The Carthaginian Empire
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Carthaginian Empire in the 3rd century BC
The Carthaginian Empire was one of the longest living and largest empires in the ancient Mediterranean. Reports state several wars with Syracuse and Rome, leading finally to the destruction of Punic Carthage during her third war with Rome.
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According to Polybius, Carthage relied heavily, though not exclusively, on foreign mercenaries,[6] especially in overseas warfare. The core of its army was from its own territory in Africa (ethnic Libyans and Numidians, as well as “Liby-Phoenicians” — i.e. Punics proper). These troops were supported by mercenaries from different ethnic groups and geographic locations across the Mediterranean who fought in their own national units; Celtic, Balearic, and Iberian troops were especially common. Later, after the Barcid conquest of Iberia, Iberians came to form an even greater part of the Carthaginian forces. Carthage seems to have fielded a formidable cavalry force, especially in its African homeland; a significant part of it was composed of Numidian contingents of light cavalry. Other mounted troops were African Forest Elephants, trained for war, which were used for frontal assaults or as anti-cavalry protection and were used for many other uses. An army could field up to several hundreds of these animals, but on most reported occasions less than a hundred were deployed. The riders of these elephants were armed with a spike and hammer to kill the elephants in case they charged toward their own army
The navy of Carthage was one of the largest in the Mediterranean, using serial production to maintain high numbers at moderate cost. The reputation of her skilled sailors implies that there was in peacetime a training of oarsmen and coxswains, giving their navy a cutting edge in naval matters. The trade of Carthaginian merchantmen was by land across the Sahara and especially by sea throughout the Mediterranean and far into the Atlantic to the tin-rich islands of Britain and to West Africa. There is evidence that at least one Punic expedition under Hanno sailed along the West African coast to regions south of the Equator, describing how the sun was in the north at noon.
Polybius wrote in the sixth book of his History that the Carthaginians were “more exercised in maritime affairs than any other people.”[7] Their navy included some 300 to 350 warships. The Romans, who had little experience in naval warfare prior to the First Punic War, managed to finally defeat Carthage with a combination of reverse engineering captured Carthaginian ships, recruitment of experienced Greek sailors from the ranks of its conquered cities, the unorthodox corvus device, and their superior numbers in marines and rowers. In the Third Punic War Polybius describes a tactical innovation of the Carthaginians, augmenting their few triremes with small vessels that carried hooks (to attack the oars) and fire (to attack the hulls). With this new combination, they were able to stand their ground against the superior Roman numbers for a whole day.
[edit] Fall of Carthage
The fall of Carthage was at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC.[8] In spite of the initial devastating Roman naval losses at the beginning of the series of conflicts and Rome’s recovery from the brink of defeat after the terror of a 15-year occupation of much of Italy by Hannibal, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus. The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and enslaving the people. Fifty thousand Carthaginians were sold into slavery.[9] The city was set ablaze, and in this way was razed with only ruins and rubble to field the aftermath. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis, Lixus, Chellah and Mogador.[10] Through a series of misunderstandings, a belief that the Carthaginian farmland was salted to ensure that no crops could be grown there developed in the modern period.[11]
[edit] Roman Carthage
When Carthage fell, its nearby rival Utica, a Roman ally, was made capital of the region and replaced Carthage as the leading center of Punic trade and leadership. It had the advantageous position of being situated on the Lake of Tunis and the outlet of the Majardah River, Tunisia’s only river that flowed all year long. However, grain cultivation in the Tunisian mountains caused large amounts of silt to erode into the river. This silt was accumulated in the harbor until it was made useless, and Rome was forced to rebuild Carthage.
By 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus founded a short-lived colonia, called Colonia Iunonia, after the Latin name for the punic goddess Tanit, Iuno caelestis. The purpose was to obtain arable lands for impoverished farmers. The Senate abolished the colony some time later, in order to undermine Gracchus power. After this ill-fated attempt, a new city of Carthage was built on the same land, and by the 1st century it had grown to the second largest city in the western half of the Roman empire, with a peak population of 500,000. It was the center of the Roman province of Africa, which was a major breadbasket of the empire.
Carthage also became a center of early Christianity. In the first of a string of rather poorly reported Councils at Carthage a few years later, no fewer than seventy bishops attended. Tertullian later broke with the mainstream that was represented more and more by the bishop of Rome, but a more serious rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy, which Augustine of Hippo spent much time and parchment arguing against. In 397 at the Council at Carthage, the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.
Vandal Empire in 500 AD, centered in Carthage.
The political fallout from the deep disaffection of African Christians is supposedly a crucial factor in the ease with which Carthage and the other centres were captured in the 5th century by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who defeated the Roman general Bonifacius and made the city his capital. Gaiseric was considered a heretic too, an Arian, and though Arians commonly despised Catholic Christians, a mere promise of toleration might have caused the city’s population to accept him. After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the 5th century, the Byzantines finally subdued the Vandals in the 6th century.
