The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean

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The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean Page 23

by Carolina Lopez-Ruiz


  Despite the sack of 146 bce and later Roman clearances, which removed most of the city’s physical structures, archaeological work has uncovered pottery fragments, artifacts, epitaphs, other inscriptions (like the dedication just mentioned on the sack of Acragas and an epigraphic record of a public works project, of perhaps mid-fourth century bce date), traces of streets and houses, and evidence of a fourth-century channel or canal cut from the shoreline of the lake of Tunis, to bring shipping up closer to the southern side of the city. The famous “hidden” ports between this canal and the eastern shoreline, which survive as shallow lagoons, are sometimes dated pre-265 bce, too (e.g., Lancel 1995: 384); incorrectly in the present author’s view.

  The Physical City, 479–265 bce

  Carthage’s disaster at Himera in 480 bce was not as costly as it could have been, for the victorious Greeks soon agreed to a peace which—at a cost to the Carthaginians of 2,000 talents and two commemorative temples (Diod.Sic. 11.26.2)—left their hegemony in western Sicily untouched. For the next seventy years, Carthaginian and Siceliot affairs went their different ways. It used to be thought that the defeat was harsh enough to push Carthage into virtual retreat from overseas relations and even trade, into a period of economic stringency before a late fifth-century bce resurgence (Warmington 1964: 58–61; Picard and Picard 1968: 86–87). Recent investigations suggest a more complex situation: while the Carthaginians did turn much of their energy toward imposing hegemony over their neighbors in Libya, their contacts and trade continued with overseas centers, in Sicily and beyond, and these contacts increased during the fifth century (e.g., Lancel 1992b; Bondì 1999).

  The city itself grew in size and affluence. It was already sizable before 480 bce, covering at least 25 hectares, possibly even 55 (Rakob 1990: 42–43; Aubet 2001: 219; Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 118). Paved streets made their appearance during ensuing decades, while the authorities built new walls of double thickness along the eastern seashore, complete with a major gateway, as far south as the lagoons, which later became Carthage’s famous enclosed ports. Another wall ran west to east to meet it. Rubbish deposits, common in earlier times, almost disappeared by the start of the century, suggesting that not only were the thoroughfares improved but so was rubbish disposal; improved toilet facilities arrived, too (Docter 2002–2003: 123–31; Berchtold and Docter 2010: 88; Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 126–29). Late in the century, residential buildings began to replace metalwork shops between the Byrsa hill and the shore, while those shops moved a few hundred meters westward to Byrsa’s southern slope (there, around 190 bce, they would be overlaid by the renovated “Hannibal quarter”).

  At least some of the residences of this and later periods were luxurious: painted walls, carefully designed floorings with colored marble tesserae, and interior columned peristyles; strikingly, these made their appearance at Carthage before anywhere else in the Mediterranean (Chelbi 1992: 71; Rakob 1992: 33–34; Schäfer 2004: 218–20; Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 129–30). Traces have been uncovered, too, of another fifth- or early fourth-century bce residential sector over half a kilometer west of Byrsa, between the sites of the Roman racing circus and the amphitheatre (Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 123, 126; on residential architecture, cf. chapter 28, this volume). The city was thus expanding significantly, or perhaps developing semirural satellite villages; the gardens and orchards of the Megara Plateau, on its northern side, were probably another example.

  In the fourth century bce, civic development advanced further. A Punic inscription of (probably) late fourth-century date, engraved on black limestone and found in 1964, offers a rare though partly damaged record of a secular building project. Its site is not known because the block was later moved elsewhere, but the inscription—with some conjectural restorations—records in detail the construction of a street and a “New Gate” which opened, it seems, onto a square that formed part of the same project. The names of the suffetes of the day, Safat and Adonibaal, are included to mark the year (as consuls’ names did at Rome and those of archons at Athens); named, too, are the work’s engineers, ʾAbdmelqart, Bodmelqart, and Yehawwielon (the first two would be rendered Hamilcar and Bomilcar by Greeks and Romans). All types of craftsmen involved in the work earned mention as well, though some terms are uncertain: porters, goldsmiths, furnace workers, perhaps moneychangers and even sandal makers (Dupont-Sommer 1968; Lancel 1992a: 142–44). The project may be associated with a New City sector that Diodorus mentions in telling of a failed military coup in the city, by another Bomilcar, in 308 (Diod.Sic. 20.44.1–5; admittedly the connection between New City and New Gate is uncertain). Thwarted in his attempt to seize the Old City, Bomilcar retreated to the New City before being overpowered. Suggestions about where it lay range from the area near the shipping channel to the southern slope of Megara: Megara looks likelier because Bomilcar rallied his troops on “high ground” (hyperdéxión tina tópon: 44.5). Connected or not, the New City and the New Gate are more evidence of fourth-century-bce vitality.

