Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (4 page)

The first Phoenician city at Carthage dates from
c
. 814
BCE
and the first people to settle there came from Tyre.
⁹
The earliest archaeological evidence for settlement at the site, while still being uncovered, agrees with the late ninth-century date. Certainly by the eighth and early seventh centuries the Carthaginians were trading with the wider Mediterranean and had developed extensive local agricultural output and relatively high levels of industrialization. Carthage flourished in its earliest stages, leading some to believe that it was intended to be a city on a grand scale from the very beginning.
¹⁰

According to the legend of the foundation of Carthage a Tyrian princess named Elishat established the city. The Phoenician Elishat, transcribed as Elissa by the Greeks, became Dido in Latin: Dido is thought to be a kind of surname for Elissa, meaning ‘the wanderer’. Dido and her brother Pygmalion were the children of Mettenos, a ninth-century
BCE
king of Tyre who died young, leaving no adult heir. The princess Dido, elder of the two, married the high priest of the god Melqart who ruled Tyre as regent/king. At some point Pygmalion claimed the throne as the legitimate male heir and killed Dido’s husband. Pygmalion’s reign lasted from
c
. 831–785
BCE
and split the nobility of Tyre. The faction that supported Dido fled the city with a fleet, taking with them sacred objects from the Temple of Melqart.

One version of the myth tells us that the queen ‘embarked for Africa with her property and a number of men who desired to escape from the tyranny of Pygmalion and arrived at that part of Africa where Carthage now stands’ (Appian,
Lib.
1).
¹¹
Even in the surviving accounts of the earliest legends there may be echoes of Hannibal. As Dido and the refugees made for Africa where the Phoenician colony of Utica had already been established, the local inhabitants (known as Libyans in the ancient sources) resisted a new Tyrian settlement. Dido then tricked the Libyans into giving up their territory, and in one story she negotiated with a local chieftain to buy ‘as much land as could be encompassed by an ox-hide’. Then, by cutting the hide round and round into a very, very long thin strip she was able to acquire the area that became the citadel of Carthage, known as the Byrsa hill (Appian,
Lib.
1; Justin 18.5.9). Dido’s marking out of the heart of the city of Carthage becomes a clever ruse used to outwit the local chieftains. Such duplicity and trickiness come to characterize all Carthaginians, and Hannibal especially, who excel in the ‘art of turning negotiations to their own advantage’.
¹²

The Tyrians called their city Qart Hadasht, which means the ‘new city’ and implied a New Tyre.
¹³
The best-known episode of the foundation myth weaves
the story of Dido with the Trojan Aeneas and the foundation of Rome. Aeneas’ flight from burning Troy brings him to Carthage where the charms of the lovely Dido distract him from his greater mission – to go to Italy and help found the Roman people. After a tryst, Aeneas reluctantly leaves his new love and duty bound continues on his journey and destiny to Italy. In his wake he leaves a heartbroken and humiliated Dido, who is driven to commit suicide. Virgil’s enduring version of the myth famously articulates the curse that the rejected Dido, on her deathbed, hurled at the descendants of Aeneas. This curse, in the Roman imagination, gave rise to their great enemy Hannibal:

These are my prayers, and this my dying will;

And you, my Tyrians, every curse fulfill [sic].

Perpetual hate, and mortal wars proclaim

Against the prince, the people and the name;

….

Rise some avenger of our Libyan blood

With fire and sword pursue the perjured brood.

Our arms, our seas, our shores, opposed to theirs

And the same hate descend on all our heirs.

Aeneid
4. 894–904

This legend came to define Carthage for the modern world. John Dryden’s stunning translation of the
Aeneid
in 1697 brought Carthage and her myth into the popular imagination in the English language.
¹⁴
From around the same period numerous plays and operas focused on the tragic story of the exotic queen who, her virtue corrupted by the Trojan prince, ended her life by her own hand. From Christopher Marlowe’s
Dido, Queen of Carthage,
to Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas
and the nineteenth-century opera
Les Troyens
by Berlioz the story was kept alive throughout the early modern period.
¹⁵
The timeless popularity of the epic of Virgil means that Dido was and is one of the most celebrated Carthaginians, outshone only by Hannibal himself.

