Chapter VI: The Story of Carthage (1)

The city of Carthage was the culmination in history of the commerce, ambition, and military prowess of the Phœnician people. It was a city which never quite reached the first rank, yet always threatened to seize the supremacy. As a collaborator with the Persians in the great invasion of Greece, Carthage sent her forces against Sicily, only to meet an equal discomfiture. Later she wrought the great city of Rome to frenzies of terror, or hatred. Carthage appears constantly throughout Grecian and Roman history, but it seems well to place here a brief and consecutive story of her career as a city. The picturesque legends of the foundation will be found in Appendix A. The date to be accepted by historians was long uncertain, but seems now to be fixed at 818 B.C. Utica and Gades (now Cadiz) were founded earlier than Carthage, but the feverish ambition of the city of Dido soon told.[a]

Carthage so greatly outstripped them in wealth and power, as to acquire a sort of federal pre-eminence over all the Phœnician colonies on the coast of Africa. In those later times when the dominion of the Carthaginians had reached its maximum, it comprised the towns of Utica, Hippo, Adrumetum, and Leptis--all original Phœnician foundations, and enjoying probably even as dependents of Carthage a certain qualified autonomy--besides a great number of smaller towns planted by themselves, and inhabited by a mixed population called Liby-Phœnicians. Three hundred such towns--a dependent territory covering half the space between the Lesser and the Greater Syrtis, and in many parts remarkably fertile--a city said to contain 700,000 inhabitants, active, wealthy, and seemingly homogeneous--and foreign dependencies in Sicily, Sardinia, the Balearic isles, and Spain,--all this aggregate of power, under one political management, was sufficient to render the contest of Carthage even with Rome for some time doubtful.

[Sidenote: [813-600 B.C.]]

But by what steps the Carthaginians raised themselves to such a pitch of greatness we have no information, and we are even left to guess how much of it had already been acquired in the sixth century B.C. As in the case of so many other cities, we have a foundation legend decorating the moment of birth, and then nothing farther. The Tyrian princess Dido or Elissa, daughter of Belus, sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre, and wife of the wealthy Sichæus [or Sicharbas] priest of Hercules [Melkarth] in that city--is said to have been left a widow in consequence of the murder of Sichæus by Pygmalion, who seized the treasures belonging to his victim. But Dido found means to disappoint him of his booty, possessed herself of the gold which had tempted Pygmalion, and secretly emigrated, carrying with her the sacred insignia of Hercules; a considerable body of Tyrians followed her. She settled at Carthage on a small hilly peninsula joined by a narrow tongue of land to the continent, purchasing from the natives as much land as could be surrounded by an ox’s hide, which she caused to be cut into the thinnest strip, and thus made it sufficient for the site of her first citadel, Byrsa, which afterwards grew up into the great city of Carthage. As soon as her new settlement had acquired footing, she was solicited in marriage by several princes of the native tribes, especially by the Gætulian Jarbas, who threatened war if he were refused. Thus pressed by the clamours of her own people, who desired to come into alliance with the natives, yet irrevocably determined to maintain exclusive fidelity to her first husband, she escaped the conflict by putting an end to her life. She pretended to acquiesce in the proposition of a second marriage, requiring only delay sufficient to offer an expiatory sacrifice to the manes of Sichæus; a vast funeral pile was erected, and many victims slain upon it, in the midst of which Dido pierced her own bosom with a sword, and perished in the flames. Such is the legend to which Virgil has given a new colour by interweaving the adventures of Æneas, and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, careless of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city: and it has been imagined with some probability that she is identical with Astarte, the divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally established, as Gades and Tarsus were founded under those of Hercules--the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the religious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns. Phœnician religion and worship were diffused along with the Phœnician colonies throughout the larger portion of the Mediterranean.

The Phocæans of Ionia, who amidst their adventurous voyages westward established the colony of Massalia (as early as 600 B.C.), were only enabled to accomplish this by a naval victory over the Carthaginians--the earliest example of Greek and Carthaginian collision which has been preserved to us. The Carthaginians were jealous of commercial rivalry, and their traffic with the Tuscans and Latins in Italy, as well as their lucrative mine-working in Spain, dates from a period when Greek commerce in those regions was hardly known. In Greek authors the denomination Phœnicians is often used to designate the Carthaginians as well as the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, so that we cannot always distinguish which of the two is meant. But it is remarkable that the distant establishment of Gades, and the numerous settlements planted for commercial purposes along the western coast of Africa and without the Straits of Gibraltar, are expressly ascribed to the Tyrians. Many of the other Phœnician establishments on the southern coast of Spain seem to have owed their origin to Carthage rather than to Tyre. But the relations between the two, so far as we know them, were constantly amicable, and Carthage even at the period of her highest glory sent Theori with a tribute of religious recognition to the Tyrian Hercules; the visit of these envoys coincided with the siege of the town by Alexander the Great. On that critical occasion, the wives and children of the Tyrians were sent to find shelter at Carthage: two centuries before, when the Persian empire was in its age of growth and expansion, the Tyrians had refused to aid Cambyses with their fleet in its plans for conquering Carthage, and thus probably preserved their colony from subjugation.[b]

