No More Learning

That the Romans at no time distinguished themselves in the mathematical and mechanical sciences is well known, and is attested, in reference to the present epoch, by almost the only fact which can be adduced under this head with certainty —the regulation of the calendar attempted by the decemvirs. They wished to substitute for the previous calendar based on the old and very imperfect IrieterU 270) the contemporary Attic calendar of the octaeteris, which retained the lunar month of 29 days but assumed the solar year at 365J days instead of 368J, and therefore, without
Litterator and grammaticus are related nearly as elementary teacher and teacher of languages with us the latter designation belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a teacher of the mother- tongue. Litttratus more recent, and denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.
It at any rate true Roman picture, which Plautus [Batch. 431) produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children J—
. . uii revenisses domum,
Cifuticulo praecinetus in sella afud magistrum adsidtra; Si, librum cum legem, unam peccavisses syllaiam,
Fitrct curium lam macules um, guam est nutrUis pallium
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CHAP. IX ART AND SCIENCE
117
making any alteration in the length of the common year of 354 days, intercalated, not as formerly 59 days every 4 years, but 90 days every 8 years. With the same view the improvers of the Roman calendar intended —while otherwise retaining the current calendar —in the two inter calary years of the four years' cycle to shorten not the inter calary months, but the two Februaries by 7 days each, and consequently to fix that month in the intercalary years at 22 and 21 days respectively instead of 29 and 28. But want of mathematical precision and theological
scruples, especially in reference to the annual festival of Terminus
which fell within those very days in February, disarranged the intended reform, so that the Februaries of the inter calary years came to be of 24 and 23 days,Jand thus the new Roman solar year in reality ran to 3 66 days. Some remedy for the practical evils resulting from this was found in the practice by which, setting aside the reckoning by the months or ten months of the calendar 270) as now no longer applicable from the inequality in the length of the months, wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of solar year of 365 days or the so-called ten-month year of 304 days. Over and above this, there
came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural purposes, the farmers' calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of 365 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).
higher idea of what the Italians were able to do in Structural
tl0
these departments furnished by their works of structural and plastic art, which are closely associated with the mechanical sciences. Here too we do not find phenomena of real originality but the impress of borrowing, which the plastic art of Italy bears throughout, diminishes its artistic interest, there gathers around historical interest all the more lively, because on the one hand
preserves the most remarkable evidences of an international inter-
868.
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u8 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
course of which other traces have disappeared, and on the other hand, amidst the well-nigh total loss of the history of the non-Roman Italians, art is almost the sole surviving index of the living activity which the different peoples of the peninsula displayed. No novelty is to be reported in this period; but what we have already shown 306) may be illustrated in this period with greater precision and on
broader basis, namely, that the stimulus derived from Greece powerfully affected the Etruscans and Italians on different sides, and called forth among the former richer and more luxurious, among the latter — where had any influence at all — more intelligent and more genuine, art.
We have already shown how wholly the architecture of all the Italian lands was, even in its earliest period, per vaded Hellenic elements. Its city walls, its aqueducts, its tombs with pyramidal roofs, and its Tuscanic temple, are not at all, or not materially, different from the oldest Hellenic structures. No trace has been preserved of any advance in architecture among the Etruscans during this period we find among them neither any really new recep tion, nor any original creation, unless we ought to reckon as such the magnificent tombs, e. g. the so-called tomb of Porsena at Chiusi described by Varro, which vividly recalls the strange and meaningless grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids.