  During the century, a narrow channel was constructed southward, extending from below Byrsa and through the marshy lagoon area, past the children’s cemetery called (by modern scholars) the “tophet,” down to the shoreline of the lake of Tunis—a shoreline which in the Punic era seems to have curved more sharply inward from its junction with the open sea than it did later. Remnants of the channel’s 700 m length survive, although it was eventually abandoned and then superseded by the enclosed ports. Near the “tophet,” a sunken sandstone block brought over from the El Haouaria quarries on the Cape Bon peninsula, and pieces of ship’s timbers under it, suggests that the channel was usable by seagoing vessels. So do remnants of early timber structures on the island in the circular enclosed port, and evidence nearby of artisans’—especially metalworkers’—workshops (Hurst and Stager 1978; Lancel 1992a: 202–11; Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 122–23). A sheltered channel made delivering and embarking cargoes and crews more efficient than mooring vessels by the seawalls; it also meant safer equipping, repairing, and manning of warships. Naval dockyards in the area would most likely be those which, Diodorus records, were destroyed by fire in 368 bce (Diod. Sic. 15.73.3: tà neória).

  Carthage and the Libyans

  Carthage’s extra-urban territories, by 400 bce if not earlier, must have included the Cape Bon peninsula across the Gulf of Tunis, a region of agricultural wealth noted by both Agathocles’s Sicilian invaders in 310 bce and the Romans with Regulus in 256 bce (Diod. Sic. 20.8.2–6; Polybius 1.29.6–7). If Justin (19.2.4) is correct that sometime after 480 bce the Carthaginians stopped paying the Libyans a fee (stipendium) for their land, they had probably been “renting” the peninsula from long before. This is compatible with seeing Kerkouane—the modern name for the little city on the northeastern tip of the peninsula, destroyed around 256—as a Carthaginian settlement founded between 550 and 500 bce. The powerful fortresses at Ras ed-Drek and Clupea (Kelibia) on the northern coast of the cape date to the fifth century (Lancel 1992a: 284–88), when the Cape Bon region would have become definitely Carthage’s territory. It is reasonable to infer that the coastland between it and Carthage was likewise under Punic control. The evidence gathered since the 1980s points to a sizable level of economic self-sufficiency based on exploiting the city’s hinterland, especially on Cape Bon (Berchtold and Docter 2010: 89–90, table 2). It complements Justin’s account of how, instead of paying the Libyans a stipendium, the Carthaginians brought them under their own rule.

  By the fourth century bce, Punic control extended westward beyond Tunis also. Xenophon has his mentor Socrates (thus at some presumed date before 399) describe the Carthaginians as the rulers and “the Libyans” (unspecified) as the ruled (Memorabilia 2.1.10). Dio Chrysostom credits a leader called Hanno with making the Carthaginians “live in Libya instead of Phoenicia,” become “Libyans instead of Phoenicians,” and master wealthy lands and ports (Orat. 25.7): a loose and generalized claim, but unless Dio has merely invented it (unlike his other examp
les of leadership in the passage), such a focus on Libya suits the fifth century bce. Then, moreover, one member of the dominant Magonid family was a Hanno—just possibly the Hanno of the Periplus (Geus 1994: 105, cf. 96n353). Writing in the 330s, Aristotle noted that domestic discontents at Carthage were regularly eased by sending out ordinary citizens “to the cities” (Pol. 2.1273b: 19–20): apparently the authorities practiced a form of colonization within Libya, including land grants (like Athenian cleruchies) to satisfy the extruded citizens. Sister Phoenician cities like Utica, Hippou Acra, Hadrumetum, and Lepcis Magna were perhaps exempt from this, though we cannot be sure.

  Aristotle’s “cities” no doubt included the small towns in the Cape Bon region like Kerkouane, Clupea, and Curubis, but also inland Libyan centers in the regions of the Bagradas, Siliana, and Catadas (Miliane) Rivers and the uplands and valleys around these. In 308 bce, the invading Greeks captured a city that Diodorus calls Tocae (Gr. Tokai)—probably Thugga (Huss 1985: 197)—and then several others whose Diodorean Greek names are tantalizingly opaque (Diod. Sic. 20.44.4–6): his “Phelline” might be Belalis, in the hilly mining region near Vaga (Béja) north of the middle Bagradas; “Meschela” perhaps Masclianae (the Roman form of the name), a strategic site in the mountains of the Dorsale chain south of Mactaris; and “Acris,” if not Mactaris itself, perhaps Aggar (Henchir Sidi Amara), a strong point dominating the key pass across the mountains between Mactaris and the coast at Hadrumetum. This reach of Carthaginian hegemony by 310 bce is believable, for only half a century later it extended as far west and southwest as Sicca and Theveste.

