Carthage Must Be Destroyed

  66 Justin 18.7.1–2.

  67 Ibid. 19.1.1–6; Pausanias 10.17.9

  68 Van Dommelen 1998, 123–4; Tronchetti 1995, 728–9.

  69 There is also clear evidence that during this period the Nuragic people were going through a period of profound social and political transformation (Webster 1996, 179–94).

  70 Bechtold 2008, 75; Fentress & Docter 2008, 104.

  71 Van Dommelen 2002, 130—37; 1998, 124–5.

  72 Barcelo 1988, 46—7.

  73 For southern Spain (Toscanos), see Wagner 1989, 150–51. For Ibiza, see Gómez Bellard 1990, 178—83. Supposedly the first Carthaginian colony was Ebusus, founded in 654 BC. However, many scholars now believe that it may initially have been a secondary foundation, possibly set up by settlers from a Phoenician settlement on the Spanish mainland, which came under Carthaginian influence only in the later decades of the sixth century BC, when the region was troubled by the collapse of the Tyrian–Iberian trading route. This change is typified by the introduction of rock-cut burial chambers, steles and statuettes.

  74 Whittaker 1978.

  75 Ibid., 59.

  76 Fruits, cereals and vegetables = Hurst & Stager 1978, 338–40. Analysis of wood used to burn sacrificial pyres also shows evidence that from the fourth century onwards almonds, peaches, apricots and plums were being cultivated in or near Carthage (Stager 1982). Meat and fish = Van Wijngaarden-Bakker 2007, 841, 848. Dogs make up only around 3 per cent of the bone sample, but often show signs of having been butchered.

  77 Bechtold 2008, 40—43; Morel 2004, 14; Lancel 1995, 257–302.

  78 For evidence from field surveys in Carthage’s hinterland see Greene 1983.

  79 Diodorus 20.8.3–4. One and a half centuries later, when another invading force tramped its way to Carthage, exactly the same fecundity was there to be witnessed by the awestruck troops (Appian 8.18.117).

  80 Kerkouane has often been presented as an anomaly (Van Dommelen 1998, 122), but the lack of evidence for a major Punic presence in other parts of Cap Bon probably has more to do with the limited number of field surveys conducted in the region.

  81 For the fullest study of Kerkouane see Fantar 1984. For a short description, Lancel 1995, 280–88.

  82 There is also evidence that a number of female deities were worshipped here, including Astarte, Tanit (the mother of Sid) and Demeter.

  83 Mezzolani 1999.

  84 For a good study of the local Libyan populations in Iron Age North Africa see Hodos 2006, 158–99.

  85 Huss 1985, 70–74. In a Greek maritime text dated to the third/second century BC, the influence that the Carthaginians possessed over large swathes of North Africa is made clear in emphatic terms. ‘As many townships or emporia as have been written about in Libya, from the Syrtis by Hesperides as far as the Pillars of Heracles in Libya, are all of the Carthaginians’ (Pseudo-Scylax 111).

  86 It was in this region that the Carthaginians planted huge numbers of olive trees, the crop for which its farmland is still famous for today.

  87 Bechtold 2008, 47–48, 75.

  88 Greene 1986, 109–16; Fentress & Docter 2008, 105.

  89 Fantar 1984.

  90 Pliny NH 18.22. Fantar 1998, 118. Mago is in fact cited on 66 occasions by Greek and Roman writers (Devillers & Krings 1994, 490–92). Selection and care of cattle = Columella Agr. 6.1.3; Varro Agr. 2.5.18. On fruit trees = Pliny NH 17.63—4, 131. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder intimated that Mago was not just an agricultural specialist but had also held a generalship, which has led some to speculate that he was indeed the individual whom a Greek source said had ‘transformed the Carthaginians from the Tyrians that they had been into Libyans’ (Pliny NH 18.22). For the dating of Mago to the fifth century BC see Fantar 1998, 114–15; Lancel 1995, 257–9.

  91 Hurst & Stager 1978, 338—40.

  92 For evidence of the start of winemaking in Punic North Africa see Greene 2000.

  93 Lancel 1995, 269–79.

  94 Pytheas supposedly sailed up through the Pillars of Hercules, up the Atlantic coast of France, along the English Channel and up to Scandinavia, the Baltic region, the mouth of the river Don and even the Orkneys, before exploring the Atlantic coast all the way down to Gades. See Dion 1977, 175–222, for a full discussion of the voyage. There is, however, no evidence to back up Dion’s assertion (175–6) that the expedition had been commissioned by Alexander the Great. Dion seems to have been heavily influenced by the Hellenocentric claims of Arrian (Anabasis 5.26.1–6) that, after his conquest of Asia, Alexander intended to turn to the West.

