Destroy Carthage Read online

  Cato's national pride was affronted by the abundance he saw there, more so by Carthage itself, a city whose manifest prosperity and buoyancy was unclouded by the overseas worries incurred by Rome. Recalling fallen comrades at Zama, and the bloody battles preceding it, it must have seemed to him that Rome had won the war, had gone on to master the Mediterranean, only that Carthage should cream off the benefits.

  Embittered by past events, his reflections were exacerbated by the city's approach to arbitration. When the commission insisted that both sides bind themselves in advance to its de­cision, Masinissa agreed but Carthage dissented. Her experience of Roman mediation scarcely made for confidence. As a token of belated independence, the argument was trivial, yet for Cato it portended danger of the gravest kind. From the moment the commission returned to Rome, the dispute unsettled, its leader was obsessed with the threat, as he saw it, of a revived Carthage. He is said to have shown the members of the senate a ripe fig, picked in Africa three days earlier, to emphasize the proximity of the old enemy - a con­tinuing enemy, he averred. Thereafter, unable to let it rest, Cato reportedly concluded every speech he made, whatever its subject, with the slogan 'Delenda est Carthago'-'Carthage must be destroyed.'

  6: Flashpoint

  Unsurprisingly, considering its enormity, Cato's message was not greeted with rapturous applause in Rome. Even today, when weapon capabilities have made mass destruction common­place, the idea of blotting out a great city - not in war or under dire provocation, but as an act of cold-blooded political ex­pediency - accords more with fantasy than reality.

  Applied to ancient Carthage, with her uniquely formidable ramparts, it verged on the preposterous.

  All the same, the proposal found a following. That it was not dismissed out of hand says much for Cato's personal standing, and perhaps more about the diminishing equability of Roman response to foreign problems. Little is known of complexions in the senate at this period, but the repetitious obstinacy of the old man's propaganda suggests both grim hope on his part and lack of popularity.

  The following year, 152, Cato was snubbed by the dispatch of a further commission to Africa, this time headed by a pro­minent opponent of his views, Publius Scipio Nasica ('Scipio of the Pointed Nose'). A close kinsman of 'Africanus,' Scipio Nasica had no cause to love the Cato faction. According to one source, he parodied the notorious 'Carthage must be destroyed' exhortation by concluding his own addresses to the senate with the words, 'And I think that Carthage should be left alone.'

  At all events, he returned to Italy with inflammatory news for the Catoists, having persuaded Masinissa to yield some disputed ground to Carthage. Scipio Nasica did not deny the renewed vigour of the African city, but took the view, not original, that a buoyant rival was essential to Rome's inner strength, to her traditional virility which, he claimed, would degenerate - indeed, was so doing - without competition.

  Another strategic possibility, seen by some as a stronger incentive to pre-emptive action than Cato's fears, cast Masin­issa as the main threat, Carthage being the economic key the king needed to possess an African nation of world account. By this reckoning, the pro-Numidian party in Carthage, not her popular movement, was the real barometer of trouble ahead for Rome.

  The support for these arguments in 152 is conjectural. Nothing known suggests that Cato's campaign made much ground in its first year. Certainly, it did not discourage Carth­age, at last a modest beneficiary of Roman mediation, from further appeals to Rome for help against Numidia. Then, in 151, a number of diverse events combined with dramatic force.

  For twelve hectic months the Roman legions in Spain had been in almost ceaseless combat. Reports told of countless deaths; of the impossibility of defeating the Celtiberians. Dis­illusion was widespread. Officers refused to volunteer for the peninsula; veteran soldiers declined to march with their leaders. To the consternation of a society which regarded army service as a cause for pride, the number of youths evading en­listment was so great that punishment became impossible.

  For the first time in a century, the senate had lost its grip on men and methods.