In antiquity, it was not until the third century and Hannibal’s war with Rome that the legend of the Phoenician Queen Dido was linked with that of her lover the Trojan Aeneas. This version is thought to have been devised in the Greco-Roman tradition as an explanation for the wars between Rome and Carthage. It was a means of tying together the origins of the Romans, Greeks and Carthaginians of the western Mediterranean into the same epic tradition of the Trojan War.
¹⁶
Almost two centuries later when the poet Virgil wrote the
most enduring version of the tale, the emperor Augustus was building a new Roman town on top of Hannibal’s destroyed city (late first century).
¹⁷

Of all the many colonies of Phoenician origin in the Mediterranean we have a foundation myth only for Carthage. The story may well be a creation of classical authors who sought to place Carthage into the pattern of Greco-Roman foundation traditions. Or the legend of Dido may hide the core of a history that helps to explain why Tyrian Carthage rose to prominence among the western Phoenician cities.
¹⁸

From the ninth-century foundation, Carthage grew and gradually became one of the most important and prosperous cities in the western Mediterranean and the most powerful city in the Punic world.
¹⁹
Carthage drew a population of Libyans from the surrounding area, people from nearby Utica and further immigrants from Tyre and other cities of the Levant. Its very origins were multicultural. With the foundation of a colony sent out from the city to the island of Ebusus (Ibiza) in 654
BCE
the transition from a colonial foundation into a power in its own right had begun (Diodorus Siculus 5.16).
²⁰
The historical development of Carthage from an autonomous political entity in the seventh century to the conflicts with Rome in the third century was fluid. The increasingly crowded western Mediterranean saw more immigration from the east with many new colonies set up by Greeks from Asia Minor and Greece proper from the eighth to sixth centuries. These settlements encroached on both the Carthaginians and their allies, the Etruscans, whose spheres of influence lay in the central/western Mediterranean.

The traditions and culture of Carthage evolved gradually from the Tyrian foundation, and over the sixth to fifth centuries
BCE
we see the beginning of conflict between competing interests in the region.
²¹
The Carthaginians built their state and its maritime foundation looking outwards to the sea with the merchant and military fleets integral to its development. We see Carthaginians, often in alliance with their close trading partners the Etruscans, battling against the increasing presence of Greek colonies and their expanding interests. A pivotal moment was the naval battle of Alalia (Aleria) which took place off the east coast of Corsica in
c
. 530
BCE
. The conflict saw a Carthaginian fleet allied with Etruscan forces engage a navy of Ionian Greeks (Phocaeans) who had been committing acts of piracy out of their base at Alalia.
²²
The base on Corsica may have been an extension of the Phocaean settlement of Massalia (Marseilles) at the mouth of the Rhône. Although there was no clear victor, the naval engagement at Alalia put an end to Greek expansion into the western Mediterranean (Herodotus 1.165–166).
²³
Hannibal may have learned about this battle as the moment when Carthage decided to take a stand over its role in the central Mediterranean.

The tripartite balance between the Etruscans, the Greeks and the Carthaginians shifted with the rise of Rome, which in 509
BCE
established itself as a republic. The first treaty between Carthage and Rome dates to this period and sets out the spheres of influence around each city at the time (Polyb. 3.22–23).
²⁴
The treaty reflects the more powerful status of Carthage in the early relationship between the two states. Etruscan power waned in the face of Roman conquests and in the fifth century Carthage became involved in a series of conflicts with the Greeks for territorial hegemony on the island of Sicily.
²⁵
What began with Carthage being drawn into battles in defence of their allies in western Sicily, the Elymians and old Phoenician colonies on the coast, led to a more direct Carthaginian influence on the island by the fourth century. In the frequent battles between the tyrants of Greek city-states on Sicily, the Carthaginians were often supplying commanders and troops to their allies. The use of force to protect the interests of one’s alliances was standard for inter-state relations at the time.
²⁶
Carthaginian fortunes fluctuated and following a great defeat of an army of allies under a general named Hamilcar at Himera in
c
. 480
BCE
there ensued a period when the Carthaginians remained outside Sicilian affairs for decades.
²⁷