  95 Pliny NH 2.169 for the idea that they were contemporaneous and sanctioned by the Carthaginian state.

  96 Bello Jiménez 2005, 17–34.

  97 Festus Rufus Avienus 114–29, 380—89, 404—15. See Picard & Picard 1961, 236–7, for arguments about the veracity of Avienus’ claims. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History (2.169) also mentions Himilco’s voyage ‘to explore the outer coasts of Europe’.

  98 Picard & Picard (1961, 239) argue that these monsters were probably whales, although such sea monsters are a common cliché in Greek and Roman descriptions of northern lands, and acted as a cipher for general wildness and otherness.

  99 Herodotus 3.115; Diodorus 5.21.30; Strabo 2.5.15, 3.2.9, 3.5.11, 6.2.5; Pliny NH 4.119, 7.197, 34.156–8.

  100 Hanno 1; Blomqvist 1979, 5. The voyage of Hanno has been variously dated by scholars to the first half of the fifth century BC (Demerliac & Meirat 1983, 9) or the first half of the sixth century BC (Lacroix 1998, 345). For the single manuscript from which the Periplus has been dated to the tenth century AD see Lacroix 1998, 343.

  101 Hanno 1—8. The two fullest attempts to track Hanno’s voyage are Demerliac & Meirat 1983 and Lacroix 1998.

  102 Hanno 9–12. Others have suggested that the site of these mountains was the area around Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

  103 Hanno 13–14.

  104 Lacroix 1998, 375–80.

  105 Pliny NH 6.200.

  106 Hanno 15–18. Some have speculated that the premature return of Hanno’s mission was a smokescreen for the fact that the Carthaginian fleet secretly carried on their journey and circumnavigated Africa (Lacroix 1998, 380–84). This relies solely on Pliny’s assertion that Hanno had successfully sailed from Gades to Arabia by circumnavigating Africa (NH 2.169). However, all other sources attest to the fact that Hanno did indeed turn back owing to lack of water, burning heat, and rivers of fire flowing into the sea (Arrian Indike 43.11—12; Pomponius Mela 3.89).

  107 Bello Jiménez 2005, 56–67, 82–6. Demerliac & Meirat (1983, 64–7) suggest the more realistic number of 5,000 people.

  108 J. Taylor 1982; Bello Jiménez 2005, 85–6. The suggestion that this was in fact a secret mission to break the Arab trading monopoly by bringing gold from the mines of the Zimbabwe/Transvaal region of southern Africa via the Strait of Gibraltar is extremely far-fetched (Lacroix 1998, 276—342).

  109 Demerliac & Meirat 1983, 49—55.

  110 Demerliac & Meirat 1983.

  111 Ibid., 46–55, for a possible model of how this North Atlantic trading operation might have worked. The Carthaginians may also have been seeking regular sources of amber and copper from the Baltic and Scandinavia.

  112 For the lack of archaeological evidence, Bello Jiménez 2005, 104–5.

  113 Lancel (1995, 102–9) argues that the descriptions of the early stages of the voyage in terra cognita along what is now the Moroccan coast were based on historical events, but that accounts of the latter stages that describe voyaging along the coast of western sub-Saharan Africa were literary fabrications.

  114 Desanges 1978, 85. ‘On ne peut au Périple arracher son revêtement grec, sans en estomper les détours jusqu’à l’inanité’ (tr. Lancel 1995, 108).

  115 Lonis 1978, 147—50; Blomqvist 1979, 11. Lancel’s (1995, 106) argument against Lonis’s thesis is a qualification but not a refutation.

  116 Bello Jiménez 2005, 71–81. The Canary Islands are mentioned by the Nu
midian king Juba II (25 BC—AD 25), who acquired much of his geographical knowledge from Punic sources (Pliny NH 6.37).

  117 Herodotus 4.42; Demerliac & Meirat 1983, 30–37. Herodotus (4.43) also mentions a later, unsuccessful, attempt at circumnavigating Africa by a Persian noblemen, Sataspes. Pliny (NH 5.8) actually states that the object of the mission was the circumnavigation of Africa. This is also mentioned as the main aim of the expedition by Pomponius Mela (3.93).