During the emperor Maurice’s reign, Carthage was made into an Exarchate, as was Ravenna in Italy. These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of Byzantium, all that remained of its power in the west. In the early 7th century, it was the Exarch of Carthage, Heraclius (of Armenian origin), who overthrew Emperor Phocas.
The Byzantine Exarchate was not, however, able to withstand the Muslim conquerors of the 7th century. Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik in 686 AD sent a force led by Zuhayr ibn Qais who won a battle over Byzantines and Berbers led by Kusaila, on the Qairawan plain, but could not follow that up. In 695 AD Hasan ibn al-Nu’man captured Carthage and advanced into the Atlas Mountains. A Byzantine fleet arrived, retook Carthage but in 698 AD Hasan ibn al-Nu’man returned and defeated Tiberios III at the Battle of Carthage. The Byzantines withdrew from all of Africa except Ceuta. The Roman Carthage was destroyed, just as the Romans had done in 146 BC. Carthage was replaced by Tunis as the major regional center. The destruction of the Exarchate of Africa marked a permanent end to Roman or Byzantine influence there, as the rising tide of Islam shattered the empire.
[edit] Culture
[edit] Language
Carthaginians spoke Punic, a subset of Phoenician.
[edit] Commerce
Carthaginian commerce was by sea throughout the Mediterranean and far into the Atlantic and by land across the Sahara desert. According the Aristotles the Carthaginians and others had treaties of commerce to regulate their exports and imports.[12]
The empire of Carthage depended heavily on its trade with Tartessos and other cities of the Iberian peninsula, from which it obtained vast quantities of silver, lead, and, even more importantly, tin ore, which was essential to the manufacture of bronze objects by the civilizations of antiquity. Its trade relations with the Iberians and the naval might that enforced Carthage’s monopoly on trade with tin-rich Britain and the Canary Islands allowed it to be the sole significant broker of tin and maker of bronze. Maintaining this monopoly was one of the major sources of power and prosperity for Carthage, and a Carthaginian merchant would rather crash his ship upon the rocky shores of Britain than reveal to any rival how it could be safely approached. In addition to being the sole significant distributor of tin, its central location in the Mediterranean and control of the waters between Sicily and Tunisia allowed it to control the eastern nations’ supply of tin. Carthage was also the Mediterranean’s largest producer of silver, mined in Iberia and the North African coast, and, after the tin monopoly, this was one of its most profitable trades. One mine in Iberia provided Hannibal with 300 Roman pounds(3,75 talents) of silver a day.[13]
Carthage’s economy began as an extension of that of its parent city, Tyre. Its massive merchant fleet traversed the trade routes mapped out by Tyre, and Carthage inherited from Tyre the art of making the extremely valuable dye Tyrian Purple. It was one of the most highly-valued commodities in the ancient Mediterranean, being worth fifteen to twenty times its weight in gold. High Roman officials could only afford togas with a small stripe of it. Carthage also produced a less-valuable crimson pigment from the cochineal.
Carthage produced finely embroidered and dyed textiles of cotton, linen, wool, and silk, artistic and functional pottery, faience, incense, and perfumes. It worked with glass, wood, alabaster, ivory, bronze, brass, lead, gold, silver, and precious stones to create a wide array of goods, including mirrors, highly-admired furniture and cabinetry, beds, bedding, and pillows, jewelry, arms, implements, and household items. It traded in salted Atlantic fish and fish sauce, and brokered the manufactured, agricultural, and natural products of almost every Mediterranean people.
In addition to manufacturing, Carthage practiced highly advanced and productive agriculture, using iron plows, irrigation, and crop rotation. Mago wrote a famous treatise on agriculture which the Romans ordered translated after Carthage was captured. After the Second Punic War, Hannibal promoted agriculture to help restore Carthage’s economy and pay the war indemnity to Rome (10000 talents or 800,000 Roman pounds of silver[14]), and he was largely successful.
Carthage produced wine, which was highly prized in Rome, Euturia (Etruscans), and Greece. Rome was a major consumer of raisin wine, a Carthaginian specialty. Fruits, nuts, grain, grapes, dates, and olives were grown, and olive oil was exported in competition with Greece. Carthage also raised fine horses, similar to today’s Arabian horses, which were greatly prized and exported.
Carthage’s merchant ships, which surpassed even those of the cities of the Levant, visited every major port of the Mediterranean, Britain, the coast of Africa, and the Canary Islands. These ships were able to carry over 100 tons of goods. The commercial fleet of Carthage was comparable in size and tonnage to the fleets of major European powers in the 18th century.
