Carthage

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Carthage

For three centuries, from about 500 to 200 B.C.E., Carthage was the capital of a commercial empire that dominated trade in the western Mediterranean. Starting around 250 B.C.E., however, the Carthaginians found themselves increasingly in conflict with the expanding Roman Republic. The Romans, after three ruthless wars of attrition, destroyed the city and scattered its inhabitants. Reestablished by the Romans in later years as a commercial outpost, Carthage languished for centuries after the fall of the empire. Today it is a pleasant suburb of Tunis, Tunisia. This article deals primarily with the ancient history of the city and its role, despite its ultimate defeat, in the growth of Roman Africa.

Phoenician Colonization

The Phoenicians were an ancient people who probably emerged from the Arabian peninsula approximately 5,000 years ago. After subduing the indigenous peoples of Syria and Palestine, they established a maritime trading empire at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Ethnically and culturally a Semitic people, the Phoenicians worshiped a paramount god, Baal, and other minor divinities. They were intelligent and inventive—among other things, they invented the alphabet. They were also skillful mariners, willing and able to sail where no one else dared. Thus, for example, they did not fear, as the Greeks did, to sail beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. They probably circumnavigated Africa in the sixth century B.C.E. and sailed as far north as Britain, where many Carthaginian coins have been found. Starting as early as 1500 B.C.E., inhabitants of the Phoenician homeland (modern Lebanon and neighboring parts of Israel and Syria) came under pressure from other peoples of the Near East. Slowly but steadily over the next 1,000 years, as their power in their homeland diminished, their “western empire” expanded. Tyre and Sidon, the ancient Phoenician city-states, fell to various enemies, and Greeks challenged their domination of the Mediterranean and its shores. Ever innovative, the Phoenicians shifted their focus from old Phoenicia to Carthage, the “new” city they had founded around 800 B.C.E. on the North African coast.

carthage conquerer  A bust of Scipio Africanus, a military commander who conquered Carthage late in the 3rd century B.C.E.

(Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.)

view larger image

The founding date is questionable, as are many other Carthaginian dates. Carthaginians were not a literate or artistic people. They used the alphabet to improve business—whereas the Greeks, adopting it in the eighth century B.C.E., used the precious invention not only for business but also to write poetry, history, and philosophy—and they consequently left few records of their achievements and way of life. Although intensely patriotic and fanatic believers in their religion, they were not proselytizers; for the most part they did not try to impose their beliefs or practices on others. Essentially, they wanted to be left alone to do business with the rest of the world. Carthage, the city on the bay, exemplified everything the Phoenicians held dear. Well situated for a maritime nation, it offered anchorage for many ships. Its central Mediterranean location was as close to Europe (at least to Sicily) as any other place on the African coast east of Morocco. The distance from Carthage to its colonies in western Sicily is less than 160 kilometers (100 miles) by sea, a distance the swift Carthaginian vessels could sail in a day. This narrow opening between the eastern and western Mediterranean could be patrolled and if necessary closed by a line of warships. The only way around was to pass through the perilous Straits of Messina. In addition to dominating both sides of this narrow gateway, Carthage also exerted control over Malta and other islands in the sea lanes. The high point of the Carthaginian hegemony may have occurred around 400 B.C.E. Carthage founded settlements, which the Greeks called emporia, along the entire coast from the Gulf of Sidra in present-day Libya, through present-day Tunisia and Algeria, to the Atlantic coast of Morocco, as well as on all the islands of the western Mediterranean, including the Balearics. Invading ships were sunk when captured, and a large army of Libyan and Nubian mercenaries could march either way from Carthage to counter invasions or put down revolts. The Carthaginian trade continued to flourish, not only by sea but also across the Sahara Desert. Routes terminating near modern Tripoli, Libya opened much of sub-Saharan Africa to trade and commerce, especially in gold and precious jewels, for which the Carthaginians exchanged cloth and manufactured articles. At its height the city may have had as many as 500,000 inhabitants, and it was reputed to be the wealthiest city in the Mediterranean world.

