A History of the Roman World (24 page)

The creation of a confederacy which gave the whole of Italy some kind of political, economic and social unity was a landmark in the political history of the ancient world. It was not an enlarged commonwealth like Sparta with her
perioikoi
, nor a confederation of separate sovereign states such as the Panhellenic League of Corinth founded by Philip II and upheld by Alexander; it was not a federal state of the type created by a king, as Thessaly, or a league that grew out of a cantonal commune, as the Aetolian League, or a league of cities, as the Achaean; nor was it the imperial rule of a city-state over subject communities, as the Athenian land-empire of Pericles. It was a new creation which blended many of these principles into a unique confederacy. By about 260
BC
it extended for some 52,000 square miles, of which about 10,000 consisted of Roman territory; of the remaining 42,000 square miles of allied territory the Latins occupied nearly 5,000. It thus exceeded the empires of Macedonia, Carthage and the Ptolemies; it was inferior in size only to the Seleucid kingdom. The adult male Roman citizens numbered 292,000 in 264
BC
. The allies, excluding the southern Greeks and Bruttians, could supply 375,000 regular troops in 225
BC
; perhaps this figure should be doubled to represent the total number of adult male allies. That is, the Roman and allied adult males numbered over one million, although not all would be fit for active military service. The Roman citizens and their families numbered nearly one million, the allies double that figure; perhaps nearly a quarter of the allies enjoyed Latin rights. This total of some three million was small compared to the thirty million of the Seleucids, the ten millions of the Ptolemies, the five millions of the Carthaginian empire; it approximated to the population of Macedonia.
²⁷
But though the numbers were small, the military experience and the moral qualities of the old Roman character easily counter-balanced the hordes of Syria. Rome had become a world power, and when once the Carthaginian Empire had been broken there was no other military power in the whole Mediterranean basin that could meet her on equal terms.

Of the settlements which, as we have seen (p. 19), the Phoenicians planted in the central and western Mediterranean, the most important was the New City, Carthage (Qart Chadascht), which the Tyrians are said to have founded about 814
BC
.
¹
The Tyrian princess, Elissa, it is said, fleeing from King Pygmalion with a few faithful followers, reached Africa, where the tribes granted her as much land as she could cover with a cowhide (
byrsa
). By ingeniously cutting this into narrow strips she surrounded enough ground to form the citadel of her new city, the Byrsa of Carthage. Later writers wove around the story of Elissa a mass of myth and legend, until the saga received its final shape at the hands of the magician Virgil who moulded from it an undying drama of love and death. Elissa, now named Dido, welcomes to her new city the Trojan hero Aeneas. At heaven’s bidding he forsakes his new love to fulfil his destiny of founding Rome, while deserted Dido stabs herself on her funeral pyre, and her cry goes up to heaven:
‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.’
The drama of the struggle of Rome and Carthage has come to birth.

The native tribes of North Africa, with whom the Phoenician settlers came into contact, had formed no extensive political union although they were all of similar stock, being the predecessors of the modern Berbers and racially distinct from the negroes of the south. Those who later became subjects of Carthage were known to the Greeks as Libyans, the rest as nomads or Numidians. Among these primitive and semi-nomadic peoples Carthage soon became the dominating power, thanks to her superior civilization and to her magnificent geographical position. Situated on a peninsula which afforded room for expansion and protection from the natives, the city lay
sheltered in the heart of a bay Her hinterland was fertile and her prominent position in the mid-Mediterranean allowed her to trade with east and west and to control trans-Mediterranean shipping.

In her early days Carthage maintained a link with her mother city of Tyre, but from the seventh century the Phoenicians of the home country were smitten by the great oriental monarchies, one after another: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt and Persia. Consequently the Phoenicians of the west were left to their own devices: to preserve their independence, their scattered energies must be united. Carthage stepped into the breach, and from the sixth century she became mistress of an empire which gradually extended far beyond the confines of North Africa.

