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  DESTROY CARTHAGE!

  Books by Alan Lloyd

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  DESTROY CARTHAGE!

  The Death Throes of an Ancient Culture

  By

  ALAN LLOYD

  BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES LONDON

  Copyright © 1977 by Alan Lloyd

  First published 1977 by Souvenir Press Ltd, 43 Great Russell Street, London WCiB 3 PA and simultaneously in Canada

  This edition published 1977 by Book Club Associates By arrangement with Souvenir Press

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner

  ISBN o 285 62235 8

  Printed in Great Britain by Bristol Typesetting Co. Ltd, Barton Manor, St Philips, Bristol

  Contents

  BOOK ONE

  1 The Numidian 15

  2 City Bearings 21

  3 The Exile 26

  4 The Censor 32

  5 'Delenda est Carthago' 38

  6 Flashpoint 44

  7 Dido and the Voyagers 49

  8 The Siceliots 54

  9 The Africa Enterprise 61

  10 Into the Ocean 66

  11 War Lessons 74

  12 Dionysius 80

  13 Exit Greek Warriors 85

  14 Bodies Politic 91

  15 Carthaginians 96

  16 BOOK TWO

  17 The Fatal Enemy 105

  18 Came the Crow no

  19 Xanthippus 117

  20 Farewell Sicily 122

  21 Hamilcar Barca 129

  22 Beyond the Alps 135

  23 Economic Revival 143

  24 Arms and Men 148

  25 Repulse 154

  26 Scipio in Command 160

  27 The 'Final Fifty' 166

  28 The Deadly Thrust 172

  29 The Salted Furrow 178

  Bibliographical Note 184

  BOOK ONE

  I: The Numidian

  Surveying the Bay of Carthage from the modern Plage d'Annibal, it is difficult to believe that here, in its age, stood the greatest merchant centre of the western world; that from the sands of that tawny, inert shore sailors sought mysterious Thulsa in the northern mists, traders braved the Sahara for Pigmy gold, generals marched turreted elephants to distant wars.

  Few cities of such stature have disappeared so profoundly, more violently. The relics are minimal. This is the story of that disappearance, of the extinction at a stroke of a civilized, thriv­ing state; the history that lingers on a haunted coast. Among the ghosts to be discovered as the tale unfolds, not the least assertive may be the first.

  Two centuries before Christ, the plateau of Maktar, in pres­ent-day Tunisia, was the territory of Masinissa, king of the Numidians. To the writers of antiquity, Masinissa was a bar­barian, a cunning savage with a varnish of culture acquired from neighbouring Carthage and the Romans. His prurience, an alleged distinction of the Numidians, was catalogued. He was said to have fathered forty-one sons among his progeny, the last in the eighty-seventh year of a prodigious life.

  Masinissa's ambition matched his procreative energies. In his youth, Numidia comprised two kingdoms, the Massylian to the east, with a royal town at Zama - identified with Jama, north of Maktar - and a western realm based on Cirta, now Constantine. Masinissa coveted Cirta from an early age. Scarcely be­yond boyhood, the precocious prince led his followers, sanguinary horsemen who rode their barbary ponies bareback, into western Numidia, first driving its ruler, Syphax, to seek refuge with the Moors; somewhat later, seizing his capital and his wife. At the same time, Masinissa flirted dangerously with Mediter­ranean power politics. The skill and ferocity of his mounted warriors gave his friendship a value to greater states. In the stormy relationship between Rome and Carthage, he switched alliances according to the run of luck, fighting for one then the other with equal zest. Each wooed him, yet, with justification, distrusted him. Dismayed by his passion for Sophonisba, the nubile Carthaginian wife he took from Syphax, the Romans in­duced him to engineer her suicide. For the major powers, con­frontation was a grim game with heavy costs. For Masinissa, it meant profit, the fulfilling of his appetites.

  His kingdom prospered wonderfully. Its treasury multiplied, its army grew, it even obtained a fleet. Despite turbulent chief­tains, whom he checked with a heavy hand, Masinissa increas­ingly turned his eyes to distant parts. His envoys made overtures in Egypt and Libya. Perhaps his dreams were pan- African. Certainly, his subjects, once a plundering tribe of the meseta, became an organized and flourishing people: a force, some feared, which might unite the entire north of the sub­continent.

  As the 3rd century bc - a century of desperate violence in the western Mediterranean - approached its conclusion, Masin­issa was in his prime. Below his native plateau, on the gulf of Tunis, a hundred miles or so from Zama, lay Carthage, the templed queen of Africa, her lands and associates established on the coastal plain. Masinissa envied her markets, her busy harbours, her influence and knowledge.

