We should also note the several treatises reported between Carthage and Rome (starting in 509 bce). In the treaty made between Hannibal and the Macedonian king Philip V in 215 bce, the Greek text, mirroring the lost Carthaginian portion, offers an example of the genre of written public oaths and treatises and the importance of divine sanction in them:
Before Zeus and Hera and Apollo, before the deity [daimon] of the Carthaginians and Herakles and Iolaos, before Ares, Triton, Poseidon, before the gods [of those?] marching to war with us, and of the Sun and the Moon and the Earth, before [the daimons of] rivers and lakes and waters, before all the gods who possess Carthage, before all the gods who possess Macedon and the rest of Greece, before all the gods of those in the army, however many preside over this oath. (Polyb. 7.9.2–3)
The oath partly matches a seventh-century bce treaty between the king of Tyre and the Assyrian king Asarhadon (Bonnet 1988: 182). These official documents were propagandistic and constituted public literature of sorts. For instance, Hannibal erected narrative inscriptions in public locations, written in both Greek and Punic, such as a list of contingents exchanged between Barcid Iberia and Africa, set up in a bronze inscription at Cape Lacinium in Calabria in 205 bce (Polyb. 3.33.9–10; Livy 28.46.16).
Exploration, Agriculture, and Other Topics
Itineraries for navigation (periploi) may have started as a Phoenician genre, later cultivated by Greeks and Romans, from the fourth-century bce Massaliote Pytheas to the fourth-century ce Ora Maritima by Rufius Festus Avienus. When dealing with western Mediterranean and especially Atlantic routes, Greek periploi were likely relying on Phoenician-Carthaginian oral intelligence and texts. The first such periploi were attributed to Carthaginians writing around 500 bce: one to Himilco, who described the Atlantic European shores (Pliny, HN 2.169a.; Avienus, Ora. 117, 383, 412) and the other to Hanno, who commemorated an exploration of the western African coast. Hanno’s narrative, allegedly displayed at Baal’s temple in Carthage, partly survives in an independently transmitted Greek version, which opens:
The Voyage of Hanno, King of the Carthaginians to the Libyan regions of the earth beyond the Pillars of Hercules, which he dedicated also in the Temple of Baal, affixing this: [1] It pleased the Carthaginians that Hanno should voyage outside the Pillars of Hercules, and found cities of the Libyphoenicians [i.e., North African Phoenicians]. And he set forth with sixty ships of fifty oars, and a multitude of men and women, to the number of thirty thousand, and with wheat and other provisions. [2] After passing through the Pillars we went on and sailed for two days’ journey beyond, where we founded the first city, which we called Thymiaterium; it lay in the midst of a great plain. [3] Sailing thence toward the west we came to Solois, a promontory of Lybia, bristling with trees. (trans. Schoff 1912)
It is also possible that the Carthaginian account describing trade with native African groups reported by Herodotos (4.196) is based on this or another periplous (Roller 2006: 57–91; Celestino and López-Ruiz 2016: 47–49, 88–91; see also chapter 42, this volume).
It is not a coincidence that a Roman from Algeciras, Spain, Pomponius Mela (mid-first century ce), wrote the only geographical work preserved in Latin, the Chorographia. Mela’s work contains ethnography and geography, but it follows the periploi tradition as he describes the coastlines of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Indian (Persian Gulf), and Black Seas, starting and ending at the Straits of Gibraltar, that is, in his native land. His Roman geography had an Iberocentric and western Phoenician inflection, so much so that he has basically been called a late Phoenician writer (Batty 2000). Not only does Mela make his native land the organizational axis of his itinerary but he also highlights the Phoenician substratum of his own town (Mela 2.96). Moreover, his account stresses local and regional traditions, especially those related to Harakles/Hercules, who was a source of pride for local Romans and (as Melqart) for Phoenicians. Most remarkably, he mentions the tradition whereby the bones of the hero-god were held in the temple at Gadir (Mela 3.46; cf. Diod. Sic. 5.20.1–3).
We know from literature and archaeology that the Phoenicians developed farming techniques and introduced new methods and species across their colonial milieu (Lancel 1995: 273–79; Fantar 1998; chapter 29, this volume). The most famous agricultural treatise in antiquity was by the Carthaginian Mago. The work (of unknown date), in twenty-eight books, was “salvaged” by the Romans after their conquest of Carthage in 146 bce. It circulated in a lost Greek version (adapted by Cassius Dionysius from Utica in the second century bce) and later in a Latin version commissioned by the Roman senate (Columella 1.1.13–14; Varro 1.1.10–11). We can feel the vertigo of the lost tradition in Varro, who, writing in the first century bce, lists a page’s worth of names of authors on agricultural matters, and then adds:
All these are surpassed in reputation by Mago of Carthage, who gathered into twenty-eight books, written in the Punic tongue, the subjects they had dealt with separately. These Cassius Dionysius of Utica translated into Greek and published in twenty books, dedicated to the praetor Sextilius. In these volumes he added not a little from the Greek writers whom I have named, taking from Mago’s writings an amount equivalent to eight books.… I shall attempt to be even briefer and treat the subject in three books. (Varro Rust. 1.1.10–11; trans. Hooper and Ash 1934)
Mago’s techniques are amply cited by the Roman agronomists, such as Varro, and in the first century ce, by both Columella (who incidentally was from Gadir) and Pliny, especially on topics such as viticulture, bees, mules, and the castration of calves. The treatise was regarded as the topic’s “bible”—so much so that Cicero could ask whether is it not enough to rely on common knowledge of agriculture and gardening, or “must we study by heart the books of Mago the Carthaginian?” (Magonis Karthaginiensis sunt libri perdiscendi? De or. 1.249). The work was also known to Byzantine and Arabic authors (Miles 2010: 13).