Merchants at first favored the ports of the east: Egypt, the Levant, Greece, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. But after Carthage’s control of Sicily brought it into conflict with Greek colonists, it established commercial relations in the western Mediterranean, including trade with the Etruscans.
Carthage also sent caravans into the interior of Africa and Persia. It traded its manufactured and agricultural goods to the coastal and interior peoples of Africa for salt, gold, timber, ivory, ebony, apes, peacocks, skins, and hides. Its merchants invented the practice of sale by auction and used it to trade with the African tribes. In other ports, they tried to establish permanent warehouses or sell their goods in open-air markets. They obtained amber from Scandinavia and tin from the Canary Islands. From the Celtiberians, Gauls, and Celts, they obtained amber, tin, silver, and furs. Sardinia and Corsica produced gold and silver for Carthage, and Phoenician settlements on islands such as Malta and the Balearic Islands produced commodities that would be sent back to Carthage for large-scale distribution. Carthage supplied poorer civilizations with simple things, such as pottery, metallic products, and ornamentations, often displacing the local manufacturing, but brought its best works to wealthier ones such as the Greeks and Etruscans. Carthage traded in almost every commodity wanted by the ancient world, including spices from Arabia, Africa, and India and slaves.
These trade ships went all the way down the Atlantic coast of Africa to Senegal and Nigeria. One account has a Carthaginian trading vessel exploring Nigeria, including identification of distinguishing geographic features such as a coastal volcano and an encounter with gorillas (See Hanno the Navigator). Irregular trade exchanges occurred as far west as Madeira and the Canary Islands, and as far south as southern Africa. Carthage also traded with India by traveling through the Red Sea and the perhaps-mythical lands of Ophir (India/Arabia?) and Punt, which may be present-day Somalia.
Archeological finds show evidence of all kinds of exchanges, from the vast quantities of tin needed for a bronze-based metals civilization to all manner of textiles, ceramics and fine metalwork. Before and in between the wars, Carthaginian merchants were in every port in the Mediterranean, buying and selling, establishing warehouses where they could, or just bargaining in open-air markets after getting off their ship.
The Etruscan language has not yet been deciphered, but archaeological excavations of Etruscan cities show that the Etruscan civilization was for several centuries a customer and a vendor to Carthage, long before the rise of Rome. The Etruscan city-states were, at times, both commercial partners of Carthage and military allies.
[edit] Government
The government of Carthage was an oligarchal republic, which relied on a system of checks and balances and ensured a form of public accountability. The Carthaginian heads of state were called Suffets (thus rendered in Latin by Livy 30.7.5, attested in Punic inscriptions as SPΘM /ʃuftˤim/, meaning “judges” and obviously related to the Biblical Hebrew ruler title Shophet “Judge”). Greek and Roman authors more commonly referred to them as “kings”. SPΘ /ʃufitˤ/ might originally have been the title of the city’s governor, installed by the mother city of Tyre. In the historically attested period, the two Suffets were elected annually from among the most wealthy and influential families and ruled collegially, similarly to Roman consuls (and equated with these by Livy). This practice might have descended from the plutocratic oligarchies that limited the Suffet’s power in the first Phoenician cities.[citation needed] The aristocratic families were represented in a supreme council (Roman sources speak of a Carthaginian “Senate“, and Greek ones of a “council of Elders” or a gerousia), which had a wide range of powers; however, it is not known whether the Suffets were elected by this council or by an assembly of the people. Suffets appear to have exercised judicial and executive power, but not military[citation needed]. Although the city’s administration was firmly controlled by oligarchs[citation needed], democratic elements were to be found as well: Carthage had elected legislators, trade unions and town meetings. Aristotle reported in his Politics that unless the Suffets and the Council reached a unanimous decision, the Carthaginian popular assembly had the decisive vote – unlike the situation in Greek states with similar constitutions such as Sparta and Crete. Polybius, in his History book 6, also stated that at the time of the Punic Wars, the Carthaginian public held more sway over the government than the people of Rome held over theirs (a development he regarded as evidence of decline). Finally, there was a body known as the Hundred and Four, which Aristotle compared to the Spartan ephors. These were judges who oversaw the actions of generals[citation needed], who could sometimes be sentenced to crucifixion.
Eratosthenes, head of the Library of Alexandria, noted that the Greeks had been wrong to describe all non-Greeks as barbarians, since the Carthaginians as well as the Romans had a constitution. Aristotle also knew and discussed the Carthaginian constitution in his Politics (Book II, Chapter 11).
During the period between the end of the First Punic War and the end of the Second Punic War, members of the Barcid family dominated in Carthaginian politics. They were given control of the Carthaginian military and all the Carthaginian territories outside of Africa.
