Carthage Must Be Destroyed (36 page)

Polybius and Livy, the two major historical sources for this period, agree that the dominant motivation for the Barcid expedition to Spain was to build up the necessary resources to gain revenge on Rome for recent humiliations that Carthage had suffered. But the actions of Hamilcar were probably driven as much by the need to restore Carthage’s ruined economy as by any hatred of Rome. The deeply debased coinage that was minted in Carthage during this period tells a story of economic hardship and personal privation. Heavy bronze coinage was being used as a poor substitute for silver, and generally there seems to have been a dramatic drop in the amount of coinage being minted in Carthage during this period.
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Carthage also had a huge indemnity to pay off. One incentive for the Spanish expedition was to rescue the city from this economic quagmire, but the meeting of Carthage’s punitive debts to Rome was only ever one of a number of motivations for Hamilcar’s Spanish expedition. Perhaps the most crucial lesson that had been learned from the First Punic War was that any successful resistance to Rome required a huge reservoir of human and material resources. With its extraordinarily rich mines and large pool of warriors, southern Spain had the potential to supply such resources at a level that far exceeded the combined output of Sardinia and Punic Sicily.
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This does not mean that a new war with Rome was already at the forefront of Hamilcar’s thinking; nevertheless, among the Barcid faction there was already a steely determination that Carthage would never again be humiliated by Rome as it had recently been.

For Hamilcar, the last commander of the Carthaginian army in Sicily, the expedition to Spain offered the opportunity not only to be cast as the saviour of his homeland, but also to increase the opportunities for autonomous action.
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Despite his own supporters dominating the Council of Elders and the Popular Assembly, Hamilcar could still expect opposition from the political clique led by his arch-rival, Hanno.
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For Hanno and his faction it was not foreign adventures but the harnessing of the huge agricultural resources of North Africa which would provide the answer to Carthage’s economic woes.
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The Greek historian Appian reports that Hamilcar defied the wishes of the Council of Elders when in 237 he set off for Spain.
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The Carthaginian elite had traditionally relied on two methods for managing their armies in Sicily. First, they controlled the flow of reinforcements, supplies and, latterly, money sent from Carthage. Second, the decisions and actions of their commanders were reviewed at the end of their service, and harsh punishments for mistakes could be meted out. Hamilcar would make sure that there were no such opportunities for scrutinizing his actions in Spain, for he recruited and paid his own troops. Also, Hamilcar never returned to Carthage to answer for his actions, instead relying on partisans in the Council and the Popular Assembly to speak for him. The wealth of Spain was used not only to pay off Carthage’s war debts, but also to ensure the support of his army, the Popular Assembly and his own faction in the Council of Elders. Despite his absence from Carthage, Spanish gold and silver guaranteed Hamilcar’s political influence by proxy.
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In a depressing sign of Carthage’s diminished maritime status, the expeditionary force did not have the means to sail directly to Spain, as it would have done in previous times, but marched along the coast of North Africa before making the short crossing at the Pillars of Hercules.
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Nor, once it got to Spain, could Hamilcar expect that the task that lay ahead would be an easy one. Carthage had maintained trading relations with the old Phoenician settlements of the Iberian peninsula as well as the Greeks at Ampurias, but it was not certain that Hamilcar and his army would receive a warm welcome, and the Iberian and Celtiberian tribes of the interior proved almost uniformly hostile.
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For Hamilcar, the lack of united political leadership in Spain may have made military campaigning easier, but it made diplomacy far harder, as an ad-hoc patchwork of individual treaties had to be agreed with the different tribal confederations and communities. Understandably, his priority was to secure control of the all-important gold and silver mines of the Sierra Morena.
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To start with, even those Spanish tribes who had previously cooperated with the Phoenician settlers resisted the Carthaginian advance. In his dealings with the hostile Celtiberian tribes Hamilcar exported much of the brutality of the Mercenaries’ Revolt. While releasing many of the defeated enemy so that they could return home, he publicly tortured and then crucified one of the chieftains. By carefully juxtaposing clemency with this display of severe punishment, Hamilcar sent out a powerful message to the Spanish tribal leadership of the rewards of cooperation and the consequences of further resistance. This strategy soon bore fruit, as the Turdentani capitulated.
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Hamilcar quickly set about a thorough reorganization of the mining operation. In contrast to the old Tyrian system, which had left production under indigenous control, a number of mines were taken over by the Barcids.
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Furthermore, in order to increase efficiency and production, new techniques were brought in from the eastern Mediterranean. Large numbers of slaves, controlled by overseers, did the manual labour. Underground rivers were redirected through tunnels and shafts, and new technology was used to pump water out of shafts. The process by which the metal ore was extracted was laborious. First the rock containing the silver ore, usually mixed with lead, was crushed in running water. It was then sieved, before going through the same process twice more. The ore was then put in a kiln so that the silver could be separated out from the stone and lead before being transported, often by river, to the main cities on the coast.
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For the Carthaginians these mining operations were hugely profitable. Although no actual figures exist for the Barcid era, in the Roman period from the second century BC to the fifth century AD it was calculated that at any one time some 40,000 slaves toiled in the Spanish mines, producing 25,000 drachmas of profit a day.
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Indeed, the colossal scale of both the Punic and the Roman mining operations can be ascertained by the 6,700,000 tonnes of mainly silver slag found at Rio Tinto that can be dated to those periods.
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For the next four years, and despite fierce local opposition, Hamilcar consolidated his hold over the coastline of lower Andalusia, and the essential Guadalquivir and Guadalete river routes, as well as pushing eastward to the coastline opposite the island of Ibiza. In order to strengthen further his control over the region, he founded a new city, Acra Leuce (‘White City’ in Greek), near to the modern town of Alicante.
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As the occupation of southern Spain progressed, there is some evidence that the relationship between the Barcids and Carthage began to change. The annual military campaigns in Spain required a huge standing army of mercenaries, and one Greek historian even puts the figure at 50,000 infantry, 6,000 cavalry and 200 elephants.
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Now that the metal mines had been brought under control and production greatly increased, the Barcids could pay their own mercenaries with their new coinage, which was of exceptional purity.
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The first silver Barcid coins, probably minted in Gades around 237 BC, used the weight standard of the Phoenician shekel (unlike in Sicily, where the Attic drachma had been used).
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However, in terms of their iconography these early issues displayed clear connections with the wider Hellenistic community. On the obverse they showed the head of a clean-shaven man wearing a hairband, who has been identified as the syncretistic figure of Heracles–Melqart. The portrait itself was a clear copy of one that was being used on the coinage being issued by Hiero, now king of Syracuse.
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The Hellenistic theme continued on the reverse of this coinage issue, which featured the prow of a war galley equipped with a triple ram and a wreathed forepost ending in a bird’s head, a motif used on the coinage of the Macedonian king Demetrius Poliorcetes in the first two decades of the third century BC. There may also have been a self-conscious connection with the Levantine world, however, as coinage minted in the Phoenician city of Arvad in the mid fourth century BC also displayed the head of Melqart on its obverse and a warship on the reverse.
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This design may have been selected simply because it would be attractive to the mercenaries in the Barcid army, or because the coin-makers were Syracusan and could therefore have reproduced it quickly from existing templates.
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However, the subsequent emphasis that the Barcids placed on the projection and control of their image warns against such a theory.
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As we have already seen, by this period the syncretism between Melqart and Heracles, long a hallmark of the island of Sicily, had become increasingly influential in Carthage itself, and had even come to play an important role in articulating the North African metropolis’ relationship with other cities in the Punic community.

