Hannibal's Dynasty

by Dexter Hoyos

  even bathrooms with bathtub and washbasin. Hamilcar engaged a Greek tutor

  for his heir and cannot have been the only Carthaginian to do so. Again, from

  early in the fourth century the Carthaginian state began to issue coins: only in

  Sicily at first, to pay the mercenary troops, then later in North Africa as well.

  From the start they were based on Greek models and well produced.8

  All this did not turn the Carthaginians into a Hellenized community. They

  26

  C A RT H AG E

  had other sources of inspiration, Egypt for instance, and they kept close links

  with their mother-city Tyre. Above all, language and religion, both descended

  from Phoenicia, sustained cultural independence. Supreme among Punic

  deities were Ba’al Hammon the god and his consort Tanit, whom the

  Carthaginians often entitled pene Ba’al, ‘Face of Ba’al’. Other divinities

  included Ba’al Shamim, Melqart whose name means ‘lord of the city’, Esh-

  moun with his temple on Byrsa hill, Reshep, and others unsatisfyingly

  shadowy.

  The Carthaginians were strongly religious, not always along lines that

  appeal to moderns. Notoriously they sacrificed small children to the gods to

  avert catastrophes: not children of slaves, Libyans or foreigners, but their

  own. Plentiful archaeological evidence from the tophet suggests that the rite,

  called molk, increased over the centuries and that rich Carthaginians were spe-

  cially assiduous. It may be that only stillborn babies, or those who died very

  young, were offered, but no ancient writer suggests it. The most striking molk

  on record took place in 310 when the city was menaced by Agathocles’ expe-

  dition from Sicily—reportedly 500 victims all told, and all from aristocratic

  families. Melqart must have been appeased: Agathocles’ expedition went

  down to disaster.

  Carthage was under threat again half a century later, from the invading

  proconsul Regulus, but no mass molk is reported. Individual child-offerings

  were certainly made down to Hannibal’s own lifetime (so the finds show).

  Maybe the community had outgrown the need for mass immolations, or was

  embarrassed by them under the eyes of the Hellenistic world.9

  III

  Carthage was now one of the greatest cities of the Mediterranean. Her state

  revenues at the outbreak of the war with Rome may be estimated at some

  2,000 talents a year—12 million Greek drachmas—sparse though the evi-

  dence is. According to the historian Livy, by 193 the wealthy and tributary city

  of Lepcis was paying one talent a day in tax: our one explicit revenue-figure.

  Lepcis, later Lepcis Magna famous for its Roman remains, stands east of

  Tripoli on the Greater Syrtes shore, today’s gulf of Sirte: but as Livy sites it

  by the Lesser Syrtes, today’s gulf of Gabès, in the fertile Emporia region, he

  may have confused it with Leptis Minor, between Hadrumetum and Thap-

  sus, and at any rate not too far north of the gulf of Gabès. Whether Lepcis

  or Leptis, the tribute may in fact represent what the whole region paid, with

  one of those cities as the collection-centre (the Emporia coast did stretch as

  far as Lepcis Magna). At a guess, all the rest of Punic North Africa—

  Carthage’s own customs and harbour-dues, the tribute paid by the Libyans,

  any dues or levies extracted from allies like Utica and Hippou Acra, and

  whatever taxes were exacted from Carthaginians themselves—should have

  added up to maybe three times as much again.10

  27

  C A RT H AG E

  This rough-and-ready calculation gives Hannibal’s city an annual revenue

  of 1,400–1,500 talents in 193: between 8,400,000 and 9 million Greek drach-

  mas or recently established Roman denarii. Uncertain though it is, this

  estimate is plausible. In the early decades of the same century, the Roman

  republic’s income, including indemnities and war-booty, has been reckoned

  as averaging 13–14 million denarii a year, in other words well over 2,000 tal-

  ents. To Rhodes, a rich trading-city but hardly comparable even with

  second-century Carthage in size or possessions, her mainland territories in

  Asia Minor were paying 120 talents a year in the same period and her own

  customs-duties bringing in a million drachmas or about 167 talents—thus a

  total of just under 300 till Roman ill-will after the Third Macedonian War

  took away the former and slashed the latter.

  In 264 Carthage’s empire had included western Sicily and southern Sar-

  dinia, and her trade and agriculture were flourishing, so revenue of well over

  2,000 talents in that era seems a reasonable though speculative estimate. This

  was a sizeable income, larger than the 1,000 talents estimated for Athens at

  the peak of her power and empire around 431. It would have fallen after 241,

  but in the 230s and 220s the new Punic empire in Spain as well as the annexa-

  tions in Numidia must have added sizeably to revenues again, conceivably

  raising them over 3,000.