The centre of this empire was the hinterland which Carthage took into her possession, stretching from Hippo Regius in the west, inland to Theveste and thence to Thenae on the east coast; it was guarded by a frontier called the Phoenician Trenches. The inhabitants served in the army of their mistress and supplied her with a quota of their produce. Under Carthaginian protection agriculture prospered and the population increased. In addition, the inhabitants of the African colonies of Phoenicia and Carthage, which stretched from beyond the Straits of Gibraltar to the three great towns in Tripoli called Emporia, became the loyal allies of Carthage. Known as Libyphoenicians, they supplied contingents in wartime and in some cases at any rate paid tribute. The individual towns were allied with Carthage on varying conditions, much as the Italian cities were with Rome. Including the territory of these Libyphoenician cities, Carthage controlled an area of about 28,000 square miles and a population of three to four million. Further, the Numidian tribes beyond often found it expedient to seek her friendship and thus formed a great potential source of power.

But the ambition and commercial aims of Carthage were not limited to Africa. For many a year she was not strong enough to aid the early Phoenician traders in Sicily, who had been driven to the west end of the island by the advancing tide of Greek colonists, but in about 580
BC
she was drawn into the troubled waters, until despite the efforts of Malchus and his successors her advance in Sicily was checked by the battle of Himera, which saved Greek civilization in the west from being overwhelmed (480). The vicissitudes of the struggle between Carthage and the Greeks in Sicily, which recommenced about 400
BC
after a period of economic recession and continued till the days of the first Punic War, belong to the history of the Greek rather than of the Roman world.

Carthage was more successful in Spain. In the late seventh and early sixth centuries the empire of Tartessus was flourishing, freer now from Phoenician influence. Its King, Arganthonius, the ‘Silver Man’, encouraged friendly relations with the Greeks who were now penetrating the western seas. As early as
620
BC
Colaeus, a mariner from Samos, was blown by an easterly gale to Tartessus (p. 21), and the Phocaeans founded two colonies in Spain at Maenace and Hemeroscopium to open up the Tartessian market. This was little to the taste of the traders of Carthage, and the clash of interests ultimately culminated in the sea battle of Alalia, when the combined Carthaginian and Etruscan fleets broke the Phocaean thalassocracy in the west (p. 31). As a result Carthage made settlements in Sardinia, leaving Corsica to her allies, and then, as a stepping-stone to Spain, she occupied the island of Ebusus which the Phoenicians had already visited. Finally, by destroying Tartessus and Maenace, she entered into the heritage of the Tartessian Empire, although she could not drive the Greeks from northern Spain beyond Cape Palos (near Cartagena).
²
In southern Spain Carthage gained an almost inexhaustible source of natural wealth and of manpower, as well as control over the Atlantic trade of her predecessors. Merchants now sailed forth from Gades instead of from Tartessus; Himilco was sent to explore the tin routes of the north, while Hanno voyaged down the west coast of Africa to bring back gold and ivory. But the Carthaginians were careful not to share this new prize; they jealously barred the gates of the Atlantic and closed the western Mediterranean to foreign shipping.

Carthage had thus won an overseas empire which she selfishly exploited. The old Phoenician colonies abroad assumed much the same relation to her as the Libyphoenician towns in Africa. In Sardinia and southern Spain some of the natives were reduced to subjection; the rest were exploited commercially and supplied mercenary troops. In Sicily the Carthaginians had to tread more warily, to avoid driving the whole island into the arms of her enemy Syracuse. The Punic province in the west gradually embraced some native and Greek cities, but these retained their internal autonomy and paid a tithe on their produce instead of supplying troops. Further, Carthage had to keep an open market in her Sicilian province. On the whole the condition of her subjects, though tolerable, was far inferior to that of most of the allies of Rome, who had infused her federation with a feeling of loyalty and imposed no tribute. The subjects of Carthage had no real bond, although common interests might sustain their loyalty for a time. Like the members of the naval confederacies of Athens they became increasingly dependent on their mistress without sharing in the advantage which the Greeks had enjoyed of all entering into relation with their leader at approximately the same time.