THE SITE AND EARLY HISTORY OF CARTHAGE

The point of land still called Capo Cartagine, which projects from the eastern side of the Gulf of Tunis, near the entrance of the Goletta, was in ancient times more nearly a peninsula than it is now, and corresponds exactly with the description given by Thucydides of the sites selected for the purposes of commerce by the Phœnicians. Its height, which is still nearly five hundred feet above the sea, afforded a good lookout; and as a shelter for ships the qualities of the bay are familiar from the description of Virgil, Æn. 1, 160. It was in this way that all the principal colonies of Phœnicia arose, and in this sense Carthage may have owed its origin to the times when Sidon was predominant among the Phœnician cities. But its rapid rise to power was due to a colony from Tyre about the end of the ninth century B.C. The circumstances which led to the migration of Dido belong to the special history of that city. The colony first established itself on the hill called by the Greeks Byrsa, still recognised in the elevated ground which bears the name of St. Louis. It is now only about one hundred and ninety feet above the level of the sea; but its height above the neighbouring ground, on which its strength depended, has no doubt been diminished by the accumulation of ruins around its base. The name, which, from its resemblance to the Greek word for hide, gave rise to the story of Dido’s purchase of as much land as a hide would cover, is Phœnician, and denotes a fortress. Like the Cadmea at Thebes, which it resembled in name, it was the place of arms of the original settlers, the _magalia_ of the civil population being gathered around the base, and gradually forming the New City, the signification of the name Carthage, by which both parts collectively are known, as Neapolis (Naples) has absorbed its older neighbour, Palæpolis. The work of excavating for themselves a dock, in which Virgil represents them as engaged at the arrival of Æneas, would soon follow their settlement; for, though they came with arms in their hands, they came rather as merchants than as warriors, and their first accessions of population were from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who flocked to them for the purpose of trade. It was probably in the same place, on the southern side of the peninsula, where we now see the remains of two basins, designed to hold the war navy of Carthage, in the day of its power. They have become a salt marsh; but under the Byzantine emperors, and after the Mohammedan conquest, they retained their ancient use.

We have much cause to regret the diffidence or vanity which made Sallust decline to speak of Carthage, because he had not space to do justice to such a theme. In the wreck which has taken place of ancient literature, even a few lines from his pen would have given us information which we now seek in vain. Its history naturally divides itself into three periods: from its foundation to the year 480 B.C., when its wars in Sicily began; from the year 480 to 265 when its wars with Rome began; and finally, from 265 to 146, when it was destroyed. We are entirely destitute of any continuous history for the first of these periods. The primary cause of its rapid increase is no doubt to be found in the fertility of the soil, and the fortunate selection of its site, midway between the seats of art and civilisation in Asia and the rich countries in the southwest of Europe,--within an easy distance also of the coasts of southern Italy and the islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. The richest portion of the traffic with these western regions, that with the south of Spain, was kept to itself by Phœnicia, during the time of its ascendency; but as a compensation for its exclusion from the mines of Tartessus, Carthage enjoyed ready access to the interior of Africa, by the caravans, in which the nomadic tribes conveyed the salt and the dates with which the north of Africa abounds, across the Sahara to the countries on the Niger, and brought back thence gold-dust, precious stones, and slaves. They had traffic with the natives of Ethiopia by a different channel. They had visited and colonised the western coast of Africa, as low down as Arguin, and dealt with the natives by dumb barter, receiving gold-dust from them in exchange for their own wares.

[Sidenote: [600-520 B.C.]]

As the Carthaginian fleet was defeated in 600 B.C. by the force of a single Greek city, Phocæa, its naval power was at that time not very great. Sixty years later they came again into conflict off Corsica with less advantage to the Phocæans, now expelled from their home by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. A great change had taken place in Asiatic history. Soon after the first conflict of these powers, Tyre underwent a siege by Nebuchadrezzar, in which, whether captured or not, it suffered so severely that it was never able to regain its former ascendency; and from this time we may date the entire independence of Carthage, and its succession to that dominion in the West which had hitherto belonged to Tyre. This increase of power is connected with the name of Hanno; not the same who commanded the expedition to the western coast of Africa, but of a generation earlier, and living about the middle of the sixth century B.C. According to Dio Chrysostom, “he made the Carthaginians to be Libyans instead of Tyrians, and to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia, and to acquire much wealth, and many emporia and harbours and triremes, and an extensive dominion both by land and sea.” These words plainly imply, that in the time, and by means of the measures of Hanno, Carthage, from being a dependency of Tyre, became a substantive state, having its seat in Africa; and that a great extension of its wealth and its power, both by sea and land, took place at the same time and under the same auspices. In an historian, we should have inferred from the phrase “that he had caused the Carthaginians to inhabit Libya instead of Phœnicia,” that he had been the leader of a large emigration from Tyre, to which this increase was owing; in a rhetorician it appears to mean nothing more than the preceding clause, namely, that before his time Carthage had been virtually a portion of Phœnicia, but henceforth was an independent African power. That such was the effect of the decline of Tyre after the siege by Nebuchadrezzar is certain; and even if no large part of its population migrated at once, during the siege and after it, the decay of its prosperity and the loss of its independence would naturally attract them towards Carthage, which was already powerful and able to protect itself. Such an increase, coupled with the decline of the Tyrian power throughout the western Mediterranean, would account for the sudden start which Carthage appears to have made in the sixth century B.C. The military talents of Mago, who lived between the middle and end of this century, contributed to the same result. He organised their military forces, and prepared the way for the extensive wars which the Carthaginians carried on in Sicily.