  118 Herodotus 4.196.

  119 All black Africans were usually collectively described by the Greeks and Romans as ‘Ethiopians’.

  120 Pseudo-Scylax 112.

  121 This is Lancel’s (1995, 108) position, although he is sceptical of whether the latter parts of the voyage took place at all.

  122 Zimmerman Munn 2003.

  123 Aristotle Pol. 6.3.5.

  124 Van Dommelen 1998, 115; Campus 2006.

  125 Van Dommelen 1998, 124.

  126 For instance, at the old Phoenician colony of Motya, in Sicily, the tophet was greatly enlarged and monumentalized with its own wall and sanctuary.

  127 This was particularly the case on Sardinia, with the quantity of Attic pottery found on the island quadrupling from the first half to the second half of the fifth century BC (Tronchetti 1992, 364–77).

  128 Bondì 1995b, 352.

  129 Huss 1985, 498–9. Others have suggested that it may in fact have been a sign of aristocratic privilege. Bordreuil & Ferjaoui (1988, 137–42) discuss an inscription found in Tyre which mentions a ‘Son of Carthage’, and a number found in Carthage that refer to ‘Sons of Tyre’. They see these as merely an admission of the individual’s heritage rather than a legal status. Some of the outsiders appear to have been able to hold certain rights in Carthage on account of their citizenship of other Punic and Phoenician city states, with Carthaginians enjoying reciprocal privileges.

  130 Peserico 1999. This was particularly true of amphorae, which by the end of the seventh century BC had become very regionally diverse across the western Phoenician world. For a good discussion of one such Phoenician grave collection found in Sardinia, see Fletcher 2006, 175–85.

  131 Moscati 1986, 61–71. The steles produced in some western Phoenician cities, such as Motya and Tharros, do show clear stylistic parallels with Carthage, all displaying a strong preference for simple designs of motifs portrayed symbolically rather than representationally, such as the betyl (sacred stone) and altars and bottle shapes. Architecturally, these cities also stand out for the strong Egyptian architectural influence and the use of cippi, throne-shaped votive monuments (ibid., 74–7). These designs are very much in contrast to those at Sulcis and Monte Sirai, where the steles were decorated with motifs mainly portrayed in a realistic way. However, it is not clear whether the Sardinian and Sicilian cities had been influenced by Carthage or vice versa. There are also stylistic connections between Motya and Tharros, such as the popularity of the motif of a feminine figure clutching a religious sign or artefact to her chest, which is not found in Carthage (Moscati 1986, 78–9). It is also clear from epigraphic evidence that Phoenicians in northern Sardinia had a close relationship with the Phoenician city of Kition on Cyprus, perhaps through colonization. The oldest Phoenician inscription found in the western Mediterranean mentioned that Kition was the mother city of the Sardinian town of Nora (Krahmalkov 2001, 5).

  132 Cicero Scaur. 42. There are references to ethnic groups created by the intermixing of Phoenician and Punic incomers with indigenous populations in Africa, Spain and Sardinia. On cultural hybridization in the Punic world see Van Dommelen 2006.

  133 Van Dommelen 2006, 134.

  134 Van Dommelen 1998, 153.

  135 This idea was first formulated by Richard White in his study of the interactions between Western settlers and indigenous populations in the Great Lakes region of North America from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century (White, 1991). This model has been used extensively by the ancient historian Irad Malkin in relation to the archaic Mediterranean (Malkin 2002, 151–3; 2005, 238–9).

  136 Some have assumed that Sid was the founder deity of Sidon (Bernardini 2005, 131), but there is no evidence to support this.

  137 Barreca 1969.

  138 For the votive inscriptions that they left behind see Fantar 1969.

  139 Antas was by no means unique in the Punic world in this respect. The sanctuary to the goddess Astarte at Tas Silg on the island of Malta also clearly witnessed a similar symbiosis with an indigenous female deity.

  140 It has been argued that one particularly famous statuette usually identified as Sid is actually of Baal Hammon; however, enough other depictions of Sid exist showing him as a warrior/hunter deity (Amadasi Guzzo 1969, 99).

  141 Barreca 1979, 140.

  142 De Angelis 2003, 116–18.

  143 Thucydides 6.2.6.

  144 Ibid. 6.2.2–6.

  145 De Angelis 2003, 122—4.

  146 Thucydides 6.2.6; Falsone 1995, 674.

  147 Despite maintaining trade networks and establishing some new settlements and bolstering some old ones in the region, keeping the Greeks out of southern Spain was not a priority for Carthage. Indeed, the commercial vacuum created by the abandonment of Phoenician trading stations in southern Spain was increasingly filled by Greeks from Phocaea, on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, who had established a colony at Ampurias in north-eastern Spain on what is now the Costa Brava (Dominguez 2002, 72–4).

