Destroy Carthage (11 page)

If modern exegesis is correct in recognizing 'West Horn'
as Bissagos Bay, and the 'Chariot of the Gods' as Mount Kakulima, then the Carthaginians have a strong claim to have been
the first civilized people to have explored the coasts of Portu­guese Guinea and French Equatorial Africa.

True, Herodotus believed that Phoenician mariners had cir­cumnavigated Africa in the 7th century, but the tale is
enigmatical. Later, Xerxes of Persia promised, somewhat less
than magnanimously, to pardon the condemned courtier
Sataspes if he sailed round the continent. Sataspes indeed
travelled south from Tangier beyond the Saharan fringe, but
just where he turned back is unknown. In any case, he could
hardly have got so far without Phoenician, probably Carth­aginian, co-operation.

By comparison, the scale of Hanno's expedition was grandi­ose. The Atlantic coast was not merely navigated but stationed
to a point near the tropics. According to extreme interpola­tion, the 'Chariot of the Gods' was the volcanic Mount
Cameroon, carrying the exploration beyond Cape Palmas to
the bight of Biafra, though this seems unlikely even ignoring
the sailing times.

Finally, the closing reference to 'Gorillas' has raised dispute.
The giant anthropoid apes were named, after Hanno's descrip­tion, by their modern discoverers. Scholars are divided as to
whether the report itself concerns apes or human beings, one
school asserting that the captives were hairy Pigmies, another
that they were apes, but specifically chimpanzees. At all events,
the skins were a sufficient novelty in their day to be placed
on public show at Carthage.

* *

While Hanno sailed south, other mariners turned north up
the western coast of Europe to Brittany. Their quest was not
for gold but tin, increasingly valuable to a developing Punic
bronze industry. The inspiration came from Tarshish. The
Tartessians traded with a Breton people, the Oestrymnians (in
legend, of Spanish origin), knowing from them of Ireland and
England. At Gades, Carthaginian merchants were well-placed
to learn of such connections. They resolved to tap the northern
trade.

Even less is known of Punic exploration in the dangerous
waters of Biscay than of the southern expeditions. The lengths
to which the pioneers would go to preserve their secrets are
mentioned by Strabo, who cites the deliberate wrecking of
vessels by captains who found themselves followed. Neverthe­less, a brief description of northern conditions survives in the
name of one Himilco, said by Pliny to have adventured 'at the
same time' as Hanno.

It occurs in the writing of a much later Roman scholar and
poet, Avienus, who referred to the Oestrymnians as inveterate
traders, brave and energetic, with skin-covered ships in which
they sailed 'the stormy channel.'

From their country to the sacred island, as it was known
of old, takes two days sailing. The island covers a vast area
and is inhabited by the Hibernian people. Nearby lies the
island of Albion. Carthaginians, together with people living
round the Pillars of Hercules and Tartessians, all visited these
regions.

The Carthaginian Himilco, who describes how he tried
this voyage, says that it takes at least four months. There
is no wind to hasten the ship, and the lazy waters of the
ocean seem asleep. From them rise shoals of seaweed which
often restrain the ship like a thicket. Nevertheless, he says,
the sea is not very deep. Aquatic creatures swim here and
there, and sea-monsters pass between the becalmed ships.

Sluggish waters and lack of wind is not the impression ex­pected from a sea voyage to the north of Spain, yet the chance
of encountering a dead calm beyond the 45th parallel was not
remote, and Himilco was generalizing from a single trip. As
for sea-monsters and seaweed, whales were common at one
time in the Bay of Biscay; ancient mariners spoke of algae far
from the Sargasso (the large quantities washed up on the
Channel Islands and the Breton coast were once used on the
fields as fertilizer). If the sea appeared shallow to Himilco it
was because the galleys hugged the gently-shelving bays and
offshore sand-banks.

The extent of Carthaginian exploration in the north is prob­lematical. There is no evidence that Himilco visited England
or Ireland, but it would not be improbable. On the other hand,
lack of Phoenician relics in the British isles, and of Punic settle­ment on the shores of Portugal and Galicia, suggests that the
feasibility of importing tin directly from the north by sea was
soon discounted. Despite intermediaries, the land routes were
quicker and safer.

Regardless of trade results, Hanno and Himilco stand among
the great explorers, the dilators of the known world. Other
Carthaginians, now anonymous, doubtless deserved equal fame.
Familiar with tides that bemused the Romans centuries after­wards, Punic seamen braved an ocean few of their contem­poraries contemplated - none without shuddering.