[Sidenote: [480 B.C.]]

Cambyses, after the conquest of Egypt, wished to have attacked Carthage, the submission of Cyrene and Barca having brought his frontier into contact with theirs; but the Phœnicians, who must have furnished the fleet for this purpose, refused to engage in hostilities against their own colony. Darius solicited the aid of Carthage in his projected invasion of the Greeks, but without success. When Xerxes renewed his father’s undertaking, he entered into a treaty with the Carthaginians, in virtue of which, in the same year in which he crossed the Hellespont, they poured a large army into Sicily, gathered from Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, as well as all their African territories. The battle of Himera was as fatal to the plans of Carthage as Salamis and Platæa to those of Xerxes; but Sicily continued for a long time to be the scene of struggles between Carthaginians and Greeks, till both were absorbed in the growing empire of Rome.[c]

MOMMSEN’S ACCOUNT OF CARTHAGE

The Semitic race stands amongst and yet apart from the peoples of the old classical world. The base of the former is the East, of the latter the Mediterranean; and as war and migration advanced the frontiers and threw the races amongst one another, a deep sense of dissimilarity still divided and yet divides the Indo-Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelitish, and Arabian nations. This is also true of that Semitic people which more than any other has extended itself westward; namely, the Phœnician or Punic race. Their first home is the narrow strip of coast between Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, which is called the plain--that is Canaan. This is the only name which the nation applied to itself--in Christian times the Libyan peasant still called himself a Canaanite; but to the Hellenes Canaan was the “Purple Country,” or the “Land of the Red Men,” Phœnicia, and in the same way the Italians were accustomed, as we are ourselves, to call the Canaanites Phœnicians.

The country is well adapted to agriculture; but above all the excellent harbours and the abundance of wood and metals are favourable to trade, which here, where the superabundance of the eastern continent stretches far into the Mediterranean Sea with its numerous islands and harbours, may have first started in all its importance to man. What courage, sagacity, and enthusiasm can contribute, the Phœnicians called into play to unite the East and West and give full development to commerce and what it involves, as navigation, manufacture, colonisation. At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even in the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The region of their commerce extends from Sierra Leone and Cornwall as far as the Malabar coast; through their hands pass the gold and pearls of the East, the Tyrian purple, slaves, ivory, lion and panther skins from the interior of Africa, Arabian incense, the linen of Egypt, clay pottery and wines from Greece, Cyprian copper, Spanish silver, English tin, the iron of Elba.

In contrast to the Indo-Germanic aptitude for political organisation, the Phœnicians, like all Aramaic nations, lacked the inspiring idea of self-governing freedom. In the best days of Sidon and Tyre, Phœnicia was the eternal apple of discord of the powers which ruled on the Nile and the Euphrates, and was subject now to the Assyrians, now to the Egyptians. With half their force the Hellenic cities would have made themselves independent; but the sharp-sighted men of Sidon calculated that the barring of the caravan routes towards the East or of the Egyptian harbours would be more costly than the heaviest tribute, and consequently they paid their taxes punctually to Nineveh or Memphis, as the case might be, and when nothing else would serve, even fought the kings’ battles with their ships.

And as at home the Phœnician placidly endured the oppression of their masters, so abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful ways of a commercial policy for one of conquest. Their colonies are factories; to them it was of more importance to take their wares from the natives and bring others to them than to acquire broad lands in distant countries and accomplish there the slow and difficult work of colonisation. They even avoided war with their competitors; almost without resistance they allowed themselves to be driven out of Egypt, Greece, Italy, and in the great sea fights which were fought in early days for the dominion of the western Mediterranean, at Alalia and Cyme it was the Etruscans, not the Phœnicians, who bore the brunt of the battle against the Greeks. If, on occasion, competition could not be avoided, the matter was compromised as well as might be; no attempt was ever made by the Phœnicians to conquer Cære or Massalia.

Still less, of course, were the Phœnicians inclined to wars of aggression. The sole instance in ancient times of their taking the offensive on the battle-field, was in the Sicilian expedition of the African Phœnicians, which ended with the defeat of Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (480), and then it was only as obedient subjects of the great king and in order to avoid taking a share in the campaign against the eastern Hellenes, that they took the field against the Hellenes of the west, as their Syrian kinsmen, in the same year, had to submit to joining with the Persians in the battle of Salamis.

This was not cowardice; the navigation of unknown waters in armed vessels demands brave hearts, and the Phœnicians have often shown that such were to be found among them. Still less was it the want of persistence and individuality in the sense of nationality; rather have the Aramæans, with an obstinacy to which no Indo-Germanic people ever attained, and which to us of the West appears as either more or less than human, defended their nationality against all the seductions of Greek civilisation, as well as against all the coercive force of both eastern and western despots, alike with the weapons of the spirit and with their blood. It is the want of a political sense which, though co-existing with the liveliest racial feeling and the most faithful adherence to the mother-city, still characterises the essential nature of the Phœnicians. Freedom had no attractions for them, nor did they possess any lust of rule; “they dwelt careless,” says the Book of Judges, “after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure,” and in possession of riches.