The focus of our surviving history is almost exclusively on conquest, and details of the more prosaic aspects of life at Carthage are sporadic. The close link between Sicily and Carthage is confirmed repeatedly by our historical sources and by the fourth/third century there was an established Carthaginian territory in the west of the island. The volume of trade across the Mediterranean increased over this period with western Sicily and Carthage very much at the centre.
²⁸
When Diodorus Siculus (13.81.4–5) describes the heavy investment in olive oil production by the elites of the city of Acragas (Agrigentum, modern Agrigento) on the south coast of Sicily, he also tells us that there was a single market for this oil, and that was Carthage (
Map 1
).
²⁹

Carthage developed allied coastal settlements east and west along the Mediterranean. Some were colonies and others were allied communities used like stepping-stones along the shore, providing a safe haven for merchant ships. In return, the Carthaginian navy supplied protection for these cities. The description of a journey along the coast of North Africa from a type of ancient sailor’s handbook claimed that Carthage controlled an area from Lepcis Magna (in modern Libya) to the far west and the Atlantic Ocean.
³⁰
This probably means that along this vast stretch of coast were cities with their own institutions and governments that were allied to Carthage.
³¹
By Hannibal’s time, a Carthaginian cultural empire of sorts may have existed alongside one of shared military and economic interests.
³²

Throughout its long history the people of Carthage continued to maintain a deep connection with their mother city Tyre. At various points, Carthage seems to have absorbed populations from Tyre (and other cities in the Levant) coinciding with periods of political strife and external pressures in the east.
³³
The Carthaginians continued to pay a regular tribute to the great temple of the god Melqart at Tyre. The very popular Carthaginian name Hamilcar, in fact the name of Hannibal’s father, means ‘servant of Melqart’ in Punic. The importance of Melqart, known as ‘Lord of the City’ at Carthage, dated back to the very foundation. The relics from Melqart’s temple at Tyre brought to Carthage by Dido were connected to the most sacred aspects of the city. As late as the second century Polybius writes of a Carthaginian ship at the mouth of the Tiber in Italy: ‘such ships were specially selected at Carthage for the conveyance of the traditional offering of first-fruits to their gods that the Carthaginians send to Tyre’ (Polyb. 31.12.11–12). Diodorus adds to this by telling us that it was Carthaginian custom ‘to send to the god a tenth of all that was paid into the public revenue’ (20.14.1–3).
³⁴
With a tithe of the public purse at Carthage going to Tyre the connection between the cities must have been strong. Some elite Carthaginian families may even have used the title ‘sons of Tyre’, which could be a conscious appropriation of these important origins. For the Carthaginian elite, including Hannibal and his family, Tyre and their connection to this heritage was, throughout the history of the city, always present.
³⁵

Carthage was a diverse, multicultural port city with a close link to the Near East. The city’s prosperity was renowned across the Mediterranean, and Carthaginian ships travelled far and wide. Evidence from the Carthaginian sailor’s coastal guide of an explorer named Hanno claims that his voyage reached well beyond the Mediterranean – down the western coast of Africa to the Niger delta.
³⁶
This expansive trading network can be perceived in the diversity of cultural artefacts that passed through the ports of the city. From the very earliest foundation wine and oils, pottery and jewellery were imported from across the seas.
³⁷
Egyptian cultural artefacts such as scarab rings and faience votives mix in the tombs of the Carthaginians with Corinthian and Athenian pottery and typically Phoenician artefacts like the delicately decorated ostrich eggs used as vessels.
³⁸
Over time influences ebbed and flowed along with the styles of art and commemoration. From the diversity and mixture of artefacts found in Punic-era tombs at Carthage a picture of the heterogeneous nature of Carthaginian culture appears.
³⁹
The sophisticated ideas of the wider Mediterranean world permeated the culture of Carthage reflecting an outward-looking view and a great diversity in its population.