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Chapter 14
Carthage after the Punic Wars and the Neo-Punic Legacy
Matthew Hobson
Late Punic North Africa?
Since the process of decolonization began in the mid-twentieth century, the legitimacy of talking about cultural developments within the ancient Mediterranean in terms of successive waves of “Punicization,” “Hellenization,” or “Romanization” has been called into question (Bonnet 2006; Quinn 2003: 23–29; Terrenato 2008). However, many of the early attempts to challenge or overturn outdated arguments of the colonial period tended simply to turn the colonial model on its head, without fully deconstructing the semantic structure of the underlying paradigm (Mattingly 2011: 43–72). Observable continuities, for example, rather than being seen as a kind of stasis representative of an inability of the inhabitants of North Africa to adapt or modify (Camps 1961: 7–8), were recast as evidence of resistance to imperial oppression and of a vibrant North African cultural unity (Bénabou 1976; Laroui 1970). Thus it has been common for both conservative and critical accounts written post-decolonization, attempting either to bolster or to topple the paradigm of Romanization, to talk of something described as “Punic culture” or of “Punic civilization” and then to argue over the extent to which it “survived” or was extinguished by the centuries of Roman rule (Fantar 1990; Lancel 1995; Longerstay 1995; Mattingly 2005: 255–69; Nicolet 1978: 626; Picard 1990; Rouillard 1995; Várhelyi 1998).
The elements most frequently cited in the continuity and survival argument include the use of the Punic language in a region spanning the Atlantic coast of North Africa to Cyrenaica continuing into late antiquity, the worship of the gods of the Phoenicio-Punic diaspora according to regional customs, the presence in many North African urban communities of the High Empire of magistrates known by the Phoenicians as shoftim (or in Latin, as suffetes), the use of Carthaginian weights and measures in the minting of coins, and of Phoenicio-Punic units of measurement for the construction of buildings—even for those considered typically Roman, such as amphitheatres (Quinn and McCarty 2015). How best to interpret the available evidence is currently under debate, but it must be conceded that use of the term “Punicization” in the context of the western Mediterranean often made the mistake of reducing all cultural development either to the arrival of Phoenician settlers or to the overbearing hegemonic influence of Carthage (Papi 2014).
True replacement of the colonial paradigm and the culture-historical approach requires the deconstruction of the underlying essentialist categories, such as “Roman,” “Punic,” or “Libyan.” A bold step in this direction was taken a decade ago by Jonathan Prag (2006). He identified a number of continuing problems with modern usage of the term “Punic.” Among these problems was the failure
of modern scholarship, which developed in the context of the European colonial experience, sometimes with a strong anti-Semitic bias, to compensate for the overwhelmingly negative impression of western Phoenicio-Punic peoples passed on by the Graeco-Roman literary tradition (Prag 2006). A particularly radical observation of Prag’s was that nothing emerges from the literary or epigraphic record to prove that there was ever something like a commonly self-ascribed and shared “Punic” identity among the various Phoenicio-Punic communities of the western Mediterranean; in the surviving evidence we have Poenus is a descriptive term used primarily—indeed, almost exclusively—by non-Phoenicio-Punic peoples. This has prompted further discussion of the meaning of the term “Punic” when used as a cultural signifier in modern scholarship, although general consensus appears far from being reached (Prag and Quinn 2013; Quinn and Vella 2014).
This short contribution cannot possibly offer a comprehensive survey of the available evidence associated with cultural development in North Africa during the Roman period, nor can it solve all the remaining methodological and terminological problems. Instead I will put forward the argument that ancient North Africa was a highly complex, heterogeneous, and multicultural space, comprising a high degree of regional diversity. Indeed this appears to have been the case already from early on in the first millennium bce. Recent excavations at the inland town of Althiburos have proven that sedentary settlement, with an economy based on domesticated animals and plants, existed on this location as far back as the tenth century bce (Kallala and Sanmartí 2011; Kallala et al. 2014). This is earlier than current archaeological evidence from either Carthage or Utica. The presence in strata of the eighth century bce at Althiburos of ceramics from the coastal zone also demonstrates that urban communities inland developed alongside, and in communication with, those coastal settlements which have traditionally been referred to as Phoenician colonies. Any simple dichotomy between continuity and rupture will fail to do justice to the multiple strands of continuity and development observable in the surviving record. With that in mind, I shall begin with a brief introduction to the political settlement that followed Carthage’s final defeat in the Third Punic War (146 bce), before moving on to other more specific topics such as municipal institutions, language, and religious and funerary rituals.