Amongst all the Phœnician settlements none throve more quickly nor more securely than those which the Tyrians and Sidonians had founded on the south coast of Spain and in the north of Africa, in regions where neither the arm of the great king, nor the dangerous rivalry of the Grecian sailors had reached, but where the natives stood face to face with the foreigners as the Indians to the Europeans in America.

Amongst the numerous and flourishing cities on these shores one was pre-eminent, the “New City” of Karthada, or, as the westerns called it, Karchedon, or Carthage. Though not the earliest settlement of the Phœnicians in this region, and perhaps originally a city standing under the protection of the neighbouring Utica, the oldest Phœnician city in Libya, she soon outstripped her neighbour and even the mother-country, owing to the incomparable advantages of her position and the eager activity of her inhabitants. She stood not far from the (former) estuary of the Bagradas (Mejerda) which flows through the richest grain-bearing district of North Africa on a fertile elevation of the soil, which is even now set with villas and covered with olive and orange groves, and which sinking gently towards the plain ends on the sea side in a promontory encircled by the waves. Situated near the centre of the Gulf of Tunis, the greatest haven of North Africa, where that beautiful stretch of water offers the best anchorage for large ships and the most excellent springs gush close to the shore, this place is so peculiarly favourable to agriculture and commerce and the connection between the two, that not only did the Tyrian settlement there become the first commercial city of the Phœnicians, but in Roman times also, Carthage, though scarcely restored, became the third city in the empire, and even to-day under no very favourable conditions a flourishing town of a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants still exists. The agricultural, mercantile, and industrial prosperity of a city in such a position and with such inhabitants explains itself; but we need some answer to the question as to how this settlement developed a political power such as no other Phœnician city possessed.

[Sidenote: [450 B.C.]]

Before the stream of Hellenic migration which was pouring itself westward in unrestrained flood, which had already thrust the Phœnicians from Greece itself and from Italy, and was preparing to do the like in Sicily, Spain, and even Libya, the Phœnicians were compelled to make some kind of stand if they did not wish to be utterly annihilated. Here, where they had to do with Greek merchants and not with the Great King, it was not enough for them to submit in order to be allowed to carry on their trade and industry in the old fashion, in return for the payment of a tax. Cyrene and Massalia had already been founded; already the whole east of Sicily was in the hands of the Greeks; it was high time for the Phœnicians to make resistance in earnest. The Carthaginians assumed the task; in long and obstinate wars they set a bound to the encroachment of the Cyrenæans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself west of the desert of Tripoli. Moreover, the Phœnician settlements in the west of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks with Carthaginian help, and gladly and voluntarily added themselves to the dependants of the powerful kindred city. These important successes, which belong to the second century of the town, and which saved the southwestern portion of the Mediterranean to the Phœnicians, of themselves gave the city which had won them the hegemony of the nation and at the same time an altered political position. Carthage was no longer a mere merchant city; she aimed at the supremacy over Lydia and over a portion of the Mediterranean Sea because she was compelled to do so.

It was probably the after effect of these foreign successes which first induced the Carthaginians to pass from the position of tenants and occupants by concession to that of actual owners and conquerors. In the 300th year of Rome the Carthaginians seem to have first freed themselves from the payment of ground-rent, which they had hitherto been obliged to deliver to the natives. Thus it became possible to cultivate the soil on a large scale for themselves. Even as landowners, the Phœnicians had always relied on making use of their capital and on cultivating the fields to a great extent, by means of slaves or hired workmen; thus a great part of the Jews were employed in this fashion for a daily wage by the Tyrian merchant princes. The Carthaginians could now exploit the rich Libyan soil to an unlimited extent through a system analogous to that of the planters of the present day. Chained slaves tilled the ground--we find that individual citizens possessed as many as twenty thousand of them. More than this. The agricultural towns in the neighbourhood were forcibly subdued, and the free Libyan peasants transformed into fellahs, who paid their masters a tribute of the fourth part of the produce, and were subject to a regular system of recruiting in order that Carthage might have an army of its own. Feuds with the wandering shepherd tribes (νομαδες) on the frontiers were constant; but a chain of fortified military posts secured the pacified districts and these tribes were slowly pushed back into the deserts and mountains, or compelled to recognise the Carthaginian supremacy, pay tribute, and furnish troops.

Besides this the dominion of Carthage was finally extended over the rest of the Phœnicians in Africa, the so-called Liby-Phœnicians. These consisted partly of the smaller bands of settlers which had been led from Carthage to places along the whole northern and part of the northwestern coast of Africa, and cannot have been without importance, since at one time thirty thousand such colonists were settled on the Atlantic shore alone; and partly of ancient Phœnician settlements, which were especially numerous on the coast of the modern province of Constantine and of the Beylik of Tunis, and included, for example, Hippo, later called Regius (Bonah), Adrumetum (Susa), the lesser Leptis (south of Susa),--the second city of the African Phœnicians,--Thapsus, and greater Leptis (near Tripoli). How it came about that all these towns placed themselves under the command of Carthage, and whether they did so voluntarily to shelter themselves from the attacks of the Cyrenæans and Numidians or under compulsion, cannot now be discovered; it is certain that they were described in official documents as subjects of the Carthaginians, were obliged to pull down their walls and had to pay taxes and render military service to Carthage.

