Destroy Carthage Page 14

  In peacetime, many armourers and carpenters switched from state to private employment. Metal workers made tools, domestic appliances, bronze utensils and ornaments. Again plentiful and cheap, their articles were not of sterling class. Despite Carthage's trade in raw metals, no attempt was made to sell finished products overseas.

  Her woodworkers, on the other hand, were known for their quality. Solomon had valued the skill of Phoenician carpenters, and the early African colonists had found timber in the new lands well-suited to building and repairing ships. Unlike their compatriots in the metal industry, shipbuilders could move from military to civil work of the same kind, simply shifting from naval to merchant yards.

  When shipbuilding was depressed, there were ploughs to make for farmers (Carthaginian ploughs were wooden, without wheels, as still found in North Africa), threshing-sleds (the ingenious 'Punic cart' as the Romans called it), household chests, and other timber items.

  The manufacture of fabrics was assiduously organized. Apart from self-supporting spinning and weaving within Carthaginian families, there were professional spinners and large workshops where dozens of slaves were kept busy. Dyeing, too, was a regular industry. So popular was the purple extract from the shell-fish murex that, even today, piles of broken shells mark the sites where the dye vats were sited. Red dye was used on hide to make a type of morocco - a process probably learned from nomads of the interior.

  It was not the talent of specific Carthaginians which Cato, on his visit of i£2, remarked nervously. Punic society mis­trusted outstanding individuals, particularly in the field of poli­tics, where the failure of aspiring tyrants was conspicuous. What disturbed the Roman was the remarkable diligence and civic solidarity which gave Carthage her resilience, her capac­ity to regenerate wealth and strength in the aftermath of blows that would have crushed the vigour of other states.

  Behind the multi-coloured populace swarming docklands, arsenals, factories, offices, was a system - not lacking institu­tional tyrannies - impelling all classes toward the supreme state objective of acquiring wealth. That private wealth, as in all ancient societies, was cruelly ill-distributed, appears not to have created serious friction in the city. The few recorded incitements to revolt completely failed to arouse the prolet­ariat. Even the slaves, who must have been numerous, showed no inclination to rebel. Indeed, their loyalty was a source of strength in the last crisis.

  So far as the system was endangered by social discontent, trouble lay in the native communities of Carthage's African territories: the Libyan farmers who paid high rents and taxes, and would have preferred, in any case, to return to the nomadic life across the frontiers. Such people were always potential allies for invaders, and had made havoc by joining the disgruntled mercenaries after the First Punic War.

  Carthage herself avoided the social turmoils of the Greek states. Perhaps the lack of an idle aristocracy contributed to a sense of common purpose. Just as landowners laboured on their own soil, so lords of industry and heads of state remained practical men involved in workaday problems. Industrious and business-like, the upper-class encouraged its sons to start their careers at a humble level and work up. Such customs made for the respect of subordinates.

  Certainly, esteem attached to the leaders of religion, a factor central to social solidarity. The priests of Baal Hammon, Melkart, Eshmoun, and other gods, interceded for the city with terrifying forces. Their job was not enviable. The placat­ing of a deity could as well demand the slaughter of a priest, a kohen, as that of any other life. One priest of Melkart was sacrificed by crucifixion in his vestments, despite being the son of a Punic king.

  For all kohanim, the rigours of everyday life were formid­able. Some priests wore the yoke, like common prisoners. Others, completely shaven, went barefoot in coarse robes. Not all were dedicated to celibacy, but all observed endless taboos to ward off dangers. As with others in positions of in­fluence, the priests were carefully watched by the Punic state, in their case by a board of ten magistrates.

  Yet if toil and austerity, cupidity and oppressive gods, were ingredients in Carthaginian society, there was a less daunting side to the picture. At annual festivals and frolics, even the priestly orders let their hair down. A sacred banquet depicted on the funeral stone of a priestess shows people lying on couches beside food and wine. The figure of a woman attired in nothing but brassiere and ear-rings suggests a far from forbidding scene.

  Rare figurines expressing life naturalistically, if crudely - a peasant in woollen djellaba, a well-to-do fellow sporting a cape over an embroidered tunic, the ubiquitous and burdened donkey - have survived to evoke familiar and captivating associations for those who know North Africa.

  Like all people, the Phoenicians delighted in pretty objects, sometimes of slight utility, especially of personal adornment. A humble bone-worker was buried at Utica wearing an elab­orate gold-filigree ear-ring and a necklace with five pendants. Beside him were mother-of-pearl shells, polished stones and carved medallions.

  Brightly-coloured glassware, characteristically of dark blue fused with brilliant yellow, was a feature of Carthaginian craftsmanship. It took many forms: beads, small phials, scarabs and a variety of charms for warding off the evil eye. Glass-blowers, jewellers, carvers of ivory and wood, and other practitioners of the decorative crafts, were numerous. There was even a group which painted faces and patterns on ostrich eggs. Cheap and repetitive their goods may often have been; dull, they were not.

