Destroy Carthage (23 page)

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.

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.

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.