In Sicily, the early fifth century bce saw the emergence of powerful tyrants at the head of the Greek cities. Among them, Gelon, tyrant of Gela since 491–490 bce, assumed power in Syracuse; master of the greater part of eastern Sicily from 485, he disposed of a powerful and well-equipped army, a large fleet, and sufficient resources to maintain lengthy military efforts. His ally, Theron, was tyrant of Acragas (present-day Agrigento), another prosperous city with vast hinterlands. Seeking to expand his territory, Theron attacked Terillus, tyrant of Himera, and chased him from the city. Carthage probably feared that the appetite of the two tyrants of Syracuse and Acragas posed a threat to its own presence on the island. Relying on its alliance with Terillus, who also entertained hospitable relations with Hamilcar the Magonid (or the Hannonid), the Carthaginians undertook the siege of Himera.
Herodotus (VII, 165), as well as Diodorus of Sicily (XI, 20, 2), insists on the size of the army gathered by the Carthaginians (300,000 men) and their ethnic diversity (Libyans, Iberians, Sardinians, Corsicans, Ligurians, Gauls). Even if we can suspect these authors of exaggeration, it would seem that Carthage wanted to take the opportunity to put an end to the ambitions of Syracuse, its great rival on the island.
The confrontation took place at the base of the walls of Himera in 480 bce. According to Herodotus, the battle lasted the whole day. Hamilcar, neglecting to lead his army, would appear to have spent the day sacrificing to the deities. When he witnessed the defeat of his men, crushed by those of Gelon and Theron, he threw himself into the pyre (VII, 166–67). Diodorus of Sicily (XI, 22–25) reports that 150,000 soldiers were massacred that day, and that almost the remainder of the formidable Carthaginian army was reduced to slavery. A single ship was able to carry the news to Carthage. The Punic metropolis then obtained a good peace treaty, which allowed it to maintain its Sicilian bases, subject to the payment of a war indemnity of 2,000 talents of silver (Diodorus of Sicily XI, 26, 2; for possible archaeological evidence of this battle, see the mass grave excavated in the West necropolis of Himera; Vasallo 2010).
The victory of the tyrants of Syracuse and Acragas did not escape comparison with the battle of Salamis, vide Herodotus (VII, 166): “They add this tale too, that Gelon and Theron won a victory over Amilcas [i.e., Hamilcar] the Carchedonian [i.e., the Carthaginian] in Sicily on the selfsame day whereon the Greeks vanquished the Persian at Salamis” (Loeb edition). Through a forced synchronism, which was soon noticed (cf. Diodorus of Sicily XI, 23, 2), Herodotus suggests that the Greek victories represent those of civilization against barbarism, a kind of “clash of civilizations.” This was far from being the case. Herodotus himself points out that Hamilcar was born of a mixed marriage, his mother being a Syracusan Greek (VII, 166). Furthermore, during the battle, the Carthaginians had as allies the Greek cities of Selinus and Reghion, as well as the autochthonous Elymes (Diodorus of Sicily XI, 21, 4; Herodotus VII, 165). Thus, looking beyond the battle and the deforming prism of the sources, which almost exclusively mention Carthage in the context of bellicose events, Sicily, with its diversity (Punics, Greeks, autochthonous populations) proved to be particularly shaped for religious and cultural interaction between the Punic and Greek worlds, as attested by the shared cult of Demeter, as well as features of their coins, iconography, and architecture (on Sicily, see chapter 35, this volume).
The economic and political consequences of this disaster have been represented in diverse manners by the historians of Carthage. For some, this defeat marked a redistribution of the areas of influence and a withdrawal that lasted almost a century. For others, it merely represented an incident in the long conflict that opposed the two parties and its consequences should not be exaggerated. Be that as it may, the defeat probably had a strong effect on Carthage. It no doubt led to a renewed focus on its own hinterland, although in no way did the event lead to a disengagement from Sicily. The island’s western extremity remained of vital importance to Carthage, since it allowed it to control the bulk of traffic between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean. From an economic standpoint, the idea of a decline has long been moot. This idea was based on the scarcity of imported pottery and of tombs from the fifth century bce at Carthage. A reexamination of the ceramic material and data from recent excavations, however, contradicts this, in that Greek imports from Attica in particular did not suffer an interruption (Lancel 1992: 153) and that construction activity, particularly in the lower part of the city, continued.
To conclude, we need to insist that it is difficult to offer a continuous narrative of the early centuries of Carthage. The unequal quality of the literary sources and the fact that they are indirect, as well as the limited historical interpretations available from archaeological data, all call for caution in the historical interpretations. This means that we must be satisfied with a sketched history of early Carthage for the time being. It is difficult to flesh out the details of the political and social organization of the city, its economy, religious sphere, and relations with its African neighbors, and its cousins from eastern and western Phoenician cities. The centuries that followed are fortunately relatively more prolix.