Thus the Tyrian factory had become the capital of a powerful North African empire, which reached from the desert of Tripoli as far as the Atlantic sea, and though it is true that in the western half (Morocco and Algiers) it contented itself with a somewhat nominal occupation of the coast, on the other hand in the wealthier East it ruled over the modern districts of Constantine and Tunis, as well as over the interior and was continually advancing its southern frontiers; the Carthaginians, as an ancient author significantly remarks, had changed from Tyrians into Libyans.

The period in which this transformation of Carthage into the capital city of Libya took place is all the more difficult to determine since the change was doubtless effected by degrees. The author just referred to mentions Hanno as the reformer of the nation; if this is the same man who lived in the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as the perfecter of the new system, which was presumably worked out in the fourth and fifth centuries of the city of Rome.

Side by side with the rise of Carthage went the decline of the great Phœnician cities in the mother-country, of Sidon and especially of Tyre, whose prosperity was ruined partly as the result of internal commotions, partly by pressure from without, in particular the sieges by Shalmaneser in the first century of Rome, by Nebuchadrezzar in the second, and by Alexander in the third. The noble families and the ancient commercial houses of Tyre removed for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city and brought thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. When the Phœnicians came into touch with Rome, Carthage was emphatically the first Canaanite city as Rome was the first Latin community.

But the dominion over Libya was only one-half of the Carthaginian power; their maritime and colonial supremacy had, at the same time, developed not less formidable proportions. In Spain the chief seat of the Phœnicians was the ancient Tyrian settlement in Gades (Cadiz); west and east of the latter they also possessed a chain of factories, and in the interior the territory of the silver mines, so that they occupied the modern Andalusia and Granada, at least their coasts. Ebusus and the Balearic Isles the Carthaginians had themselves colonised at an early period, partly for the sake of the fisheries, partly as advance posts against the Massaliots with whom, from this base, they carried on an eager war. Similarly by the end of the second century of Rome the Carthaginians had established themselves in Sardinia, which they exploited in exactly the same way as Libya.

[Sidenote: [450-350 B.C.]]

In Sicily, finally, it is true that the roads from Messana and the eastern and larger half of the island had early fallen into the hands of the Greeks; but by help of the Carthaginians the Phœnicians maintained themselves, some in the smaller islands in the neighbourhood, the Ægates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra, of which the colony in Malta was especially flourishing; some on the western and northwestern coasts of Sicily, where, from Motya, and later from Lilybæum, they kept up relations with Africa and from Panormus and Solœis with Sardinia. The interior of the island remained in possession of the native Elymi, Sicani, and Sicels.

All these settlements and possessions were considerable enough in themselves; but they were of still greater importance as the pillars of the Carthaginian dominion of the sea. By the possession of the south of Spain, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, the west of Sicily and Melita, in union with the prevention of Hellenic colonisation on the eastern Spanish coast, as well as on Corsica and in the neighbourhood of the Syrtis, the lords of the North African coast closed their seas against the foreigner and monopolised the western waters. The Phœnicians had indeed to share the Tyrrhenian and Gallic seas with other nations; but this might be tolerated so long as the Etruscans and Greeks counterbalanced each other there, and with the former as the less dangerous rival, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks.

But after the downfall of the Etruscan power, which, as is usually the case in alliances entered into under stress of circumstances, Carthage had probably not exactly used all her strength to avert, and after the frustration of the schemes of Alcibiades, when Syracuse was indisputably the first Greek naval power, this system of balance could no longer be maintained. As the rulers of Syracuse began to aim at the dominion over Sicily and lower Italy, and over the Tyrrhenian and Adriatic seas, the Carthaginians had perforce to pursue an energetic policy. The first result of the long and obstinate struggle between them and their opponent, Dionysius of Syracuse (405-367), a prince as powerful as he was infamous, was the annihilation or reduction to impotence of the central Sicilian states, in the interest of both parties, and the partition of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians. But each party constantly renewed the attempt to dislodge its rival. Four times the Carthaginians were masters of all Sicily, save Syracuse, and were baffled by its strong walls; almost as often the Syracusans under able leaders, such as the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, appeared to be almost as near success. But gradually the balance became more and more in favour of the Carthaginians. Meantime the struggle on the sea was already decided. Pyrrhus’ attempt to restore the Syracusan fleet was the last. When it had failed the ships of the Carthaginians ruled the whole western Mediterranean without a rival; and their attempts to occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum showed what they could do and what was their object. Side by side with this went the endeavour to gradually monopolise the maritime trade of these regions against both foreign countries and their own subjects; and it was not a Carthaginian practice to shrink forever from the violence required to further an object. A contemporary of the Punic war, Eratosthenes, the father of geography, testifies that any foreign sailor, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians on his way to Sardinia or the Straits of Gades, was thrown by them into the sea.

[Sidenote: [350-283 B.C.]]