  The indemnities that the Carthaginians later had to shoulder are compati-

  ble with this. After 241—or more probably 237—they had to pay the

  Romans 220 talents a year for ten years, after an opening payment of 1,000

  and with a further 1,200 to be squeezed from them in 237. The indemnity

  after Hannibal’s war, 200 a year, was equivalent to 12 million Roman asses or

  1,200,000 denarii— less than after 241, but the Carthaginians had now lost

  Spain. By contrast Syracuse in Sicily was required to pay only 100 talents over

  15 years when it made peace with the Romans in 263.11

  In 241 there were probably close to 200,000 Carthaginian male citizens.

  There are no contemporary statistics but the geographer Strabo reports that

  at the start of the Third Punic War, a century later, the city was home to

  700,000 people. Probably he means free persons, since ancient population

  statistics (and ancient guesses) rarely include slaves, but whether non-

  Carthaginian residents are also counted in we cannot say. Strabo must have

  got his figure from a writer on that war: it could have been Polybius, who was

  at Carthage in 146 as it died.

  The total is impossible for the city alone, whose built-up area was too small

  on any calculation. Nor can the people living in the spread-out garden suburb

  of Megara have been very numerous. Modern estimates for the city itself

  vary widely, from as few as 125,000 residents to more than double that. But if

  Strabo’s statistic means residents and their families living both in Carthage

  and in its own surrounding territory—distinct from the territories of sister

  cities like Utica and of the subject Libyans—it may be accepted as a round

  figure.

  28

  C A RT H AG E

  As Carthage was formidably prosperous in the last half-century of its exis-

  tence, between 10 and 20 per cent of residents would be non-citizens

  (assuming that Strabo includes them, knowingly or not). On a conservative

  estimate, citizens and their families in Carthage and its surrounding territory

  would then total around 575,000 in 149, with adult males numbering between

  160,000 and 175,000. Ninety-two years earlier, when they were a great power<
br />
  but at the end of a harrowing war with the Romans, the total would hardly be

  lower. Also to be reckoned in would be a number of citizens living else-

  where—traders, farmers, administrators—in North Africa, Sardinia and

  Spain, even if Sicily was now closed off. Aristotle in fact twice stresses the

  Punic state’s habit of relieving social strains at home by sending out ordinary

  citizens to neighbouring towns to ‘make them prosperous’. At a very conser-

  vative guess, the Carthaginian citizens living elsewhere might total 10,000 to

  15,000, plus their families.

  Punic human resources naturally included the other peoples under Punic

  control: the allied Phoenician cities and, above all, the subject Libyans. The

  wealth of the state also allowed it to hire mercenary troops (something never

  done by the Romans). Slaves were a further human resource. Little enough is

  known about them, but at least tens of thousands existed in Punic lands, and

  probably hundreds of thousands. The Punic state and its empire must have

  included some millions of people in 241, even after the loss of western Sicily.

  For comparison, 241,700 Roman citizens—adult males again—were regis-

  tered in the census of 247, growing to 273,000 twenty-two years later.

  Polybius perhaps exaggeratedly reckons the Italian allies of military age in

  225 at another half-million. In numbers at least, though not in militarized or

  geographic cohesion, the Carthaginians were still a match for the Romans.12

  IV

  To the contemporary Greek world the Carthaginians were barbarians just like

  the Romans. Neither people spoke Greek (a fatal flaw) and, even by the mid-

  third century, neither had anything that could be called a literature. None the

  less Greeks put the Carthaginians in a special category long before they did

  the same for the Romans. In the late fourth century Aristotle, analysing and

  classifying states’ constitutions, included the political system of Carthage for

  discussion—the only non-Greek state to qualify. It had stable institutions

  with many Greek-like features: elected magistrates, a council or senate, a citi-

  zen assembly—all these could be found at Rome too, though Aristotle was

  uninterested—and even a few social features reminiscent of one Greek city

  or another. Men’s meals in communal clubs recalled those at Sparta, for exam-

  ple. To Aristotle the Carthaginians’ political system, in spite of its partiality to

  money, was ‘aristocratic’, meaning government by the best men: it had ‘a

  threefold aim, wealth, virtue and the good of the people’. He approves of it.

  Details, of course, and emphases differed. Originally the city had had kings

  29

  C A RT H AG E

  like its mother Tyre, but monarchy had eventually given place to aristocratic

  rule. In Hamilcar’s time the republic was presided over by two annually

  elected sptm or shouphetim, ‘sufetes’ in the Latin form (a kin-word to Hebrew

  shophet, judge). Whether these had replaced the king, or whether a nominal

  king still existed, is one of the many Punic unknowns. Greek and Roman

  writers often use the term ‘king’ without making clear whether they mean it

  literally or as a misnomer for sufete. (A complication is added by various

  lesser officials also, it seems, called sufetes.) Military commands were

  entrusted to generals elected by the citizens for particular theatres of cam-

  paigning, as Hamilcar was for Sicily. It looks unlikely that someone could be

  both sufete and general at the same time—no one is known who did—but

  Aristotle does emphasize that a Carthaginian could hold more than one

  office at the same time.