In Latium too, during the first century and half of the republic, probable that they moved solely in the previous track, and has already been stated that the exercise of art rather sank than rose with the introduction of the republic 84). There can scarcely be named any Latin building of architectural importance belonging to this period, except the temple of Ceres built in the Circus
498. at Rome in 261, which was regarded in the period of the empire as a model of the Tuscanic style. But towards the close of this epoch new spirit appeared in Italian and
a
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chap, IX ART AND SCIENCE
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particularly in Roman architecture 85); the building of the magnificent arches began. It true that we are not entitled to pronounce the arch and the vault Italian inventions. It well ascertained that at the epoch of the genesis of Hellenic architecture the Hellenes were not yet acquainted with the arch, and therefore had to content themselves with flat ceiling and sloping roof for their temples; but the arch may very well have been later invention of the Hellenes originating in more scientific mechanics as indeed the Greek tradition refers to the natural philosopher Democritus (294-397). With this priority of Hellenic over Roman arch-building the hypo thesis, which has been often and perhaps justly propounded,
quite compatible, that the vaulted roof of the Roman great cloaca, and that which was afterwards thrown over the old Capitoline well-house which originally had pyramidal roof 302), are the oldest extant structures in which the principle of the arch applied for more than probable that these arched buildings belong not to the regal but to the republican period 139), and that in the regal period the Italians were acquainted only with flat or overlapped roofs 302). But whatever may be thought
as to the invention of the arch itself, the application of principle on great scale everywhere, and particularly in architecture, at least as important as its first exposition and this application belongs indisputably to the Romans. With the fifth century began the building of gates, bridges, and aqueducts based mainly on the arch, which thence forth inseparably associated with the Roman name. Akin to this was the development of the form of the round temple with the dome-shaped roof, which was foreign to the Greeks, but was held in much favour with the Romans and was especially applied by them in the case of the cults peculiar to them, particularly the non-Greek worship of Vesta. 1
The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an imita-
The arch,
460-357.
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Plastic and delineative an.
Etruscan.
130 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
Something the same may be affirmed as true of various subordinate, but not on that account unimportant, achieve ments in this field. They do not lay claim to originality or artistic accomplishment ; but the firmly-jointed stone slabs of the Roman streets, their indestructible highways, the broad hard ringing tiles, the everlasting mortar of their buildings, proclaim the indestructible solidity and the energetic vigour of the Roman character.
Like architectural art, and, if possible, still more com pletely, the plastic and delineative arts were not so much matured by Grecian stimulus as developed from Greek seeds on Italian soil. We have already observed (L 306) that these, although only younger sisters of architecture, began to develop themselves at least in Etruria, even during the Roman regal period ; but their principal development in Etruria, and still more in Latium, belongs to the present epoch, as is very evident from the fact that in those districts which the Celts and Samnites wrested
from the Etruscans in the course of the fourth century there is scarcely a trace of the practice of Etruscan art. The plastic art of the Tuscans applied itself first and chiefly to works in terra-cotta, in copper, and in gold — materials which were furnished to the artists by the rich strata of
tlon of the oldest form of the house ; on the contrary, house architecture uniformly starts from the square form. The later Roman theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun (Fest. v. rutundam, p. 282 ; Plutarch, Num. 1 1 ; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267, seg. ). In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody. That was the rationale of the round thcsaitroi of the Greeks as well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of the Penates. It was natural, also, that the fireplace—that is, the altar of Vesta —and the fire-chamber —that is, the temple of Vesta — should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the cistern and the well-enclosure ( puteat). The round style of building in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house ; but the architectural and religious development of the simple tholos into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.
chap, ix ART AND SCIENCE iai
day, the copper mines, and the commercial intercourse of Etruria. The vigour with which moulding in clay was prosecuted is attested by the immense number of bas-reliefs
and statuary works in terra-cotta, with which the walls, gables, and roofs of the Etruscan temples were once decor ated, as their still extant ruins show, and by the trade which
can be shown to have existed in such articles from Etruria
to Latium. Casting in copper occupied no inferior place. Etruscan artists ventured to make colossal statues of bronze
fifty feet in height, and Volsinii, the Etruscan Delphi, was
said to have possessed about the year 489 two thousand 265. bronze statues. Sculpture in stone, again, began in Etruria, as probably everywhere, at a far later date, and
was prevented from development not only by internal causes, but also by the want of suitable material ; the marble quarries of Luna (Carrara) were not yet opened. Any one who has seen the rich and elegant gold decora tions of the south-Etruscan tombs, will have no difficulty in believing the statement that Tyrrhene gold cups were valued even in Attica. Gem-engraving also, although more recent, was in various forms practised in Etruria. Equally dependent on the Greeks, but otherwise quite on a level with the workers in the plastic arts, were the Etruscan designers and painters, who manifested extraordinary activity both in outline-drawing on metal and in mono chromatic fresco-painting.