  At the same time, Rome complained that Carthage was re­building an army and naval force. The African city's dispute with Numidia had reached flashpoint, embassies and counter- embassies scuttling to Italy for crisis talks. Probably, a Carth­aginian army of some size had evolved from the territorial skirmishes coinciding with the resurgence of the popular party. Half a century of Numidian encroachment underlined the need for it. Fighting ships were less important. Masinissa's was not a seafaring nation, and it is doubtful if Carthage projected a large fleet. In a calmer moment, the formal protest Rome presented at these breaches of a somewhat dated treaty might have led to satisfaction. But the hour was fraught for both sides. That year, Carthage was due to pay the final instalment of the war in­demnity. The knowledge that she would then have a substan­tial surplus revenue to devote to other things, possibly armaments, did nothing to relieve the trauma occasioned in Rome by bitter Spanish setbacks. Suddenly, the Roman climate, xenophobic, vindictive, favoured Cato's call for violent action.

  In Carthage, an atmosphere of mounting crisis overrode Roman strictures as public indignation centred on the op­probrious Numidians. Late in 151, the government, losing patience, expelled the leading members of the pro-Masinissa faction in the city and, prompted by Carthalo and other fervent nationalists, insultingly rejected the king's protests. The popular party denied his envoys entry to Carthage and even attacked them on their way home.

  Having threatened for decades, the conflict exploded.

  Masinissa promptly attacked a town of Carthaginian con­nection named Oroscopa, while forces under Carthalo and another captain, Hasdrubal, marched against the king. Masin­issa was now almost ninety. Anticipating his death, the princes he had ruled with patriarchal rigidity jockeyed for the dynastic struggle they saw ahead. Two of his sons joined Hasdrubal, doubtless hopeful of repayment in kind later.

  Weakened by the desertions, Masinissa withdrew to a region remote from Carthaginian supply routes. Confidently, Hasdrubal followed. A number of preliminary engagements had gone his way and he sought the major battle. It remains, in its obscurity, one of the phantom epics of Africa, remarked chiefly for the presence of a notable spectator: a young Roman officer seeking elephants for the Spanish war.

  The son of a distinguished soldier (Aemilius Paullus, con­queror of Macedon) and adopted member of the Scipionic family, the talented Scipio Aemilianus had already won a name for intrepidity in Spain when he found himself perched on a hillside in North Africa watching a sprawling battle on the plain below. He relished the experience. 'It was a privilege,' he declared later, 'such as only two had enjoyed before me, Zeus from the top of Mount Ida and Poseidon from Samothrace, in the Trojan War.'Masinissa, grey from more years even than Cato, commanded the Numidians in person, riding without saddle or stirrups in the native style. But the day proved indecisive, and the Roman witness was at length asked to mediate. Negotiations faltered over the deserters, Masinissa demanding the surrender of his sons, the Carthaginians refusing to co-operate. Imprudently, since the terrain itself was hostile, Hasdrubal postponed break­ing camp in expectation of further talks.

  They failed to materialize. Instead, the Carthaginians dis­covered that the artful Numidian had exploited the delay to blockade their return routes. Trapped in barren country, Hasdrubal's troops were first weakened by famine then swept by epidemic. In the end, they agreed to purchase a passage by surrendering their arms and the deserters, and promising an indemnity.

  Even so, disaster awaited the survivors. As they trudged defencelessly from camp, Masinissa's horsemen harried them savagely, leaving few to reach safety. The affair might have been planned to suit Cato. By embarking on war against Numidia in contravention of the treaty of 201, Carthage had absolved Rome of her legal obligation as co-signatory. By losing that war, and her army to boot, Carthage had left herself naked. Walls she possessed, but no battalions
to man them.

  Also, she had reinforced the old bogey of Carthaginian per­fidy. Romans on the whole might not share Cato's hatred of Carthage, but they did regard her people with mistrust. Like Plautus's Hanno, they were thought to be tricky rogues. Trickery could be amusing in a pedlar, but when it came to breaking treaties the legalistic Roman had a meagre sense of humour. The public, as one Roman avouched, was not discrim­inatory in what it believed about the Punic race.