  The precise powers and range of Punic executive offices, military and civil,

  are obscure too. Punic generals, according to Greek observers, had ‘kingly’—

  no doubt meaning absolute—authority on campaign. The record shows that

  they could make pacts with foreign states, though these may then have had to

  be ratified at Carthage. Their power was matched by the risk they ran if they

  failed. Unusually in a republic, a defeated general was liable to be recalled and

  put to death: the fate of Hanno who lost the battle of the Aegates in 241.13

  The collective political wisdom of the Carthaginians reposed in a council

  or senate of several hundred, many of them no doubt former sufetes and

  generals. The senate’s formal collective name was ‘The Mighty Ones’ ( h’drm

  or hadirim)—a noteworthy forerunner of de Hoogmogendheden, ‘the High

  Mightinesses’, the formal epithet of the Dutch States-General three cen-

  turies ago. How were senators recruited? We are not told. Tenure of one of

  the various official posts, for instance as a rab (a title much attested on Punic

  inscriptions though its functions are not clear), public scribe, or market

  inspector, or membership of what Aristotle calls the ‘pentarchies’, adminis-

  trative Boards of Five, may have been the regular way in.

  The senate, the Mighty Ones, dealt with questions of peace and war, and

  the overall direction of policy. Apparently it could interest itself in any aspect

  of internal affairs—once even forbidding citizens to learn Greek (a Roman

  writer claims), a ban not likely to have lasted long. The senate had an inner

  ‘sacred council’ by the third century, apparently 30 strong, whose authority

  Livy stresses. Just what it did is unknown: it may have organized the agenda

  of the Mighty Ones, and acted too as an executive committee.14

  This inner council was an institution peculiar to the Carthaginians. So were

  some others, above all the tribunal of One Hundred, or One Hundred and

  Four. This was set up 150 years (or more) before Hamilcar’s time to supervise

  and where necessary to discipline generals. According to Aristotle, members

  were chosen not by the senate, but by the Boards of Five from among

  the senators, and purely on merit (process unknown, as usual). He calls the

  Hundred and Four ‘the highest authority’ at Carthage—arguably an over-

  30

  C A RT H AG E

  statement since he applies the same term to the chief magistrates. Perhaps by

  his day the tribunal had extended its jurisdiction, though we can only surmise

  in what directions: for instance scrutinizing the work of civil magistrates,

  sufetes included.

  Though not mentioned in events of the century and a quarter after Aristo-

  tle, it was probably enough the same tribunal which convicted the hapless

  generals put to death at various times for failure, and likely enough it was the

  one whose judgement Hamilcar risked facing in 241. Livy’s ‘order of judges’

  appointed for life, reportedly the most powerful institution in the state soon

  after the Second Punic War, was very likely though not definitely the same

  body. Its powers may have fluctuated over that length of time too, as we shall

  see.15

  The ordinary Carthaginian male citizen had a voice in government too.

  The citizen body was fairly limited: women had no vote, nor of course did

  slaves. Perhaps too Punic men of low economic status, like poor artisans,

  were excluded, but the evidence is too indirect to be reliable. Citizens them-

 
selves no doubt had to reach legal manhood, whatever age that was, before

  they qualified as voters. The men of Phoenician towns like Utica and Hippou

  Acra—not to mention the millions of subject Libyans—were not Carthagini-

  ans, though each may have had suffrage in his own community. But nobody

  expected that even the existing 180,000 Punic citizens would or could all take

  part in voting, any more than all citizens could at Rome. The central square

  below the Byrsa hill, however big, would not have held more than a fraction

  of them. Plainly only limited numbers took part.

  The citizen assembly, meeting in the square, elected sufetes and generals,

  and passed laws. What procedures were followed and what determined a can-

  didate’s eligibility for office are predictably unknown, but the lavish spending

  which our informants insist was taken for granted meant that only rich men

  could compete. This in turn is a clue, both to sharply marked patron–client

  relationships between the powerful few in public life and many if not most

  ordinary voters, and at the same time to constantly fluctuating political

  cliques and followings—the great men manoeuvring for allies and against

  opponents; friendships, enmities (and clientships) very changeable; and

  voters on the lookout for the biggest or most ingratiating offers.

  The assembly’s powers were oddly qualified. If the sufetes—Aristotle calls

  them the ‘kings’—and the senate agreed on referring a matter to the people,

  this was done. Likewise if sufetes and senate disagreed over referral; and

  (presumably) so again if one sufete and the bulk of the senate were at odds

  with the other sufete. When consulted, the citizens had more freedom to dis-

  cuss and decide than for instance Romans did in their assemblies. But

  Aristotle equally implies that sufetes and senate, if they saw eye to eye, could

  take decisions without consulting the citizens at all. How often this happened

  we do not know, but happen it did: memorably in 218 when the Romans’ dec-

  laration of war was vociferously and fatally accepted in the senate.16

  31

  C A RT H AG E

  V

  This fairly tidy, and to Greek theorists impressive, political setup must not

  obscure one important reality. For much of their known history, the

  Carthaginians had in practice been governed by dominant individuals and