Carthaginian Territory Following 146 bce
After the initial major impact of the destruction of the city of Carthage, Rome’s political and economic control of the region naturally took time to fully establish itself (Lintott 1994: 27–31; Quinn 2003, 2004; Whittaker 1996: 586–87; for the Punic Wars, see chapter 13, this volume). A territorial border set up by Scipio Aemilianus and described as the Fossa Regia (Plin. HN V.25) had a historical precedent in the “Phoenician trenches” (App. Pun. 32 and 54; De Bonis 2012; Ferchiou 1986, 1990, 1998). Our best evidence for the immediate post-destruction settlement comes from a brief passage in Appian (Pun. 135–36), supported by the African section of a fragmentary agrarian law of 111 bce (Crawford 1996; Lintott 1992). When combined, these sources demonstrate that shortly after the fall of the city a ten-man commission was sent out by the Roman senate. Some of the newly conquered land was allotted by this commission to Roman allies and Carthaginian deserters. As part of this process significant estates were given to the Numidian royal house. Seven urban communities upon the coast, which had gone over to the Roman side early on during the Third Punic War, remained free and in possession of their territories. Utica, which had given its harbors to the invading fleet and was eventually to become the seat of the Roman governor of the new province, was given a large part of the newly conquered land within its vicinity. A tax was imposed on the rest of the local population, who became stipendiarii, farming on land that in legal terms now belonged to the Roman people (Lex. agr. ll. 77–78; cf. Cic. Verr. II.3.12).
Archaeological excavation of Republican period deposits is still in woefully short supply. There are, however, some clear indications of continuity of population in the region of Carthage’s former territory (Stone 2007, 2013). A partially excavated Republican-period domestic building at Thugga, the design of which apparently finds its closest parallels at Kerkouane, appears to have enjoyed continuity of use (Ritter and von Rummel 2015: 23). While there appears to have been interruption in the production of imitation black gloss wares (Ardeleanu 2015: 585), the fabrication of amphorae in the immediate hinterland of Carthage continued (Anastasi and Leitch 2012; Ben Jerbania 2013: 25; Bonifay et al. 2015; Capelli and Contino 2013; Freed 1998: 33–35). The circulation of ceramics between sites in Numidia and the former Carthaginian territory seems also to have continued after 146 bce (Broise and Thébert 1993: 153–218; Bussière 1995: 275–76; Kallala and Sanmartí 2011: 37; Khanoussi and von Rummel 2012: 205–10), and the connections with the broader Mediterranean intensified (Bridoux 2005, 2009).
Serious discussion of the fate and fortunes of the Carthaginians following the destruction of their city in 146 bce is almost nonexistent in the literary sources. There are exceptions to this rule, such as Cicero’s extended discussion on the subject of grief, in which he mentions captive “Carthaginians” living away from Africa (Cic. Tusc. 3.22), and a number of other enigmatic literary references at the time of the Social War, in which it is unclear precisely what kind of social groups are being referred to by the term “Carthaginians” (Nicolet 1966; Prag 2006: 17). These tell us nothing of significance about the conditions in which the population of Carthage’s former territory now lived, and the narrative of ancient literary accounts only shifts to Africa when important Romans go there in the context of armed conflict (e.g., pseudo-Caesar’s Bellum Africum and Sallust’s Bellum Jugurthinum). Perhaps owing to this lack of information, the Republican period for North Africa has, somewhat unfairly, often been painted as a rather sterile period, which saw little serious Roman intervention for the first century following the removal of Carthaginian hegemony (Quinn 2003, 2004; Toutain 1912: 345–46).