Finally, in Hellenistic times some Carthaginians joined in the tradition of Greek philosophical writing. At least one of them, Kleitomachos (Hasdrubal), became the leader of the Academy in Athens in the second century bce. Of his 400 books, we only have some titles, but he was highly regarded by later authors. Diogenes’s Laertius describes him as “a Carthaginian, his real name being Hasdrubal,” who “taught philosophy at Carthage in his native tongue.” At age forty, he left Carthage for Athens in a timely fashion before the city was besieged by the Romans (Diog. Laert., Lives of Philosophers 4.67; Krings 1991). Much later, in the second century ce, another North African writer and Platonist, Apuleius of Madaurus, bragged of navigating three cultures and languages: Greek, Roman, and Punic (Apul. Flor. 16), while he seems to have incorporated North African folk motifs in his novel the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass (Graverini 2012: esp. ch. 4).
Finally, Aristotle presented the Constitution of Carthage as one of the close to ideal forms of government alongside those of Crete and Sparta (Arist. Pol. 2.11 [1272b24–1273b26]), and Plato implied some indirect (and probably distorted) knowledge of Carthaginian laws, at least regarding drinking (Pl. Laws 1.637d, 2.674a–b; Lancel 1995: 276). We do not know what their sources were but, again, we should not discard the possibility that western Phoenician writing on such matters could have reached Greek circles in the fourth century bce, or earlier.
Conclusions
“Tradition tells us that the Carthaginian and Greek authors, and the Roman also, did not neglect to pay attention to small details” (Columella 12.4.2). Ancient literature was not the exclusive property of Greeks and Romans. Through the trail of Classical references and quotations, we can at least be certain that there was a written literature by eastern and western Phoenicians spanning different genres. They especially cultivated and became best known for mythology (especially cosmogony and foundation stories), city annals and historiography, and travel literature, with other technical areas such as agriculture, philosophy, and perhaps laws also represented.
In some cases, we can access segments of Phoenician works translated or par
aphrased by others. In other cases, we can only tentatively postulate a Phoenician source underlying a Classical tradition. From Hellenistic times onward, works by Phoenician authors had to be written and transmitted in Greek in order to survive. We should not lightly categorize them as merely “Greek” literature, however, at least where we know that they were written by Phoenicians (including Carthaginians) about Phoenician matters. They were written in the intellectual language of the time for a multicultural and international audience. In a similar way, we would not treat Josephus’s works or Fabius Pictor’s history of the Second Punic War (both composed in Greek) as straightforwardly “Greek” works.
The Greco-Roman stereotype of the Phoenicians as merchants and “practical” folk has become most popularly attached to these “traders in purple.” This cliché, however, renders mute other types of Phoenicians, whom Greeks and Romans represented and respected as producers of literature, transmitters of wisdom, and untiring innovators, who were responsible for the spread of new technologies and of writing itself.
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Religion
Chapter 19
Religion
Paolo Xella
Owing to the type of sources, an overview of Phoenician religion (e.g., Xella 2008: 50ff.; Bonnet 2010) encounters the same difficulties as any general study of this civilization. As other ancient Mediterranean peoples, the Phoenicians had their own worldview, which did not distinguish between religious and other spheres of culture in the way we do. In particular, concepts such as exclusive faith in the gods are inapplicable to this type of society. Instead of a codified and detectable “religion,” they possessed complex traditions shaped by their own conceptual categories and a cosmological vision, in which what we see as religious, political, and economical spheres were differently articulated.
This has an immediate consequence for our approach: there are no sources that are particularly “religious,” but almost all evidence must be taken into consideration in order to reconstruct t
heir “religion” according to our parameters. Of course, sources such as dedicatory inscriptions, cultic prescriptions, or mythological tales are closer to our concept of religion, but iconographic evidence, onomastic material, and administrative documents can also make a useful contribution to our research (Bonnet and Xella 1995).
Like every polytheistic system, Phoenician religion is based on the belief in a multiplicity of superhuman agents, each with specific functions, organized in a particular hierarchy and a network of mutual relationships (Xella 1986). This symbolic system manifests itself at two different levels: ideological and practical. The first level is that of differently codified traditions, which could be oral (mythology), written (prescriptive texts), or both (undoubtedly, the case of the Phoenicians); at this level we find the theoretical premises of the various beliefs and cults. The second level is the operative dimension of the ritual actions practiced by humans, as well as their behavior within the reciprocal relationship with their divine interlocutors.
In addition to archaeological evidence, dedicatory and votive inscriptions are a direct source for Phoenician religion (on inscriptions, see chapter 16, this volume). These texts provide important information in spite of their repetitive and laconic character. Onomastic evidence is also very useful, because it enables us to learn divine names and epithets. Among other Near Eastern sources, Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts provide sporadic but precious information. As for the texts of Ras Shamra (Ugarit), they preserve mythical and ritual traditions during the Late Bronze age and are a valuable reference point for developments in the Phoenician world during the Iron Age. As regards the Hebrew Bible, information provided about the gods and the cults of Canaan are of great importance, despite its polemical and depreciative nature, since the Canaanites can be considered as Phoenicians (see chapter 43, this volume). The Classical writers preserve micro-traditions providing equivalences between Phoenician-Punic and Greek or Roman deities, in addition to individual pieces of information about cultic aspects (e.g., Xella 2009) and mythological traditions (see chapter 44, this volume).
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