References
Amadasi Guzzo, M. G. 1992. “Sulla dedica a Melqart da Tharros e il toponimo QRTḤDŠT.” L’Africa romana 9, no. 2: 523–32.
Bellelli, V., and P. Xella, eds. 2016. Le lamine di Pyrgi. Nuovi studi sulle iscrizioni in etrusco e in fenicio nel cinquantenario della scoperta. Verona: Essedue Edizioni.
Ben Jerbania, I., and T. Redissi. 2014. “Utique et la Méditerranée centrale à la fin du IXe s. et au VIIIe s. av. J.-C.: les enseignements de la céramique grecque géométrique.” Rivista di Studi Fenici 42: 177–203.
Bernardini, P. 2004. “Cartagine e la Sardegna: Dalla conquista all’integrazione (540–238 A.C.).” Rivista di Studi Fenici 32: 35–56.
Bondì, S. F. 2016. “Obiettivi e modalità dell’azione militare di Cartagine in Sicilia.” In Guerra e pace in Sicilia e nel Mediterraneo antico (VIII–III sec. a.C.). Arte, prassi e teoria della pace e della guerra, volume 1, edited by C. Ampolo, 131–38. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.
Briese, Ch. 1998. “Die Chapelle Cintas—das Gründungsdepot Karthagos oder eine Bestattung der Gründergeneration?” In Archäologische Studien in Kontaktzonen der antiken Welt, edited by R. Rolle and K. Schmidt, with the collaboration of R. Docter, 419–45. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Bunnens, G. 1979. L’expansion phénicienne en Méditerranée occidentale. Brussels and Rome: Institut historique belge de Rome.
Devillers, O. 2000. “‘Magonides’ ou ‘Hannonides’? A propos de Justin, Historiae Philippicae, XIX, 1, 1,” ACFP IV, 1 [Actes du quatrième Congrès des Études Phéniciennes et Puniques, Cadix, 2–6 Octobre 1995], 147–51. Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Cádiz.
Docter, R. F. 2009. “Carthage and Its Hinterland.” In Phönizisches und punisches Städtewesen, edited by S. Helas and D. Marzoli, 179–89. Madrid and Mainz: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Madrid.
Docter, R. F., F. Chelbi, B. Maraoui Telmini, A. J. Nijboer, J. Van der Plicht, W. Van Neer, K. Mansel, and S. Garsallah. 2008. “New Radiocarbon Dates from Carthage: Bridging the Gap. between History and Archaeology?” In Beyond the Homeland: Markers in Phoenician Chronology, edited by C. Sagona, 379–422. Leuven, Paris, and Dudley, MA: Peeters.
Docter, R. F., and H. G. Niemeyer. 1994. “Pithekoussai: the Carthaginian connection. On the Archaeological Evidence of Euboeo-Phoenician Partnership in the 8th and 7th Centuries B.C.” In Apoikia, Scritti in onore di Giorgio Buchner, edited by B. D’Agostino and D. Ridgway, 101–15. Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale.
Esposito, R. 1999. “Il tempio punico-romano di Antas: qualche considerazione.” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Cagliari 64 (n.s. 17): 111–20.
Famà, M. L. 2008. “Mozia tra il V e il IV sec. a.C.” In Greci e Punici in Sicilia tra V e IV sec. A.C., edited by M. Congiu, C. Miccichè, S. Modeo, and L. Santagati, 47–67. Caltaniss
etta: Salvatore Sciascia Editore.
Fantar, M. 2002. Recherches sur l’architecture funéraire punique du Cap Bon. Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.
Geus, K. 1994. Prosopographie der litterarish bezeugten Karthager. Leuven: Peeters.
Gras, M., P. Rouillard, and J. Teixidor. 1989. L’Univers phénicien. Paris: Arthaud.
Gsell, S. 1918. Histoire Ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord II. Paris: Hachette (= HAAN II).
Gsell, S. 1920. Histoire Ancienne de l’Afrique du Nord I. Paris: Hachette (= HAAN I).
Guirguis, M. 2012. “Monte Sirai 2005–2010. Bilanci e prospettive.” Vicino Oriente 16: 97–129.
Jehasse, J., and L. Jehasse. 1973. La nécropole préromaine d’Aléria (1960–1968). Paris: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.
Jehassse, J., and L. Jehasse. 2001. Aléria. Nouvelles données de la nécropole. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient méditerranéen.
Kallala, N., J. Sanmarti, J. Ramón Torres, R. Alvarez, B. Maraoui, and C. Belarte. 2014. “La ville numide d’Althiburos et le monde de Carthage,” Rivista di Studi Fenici 42: 127–47.