For
most of the 5th century, Carthage, preoccupied in Africa,
remained aloof from the incessant feuds and revolutions which
upset life in Sicily. Against Syracuse, the dominant tyranny in
the east, a well-fortified Motya guarded Carthaginian interests
in the west. Through the rest of the island, states of varying
complexion struggled stubbornly, aristocracies and democ­racies, Ionians and Dorians, Siceliots and Sicels (the native
Sicilians).

Mindful of the costly fiasco at Himera, Carthaginian society,
intrinsically unwarlike, was content with a passive role so long
as its buffer on the near end of Sicily was undisturbed. Few of
the mercantile families which governed Carthage prized a mil­itary tradition. Accumulation of wealth was their business,
not its dissipation on expensive wars.

Punic intervention when Sicilian affairs took a turn for the
worse, placing Motya and the west in jeopardy, was reluctant,
protracted diplomacy delaying armed initiative. The corollary,
a marked impatience to recall and disband armies once they
had been deployed successfully, precluded the strategic ex­ploitation of victories.

Despite such militarily inhibiting tendencies, it had to be
admitted that the affluence created by the system was itself
a substantial asset when the sword was drawn. It bought the
foreign troops whose services enabled Carthaginian life and
business to proceed largely undisturbed at time of war. It
bought valuable alliances. It bought disaffection in the forces
of the enemy. Indeed, so far as Carthage was unlucky to em­erge at last with less than outright dominance, her renewed
struggle in Sicily was to provide succinct testimony to the
power of finance in war. As it happened, the Sicilian campaigns commencing at the
end of the 5th century and proceeding throughout the 4th,
may be said to have covered a great deal of territory without
much changing Carthage's position in the island. The
History
of Diodorus, himself a Sicilian, recounts battles, depredations,
plunder and atrocities with depressing monotony. From one
extremity of the land to the other, campaigns rage. Tyrants
rise, cities fall, martial heroes and miscreants come and go.

And, after all, Syracuse holds the east; Carthage still holds
her western ground.

What indeed changed as war trundled back and forth was
the Punic outlook. Inevitably, Carthage acquired an overlay
of Greek tastes. A hundred years and more of conflicts, truces
shifting alliances, could hardly fail to impress the ways of the
island on the countless soldiers and diplomats who commuted
from Africa. Carthage also acquired military technique. Re­peated fighting produced skilled officers, refined war proce­dures.

That a community of traders from the balmy gulf of Tunis
would ultimately alarm the hardened militarists of Rome into
seeking its destruction had much to do with lessons learned in
the Sicilian wars of the 4th century. From her Phoenician
background Carthage could draw two military assets : the skill
of her seamen, and an expert knowledge of building and attack­ing fortifications. Siege warfare, dating back to the earliest city
foundations of Mesopotamia, evinced cogently by the Assyr­ians, was very much an Asian skill.

In open warfare, as the Persians had learned to their cost
against Greek infantry, eastern modes were less dependable.
The so-called Sacred Band at the core of Carthage's motley
armies achieved fame at first for its ornament. Clad in re­splendent costume and armour, feasting on gold and silver
plate, battles commemorated by precious rings on their fingers,
the affluent merchants' sons who filled its ranks aroused the
wonder of Greek writers.

But their fighting technique - at least in the early days -
seems to have been obsolete. Accounts of numerous chariots
transported from Carthage to Sicily suggest a concept of war­fare outdated by Greek tactics. If initial successes were dra­matic, they owed more to the expendability of innumerable
hired troops than to any sophistication of Punic arms.

* * *

Briefly, the events which precipitated Carthaginian interven­tion in Sicily after so many years concerned the violent rivalry
of two Siceliot states, Segesta and Selinus. Situated in the west
of the island, close to Phoenician territory, both communities
had been friendly with Carthage until military conflict between
them jolted Selinus into alignment with the eastern power of
Syracuse.

Fear that Syracuse might establish a hold in the far west,
endangering the one feature of northern strategy Carthage
deemed sacrosanct, gave weight to Segesta's urgent calls for
Punic aid
-
the more so since the Segestans were willing to
make their city a dependency of Carthage. All the same, there
was no hasty action. Only when diplomatic approaches to
Selinus and Syracuse proved unsuccessful were the Carthagin­ians persuaded to intervene with armed force.

The expedition was entrusted to the first Carthaginian of
note to bear the name of Hannibal (Grace of Baal), the son of
a Magonid called Gisco. Grandson of the Hamilcar who had
died at Himera, Hannibal had a personal motive for revenge
by war. Diodorus dubbed him 'a Greek-hater.'