CARTHAGE

Founded by Phoenicians from Tyre in the late ninth century BC, Carthage, located north of modern Tunis, became the greatest of the many Phoenician colonies in the central and west Mediterranean. Supported by a rich agricultural hinterland and good harbors and well placed for trade, the city expanded its sphere of influence throughout the western Mediterranean. Eventually it came into conflict with Rome, also expanding, The two clashed in a series of three wars, the Punic Wars (264—146 BC), which included such dramatic exploits as a march over the Alps into Italy by the Carthaginian army, complete with elephants, under the leadership of the general Hannibal. In the end the Romans defeated the Carthaginians and destroyed the city in 146 BC. Recolonized by the Romans in the later first century BC, Carthage became a major urban center during the Roman Empire and late antiquity. Excavations conducted since the late nineteenth century, and intensively since the 1970s, have revealed much of the city’s Punic and especially Roman past.

The city was said to have been founded in 814 BC, by Elissa (Dido, in Virgil’s Aeneid), sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre. She had fled west, first to Kition, then to North Africa, escaping from an internecine feud. Settlement was made on a hilly area next to the sea, today the Bay of Tunis (Figure 11.10). The earliest archaeological evidence is somewhat later, however. Greek pottery (Euboean and Corinthian types) dating to 760—680 BC has been found in the Salammbo sanctuary area, evidence valuable both for dating and for the international character of the city’s trade relations even at its beginnings. Three early cemeteries have yielded pottery dated from the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC: the cemeteries at Junon (with early cremation), the south-west side of Byrsa Hill (with inhumation), and Dermech and Douimes. The tophet, a sanctuary and burial ground for child sacrifices, a practice brought from the Levant but

Figure 11.10 Plan, early Carthage

Continued at Carthage long after it was abandoned in the eastern Mediterranean homeland, has evidence of use beginning ca. 700 BC. Where was the settlement that accompanied these cemeteries? Presumably on Byrsa Hill, but no evidence for settlement here before the fourth century BC has as yet been found.

From the start Carthage was to be a colony, not simply a trading post. The name of the city, Qart-hadasht, means “new city” in Phoenician. Connections with Tyre were maintained for centuries, expressed among other ways as yearly offerings sent to the Temple of Melqart at Tyre. And Tyre, after the Persian conquest of Phoenicia, when asked to participate in the planned Persian invasion of Carthage in 525 BC, refused to attack its daughter city. The invasion was eventually called off.

Carthage was ruled by an oligarchy, a government independent of Tyre. Prominent families included the Magonids, descendants of the semi-legendary general Mago. From the later sixth century BC, the city gradually assumed control of the Phoenician areas of the west and central Mediterranean, and even into the Atlantic, where Phoenicians had descended along the coast of Morocco to Mogador, a small island 400km south of Rabat, used as a trading center. The Canary Islands and Madeira may well have been reached; the Azores, further west, perhaps not. Herodotus said the Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa in clockwise direction, at the request of the Egyptian pharaoh Necho (610—595 BC). Carthaginian explorers continued this taste for adventure. In the fifth century BC, Hanno ventured along the west coast of Africa, but how far — Senegal, or as far as Cameroon? — is unknown. The account of his voyage was inscribed on bronze tablets displayed in the Temple of Baal in Carthage. Himilco, another fifth century BC

Traveler, is said to have headed north along the Atlantic coasts of Iberia and France to Brittany and perhaps beyond, to south England and Cornwall.

In the central and western Mediterranean, Carthage eventually came into conflict with the other powers of the region, the Greeks, the Etruscans, and the Romans. In 509 BC, Carthage signed its first treaty with Rome, defining spheres of interest in the central and west Mediterranean. Shortly thereafter, in 480 BC, Carthage intervened in a squabble between Greek city-states of Sicily, an opportunity to expand its influence on the island. But the plan went awry. The forces of Syracuse and Acragas defeated the Carthaginians soundly at the Battle of Himera, a victory that the western Greeks would equate in significance with the Athenian victory against the Persians at the Battle of Salamis (see below, Chapter 19). Indeed, later Greek tradition would assert that the battles happened on the same day. After this defeat, Carthage retreated from its Sicilian ambitions, focusing instead on its African territory. The fifth and fourth centuries BC were prosperous.

Meanwhile, as Rome expanded, conflict between Carthage and Rome became inevitable. In 279 BC they signed their fourth and last treaty. The Punic Wars followed, three rounds of conflict with, at the end, in 146 BC, the Roman invasion of North Africa and the capture and destruction of Carthage itself. The site was demolished and cursed, the survivors sold into slavery.

Interestingly, the Romans, under Augustus, would refound Carthage in 29 BC, in fulfillment of an ambition of Julius Caesar, a symbol of peace and reconciliation at the end of the bitter civil wars that wracked the Roman Republic in its final decades. Named Colonia lulia Concordia Carthago, the city would serve as the administrative capital of the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis (see Figure 23.1), a major city until destroyed during the Arab invasions in the late seventh century AD and replaced by Tunis. The topography was carefully prepared, the city regularly laid out, with the Byrsa Hill the center of this new city just as it had been the center of the old. With this massive urban renewal, even less of the Punic city would remain.