Kourou, N. 2002. “Phéniciens, Chypriotes, Eubéens et la fondation de Carthage.” In Hommage à Marguerite Yon. Actes du colloque international “Le temps des royaumes de Chypre, XIII-VIe s. av. J.-C.,” Lyon 20–22 juin 2002, edited by A. Hermary, 89–114. Paris: Centre d’Études chypriotes.
Lancel, S. 1982. “Les niveaux funéraires.” In Byrsa II. Mission archéologique française à Carthage: Rapports préliminaires sur les fouilles 1977–1978: niveaux et vestiges puniques, edited by S. Lancel, 263–64. Rome: École française de Rome.
Lancel, S. 1992. Carthage. Paris: Fayard. [English ed. 1995.]
Lasserre, F. 1966. Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Lipiński E., ed. 1992. Dictionnaire de la Civilisation Phénicienne et Punique. Turnhout: Brepols.
Maggiani, A. 2006. “Dinamiche del commercio arcaico: le tesserae hospitales.” In Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo. Commerci e politica, edited by G. M. Della Fina, 317–49. Orvieto and Rome: Fondazione per il Museo “Claudio Faina” and Edizioni Quasar.
Mansel, K. 1998. “Verzierte handgemachte Keramik des 8. und 7. Jhs. v.Chr. aus Karthago. Ein Beitrag zur Keramik nichtpunischer Tradition.” In Archäologische Studien in Kontaktzonen der antiken Welt, edited by R. Rolle and K. Schmidt, with the collaboration of R. Docter, 559–71. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Maurin, L. 1962. “Himilcon le Magonide, crises et mutations à Carthage au début du IVe siècle avant J.-C.” Semitica 12: 5–43.
Morel, J.-P. 2010.“Les tombes puniques de Byrsa à Carthage et leur sort à travers les siècles.” In Monuments et cultes funéraires d’Afrique du Nord, edited by François Déroche and Jean Leclant, 41–76. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Morel, J.-P. 1969. “Kerkouane, ville punique du cap Bon: remarques archéologiques et historiques.” Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie 81: 473–518.
Moscati, S., P. Bartoloni, and S. F. Bondì. 1997. La penetrazione fenicia e punica in Sardegna. Trent’anni dopo. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
Niemeyer, H. G., R. F. Docter, and K. Schmidt, eds. 2007. Karthago. Die Ergebnisse der Hamburger Grabung unter den Decumanus Maximus. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.
Perra, C. 1998. L’Architettura templare fenicia e punica di Sardegna. Il problema delle origini orientali. Oristano: Editrice S’Alvure.
Ridgway, D. 1998. “The Carthaginian Connection: A View from San Montano.” In Archäologische Studien in Kontaktzonen der antiken Welt, edited by R. Rolle and K. Schmidt, with the collaboration of R. Docter, 301–18. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Sagona, C. 2015. The Archaeology of Malta. From the Neolithic Through the Roman Period. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sanmartí, J., N. Kallala, M. C. Belarte, J. Ramón, B. Maraoui Telmini, R. Jornet, and S. Miniaoui. 2012. “Filling Gaps in the Protohistory of the Eastern Maghreb: The Althiburos Archaeological Project (El Kef, Tunisia).” Journal of African Archaeology 10, no. 1: 21–44.
Scheid, J., and J. Svenbro. 1985. “Byrsa. La ruse d’Elissa et la fondation de Carthage.” Annales Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 40: 328–42.
Spanò Giammellaro, A. 2000. “I fenici in Sicilia: modalità insediamentali e rapporti con l’entroterra, problematiche e prospettive di ricerca.” In Fenicíos y Território, edited by A. González Prats, 295–335. Alicante: Instituto Alicantino de Cultura “Juan Gil-Albert.”
Sznycer, M. 1978. “Carthage et la civilisation punique.” In Rome et la conquête du monde méditerranéen 264–27 av. J.-C.—Tome 2. Genèse d’un empire, edited by C. Nicolet, 545–93. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Van Compernolle, R. 1959. Étude de chronologie et d’historiographie siciliotes. Recherches sur le système chronologique des sources de Thucydide concernant la fondation des colonies siciliotes. Brussels and Rome: Institut historique belge de Rome.
Van Heems, G. 2012. “De Carthage à Gouraya: Onomastique étrusque d’Afrique.” In L’onomastica africana, edited by A. M. Corda and A. Mastino, 159–69. Ortacesus: Sandhi Edizioni.
Vassallo, S. 2010. “Le battaglie di Himera alla luce degli scavi nella necropoli occidentale e alle fortificazioni. I luoghi, i protagonisti.” Sicilia Antiqua 7: 17–37.