  Libyan towns were not normally governed directly by Carthaginian officials, any more than Italian socii were by Rome, but they had to provide manpower and money as required. So, at any rate they had to do so in the third and second centuries bce when evidence from literary sources is better (e.g., Polybius 1.72.1–5, 31.21.8; Livy 34.62.2–3), and in Diodorus, a Syracusan leader in 396 describes Punic rule as requiring financial tribute but allowing internal autonomy (Diod. Sic. 14.65.2). These conditions applied, too, to the other Phoenician cities on the North Africa coast—the “Libyphoenicians” in Diodorus’s definition)—but they had rights or privileges not open to Libyans. Diodorus mentions the right to marry Carthaginians (epigamía: Diod. Sic. 20.55.4), which should imply property and commercial rights as well. A few commemorative inscriptions of the fourth and third centuries, for instance at Kerkouane and at Carthage itself, show a variety of Punic and Libyan names in the nomenclature of those interred: one Pt bn Ytnb‘l bn Zybq, for example (Ben Younès 1995: 821–22). Libyphoenicians could bear Libyan names—the obvious example is Hannibal’s cavalry officer from Hippou Acra, Mottones—but in the nature of things, unions licit or not between Carthaginians and native Libyans were inevitable, too, especially with the Carthaginians sent out as colonists to inland centers.

  Relations with either Libyans or Libyphoenicians were not always good. The Libyans, even if self-governing, were often subjected to tough treatment, to judge by their repeated rebellions in the fourth–third centuries bce—in 398 and the 370s, in 310–307, again in 256, and most famously of all, in 241–237, Polybius’s “Truceless War”—as well as by Diodorus’s bleak remark, in reporting Libyan defections to Agathocles, about how deeply they hated Carthage’s heavy dominance (Diod. Sic. 20.55.4). As for the Libyphoenicians, the only known high rank holder was Mottones, and he was so badly treated by the disdainful Punic general in Sicily in 212–210 bce that he defected to the Romans (Günther, Kleine Pauly s.v. Myttones).

  Nonetheless, at various times Carthage may have dealt more leniently with both subjects and allies. It is worth noting that in 308 bce, the invading Greeks had to use force to subdue Tocae and the other inland towns, just as no mass defections by Libyans to the Roman invaders are recorded in 204–202, or even during the Third Punic War (in which the Carthaginians were cut off from help from Libya only after Scipio Aemilianus took command in 147). During Regulus’s invasion in 256–255, though Libyans rebelled, the Libyphoenicians did not nor did they when Africanus arrived in 204. In fact, he was impeded throughout his invasion by the stubborn resistance of little Utica. It is unknown how loyal to Carthage the descendants of the colonists mentioned by Aristotle were, but conceivably they played a part, with varying success, in maintaining Punic control through Libya.

  Relations with Greeks and Others

  During the fifth century bce, the Carthaginians were generally at peace with Greek Sicily. Although they had combined their fleet with an Etruscan one to fight the Phocaeans in Corsica in around 540, they took no part in the war between their former allies and Hieron of Syracuse, which ended in his naval victory in 474 off Cumae, in Italy. Nor were they troubled, at any rate before the last years of the century, by the Sicilian Greeks’ vigorously developing prosperity and strength, especially at Syracuse and Acragas (Pindar’s poetic concern about a possible new “Phoenician” war notwithstanding: Pyth. 1.70–75; Nem. 9.28–29). In fact, the Carthaginians developed a thriving trade with Acragas: according to Diodorus, they imported immense quantities of Acragantine olives every year (Diod. Sic. 13.81.4–5). The change in policy from peaceable relations to massive military intervention in 409 and 406 bce may have been due, partly at least, to economic resentment at how Acragas profited from this trade, and more broadly at how wealthy Greek Sicily had become—though Diodorus puts the invasion down to a thirst to avenge the defeat of 480, felt especially (he claims) by the grandsons of the defeated Hamilcar.