[edit] Carthaginian ethnicity and citizenship
In Carthaginian society, advancement was largely relegated to those of distinctly Carthaginian descent, and the children of foreign men generally had no opportunities. However, there are several notable exceptions to this rule. The Barcid family after Hamilcar himself was half Iberian through their mother, Hamilcar’s wife — a member of the Iberian nobility, whose children all rose to leading positions in both their native cultures. Adherbal the Red and Hanno the Navigator were also of mixed origin, the former identified from his Celtiberian epithet, and the latter from a coupling much like the later Barcids. Other exceptions to this rule include children of prominent Carthaginians with Celtic nobles, as well as a single half-Sardinian admiral who was elevated simply by virtue of his own ability.
Owing to this social organization, citizenship in Carthage was exclusive only to those of a select ethnic background (with an emphasis on paternal relationships), though those of exceptional ability could escape the stigma of their background. Regardless, acceptance of the local religious practices was requisite of citizenship — and by extension any sort of advancement, which left many prominent and well regarded peoples out of the empire’s administration.
[edit] Religion
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Ruins of Punic houses on the Byrsa Hill
Carthaginian religion was based on Phoenician religion, a form of polytheism. Many of the gods the Carthaginians worshiped were localized and are now known only under their local names.
[edit] Pantheon
The supreme divine couple was that of Tanit and Ba’al Hammon. The goddess Astarte seems to have been popular in early times. At the height of its cosmopolitan era, Carthage seems to have hosted a large array of divinities from the neighbouring civilizations of Greece, Egypt and the Etruscan city-states. A pantheon was presided over by the father of the gods, but a goddess was the principal figure in the Phoenician pantheon.
[edit] Caste of priests and acolytes
Surviving Punic texts are detailed enough to give a portrait of a very well organized caste of temple priests and acolytes performing different types of functions, for a variety of prices. Priests were clean shaven, unlike most of the population. In the first centuries of the city ritual celebrations included rhythmic dancing, derived from Phoenician traditions.
[edit] Punic stelae
Cippi and stelae of limestone are characteristic monuments of Punic art and religion, and are found throughout the western Phoenician world in unbroken continuity, both historically and geographically. Most of them were set up over urns containing cremated human remains, placed within open-air sanctuaries. Such sanctuaries constitute striking relics of Punic civilization.
[edit] Child sacrifice
Carthage under the Phoenicians was notorious to its neighbors for child sacrifice. Plutarch (c. 46–120) mentions the practice, as do Tertullian, Orosius, Philo and Diodorus Siculus.[15] Livy and Polybius do not. The Hebrew Bible also mentions child sacrifice practiced by the Canaanites, ancestors of the Carthaginians, and by some Israelites.
Modern archaeology in formerly Punic areas has discovered a number of large cemeteries for children and infants. But there is some argument that the reports of child sacrifice were based on a misconception, later used as blood libel by the Romans who destroyed the city. These cemeteries may have been used as graves for stillborn infants or children who died very early.[citation needed] Modern archeological excavations have been interpreted as confirming Plutarch’s reports of Carthaginian child sacrifice.[16] In a single child cemetery called the Tophet by archaeologists, an estimated 20,000 urns were deposited between 400 BC and 200 BC, with the practice continuing until the early years of the Christian period. The urns contained the charred bones of newborns and in some cases the bones of fetuses and 2-year-olds. These remains have been interpreted to mean that in the cases of stillborn babies, the parents would sacrifice their youngest child. There is a clear correlation between the frequency of cremation and the well-being of the city. In bad times (war, poor harvests) cremations became more frequent, but it is not possible to know why. The correlation could be because bad times inspired the Carthaginians to pray for divine intervention (via child sacrifice), or because bad times increased child mortality, leading to more child burials (via cremation).
Accounts of child sacrifice in Carthage report that beginning at the founding of Carthage in about 814 BC, mothers and fathers buried their children who had been sacrificed to Ba`al Hammon and Tanit there.[citation needed] The practice was apparently distasteful even to Carthaginians, and they began to buy children for the purpose of sacrifice or even to raise servant children instead of offering up their own. However, in times of crisis or calamity, like war, drought or famine, their priests demanded the flower of their youth. Special ceremonies during extreme crisis saw up to 200 children of the most affluent and powerful families slain and tossed into the burning pyre.
It has been argued by some modern scholars that evidence of Carthaginian child sacrifice is incomplete, and that it is far more likely to have been Roman blood libel against the Carthaginians to justify their conquest and destruction[citation needed]. Skeptics suggest that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children that died naturally. Sergio Ribichini has argued that the Tophet was “a child necropolis designed to receive the remains of infants who had died prematurely of sickness or other natural causes, and who for this reason were “offered” to specific deities and buried in a place different from the one reserved for the ordinary dead”.[17] The few Carthaginian texts which have survived make absolutely no mention of child sacrifice, though most of them pertain to matters entirely unrelated to religion, such as the practice of agriculture.
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