  It was across this bustling and assiduous society - again pros­perous but no longer, in the 2nd century, a power in the class of Rome - that there fell after more than four decades of peace the shadows of Masinissa and Cato: old men, hoary survivors of distant battles, refusing to let the past die. In 149, as the consuls Manilius and Censorinus landed their army at Utica, Cato was eighty-five, Masinissa eighty-nine. Neither would survive the year, but their damage was already done.

  Had unusual longevity not been bestowed on them, the destruction of Carthage might never have been proposed.

  As it was, Cato had drained his energy translating his ob­jective into action - and then, with the city duped into virtual defencelessness, the consuls could not deliver the death-blow in his lifetime. Carthage was yet to write her last chapter in epic terms. That she survived the shock of Rome's treachery to do so was closely bound to the twin attributes of social cohesion and industry.

  23 Arms and Men

  The declaration of war by Carthage on receiving pronounce­ment of her intended destruction was not taken very seriously by the Roman consuls. Having achieved the disarming of the city by trickery, Censorinus and Manilius were prepared for a brief storm of fury. It could reasonably be expected to sub­side as judgement replaced emotion and the citizens resigned themselves to their plight.

  An invading army of 80,000 stood ready to march the few miles to Carthage. Offshore, the Roman fleet was prepared to support the advance. Carthage, denied warships by the treaty of 201, had no navy. The remnants of her land force, shattered by Masinissa, skulked in the interior. She had no weapons with which to arm her populace. To complete her distress, not only Utica but a batch of important satellites, including Hadru- metum, Leptis Minor, Thapsus and Acholla, submitted to the enemy.

  That Carthage's impulsive defiance was no more than bravura seemed certain to her persecutors when the citizens requested a thirty-day truce in which to make a last appeal to Rome. The consuls rejected the approach. When the city had stewed a while in its helplessness, they would move un­opposed to their ordained task. The psychology was persuasive, but ignored the Punic temperament.

  Deluded by concessions and pleas into underestimating Punic fibre, the consuls were complacent. True, the Carthaginians, happier bargaining than fighting, were diplomats by inclina­tion, soldiers only in extremity. Pushed too far, however, the Phoenician breed fought ferociously, with a suicidal passion evidenced by the resistance of the Tyrians to the might of Assyria, and by the Motyans in the time of Dionysius.
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  Beaten now in the war of diplomacy, Carthage was not bluffing. The new government of resistance had popular back­ing; indeed, was born of public insistence. Every hour of Roman inactivity was put by the citizens to fevered use.

  The most important work, when the people recovered from the anguish of their first despair, was the production of weapons to make good the surrendered arms. For this job, the city's work-force, geared to fast utility output, was well equipped. Apart from the regular factories, temples and public buildings were turned into workshops for armaments. Weapons were forged and assembled at a hectic pace.

  Knowledge of Carthaginian weaponry is confused by the use in normal times of mercenaries who carried the arms of their own lands. The citizen element of Punic armies seems to have resembled the Greek hoplite forces in drill and equip­ment, with round-topped, crested helmets, body armour, shields, swords and lances. The statue of a warlike deity at Carthage was clad in a Greek-style cuirass. Punic stelae depict warriors with greaves, round shields and a characteristic short- sword with a V-shaped hand-guard.

  At the same time, Roman inventories of captured Punic weapons mention the scutum, or oval shield, and there is evi­dence of long-swords and conical helmets - these probably belonging to light infantrymen rather than heavily-armoured troops. The Sacred Band was renowned for the splendour of its armour and emblems, but doubtless the hardwear produced in the rearmament of 149 was entirely plain and basic to the needs of the emergency.

  Carthaginian cavalry was mainly of lightly armed horsemen in the Numidian style, fighting with small shields and javelins. Effectiveness derived from equestrian dexterity, the fleetness of the diminutive barbary mounts and the power and accuracy with which the riders hurled their missiles. There was also a corps d'elite of heavy citizen cavalry, the mounted section of the Sacred Band, more elaborately protected than the light horse and apparently equipped with long cavalry swords.

  Though archers appear to have played little part in Punic warfare - bows and arrows are not listed among the items produced in the crisis - the Carthaginians specialized in the projection of various missiles, notably limestone shots hurled from balistae, catapults and other contraptions. Thousands of such munitions, weighing from twelve to more than thirty pounds, have been found on the site at Carthage, produced at the time of the final threat.

  The machines employed to project them worked on several principles, including propulsion by metal springs and centrif­ugal force. Those specifically mentioned as part of the 149 arms drive - probably the simplest to manufacture - were operated by twisting elastic ropes. Such devices were useful defensive weapons, particularly when mounted in elevated positions: on walls and towers. Another Punic war machine, the chariot, was mainly offensive in purpose, at its best in desert fighting, and little use to a beleaguered force.

  The most vital of these items now emerged from the factories in a ceaseless flow. Men and women worked day and night. Metal was stripped from houses and public places to augment reserves. Matrons cut off their long hair, recounted Appian, and twisted it into ropes for catapults.

  Each day, the workshops produced 100 shields, 300 swords, 500 javelins, and 'as many catapults as they could.' Stone mis­siles were hewn by the thousand, some for mechanical pro­jection, others to be thrown by hand from the ramparts. It was a remarkable effort. Even so, it would have taken more than eight months to arm the equivalent of the Roman army, and that sketchily with a grave deficiency of protective gear. Wisely, with walls to defend, the Carthaginians placed the emphasis on missile weapons, strikingly javelins.