  148 Isserlin & Du Plat Taylor 1974, 50–68; De Angelis 2003, 118–20.

  149 De Angelis 2003, 110–11. In less exalted indigenous communities there were also signs of growing prosperity and the adoption of some facets of Greek culture. At Monte Iato, another Greek-influenced temple was built during this period. At Segesta, an indigenous city in the western area of the island, the sixth century was a time of rapid aggrandizement and expansion. During this period the elite indigenous families began to take control of centralized institutions in their cities, while also collecting revenues and directing labour. The strong commercial and cultural contacts that the Segestan elite had with the Hellenic world are further underlined by the vast amount of Greek pottery (with some 2,300 shards with Greek writing) that has been found in the city. Yet at other indigenous settlements Greek cultural influence seems to have been strictly limited. At Monte Polizzo, in the rugged interior of western Sicily, a settlement sprang up that at its height was home to up to 1,000 people. Here, while there is some evidence of Greek influence in domestic architecture and pottery styles, this is strictly limited in scope (Morris et al. 2001, 2002, 2003; De Angelis 2003, 107–10). However, the adoption of particular aspects of Phoenician or Greek culture varied markedly from one indigenous community to another (Hodos 2006, 89–157).

  150 Pausanias 10.11.3–4. Diodorus (5.9) makes no mention of the Phoenician–Elymian force, but relates that the Cnidian colonists had got themselves involved in an internecine conflict between the Segestans and Selinuntines. Krings (1998, 1—32) points to a number of elements in both texts that suggest doubt as to whether this episode really was one of the starting points for tensions between Phoenician/Punic and Greek populations. However, despite the usefulness of many of these qualifications, they do not prove that Pausanias’ account of a joint Phoenician–Elymian force is incorrect.

  151 De Angelis 2003, 128–45.

  152 Rocco 1970, 27–33.

  153 For archaeological evidence of Carthaginian–Etruscan trade see Macintosh-Turfa 1975. Although only limited amounts of Punic material have been found in Etruscan contexts, it appears that even in the seventh century BC Carthage was supplying luxury goods to Etruria. Etruscan bucchero — a type of black pottery—was exported to Carthage in greater numbers. The importation of Etruscan bronze metals and utensils continued to the third century BC. There is little evidence for the scholarly tradition that it was the Greeks who acted as the middlemen in the trade of Etruscan and Carthaginian artefacts. It is also important to note that Etruria was not politically united.
It seems clear that Carthage had diplomatic relations with at least the larger kingdoms of Tarquinii and Caere. For Tyrrhenian trade in the archaic period see Gras 1985.

  154 Macintosh-Turfa 1975, 176–7.

  155 It may have either served as a business card or as a label for commercial stock (Lancel 1995, 85–6; Macintosh-Turfa 1975, 177).

  156 Heurgon 1966; Ferron 1972. Some scholars have argued that the dialect used on the third tablet is not Punic but Cypriot Phoenician, and that the architectural decoration in the temple itself also shows strong parallels with Phoenician Cyprus, so that the most likely scenario is that this was actually a grant of a place of worship in an already existing Etruscan temple for a community of Phoenician traders who had originally come from Cyprus (Gibson 1982, 152–3; Verzár 1980). For a summary of the academic debate surrounding the tablets see Amadasi Guzzo (1995, 670—73). However, with our limited knowledge of Phoenician or Punic, and given the close links that existed particularly between Carthage and Phoenician Cyprus, as well as the political alliances between Carthage and the Etruscan kingdoms in this period, the evidence still points towards Punic merchants, although it might very well be both.

  157 Aristotle (Pol. 3.5.10–11) referred to ‘agreements about imports, and engagements that they will do each other no wrong and written articles of alliance’ between the Carthaginians and the Etruscans.

  158 Aristotle Rhet. 1.12.18.

  159 Herodotus 1.165–7. Krings’ (1998, 159–60) warning about viewing Alalia as part of a wider Mediterranean clash between Carthage and Greeks is, however, surely well founded.

  160 Palmer 1997, 23–4. It has been plausibly suggested that this treaty may also have helped regulate Roman purchases of corn from the Punic sector of Sicily when Rome was faced with food shortages in the fifth century BC.