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the first Punic war, describes the Carthaginian government as having passed from a monarchy into an aristocracy or a democracy inclining towards oligarchy; for he calls it by both names. The conduct of business lay first of all with the council of Elders, which like the Spartan Gerusia consisted of two annually appointed kings and twenty-eight Gerontes, who also, as it appears, were elected year by year by the citizens. It was this council which to all intents and purposes carried on the business of the state; for example, it took the steps necessary for war, gave orders for levies and recruiting, appointed the general, and gave him a number of Gerontes as colleagues, from amongst whom the subordinate commanders were as a rule taken; to it the despatches were addressed. It is doubtful whether a larger council stood side by side with this small one; in no case was it of much importance, nor does it appear that any special influence appertained to the kings; their chief function was that of supreme judges, as they are not unfrequently styled (suffets, _prætores_). The general’s power was greater; Isocrates, an elder contemporary of Aristotle, says that at home the Carthaginians obeyed an oligarchical government, but in the field a monarchical one, and so the office of the Carthaginian general is described by Roman authors as that of a dictator, although the Gerontes joined with him must have, practically at least, limited his power, as must also the regular account which was unknown to the Romans and which he had to render on laying down his office. Above the Gerusia and the officials stood the body of the hundred and four, or, more briefly, the hundred, or judges, the chief bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. This was not part of the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, took its rise in the aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements in that constitution. Owing to the system of purchasing offices and the small number of the members of the highest court, a single Carthaginian family, that of Hago, which was pre-eminently distinguished for its wealth and military glory, threatened to unite the administration in war and peace, with the charge of justice, in their own hands; this led, about the time of the decemvirs to a change in the constitution and the establishment of this new authority.

It appears that although the Carthaginian citizens were not expressly limited to a passive assistance at the discussion of questions concerning the state, as was the case in Sparta, yet practically their influence in such matters was very slight. At the elections to the Gerusia a system of open bribery prevailed; at the appointment of a general the people were indeed consulted, but probably only when in reality the appointment had already been made on the suggestion of the Gerusia; and in other matters the people were only referred to when the Gerusia thought good or could not agree. Popular tribunals were unknown in Carthage. The impotence of the citizens was probably an essential condition of their political organisation; the Carthaginian messes, which are mentioned in this connection and compared to the Spartan _pheiditia_, may have been fraternities conducted on an oligarchical basis. We even hear of a distinction between “citizens” and “manual workers,” which leads us to suppose a very degraded position for the latter, and perhaps no rights at all.

Regarded as a whole, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a government by capitalists, such as is conceivable in a citizen community without a well-to-do middle class, and consisting on the one hand of a crowd owning no property and living from hand to mouth, on the other of great merchants, estate owners and noble magistrates. Nor was Carthage without that infallible token of a corrupt city oligarchy: the system of enriching the impoverished masters at the cost of the subjects by sending them to the subordinate communities as treasurers and superintendents of forced labour. Aristotle describes this as the main cause of the tried stability of the Carthaginian constitution. Down to his time no revolution worth mentioning had been effected in Carthage, either from above or beneath; the crowd remained leaderless in consequence of the material advantages which the ruling oligarchy was in a position to offer to all ambitious or distressed members of the upper class, and were compensated by the crumbs which fell to them from the master’s table in the form of bribes at elections or in some other fashion.

Of course with such a government there could not fail to be a democratic opposition; yet even at the time of the first Punic war this was completely powerless. Later on, partly under the influence of the defeats suffered, their political influence is seen rapidly increasing, and far more rapidly than that of the similar and contemporary Roman party; the popular assembly began to give the final decision in political questions and broke the all-powerful influence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. A patriotic and reforming energy prevailed in the opposition; still we cannot overlook the fact that it rested on a corrupt and rotten foundation. The Carthaginian citizenhood, which well-informed Greeks have compared to the Alexandrian, was so corrupt that in this respect it deserved to be powerless, and it might well be asked what good could come from revolutions where, as in Carthage, the scamps were instrumental in making them.

From a financial standpoint Carthage maintained in all relations the first place among the cities of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phœnician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all Greek states, and her revenues are compared to those of the Great King. Polybius calls her the richest city in the world. The close relation between Phœnician agriculture and capital is characteristic. The idea of never acquiring more land than could be properly cultivated is quoted as a leading principle of Phœnician agriculture. The Carthaginians also made their profit out of the wealth of the country in horses, cattle, sheep, and goats, in which, according to the testimony of Polybius, Libya at that time surpassed all other countries on earth by reason of her nomad tribes.

As in the exploitation of the soil, so also in the exploitation of their subjects the Carthaginians were the instructors of the Romans; through them was poured into Carthage the ground-rent “of the best part of Europe” and of the fertile North-African districts, which in some regions, for instance in Byzakitis and on the lesser Syrtis, was superabundantly favoured. In Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, learning and art seem to have been generally dominated by Hellenic influence, but were not neglected; a considerable Phœnician literature existed, and at its conquest the city was found to contain valuable libraries and many treasures of art, though it is true that these had not been produced in Carthage but carried off from the Sicilian temples. But intellect also was here at the service of capital; even the general distribution of certain kinds of knowledge and in particular of an acquaintance with foreign languages, in which Carthage may at this period have stood almost on a line with imperial Rome, shows the thoroughly practical direction which was given to Hellenic culture in Carthage.