  Meanwhile, the slaves of the city were freed to fight beside the citizens; a measure wholly justified, for the emancipated bondsmen gave brave and true service to the end. Hasdrubal, the general defeated by Masinissa and condemned by the old government to appease the Romans, was pardoned hastily and instructed to salvage what he could of the field army. Rallying about 20,000 men, he established himself in the interior, guarding the vital route to the grain lands and discouraging Libyan insurrection.

  Another Hasdrubal, prominent in the democratic party, in­itially held command within the city, but little is known of him and he was soon removed by assassination - possibly due to his relationship, through his mother, with Masinissa, who was his grandfather. More conspicuous in the early stages of the defence was a cavalry commander named Himilco Phameas, operating in the country outside the walls.

  Impressively, if belatedly, the consuls advanced in early summer from Utica. A Roman army on the move was at any time an awesome spectacle, and this was a force of unusual strength. Typically, a consular army, comprising two Roman legions, two allied legions, and auxiliaries, would have been about 20,000 strong. With a total force of 80,000, Censorinus and Manilius each commanded twice the number of troops to be expected in less exceptional circumstances.

  The Roman legion of the period, about 4,500 men, was divided into ten cohorts, each of three maniples. In modern terms, these compared roughly as tactical units with a division, battalions and companies. Traditionally, the troops of the cohort were represented in its maniples on an age basis, one maniple containing the younger men (hastati), another some­what older men (principes), and the third containing middle- aged veterans (triarii).

  All were helmeted and armoured from the waist up. Of the two younger groups, each man was armed with sword, shield, lance and javelin. The veterans fought with swords and pikes. In addition to these units, a company of light infantry and a small troop of cavalry were attached to the cohort. In each army, a force of 1,000 troops (including 200 cavalry) was detached to form the reserve and provide the consul's body­guard.

  Unlike the heavy infantry of Carthage, which fought in a solid phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, in the manner of Greek hoplites, the Roman legionaries stood a pace or two apart, with more room to swing their weapons, while spaces were left between the maniples. The Romans were not outstanding cavalrymen. The strength of their armies was in the part-time but generally enthusiastic legionaries, and the highly-disci­plined centurions, tough professional N.C.O.s who served two to a maniple.

  Consular command was less reliable. The system still operat­ing by which generals were changed annually - a precaution against military dictatorship - worked against the accretion of martial experience and made coherent strategy difficult for any length of time. The expedition against Carthage was not exempt from this failing.

  But to the legions heading southeast for their boasted des­tination, the prowess of their generals must have seemed ir­relevant. The richest city in the world lay before them, ostensibly helpless. The men had enlisted not for the fighting this time, but the pickings, and events so far had buoyed their confidence.

  The legionary marched laden. In addition to his weapons and armour, he carried digging tools, cooking pot, rations of corn and meat, and two palisades to contribute to field fortifi­cations. To the legionaries of Censorinus and Manilius, the load was slight discouragement. It would, they hoped, be increased soon with Punic loot.

  Coiling inland of the Sebka er Riana, the great lagoon then open to the sea, the invading column swung east on to the isthmus. The heights of Carthage smudged the skyline, strag­gling south from Catacomb to the Byrsa. To the left of the Romans sparkled the gulf they had skirted; to the right, the lake of Tunis and its marshes. Ahead, spanning the neck be­tween the waters, stretched the city's celebrated landward ramparts, the triple fortifications studded with massive four- storey towers. Inconsequential to an army which expected the gates to be surrendered, the populace unarmed, these became a different proposition when report indicated the inlets barred and the walls manned by defiant citizens, many of whom possessed newly-forged weapons. They may have seemed to the consuls a contemptible garrison, but they meant that the operation was not to be bloodless.

  Deploying their divisions, the Romans prepared to sweep aside the mob.

  24' Repulse

  Maniuus threw his troops against the land wall. Since he can scarc
ely have expected to carry such bulwarks against serious defence, he must have reckoned on the Carthaginians abandon­ing their posts as the attack commenced. It was, perhaps, a fair assumption. The purposeful and disciplined approach of 40,000 efficiently-equipped soldiers in battle order was a sight to test the resolution of any force, let alone an extemporary levy.

  The fighting formation of the Roman army was led by the youngest men. The maniples of hastati advanced in twelve files, ten men deep. Between each maniple in the line was a gap equal in distance to the frontage of a maniple. In the second line, composed of the next in age, the maniples were positioned behind the spaces in the line ahead. The third line, of veteran troops, contained smaller maniples (six files, ten men deep) again covering the gaps of the preceding line.

  As the youths of the vanguard surged toward the broad ditch and earthwork fronting the great wall, the Carthaginian bombardment would have started. It is not difficult to imagine the effect of the missiles on the advancing ranks. Stones the size of pumpkins hailed on the Romans. Any one of the shots could flatten a man's head, or smash his ribs through his thorax, but the principle purpose of the barrage was to scatter formations and confuse the foe.