  Beyond the city, across the sea Carthaginian traders had once called their own, republican Rome, still shaken by Han­nibal's aggression, stubbornly reaffirmed her role of expansion in world affairs: a role Masinissa was ready to utilize. These were the fulcrums of his strategy; the first, rich in the resource­fulness and enterprise of her Phoenician heritage, a gem worth all the stones in Numidia; the second, a steely tool which might yet chip the prize from bedrock into its neighbour's lap. To the east, Greece and Egypt continued their long decline, secondary on Masinissa's skyline, while westward, Spain, the uncivilized object of colonial rivalry, marked the end of the ancient world - at least for all save a tiny band of daring men. It was from the settlements in Spain that the latest clash of the great powers, the Second Punic War of history, had spread to Italy and, now in its final throes, swayed to Africa.

  Two years before the new century, the dust of advancing armies accented the Numidian marches. A Roman column was moving from the coast up the valley of the river Bagrades (Medjerda), penetrating the elevated hinterland behind Carth­age. At its head rode the brilliant Publius Cornelius Scipio, dis­tinguished later as 'Africanus Major.' His father and uncle had died in Spain campaigning against the Carthaginians. Scipio, succeeding to their command, had been conspicuous in wresting the initiative from Hannibal.

  Simultaneously, Hannibal himself, returned from Italy, ad­vanced to intercept the foe. The battle which followed their conjunction near Zama was preceded by a celebrated interview. Bringing the rival generals face to face for the first time, the meeting captured the imagination of the ancient world. 'Mutual admiration struck them dumb,' exclaimed Livy. 'They gazed at each other in silence.'

  Hannibal Barca, reflected in numismatic portraiture as craggily handsome with a curly mane, already a byword for audacity, was willing to make peace. Hope of winning the war with Rome had faded, but an awesome reputation
supported the proposition he essayed. A Roman defeat now would blemish his rival's fame. Better an amicable compromise, he declared, than to gamble for more on the battlefield.

  Scipio, whose thin-lipped, shaven-headed effigy suggests a practical and penetrating intellect, was a move ahead. Numeri­cally, the armies were balanced, though Hannibal alone pos­sessed elephants, the heavy assault vehicles of the age. Scipio's confidence reposed in a pact with Masinissa whereby the king's mounted warriors would provide the Romans with cavalry ascendancy. Unfortunately, Masinissa had been occupied chastising a fac­tious chief, and was late arriving with his horsemen. Ostensibly disposed to negotiate, Scipio was more concerned to kill time than reach a settlement. Masinissa's approach assured the failure of the interview. The battle of Zama was fought next day.

  It was autumn in the year 202 b.c.

  Scipio deployed his legions in three lines, the companies dressed by the front with passages between them from van to rear. As Hannibal's elephants, eighty-strong, lumbered forward, many passed harmlessly into the corridors, to be harried by missile-hurling skirmishers. Others, inadequately trained for warfare, ran amok at the blare of battle. Prepared for the con­tingency with lethal bolts to drive into the heads of their un­gainly mounts, the handlers found it hard to effect instant execution. Threshing and squealing, the maddened animals stampeded into Hannibal's cavalry which, disordered, was pur­sued from the field by Masinissa's horse.

  The contest devolved on infantry. With neither side abun­dant in seasoned troops, Hannibal was handicapped addition­ally by the heterogeneity of his force. The Carthaginian army - matching the enemy at about 40,000 men - comprised a mixed bag of Africans, Ligurians, Gauls, Macedonians, Balearic Islanders and others, the majority mercenaries. Apart from some veterans brought back from Italy, they were unaccus­tomed to campaigning together, prone to factional distrust.

  Hannibal chose to hold his seasoned men in reserve. His front line, following the elephants, contained Gauls, Ligurians, Balearians and Moors. They attacked boldly, but Scipio had closed his companies behind the tuskers, and the enemy re­coiled, mauled, from a solid wall of legionaries. There was momentary confusion as the Carthaginian lines coalesced. The second comprised levies from the city and its territories. Angered by the repulse of the mercenaries, the home troops drove them roughly to either flank.

  At this juncture, Hannibal and Scipio brought their units into single line. With the cavalry absent in flight and pursuit, the opposing infantry surged together across ground slippery with blood to form an attenuated mass of struggling warriors. The conflict was desperate. Then Masinissa reappeared.

  Having abandoned the mounted chase, the Numidian wheeled his foam-flecked cavalcade round the battling host and, accompanied by Scipio's cavalry captain, Laelius, charged Hannibal's infantry in the rear. It was the decisive stroke. Shocked and divided, the Carthaginian force disengaged and fled leaving heavy losses on the battlefield. Roman victory was complete.

  As Scipio advanced on an apprehensive Carthage, he was forestalled by a deputation of citizens bearing olive branches and ready to receive his terms. His immediate requirements were soldierly. All Roman deserters and prisoners were to be handed over; all war elephants to be surrendered; all naval vessels given up except for ten galleys. Scipio demanded money and grain for the Roman troops.