  The grandsons’ campaigns in 409 and 406–405 bce initiated a hundred and thirty years of intermittent wars against the Sicilian Greeks, fought every ten to twenty years and, despite Punic naval prowess and Greek sailing skills, waged almost entirely on land (Huss 1985: 107–48, 176–215; Hoyos 2010: 149–77). Every so often, Carthage made spectacular gains: the sack of Himera, Acragas, Gela, and Camarina in 406–405 garnered huge plunder; the peace of 405 with Syracuse under its new tyrant Dionysius I imposed Carthaginian control over the western half of the island; in the 340s and again in 312–310, and once more again in 278–277, the city seemed set to repeat that achievement. Nevertheless, the victories and conquests were ephemeral while disasters almost predictably occurred—Dionysius’s destruction of Motya in 398, the plague of 396, Timoleon’s annihilation of the great Punic army at the Crimisus River in 341, and worst of all, Agathocles’s three-year invasion of Libya beginning in 310, which brought Carthage to the edge of ruin. Pyrrhus in his turn almost ejected the Carthaginians from Sicily. The recurrent status quo, down to 264 bce, was that they kept hegemony over the western quarter or third of the island, while Sicily’s Greeks—as soon as they were left to themselves again—fought among themselves over which city-state should dominate the others.

  Throughout these wars, Punic engagement with Greeks and Greek culture nonetheless continued. Particularly notable was Carthage’s formal adoption of the cult of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) in 396 bce, in an effort to placate the divine wrath visited on North Africa in the shape of a virulent plague and a massive Libyan rebellion (Diod. Sic. 14.77.4–5). The plague had been brought back from Sicily after a Punic expedition sacked the goddesses’ shrine outside Syracuse, so the Carthaginian authorities assigned eminent citizens to foster the new cult while at the same time, to ensure proper rites, prominent Greek residents were designated to assist them. The cult included—perhaps was led by—priestesses: on a votive stele, one named Hannabaal describes herself as “priestess of Kore” (hkhnt š Krw’; Lipiński 1992/DCPP, s.v. “Déméter et Kore”).

  This is not the only detail revealing that even amid hostilities with some Greek states—usually Syracuse and its allies—good Punic relations with others continued. Ten years earlier, in 406 bce, as a fragmentary inscription in Athens attests, Carthage’s generals in Sicily and the Athenians were exchanging envoys, apparently with a view toward friendship and alliance (philía kaì symmachía: Bengtson 1975/SVA 2.151–2, no. 208)—this at a time when the Car
thaginians were wreaking havoc on Himera and Acragas. Athens, fighting for its life in Greece against a Spartan coalition which at times included warships from Syracuse (Thuc. 8.26.1, 61.2, 85.3; Xenophon, Hellenica 1.18, etc.), might well try for friendship with Carthage, which had Syracuse, as well as Acragas, in its sights. They had tried this before, in 415 (Thuc. 6.88.2). What Carthage could gain from such a link is not obvious, and nothing came of the scheme on either occasion, but at other times the Carthaginians were ready to ally with various Sicilian Greek cities when it suited them: for example, with Syracuse in the 340s to prevent it from being reconquered by the expelled Dionysius II; with Acragas and other cities in 312–307 against Syracuse; and again with Acragas in 264–261 to confront the latest comers to Sicily, the Romans.

  Trade with the Greek world and elsewhere was scarcely harmed by the disaster of Himera in 480 bce. After a sharp fall of archaeological deposits at Carthage dating to the later sixth century—ca. 550 to 510—the quantity then rises steadily, although not until the end of the third century bce do they match those from the city’s first two centuries (Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 125, fig. 7.7). During the fifth century bce, imports of oil and wine from the Greek world, notably Massalia, Sicily, Magna Graecia, Corinth, and the Aegean, grew. In a rare and welcome item of economic history, Diodorus reports that the Carthaginians imported great quantities of fine Sicilian oil from Acragas (Diod. Sic. 14.81.4–5)—until, that is, they sacked and burned the place in 406. They brought in goods, too, from southern and northeastern Spain, Etruria, Rome, Sardinia, and—the largest proportion of finds—producers within their own areas of hegemony. While a good deal of this period’s Punic ceramics were adaptations of foreign ware, the quantity of locally made ceramics far outweighs the imported: based on finds at Carthage, the current figure for the fifth and fourth centuries is 58 percent, although much local tableware continued to imitate foreign, especially Greek, models, a testimony to Carthaginians’ continuing openness to models from abroad (Morel 1990: 85–99; Maraoui Telmini et al. 2014: 133–37, 134, fig. 7.15; cf. Lancel 1992b).

 

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