During this period of external expansion Carthage first came into contact with Rome. The intermediaries were her Etruscan allies, whose ports in Italy had long been open to Phoenician merchants. The product of such trade is seen in the rich seventh-century tombs at Caere and Praeneste: silver and gilded bowls, painted ostrich eggs, and ivory plaques like those made for Solomon’s temple by Tyrian artists. When the Etruscan dynasty was driven
from Rome, Carthage struck a treaty with the new Republic. A copy of this treaty, engraved on brass, was preserved in the Treasury at Rome and was known to the historian Polybius. It was obviously the work of Carthage, as all the restrictions imposed were in her favour; only Rome’s lack of commercial interests can explain why she accepted it. The Romans agreed not to sail west of a point, the Fair Promontory, close to Carthage itself, unless driven by stress of weather or fear of enemies; men trading in Libya or Sardinia were to strike no bargain save in the presence of a herald or town clerk; any Romans coming to the Carthaginian province in Sicily should enjoy all rights enjoyed by others. Thus Carthage was already enforcing the policy of a
mare clausum
: Numidia, Morocco, and the Straits of Gibraltar were closed: conditions of trade in Libya and Sardinia were restricted, though Carthage was not yet strong enough to claim a monopoly there or to close western Sicily. Further, it is assumed that the ports over which Rome had any control were to remain open. In return for these substantial advantages Carthage merely pledged herself to abstain from injuring certain towns in Latium. When this treaty was renewed, probably in 348, Rome allowed Carthage to stiffen up the conditions very considerably. By the new agreement Roman traders were excluded from Sardinia and Libya and from the western Mediterranean from the Gulf of Tunis to Mastia (Cartagena) in Spain; Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself alone remained open. Thus the new Republic willingly sacrificed any commercial interests which Rome may have had under the Etruscan regime; for many a long year her thoughts turned landwards while her future rival was transforming the western Mediterranean into a Carthaginian lake.
³

The felicity of the Carthaginian Empire depended largely on the unusual stability of her constitution, which attracted the interest of Greek political thinkers such as Aristotle (
Politics
, ii, 1). The Phoenicians of the west probably did not model their new cities on the monarchical pattern of the mother country: to have set up new kings (
melakim
) would have smacked of disloyalty. Instead, at the head of the state we find two annually appointed judges or Suffetes (Shophetim; cf. the judges of early Israel) whom the Greeks and Romans probably misnamed βασιλε
î
ς and
reges
. In original function these magistrates were judges rather than generals: the early aims of Carthage were commercial, not military. The real conduct of state affairs rested with a Council of (perhaps) Thirty, which included the Suffetes, and with a Senate of Three Hundred, of which the Thirty were a subcommittee. Matters carefully prepared by these bodies, or questions on which the higher powers could not agree, might be brought before a popular assembly of citizens; but where agreement was reached, the assembly would not usually be consulted. In the assembly,
however, there was great freedom of speech, and it was the people who, with certain restrictions, elected the Suffetes, the members of both councils, and the generals. Common commercial and economic interests helped to preserve the balance of power between the governing class and the people. Stability was further increased by vesting judicial power, not in the people, but in a Council of One Hundred and Four, chosen from the larger Senate. This court of judges, which was first established to check the tyrannical tendencies of the house of Mago, supervised the administration of the magistrates. Yet as these judges were elected, not by the people, but by a group of magistrates whom Aristotle called Pentarchies or Boards of Five, the state gradually succumbed to the domination of a close and corrupt oligarchy of judges and pentarchs, until the day when Hannibal cleansed the administration.

The effective government was thus in the hands of an oligarchy of nobles. But it is uncertain how far they formed an aristocracy of birth or of wealth, how far they closed their ranks against other aspirants to office, and how far their interests were commercial or agricultural. The original settlers may have formed an aristocracy of birth, but being merchants and manufacturers they would gradually become an aristocracy of wealth. This in turn may have been somewhat exclusive: the leaders of the nation known to history came from surprisingly few families, and their names, repeated constantly in the same and different generations, form a very small proportion of the names known from Punic inscriptions. But it can scarcely be doubted that the ranks of the nobles were often increased from the aspiring
nouveaux riches
; indeed, the great house of Barca, which appeared in the mid-third century, seems to have been a new family.

Many of these nobles continued to derive their wealth from commerce and industry, but others, in answer to the needs of the growing population for food, gradually turned to agriculture and became landowners. Big estates were cultivated with cheap slave labour, and the success achieved by the landed gentry in scientific farming may be gauged by the fact that after the fall of Carthage the Roman Senate had Mago’s thirty-two books on agriculture translated into Latin for the benefit of Roman colonists. It has been suggested that from the fourth century the nobility became so immersed in their estates that they left the profits of commerce to others; and that politically their interests were represented by the Suffetes and the Senate of Three Hundred, those of the commercial aristocracy by the Hundred and Four and the pentarchs. Such a rigid cleavage, however, is not very probable, though at times a clash of interest may have occurred between the landowners and merchants. And it is not necessary to suppose that all who turned to agriculture automatically lost their interest in trade.
⁴