  By 150, 'Destroy Carthage!' had ceased to seem an outrage­ous slogan. Against the drift of sentiment, Scipio Nasica warned of the need to have regard for world opinion. But to many minds the destruction of an untrustworthy city would be a salutary message to the world, succinct in any tongue: a timely counter to wrong ideas which might be drawn from the intransigence of Spanish savages. Contrary to recruiting problems apropos of Spain, raising an army for the seemingly profitable picnic of demolishing a rich and cultivated state was all too easy. 80,000 Italians, unde­ceived by official secrecy about their destination, quickly volunteered for the campaign. It could hardly have come at a more opportune moment. Masinissa, having smashed the Carthaginian army, was fast approaching the end of his own life.

  In the struggle for succession which must follow, Numidia would be ill-placed either to exploit the demise of her rival or to contest a Roman stake in Africa.

  How far the ruthlessness of Roman intentions toward Carthage was part of a wider strategy of supremacy, or in fact a crude reaction in the absence of any real policy, is question­able. The ancient world was divided in opinion. According to Polybius, one school of thought held the assault on Carthage an astute and far-sighted action on Rome's part, while others saw it as the brutal aberration of a normally civilized nation, a treacherous and profane act.

  Its immensity was not doubted. The sands of Punic history were running out.

  7: Dido and the Voyagers

  Legend has it that Carthage was founded in the 9th century b.c. by a princess of Tyre named Elissa, or Dido. When Dido's brother, Pygmalion, became king, the princess married her uncle, Acherbas, the wealthiest member of the royal house. Coveting his fortune, Pygmalion had Acherbas murdered, but Dido escaped to sea with the riches and her followers.

  According to the story, told with several variations, Dido sailed to Cyprus where the high priest of the Semitic goddess Astarte agreed to join her on condition that his family should be granted the priesthood in perpetuity of any colony founded. A number of sacred prostitutes embarked with him, to provide women for the men and, in time, regenerate the company. In Justin's version of the legend, Dido went to Africa where

  finding that the people of those parts were well disposed to strangers, and liked buying and selling, she agreed to buy a piece of land, so much as could be encompassed by the hide of an ox, on which to rest her weary companions. This hide she cut into narrow strips that they might encircle a large plot, which was called Byrsa, that is the Hide.

  Like Utica, a colony already thriving on the coast to the west, Dido's foundation prospered. But so great was the re­putation of the princess's beauty (runs the fable) that one native chieftain insisted on marrying her, failing which he promised to make war on the settlement. At this, Dido had a huge pyre built on the outskirts of the colony, climbed on to it sword-in- hand, and, swearing faithfulness to her dead husband, took her own life.

  Thus Dido burned. The story, owing much to Greek elab­oration, need not be taken literally. Dido, or Elissa, are not historically authenticated persons, deriving respectively from Semitic words meaning 'beloved' and 'goddess.'

  The ox hide anecdote appears repeatedly in founding legends, being told of Assassin settlement in Persia, Saxon set­tlement in England, and even of English settlement in America. Again, byrsa meant an ox hide to the Greeks, but the Phoenic­ian colonists, presumably christening the camp site in their own tongue, more likely used the word bozra, a stronghold - this corrupted in time by Greek usage.

  Yet there are points of factual interest in the legend. Though traditional dates for Phoenician settlement are suspect, archaeological evidence suggests that Utica was indeed older than Carthage; nor is there reason to doubt that the settlers were Tyrians. Indubitably, they hailed from that land of which Tyre was a leading community, Phoenicia, or Canaan as its own people knew it.

  The Phoenicians, a Semitic people closely related to the Hebrews, had turned to seafaring early in their history, when they migrated from the Negeb to a narrow strip of coast in the region of modern Lebanon and Palestine. Afflicted by powerful land enemies, the Phoenicians depended heavily on maritime skills for survival and prosperity. Tyre, a rocky island a few hundred yards off-shore, was able to survive long sieges thanks to her many ships.

  When the fall of Cnossos in the 14th century ended the long-standing danger posed by Cretan fleets to traffic in the sea lanes south of Greece, Tyrian captains ventured further and further west. The merchandise they brought back increased the city's wealth and influence. Ezekiel described Tyre as 'the renowned city which wast strong in the sea,' a brilliant market for commodities from all parts of the known world.