The superiority of Carthage is not expressed merely in the amount of her revenue; amongst all the important states of antiquity it is here alone that we find the economical principles of a later and more advanced period; we hear of foreign government loans, and in the money system we find, besides gold coins, a piece of money of a material in itself worthless, a thing elsewhere unknown to antiquity. In fact, if the state were a speculation, none would ever have fulfilled its task more brilliantly than Carthage.

WAR IN SICILY BETWEEN ROME AND CARTHAGE

[Sidenote: [283-264 B.C.]]

For more than a century the feud between the powers of Carthage and Syracuse had ravaged the beautiful Sicilian island. The war was carried on on both sides partly by political propaganda, Carthage maintaining relations with the aristocratic-republican opposition party in Syracuse, and the Syracusan dynasties with the national parties in the Greek cities that paid tribute to Carthage, and partly by means of mercenary armies with the aid of which Timoleon and Agathocles, as well as the Phœnician generals, had fought their battles. As both sides used the same methods, the contest was carried on with a disregard for truth and honour unknown in the history of occidental peoples. The Syracusans were finally defeated. In 314, before the breaking out of the war, Carthage claimed only a third of the island, that lying west of Heracleia Minoa and Himera, and had recognised the hegemony of the Syracusans over several of the eastern states. The expulsion of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (276) left the greater part of the island, especially Acragas, in the possession of Carthage, only Tauromenium and the southeastern end remaining to Syracuse. About 283 a Campanian troop that had served under Agathocles, and had continued marauding on their own account since his death, had established themselves in Messana, the second largest city on the eastern coast, and seat of the anti-Syracusan party. They massacred or drove out the citizens, divided the women, children, and houses among themselves, and settling down to complete possession of the city soon became the third power in the island. The Carthaginians witnessed these proceedings by which the Syracusans received a powerful adversary as neighbour instead of a kindred or friendly people, without displeasure; with the support of Carthage the new-comers, or _Mamertines_ (Sons of Mars), arranged themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely withdrawal of this king restored to the Carthaginians all their powder.

A young Syracusan officer Hiero, son of Hierocles, who had drawn attention to himself by reason of his close kinship to Pyrrhus and the bravery with which he had fought in the battles of that king, was appointed head of the Syracusan army (274). By his moderation and wise generalship he won the confidence of all his supporters, dismissing the mercenaries, reorganising the citizen-militia, and trying first as general, later as king, at the head of civic troops to restore the vanished power of Hellas. With the Carthaginians, who in conjunction with the Greeks had driven Pyrrhus from the island, the Syracusans were at that time at peace; their nearest enemy being the Mamertines, kinsmen of the hated mercenaries. In alliance with the Romans, who about this time sent their legions against the Campanians in Rhegium, Hiero turned towards Messana. By a great victory, after which Hiero was made king of the Siceliotes (269), he succeeded in confining the Mamertines within the limits of their own city, and after the siege had lasted several years they were reduced to extremity--finding themselves unable longer to defend the city unaided against Hiero. A conditional surrender was impossible, the axe of the executioner that had been used upon the Rhegium Campanians was surely awaiting those of Messana in Syracuse, and their only hope of safety lay in delivering over the city either to the Carthaginians or the Romans, to both of whom the conquest of the important position must be of equal moment.

Whether it would be more advantageous to surrender to the Phœnicians or to the lords of Italy was doubtful; after long hesitation the majority of the Campanian citizens finally decided to give over possession of their fortress to the Romans. Rome was striving for the possession of Italy as Carthage was for that of Sicily; but the plans of neither power could proceed further at that time. Just here lay a reason for the wish of each that a neutral power should permanently establish itself on its frontier--Rome looking to Tarentum, Carthage to Syracuse and Messana. Failing this, each preferred to occupy the cities itself rather than let them fall into the hands of its rival.

[Sidenote: [264 B.C.]]

As Carthage had tried in Italy,--Rome being on the point of taking Rhegium and Tarentum,--to acquire these cities for herself, her purpose being frustrated by a mere accident, so Rome now saw in Sicily an opportunity of bringing Messana into her symmachy; should this design fail, the city could not hope to remain independent or turn Syracusan, she would be thrown into the arms of Phœnicia. Would it be justifiable to let an opportunity, that would certainly never return, escape, of taking possession of the natural bridge-head between Sicily and Italy and by securing it to themselves by a firm and, for very good reasons, reliable occupation; was it also justifiable to sacrifice, in renouncing all hopes of Messana, dominion over the last free passage between the eastern and western seas and Italy’s free trade? Other objections than those of sentiment and justice arose to the occupation of Messana. That it must lead to a war with Carthage was the least among them, Rome having nothing to fear from such a war, however serious it might be. It was far more important that she should, by the crossing of the sea, depart from the purely Italian and continental policy she had formerly pursued; so the system founded by the authors of Rome’s greatness was relinquished for another, the consequences of which no one could foresee. It was one of those moments when reflection and calculation cease, and faith in a personal star and that of the fatherland alone gives courage to grasp the hand that beckons out of the future, and follow wherever it may lead. Long and earnestly the Senate deliberated upon the offer of the councillors to send the legions to the assistance of the Mamertines, yet came to no decision. But among the citizens to whom the matter was finally referred, there was alive that consciousness of strength of a power that has come to greatness through its own efforts. The conquest of Italy gave to the Romans, as that of Macedonia had given to the Greeks, courage to blaze a new political path for themselves; support of the Mamertines was warranted by the power of protection claimed by Rome over various Italian states. The Italians from over seas were taken into the Italian confederation, and on the proposition of the citizens’ council it was decided to send them aid (264).