Some think that Rome simply adopted en bloc the Carthaginian system of taxation (Fentress 2006), whereas others believe a new system was created at the point of conquest (Aounallah 2010a, 2010b). Certainly some of the administrative districts (pagi) used by the Roman administration took their names from those which had existed under the rule of Carthage (Picard 1966), but it also seems likely that a thorough reassessment of tax obligations may have taken place following a massive program of land division. The Roman surveyors’ work, visible on aerial photographs and satellite imagery, appears to have covered the majority of the territory delimited by the Fossa Regia. The work may well have begun soon after 146 bce and certainly seems to have been associated with the allocation of lands to Italian colonists by the later 120s bce (Hobson 2015: 36–39).
Municipal Institutions
Although initial attempts at official colonization stalled, there is little doubt that Italian colonists arrived in considerable numbers during the Republican period, whether as Gracchan colonists, demobbed veterans of Marius, or refugees fleeing the unrest of the civil wars in Italy. A combination of the Numidian aristocracy, local municipal élites, and Italian absentee landlords profited from the agricultural surplus produced by a diverse and multicultural peasantry living on estates which had once been controlled by Carthage. Evidently there was enough interest in acquiring estates in North Africa for the senate to have an agricultural treatise translated from Punic into Latin (Heurgon 1976). The terms given by Rome following the Third Punic War forbade anyone to settle on the site of Carthage, which lay in ruins until the decision to refound the city as a Roman colony was taken a century later by Julius Caesar and carried through to completion by Octavian/Augustus (Plut. Vit. Pomp. 11; Fishwick 1994). Roman Carthage was given a vast new territory, and this action had a profound effect on the social, economic, and political development of the region over the next few centuries.
What status the indigenous settlements were initially granted by Rome is difficult to gauge from the surviving evidence (Aounallah 2010b). Rome ofte
n allowed peregrine communities to retain their internal customs and traditions, with specific municipal charters only being issued if the community was promoted to the status of Roman colony or municipium, or, in a later context, a Latin municipium (Jacques 1990). This, however, depended upon how such communities had come under Roman control in the first place, and it may well be that the stipendiary communities in Africa were initially denied any legally recognized municipal organization following the destruction of Carthage. One of the main sources for the elder Pliny’s African geography is thought to date from a time shortly after the battle of Thapsus (46 bce), but it apparently failed to list the stipendiary communities existing in former Carthaginian territory and the parts of Numidia that had been annexed by Caesar (Shaw 1981). A number of Roman colonies were planted in the area surrounding Carthage’s huge new territory from early on, but many of the subordinate centers within the territory did not gain promotion in their municipal status until the early third century ce (Garnsey 1978; Gascou 1972; Pflaum 1970; Teutsch 1962).
With the increasing popularity of both the neo-Punic (second century bce–second century ce) and Latin (mid-first century bce and onward) epigraphic habit, we begin to get a picture of how these communities were organized (for the corpus of Phoenician-Punic inscriptions, see also chapter 16, this volume).
In the latter set of inscriptions we find a gradual increase in the description of peregrine communities as civitates (Peyras 2004), sometimes paired with a community of Roman citizens (pagus) belonging to the mother colony at Carthage. Such civitates could evidently possess a town council of decuriones, but lacked the official positions of municipal office known from municipia and coloniae. The presence of Roman-style magistrates, such as duoviri, aediles, and quastores, in a settlement’s Latin epigraphy has been viewed by Jacques Gascou as sufficient evidence that it had attained official municipal promotion from Rome (Gascou 1972, 1982a, 1982b). In peregrine communities, however, one instead finds terms such as suffete, magistratus, magister, and magisterium, which may have been used to render local titles into Latin (Belkahia and di Vita-Evrard 1995; Briand-Ponsart 2005: 108–109).
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