Punic Wars

The beginning of the end for Carthage came in 264 B.C.E., with the onset of the first Punic War. (“Punic” is derived from a Roman word for Phoenicia.) By that year Rome had acquired control of the entire Italian peninsula and had begun to look both east, toward Greece, and west, toward Carthage. The Romans’ first task was to capture the western half of Sicily, which Carthage had used as a fulcrum of its empire. Carthage could not permit the loss of Sicily, and so the war began. It lasted for twenty-five years and was a disaster for Carthage; not only was Sicily lost but also Sardinia, Corsica, Malta, and other islands, together with the monopoly of trade west of Italy. Carthage did not despair. Once before Phoenicians had moved west, from Tyre and Sidon to the coast of Africa; now they could move west again, to present-day Spain. A new empire was rapidly established based on the wealth of Spanish silver mines and trade with the Iberian and Celtic peoples of the region. Again, Rome was concerned and sought any excuse for another armed conflict. The Second Punic War began in 218 B.C.E. and ended in 201. Rome won and Carthage lost. Indeed, Rome’s victory laid the foundation for the Roman Empire. But it was a near thing, and victory could have gone the other way. One man made the difference. Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barca, leader of the Phoenicians’ Spanish empire, inherited the command of the army after his father died and his brother was assassinated. Unlike his predecessors, he believed Rome could be defeated only in its homeland; he therefore determined to invade Italy. The Romans knew he was coming and moved into Gaul to stop his army of some 40,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and fifty elephants. For the first of many times, Hannibal outwitted his opponents and headed for the Alps instead of following the coastal route, as Rome had expected. His passage through the rugged mountains is one of the great feats in military history. The army was harassed by Celtic tribes, who rolled rocks down upon it from the heights. Snow falling on narrow icy paths created perilously slippery conditions. The elephants often fell to their death. Provisions ran short and hundreds starved, while thousands more deserted or were hurt or killed. Reduced to 20,000 men, 6,000 cavalry, and only a few of the war elephants, the army descended into the Po River valley after a journey of five months from Cartagena. A lesser man might have turned tail and gone home. Instead, Hannibal met one Roman army on the Ticino and defeated it, and then overwhelmed a larger force in Lombardy a month later (December 218). Italians began to join the army, which was also augmented by Celtic recruits. Hannibal had hoped that an invasion of Italy might dismember the Roman state, and it seemed as if his hopes might be realized. Hannibal’s hopes rose even further the following spring (April 217), when he led his troops south to the Arno and then to (modern) Arezzo and Perugia. In so doing, he trapped a large Roman army on the narrow shore of Lake Trasimeno. Descending from prepared positions in the hills, the invaders pushed the Romans back, killing thousands and forcing thousands more into the lake, where, encumbered by their armor, they drowned. The site of this famous battle, one of the worst defeats the Romans ever suffered, is near a small town now called Ossaia (“bony”). Even after more than 2,000 years, plows in nearby fields still turn up bone fragments from the ancient encounter. After their defeat at Ossaia, the Roman army was temporarily helpless; the Carthaginians had the chance to enter Rome, little more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) away, but the troops were themselves exhausted and could not take advantage of the opportunity. Meanwhile another Roman army was raised and, unwilling to test Hannibal in another battle, they watched as he wearily followed the river valleys south to Apulia and Campania, where he wasted the country, distributed large amounts of booty, and underwent treatment for wounds he had sustained. Well rested after the winter, Hannibal again outwitted his foes. In the early summer of 216, in a swift maneuver, he seized the army supply depot at Cannae, on the Adriatic coast, and then prepared a trap. The Gauls and the Iberian infantry were drawn up in a line across the plain of Cannae, between the mountains and the sea. On either side were wings of cavalry, not easily visible from the plain. The Roman army, also rested and numerically much superior, attacked the center, which gave way little by little but did not break. Suddenly, without warning, the Libyan and Nubian cavalry circled and attacked from the rear, again annihilating the Romans at Cannae, one of the most famous battles in European history. This great victory had the desired effect, and many Italian regions began to defect from Roman domination. But Hannibal, for reasons that are not clear, did not march on defenseless Rome. Instead, perhaps hoping the peoples of Italy would do his work for him, he spent the winter of 216–215 in Capua. Disappointed, his new allies began to drift away. Fabius, the Roman general, adopted a strategy of never fighting but always threatening, and Hannibal found himself on the defensive for the first time. What is more, he had begun to lose support at home, where a new government of oligarchs, shocked by the expense of the campaign, charged him with misconduct of the war. The rest of the story, after the ambiguous triumph at Cannae, involves a long, slow descent into loss and death, not only for Hannibal but also for his country. The final blow was delivered when still another Roman army, under Scipio Africanus, sailed across the sea and attacked Carthage itself. Hannibal abandoned Italy and rushed to defend his city. He met the Romans at Zama. The losses were terrible—20,000 men and horses and all the elephants, supplies, and provisions. Though he himself escaped, the end had come. Harried from country to country by his enemies, Hannibal lived another twenty years; finally trapped in a small village near the Black Sea, he took poison. The year was 183 B.C.E.

“Delenda est Carthago”

Carthage survived even this defeat; a treaty with Rome was signed, and although the treaty’s provisions were severe, the city slowly began to prosper again. By 150 B.C.E. it was once more rich and, consequently, influential in African affairs. Cato the Elder, the fierce old conservative who hated all things not Roman, took it as his private crusade to see that Carthage was destroyed once and for all. He repeated the famous phrase “Delenda est Carthago,” or “Carthage must be destroyed,” on every possible occasion; and he had his way. In 146 B.C.E. the city was besieged, taken, plundered, its inhabitants exiled or enslaved, its wall demolished, its houses and public buildings burned to the ground. The site was dedicated to the infernal gods and, to ensure that it would never again be inhabited, its smoking ruins were sown with salt. Carthage, however, had nine lives; it seemed it could not die. Only twenty-five years later, a Roman colony was established on the site, and in due course New Carthage became the capital of the Roman province of Africa (incorporating present-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria) and a favorite vacation spot of the emperors.

See also North Africa and the Greco-Roman World; North Africa, Roman Rule of.

processed xml | source xml