There were also more particular local concerns that may have come into consideration in Hamilcar’s choice of coinage. Melqart was the patron god of Gades, but as chief deity of Tyre he also emphasized the Phoenician heritage which that city shared with Carthage. The desire to stress that association most probably explains why the god appears without his customary lionskin headdress on contemporary Barcid coinage, in accordance with local iconographic conventions.
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At a time when the Barcids needed the support of the Phoenician cities in Spain, the promotion of an association with Melqart was thus a clever choice. At the same time, Melqart was strongly associated, through Heracles, both with the martial legacy of Alexander the Great and with the Carthaginian army on Sicily, of which Hamilcar had been the last commander. The Carthaginian military mints in Sicily had started producing silver tetradrachms with a portrait of Heracles in lionskin headdress during the last decade of the fourth century, but it is unlikely that such a design was meant merely as a copy of similar coins produced by Greek mints, or simply to satisfy the tastes of mercenaries within the Sicilian army.
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For within a Phoenician context the Heraclean image had strong associations with Melqart, and the new coin succeeded an issue with Melqart’s more traditional iconography on its obverse. Redeployed in Spain, the multivalent image of Melqart–Heracles proved an excellent and enduring emblem of Barcid power.
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Hamilcar’s growing autonomy must have been further highlighted by Carthage’s reliance not only on his mining operation, but also on his military assistance. When a serious mutiny broke out in North Africa, Hamilcar sent his son-in-law Hasdrubal from Spain with a contingent of Numidian cavalry to suppress it. The strength of the Barcid position on the Iberian peninsula was further underlined by the events that followed the death of Hamilcar in the early years of the 220s. The circumstances of his death are confused, and different stories have him variously killed on the battlefield, drowned while attempting to divert enemy pursuers away from his two sons, or killed in the panic caused by the Spaniards driving burning carts into the Carthaginian ranks.
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Traditionally, the Council of Elders should have selected his successor; however, that precedent had been ignored since the tumultuous events of the Mercenaries’ Revolt. Before any decision could be made in Carthage, the army in Spain took matters into their own hands and acclaimed Hasdrubal, Hamilcar’s son-in-law, as their new leader. The Popular Assembly then enthusiastically endorsed this decision.
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Appian relates that tensions were generated when, after he had been appointed commander of the Spanish armies, Hasdrubal returned to Carthage, with the express aim of overthrowing the constitution and introducing his own monarchical rule. After the Council of Elders managed to rebuff this putsch, Hasdrubal returned to Spain in high dudgeon and henceforth ruled the Iberian dominions without taking instruction from the Council. Polybius hotly denied the veracity of this story, but Hasdrubal’s previous history of buying public support, and his subsequent actions, suggest it is true.
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Increasingly the modus operandi pursued by Hasdrubal in Spain came closely to resemble that of the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded the empire of Alexander the Great in the East. Like there, in Barcid Spain a small population of an alien elite backed up by a large mercenary army ruled over a much larger indigenous population. As in the successor kingdoms, considerable emphasis was placed on the founding of new urban centres and the replenishment of old cities in order to consolidate power over conquered territory and generate much-needed markets and transport hubs. The fiscal structure of the state also reflected a form of apartheid within it, with the coinage being divided between high-value issues for the troops and copper for the local market.
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There were also similarities in the way that the Barcids ruled through a patchwork of alliances made with the tribal leaderships of both the peninsula and the old Phoenician cities. Like Alexander, Hasdrubal attempted to make himself more acceptable to the indigenous population by marrying the daughter of a local king. Diodorus states that Hasdrubal was acclaimed by all the Iberians as
strategos autokrator
, a title which (as we have already seen) had strong associations with Syracusan tyranny and kingship. Most strikingly of all, Hasdrubal built a new city on the south-eastern coast of Spain. Founded in 227 BC, it carried the same name as the mother city,
Qart-Hadasht
(Carthage).
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