ROME AND CARTHAGE

[Sidenote: [264-241 B.C.]]

Let us compare the powers of Rome and Carthage. Both were agricultural and commercial states with no other claim to greatness; the subordinate and eminently practical position held by the arts and sciences was in both virtually the same, the balance being perhaps a trifle in favour of Carthage. But in Carthage commercial industries led those of agriculture, while in Rome they occupied second place, so that at a time when the Carthaginian farmers were leaving their fields to become large slave and property owners the great mass of the Roman citizens were still at the plough. In Carthage was to be seen the opulence peculiar to great commercial centres, but Rome still displayed in her customs and police regulations old-fashioned strictness and economy.

When the Carthaginian envoys returned from Rome they represented the parsimony of the Roman councillors as exceeding all accounts, alleging that a single silver service did duty for the entire council, and confronted its members anew in every house to which they were invited. In all else the systems of both states were alike, the judges of Carthage and the senators of Rome rendering decision according to the same code. The strict dependence in which the Carthaginian governing bodies held their officials, their orders to the citizens not to learn the Greek language and to hold no intercourse with any Greek save through the medium of an interpreter, reveal the same spirit as that that inspired the Roman laws, but in contrast to the cruel and stupid severity of these Carthaginian regulations, the Roman fines and censure laws appear mild and reasonable. The Roman Senate which opened its doors to the highest ability worthily represented the nation and had no reason to fear her or her officials. The Carthaginian Senate, on the contrary, represented only the aristocratic families and was held under the most jealous governmental control; an institution founded on mistrust above and below it could be sure neither of the support of the people nor of security from usurpation by officials. To their freedom from these defects may be ascribed the steadily onward course of Roman politics that never retreated a step because of disaster, and did not forfeit fortune’s favour through indolence or irresolution. Carthage on the other hand would frequently retire from the contest that one last rally might have won, and weary or unmindful of her great national undertakings would let the structure she had half erected tumble to the ground only to commence her work anew after a little time. Between the capable Roman official and the governing board existed a perfect understanding, whereas at Carthage these two classes were at constant war, the officials often being forced to take stand against their superiors and make common cause with their political opponents.

Both Carthage and Rome had dominion over people of many races besides their own. Rome admitted to citizenship district after district of these aliens, even leaving a legal way of entrance open to the Latins themselves; whereas Carthage shut herself off entirely from all her dependencies, extending to them not the slightest hope that she would ever admit them to such equality. Rome permitted the communities that were of kindred race to have a share in the spoils of war, and sought by specially favouring the rich and influential of tributary states to reconcile them to Roman dominion. Carthage not only kept for herself all the fruits of victory, but deprived tributary cities of their most useful privilege--free trade. Rome never entirely denied independence to even the weakest of her subject states, and never burdened them with heavy taxes; Carthage sent representatives far and wide and laid even the ancient Phœnician cities under exorbitant toll, treating their inhabitants little better than they would slaves. In the African-Carthaginian alliance there was thus not a single commonalty, with the exception of Utica, which did not aspire to bettering its political and material condition through the fall of Carthage, whereas in the Roman-Italian alliance there was not one which by rebelling against a rule that promoted its material welfare, without directly challenging the political opposition party, would not have lost more than it gained. When the Carthaginian statesmen thought to have linked to Carthage Phœnician dependencies by arousing their fear of a Libyan revolt, and the dominant states by the payment of oracle money to their temple, they were carrying mercantile practices over into a field where these did not belong. Experience showed that the Roman symmachy, despite the less solid front it opposed to Pyrrhus, held together like a wall of rock; while that of Carthage fell apart like a spider-web as soon as a hostile power set foot on the soil of Africa. This was evidenced at the landing of Agathocles and Regulus, and also in the war against the mercenaries, while the spirit that prevailed in Africa is shown by the fact that the Libyan women voluntarily sacrificed their jewels to the mercenaries to carry on the war against Carthage. In Sicily she appears to have acted with greater moderation, hence to have obtained better results. Her dependencies there were allowed relative freedom in their trade with other lands, using metal money exclusively from the first in their domestic commerce, and enjoying in every respect greater liberty of action than was accorded to Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into her hands, all this would have soon been changed; but no such thing occurred, and under the wise moderation of Carthaginian rule, favoured by the unfortunate disarray of the Sicilian Greeks, a distinctly Phœnician party arose in Sicily; Philinus of Acragas, for example, writing the history of the great war after the loss of the island to the Romans entirely from a Phœnician point of view. Still, on the whole, the Sicilians, as subjects and as Hellenes, must have borne an aversion to their Phœnician masters equal to that shown by the Tarentians and the Samnitians towards Rome.