To support her empire Carthage needed money, men and ships. The first she derived from tribute and customs dues, but our evidence is insufficient to
allow a reliable estimate of the amount.
⁵
Her army, originally formed of citizens, did not suffice for her great wars abroad, so that she began to conscript her subjects – Africans, Sardinians and Iberians – and to employ mercenaries. By the third century her citizens no longer served in her armies, except as officers, or in wars fought in Africa itself. This development had many obvious advantages for a people whose interests lay in commerce rather than in war, but it brought its peculiar dangers. Outstanding generals might aspire to military dictatorship, particularly when after the First Punic War armies of mercenaries became a permanent feature; but the oligarchical institutions of the city were devised to check the too-successful general, while crucifixion was the punishment for failure. Further, when the subject Africans found themselves serving no longer with citizens but merely with allies, mercenaries, or other subjects, they acquired a dangerous estimate of their own importance; the Numidians also realized their own value when Carthage made increasing use of their cavalry. The army was thus always a potential source of danger. Although often a motley crew with little or no national feeling, when disciplined and organized by a general of genius it developed into a first-class fighting machine.

The navy also was maintained from the tribute of the subjects, who were relieved of the duty of self-protection. The skill of the seamen and navigators of Carthage was well known and the maintenance of a large fleet offered a good excuse for exacting tribute. But it is unlikely that she normally found it necessary to keep her whole navy afloat in order to safeguard her commerce and to protect or threaten her subjects. Many vessels would be laid up in the great arsenals and dockyards at Carthage, and the crews called up only in time of need. The praise accorded to the Punic navy by patriotic Roman writers arose partly from sincere admiration, but partly from a desire to exaggerate the achievements of their own victorious fellow-countrymen.

The civilization of Carthage has left little mark on world history, and our knowledge of it derives mainly from biased Greek and Roman writers and from the results of recent archaeological investigation. But when every allowance has been made the resultant picture is not attractive. Carthage tapped the caravan routes of Egypt and Africa, her merchants sailed to Britain and Senegal, and she became one of the richest states of the world, but she was rather a carrier than a productive state; and curiously, she did not issue coins until early in the fourth century and at first only to pay her troops in Sicily rather than for commercial reasons. Her industry aimed at mass-production and cheapness rather than beauty. Her art was unoriginal and owed much to Egypt and Greece. Her nobles might acquire a taste for Greek art, but this was met by importing foreign artists and works of art or by the imitation of Greek models. Even the equipment of the tombs, which in early days were richly adorned, became increasingly cheaper. We hear of Carthaginian books and
libraries, but there is no evidence to suggest that she was gifted with any real literary inspiration. The Punic language, however, which belongs to the North Semitic group and is akin to Hebrew, was more virile, as is shown by its persistence and by the numerous inscriptions which have come to light. Carthaginian religion and cult were cruel, gloomy and licentious. The Canaanitish deities, Ba’al Hammon, Tanit, Melkart, Eshmun and Astarte inspired in their worshippers a fanatical devotion, which did not shrink from self-immolation or human sacrifice. Contact with the civilized world may have mitigated the barbarity to an extent, but the fires of the sacrifice called Moloch continued to receive their tribute of infants from noble families at hours of crisis in the city’s history.
⁶

Carthage thus gave the world little of value. Even the spirit of the great house of Barca came rather to destroy than to build. To the end the Carthaginian remained Oriental and was only superficially tinged with Greek culture; and he was not popular in the western world. ‘Bearded Orientals in loose robes, covered with gaudy trinkets, often with great rings of gold hanging from their nostrils, dripping with perfumes, cringing and salaaming, the Carthaginians inspired disgust as much by their personal appearance as by their sensual appetites, their treacherous cruelty, their blood-stained religion. To the end they remained hucksters, intent on personal gain, careless or incapable of winning the goodwill of their subjects.’
⁷
They may have been thus conceived by some Greeks and Romans, but it is well to recall that a Carthaginian named Hasdrubal and renamed Cleitomachus became head of the Academy at Athens in 129, and to balance the picture with the words of Cicero: ‘Carthage would not have held an empire for six hundred years had it not been governed with wisdom and statecraft.’ (
de rep.
, i, frg. 3.)