a traitor. Masinissa’s grandson was bludgeoned to death by his fellow citizens. More ominously still, Scipio’s exploits during the siege gained him election as consul for 147 and the command in Africa. With him, incidentally, he brought his friend Polybius the historian.

  Scipio reinvigorated the army and the siege. New fortified camps on the isthmus cut all land communications. He frightened Hasdrubal into abandoning Megara, built a mole out into the sea below the southern city wall to block off the Cothon – the artificial ports – and seized the ‘Falbe quadrilateral’. A small Carthaginian fleet, built by the citizens from leftover materials in the circular port and launched through a channel secretly dug through to the sea alongside, was poorly led and suffered defeat. In the city Hasdrubal became virtual tyrant, murderously intolerant of criticism and reportedly living in luxury with his troops while the citizens starved. Deaths and desertions mounted dramatically. During the winter, Scipio attacked and destroyed the army at Nepheris under its Greek (or Greek-named) commander Diogenes and captured Nepheris itself, with up to 70,000 enemy troops and civilians reportedly killed and 10,000 taken. All of Libya now capitulated, including the Libyphoenician loyalists such as Hippacra.

  No hope remained for Carthage. In spring 146 the Romans launched the final assault.

  Attacking first through the naval port, then over the lakeshore wall, they moved past the ‘tophet’ and Cothon to reach the agora with its surrounding public buildings, like the senate house and the golden – and instantly looted – temple of ‘Apollo’ (Reshef). Byrsa’s citadel, the last refuge of thousands of surviving citizens, was connected to the agora by three streets lined with six-storey apartment houses where many people were still trapped. Each had to be taken against bitter hand-to-hand resistance on every level: assault troops reaching the upper floors used planks to fig
ht their way across to another while more fighting raged on the ground far below – a struggle recalling the horrors of Dionysius’ capture of Motya. Once his men reached the walls of Byrsa, Scipio had all the houses along these streets destroyed to clear access.

  Next day, the seventh since the assault began, Byrsa capitulated. The last Carthaginians, fifty thousand men, women and children, came out to be enslaved. Hasdrubal and 900 Roman deserters held out in the temple of Eshmun until the general emerged, alone, to surrender to Scipio. In a Dantesque scene the deserters set the temple on fire and hurled curses on him before perishing in the flames. So did his own wife, who then slew their two small sons and threw both them and herself into the inferno.

  Scipio put the city to the torch and pronounced a solemn curse on any who might seek to dwell there. Polybius saw him weeping as he watched Carthage’s funeral pyre: the general explained that he was thinking that one day this could happen to Rome.90

  XIII

  CARTHAGE IN HISTORY

  The Romans annexed Carthage’s remaining territory as the province ‘Africa’, granting tax freedom and other privileges to Utica and the other towns which had deserted her, while the rest paid taxes and were subject to the Roman governor. Not all Carthaginians perished or became slaves: many had fled to Numidia during the war, some had deserted to the Romans, and the three hundred child hostages (we may hope) lived out their lives. They may have been among the survivors for whom Hasdrubal-Cleitomachus in Athens wrote his work of consolation. The site of Carthage itself remained desolate – apart from a failed effort to create a Roman colony alongside it twenty-five years later – until Rome’s new despots Caesar and then Augustus ignored Scipio’s curse to found a city which, like the rest of North Africa, would flourish far into the future. (They did not, incidentally, need to scrape away any salt: it was not Scipio in 146 bc but a historian in 1928 who scattered that over the ruins.) Masinissa’s expanded kingdom continued to thrive too, even after being annexed by Caesar in 46 BC.