  Isaiah called her 'the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth.'

  To Tyre came spices from Arabia, amber from the Baltic, foodstuffs from Judaea, linen from Egypt, copper from Cyprus and, increasingly as her ships reached the limits of the western sea, precious metals from Tarshish, or Tartessus, in the south of Spain. Here, on the very brink of the unknown, the ocean without end, were the fabulous mines, rich in gold, silver, tin and other minerals, familiar to Solomon and his neighbours.

  Here berthed the biblical 'ships of Tarshish,' the long-dis­tance freighters which plied a 4,000-mile return journey from the Levant. At Phoenician Gadir (from which stemmed the Roman Gades, hence Cadiz), the easterners established a colony handy for the silver mines of the Sierra Morena, and other works. Acquired cheaply from the natives, sold expensively in the east, the metals not only brought wealth to Phoenicia's home cities but helped finance settlements in Africa, Cyprus, Sicily, and elsewhere.

  Intermediate stations between Phoenicia and Spain were imperative. Ancient seafarers of the Mediterranean, vulnerable to rough weather in their narrow oarships, primitive in navi­gation and reluctant to sail at night, seldom ventured far from land. Their method of traversing seas was either to follow the most suitable coast, or to hop from island to island. Normally, they anchored during the late part of the day, often looking to the shore for rest and refreshment.

  In the circumstances, the obvious course to Tarshish from the Levant was along the relatively direct coastline of North Africa rather than by the devious boundary of Europe. Island- hopping was only practicable in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. It was also true that the pirate swarms of com­peting maritime states, especially those of Greece, were less prolific in the south than in the Ionian, Aegean and Cretan seas.

  Feeling their way along the northern rim of the sub-con­tinent, the Phoenicians discovered immense stretches of shore untouched by eastern progress, or by the tides of human migration disrupting much of Europe. Time had stood still in North Africa, a world isolated by formidable deserts to land­ward, to seaward by a face of inhospitable cliffs and dunes with few natural harbours.

  It was a wild, awesome realm abounding in great animals: elephants, lions, bears, panthers (now extinct in the north, but prolific on the coastlands in antiquity). The people of the region, living in small tribes, largely nomadic, remained in the stone age of material development. At first, disunified and amenable to enticement with cheap commercial products, they were less an obstacle to settlement on the whole than the land itself.

  Vast tracts of barren and parched coast encouraged no more than the establishment of small communications posts. These were frequent. The Phoenicians organized anchorages at regular intervals, possibly every thirty miles or so. But few became places of any real permanency. Only in limited areas, where scope for culti
vation coincided with harbourage, would settlement prosper. Outstanding among these was northern Tunisia.

  In this region, reaching fondly toward the toe of Italy, fertile lands and an equable climate soon attracted the attention of the voyagers. Coastal conditions were suitable to the growth of a variety of fruit trees; corn, though susceptible to inter­mittent droughts, grew well on the inland vales. Halfway be­tween Tarshish and the Levant, the gulf of Tunis plainly beckoned the early Phoenicians.

  Strategically, its proximity to the Sicilian narrows, dominat­ing the passage between eastern and western spheres, was portentous.

  Of the Phoenician settlements which attained any size in North Africa, most were in this area. The site of Carthage, the 'ship at anchor,' was typically Phoenician in its choice; indeed, remarkably similar to that of Tyre. Its most sheltered beach, on the bay of Kram, probably served as the earliest anchorage. Nearby, the settlers placed their sacred enclosure, the sanctu­ary of Tanit; built their first defences on the plateau of the Byrsa; planned their man-made harbours.The name Carthage (Greek Karchedon) derives from the Semitic Kirjath-Hadeschath, or 'New Town' - new in relation either to the motherland of the migrants, or the neighbouring and older settlement of Utica. The time generally accepted by the ancients for the birth of the city was thirty-eight years before the first Olympiad, that is 814, though the earliest re­mains found on the site post-date this by a century.