Zucca, R. 1989. Il tempio di Antas. Sardegna Archeologica, Guide e Itinerari 11. Sassari: Carlo Delfino Editore.
* The author would like to thank Dr. Michael Templer (Institut d’Archéologie, Université de Neuchâtel) and the editors for their valuable help in translating and smoothing this contribution.
Chapter 12
Classical-Hellenistic Carthage Before the Punic Wars (479–265 bce)
Dexter Hoyos
Sources and Evidence
The sicilian disaster of 480 bce had its advantages for Carthage. Ambitious projections of power overseas were forgone in favor of improving its position in North Africa (for this earlier phase, see chapter 11, this volume). Defeat in that war had little effect on Carthaginian dealings, commercial and cultural, with the Greek world—which in turn viewed the Carthaginians with increased interest, as Herodotus’s references to them and later Aristotle’s treatment of their slightly paradoxical constitution show.
As with the city’s earlier history, literary sources continue to be slender for 479–265 bce. Contemporary materials are very limited, all in Greek, and only one—the earliest and most striking if it is genuine and does date to the fifth century bce—purportedly by a Carthaginian: the Periplus of Hanno, a short first-person account of a colonizing and (apparently) exploratory naval expedition down the coast of West Africa under Hanno, who is called a “king” (Euzennat 1994; Huss 1985: 75–84; Geus 1994: 98–105; Lipiński 2004: 435–76; Hoyos 2010: 51–54; see also chapter 42, this volume). Herodotus’s notices are few but important, Thucydides’s few and incidental (one illustrates the Sicilian Greek view, in 415 bce, that Carthage had the greatest store of gold and silver in the world; Thuc. 6.34), and likewise items in Isocrates, Plato, and Theocritus (his Idyll 16 includes a paean to Syracuse’s new ruler Hiero, at war with the Carthaginians in the 270s bce). Aristotle’s description of, and other remarks on, Carthaginian political institutions in the Politics, compressed and in places unclear though they are, amount to the only evidence of any length on the topic.
It is later literary sources that supply fuller narratives, though fitfully; above all, the fifth- to third-century bce Sicilian sections of Diodorus of Sicily’s Historical Library, composed during the first century bce—focusing on the wars that the island’s Greek city-states waged against Carthage—and Plutarch’s Lives (written around 100–120 ce) of Dion and Timoleon, Greek Sicily’s “liberators” in the 350s and 340s bce, and of Pyrrhus of Epirus, another (self-styled) liberator fifty years later. Still further away in date from those centuries is Justin’s nonetheless important epitome—variously dated to the third, fourth, or some other centur
y ce—of the Augustan-era historian Pompeius Trogus’s Philippic Histories on the non-Roman Mediterranean world. Trogus’s sources are not known; although the Greek polymath Posidonius, Cicero’s friend and Trogus’s much older contemporary, is considered one possibility, there may well have been several others, too.
Hanno’s Periplus (probably) apart, the shared feature and failing of all the literary sources is their non-Punic provenance. The information they give about Carthage shows no sign of direct Punic origin: items must, at best, have been transmitted via Greek informants who had visited Carthage or consulted Carthaginian informants. That written records did exist at Carthage before 264 bce is shown by the Periplus and also by the damaged inscription recording details of the Carthaginian campaign of 406–405 bce in Sicily (CIS I 5510; Schmitz 1994; cf. Balboa Lagunero 2015). So, too, Sallust’s report of the libri Punici “qui regis Hiempsalis dicebantur” (Jug. 17), which had to be translated for him and which recorded traditions of how North Africa had been settled by foreign peoples including Phoenicians. These “Punic books” probably formed part of the Carthaginian libraries looted in 146 bce which, apart from the encyclopedia of agriculture by the famous Mago, were gifted by Senate decree to the then-rulers of Numidia (Pliny, NH 18.22–23). Even if some Carthaginian writings may have been in Greek, in the city’s final age anyway (Hannibal wrote works in Greek, for example), the fact that Mago’s book and Hiempsal’s libri Punici still needed to be translated for Roman use makes it unlikely that many—especially of earlier centuries—were available save in Punic. Sources composed with a Greek or Roman outlook naturally were prone to judging Carthaginians and Punic culture suspiciously, sometimes censoriously (most famously in the lurid and conflicting claims of child sacrifice: Hoyos 2010: 100–105), and often with limitations—Aristotle’s sketch of the city’s politeia, for instance. Note, too, Latin writers’ habit, going back to Cato, of garbing Carthaginian leaders in varying Roman official dress as dictators, consuls, or praetors (cf. also chapters in this volume: on Classical sources, chapter 44; on Phoenician literature, chapter 18; on infant sacrifice and the tophet, chapter 21).
The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean Page 22