  Then came the indemnity. Carthage was held liable for a sum of ten thousand talents of silver payable by instalments over fifty years. For a city of vast resilience and wealth-accru­ing capability, it was hard but not ruinous. Worse were the territorial clauses. On the one hand, Carthage was to surrender all lands which had ever belonged to Masinissa and his ancestors, nomadic tribes whose wanderings raised issues of dispute.

  On the other hand, she was forbidden to make war, even in Africa, without Roman consent. Whether this precluded re­sort to arms in defence of her own boundaries was ambiguous, but it certainly ruled out retributive or pre-emptive move­ments across them. Thus, plainly exposed to contentious claims, Carthage no longer had the right of direct redress. With such despair did some regard these terms that there was talk of con­tinued resistance. A certain Gisco, arguing this course in the senate at Carthage, was manhandled by those who saw the uselessness of further fighting. For a contrary reason, Rome lacked una­nimity over the treaty. The consul, then Cnaeus Lentulus, op­posed a settlement, loath to let Scipio get all the glory. If the war continued, at least in formality, Lentulus might himself gain credit for delivering the coup de grace, or exacting even tougher terms.

  But the Roman people were for Scipio. Lentulus was over­ruled by popular vote and it was proposed to make the victo­rious general not only consul but dictator of Rome for life - honours he declined, to resume before long his foreign services. So, in the spring of 201, after seventeen years of constant fighting, Rome and Carthage forswore hostility and looked to new relationships.

  Masinissa was not done. Virtually invited to make free with Carthaginian territory, he surveyed the frontiers of his neigh­bour with mounting cupidity. True, Carthage could turn to Rome for arbitration in land disputes, but Rome, as the wily king realized, had no favours to return her old enemy.

  2: City Bearings

  The historian Appian described Carthage as a ship at anchor off the coast of North Africa. More accurately, the configuration was that of a thick wedge driven east into the gulf of Tunis, its point at Cape Carthage, its leading faces culminating at Cape Gammarth to the north, to the south at the bay of Kram. From Kram to Gammarth is seven or eight miles.

  Connecting the head of the wedge to the continent, a neck of land varying from two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half miles in width passed between what was then a northern gulf of the sea - now the Ariana lagoon, or Sebka er Riana - and the southern lake of Tunis, the ancient Stagnum Marinum. While the neck was of low ground, the broader head of the promon­tory contained a series of heights, contributing to the illusion noted by Appian.

  Three areas of high land may briefly be identified.

  In the south, an elevated region marked the site of the old quarter of the city, the Byrsa or acropolis, its seaward declivity dropping to the bay of Kram and the harbour complex. In the central region, an agglomeration of hills, rising inshore of Cape Carthage, terminated to the south in the now St Louis hill, where the Byrsa began, and to the north near the present village of Sidi Bou Said. Beyond the latter extremity, running to Cape Gammarth, was the so-called Catacomb hill (Djebel Kawi).

  Distinct from the Byrsa, or city proper, the ancients ident­ified the Megara, the greater area of Carthage, its suburbs and semi-rural aspects stretching inland of the hills toward the throat of the isthmus, where the civil boundary was defined. Westward, straddling the plain behind the promontory, a further range of heights concealed the distant hinterland.

  The population of the city in the years after Zama has been estimated at 200,000, thinly spread in the Megara, teeming in the markets and docklands. Here, the economic heart of Carthage, with its whitewashed facades, its jumble of ten­ements and terraced dwellings, its flat roofs and vaulted roofs, its twisting alleys and steep streets climbing to the Byrsa, prob­ably presented many similarities to those towns of the eastern Mediterranean which survived until recent times - still survive, in some places - with few concessions to modern change.

  Those familiar with North Africa will readily imagine the out-of-door display of produce and artefacts, the craftsmen huddled at cluttered portals amid solemn infants and sleeping dogs. In the heat of day, parts of the city, rudimentary in sanitation, were far from fragrant. But the evenings, redolent of night-scented flora and the warm, nocturnal breezes of the continent, must have conjured longing in absent Carthaginians.

  Like their Phoenician ancestors, the city's architects were capable of building massive and durable structures, as the de­fences will demonstrate. Dwelling apartments in three streets descending from the Byrsa toward the docks rose, in some cases, to six storeys. Generally, however, the low
cost of labour and the availability of cheap, light materials, discouraged monumental work.

  Friable limestone from deep quarries on Cap Bon, across the gulf, was used for important buildings, and in the foundations of others. But most houses were of unbaked brick and puddled clay, faced with stucco. The outer walls, it seems, were largely blank, domestic life concentrating on inner courtyards where cool floors might be found of a characteristic pink cement mixed with marble chips.