On comparing with this the domain of the Italians Campanlu
proper, it appears at first, contrasted with the Etruscan riches, almost poor in art. But on a closer view we cannot fail to perceive that both the Sabellian and the Latin nations must have had far more capacity and aptitude for art than the Etruscans. It is true that in the proper Sabellian territory, in Sabina, in the Abruzzi, in Samnium, there are hardly found any works of art at all, and even coins are wanting. But those Sabellian stocks, which reached the
Iceman
122 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
coasts of the Tyrrhene or Ionic seas, not only appropriated Hellenic art externally, like the Etruscans, but more or less completely acclimatized it Even in Velitrae, where prob ably alone in the former land of the Volsci their language and peculiar character were afterwards maintained, painted terra-cottas have been found, displaying vigorous and characteristic treatment In Lower Italy Lucania was to a less degree influenced by Hellenic art; but in Campania and in the land of the Bruttii, Sabellians and Hellenes became completely intermingled not only in language and nationality, but also and especially in art, and the Cam- panian and Bruttian coins in particular stand so entirely in point of artistic treatment on a level with the contemporary coins of Greece, that the inscription alone serves to dis tinguish the one from the other.
It is a fact less known, but not less certain, that Latium also, while inferior to Etruria in the copiousness and massiveness of its art, was not inferior in artistic taste and
among these the art of gem-engraving so
prosecuted in luxurious Etruria entirely wanting, and we find no indication that the Latin workshops were, like those of the Etruscan goldsmiths and clay-workers, occupied in supplying foreign demand. It true that the Latin temples were not like the Etruscan overloaded with bronze and clay decorations, that the Latin tombs were not like the Etruscan filled with gold ornaments, and their walls shone not, like those of the Tuscan tombs, with paintings of various colours. Nevertheless, on the whole the balance does not incline in favour of the Etruscan nation.
practical skill. Evidently the establishment of the Romans in Campania which took place about the beginning of the fifth century, the conversion of the town of Cales into a Latin community, and that of the Falernian
territory near Capua into a Roman tribe 463), opened up the first instance Campanian art to the Romans. It true that
diligently
The
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123
device of the effigy of Janus, which, like the deity itself, may be attributed to the Latins 213), not unskilful, and
of more original character than that of any Etruscan work of art The beautiful group of the she-wolf with the twins attaches itself doubtless to similar Greek designs, but was— as thus worked out — certainly produced, not in Rome, at any rate Romans and deserves to be noted that first appears on the silver moneys coined by the Romans in and for Campania. In the above-mentioned Cales there appears to have been devised soon after its foundation peculiar kind of figured earthenware, which was marked with the name of the masters and the place of manufacture, and was sold over
wide district as far even as Etruria. The little altars of terra-cotta with figures that have recently been brought to light on the Esquiline correspond style of representation
as in that of ornament exactly to the similar votive gifts of
the Campanian temples. This however does not exclude Greek masters from having also worked for Rome. The sculptor Damophilus, who with Gorgasus prepared the painted terra-cotta figures for the very ancient temple of Ceres, appears to have been no other than Demophilus of Himera, the teacher of Zeuxis (about 300). The most in- 450. structive illustrations are furnished those branches of
art in which we are able to form comparative judgment,
from ancient testimonies, partly from our own observation. Of Latin works in stone scarcely anything
else survives than the stone sarcophagus of the Roman consul Lucius Scipio, wrought at the close of this period
in the Doric style but its noble simplicity puts to shame
all similar Etruscan works. Many beautiful bronzes of an antique chaste style of art, particularly helmets, candelabra,
and the like articles, have been taken from Etruscan tombs
but which of these works equal to the bronze she-wolf erected from the proceeds of fines 458 at the Ruminal 29«. fig-tree in the Roman Forum, and still forming the finest
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ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
ornament of the Capitol? And that the Latin metal- founders as little shrank from great enterprises as the Etruscans, is shown by the colossal bronze figure of Jupiter
293. on the Capitol erected by Spurius Carvilius (consul in 461) from the melted equipments of the Samnites, the chisellings of which sufficed to cast the statue of the victor that stood at the feet of the Colossus ; this statue of Jupiter was visible even from the Alban Mount. Amongst the cast copper
coins by far the finest belong to southern Latium ; the Roman and Umbrian are tolerable, the Etruscan almost destitute of any image and often really barbarous. The fresco-paintings, which Gaius Fabius executed in the temple
302. of Health on the Capitol, dedicated in 452, obtained in design and colouring the praise even of connoisseurs trained in Greek art in the Augustan age ; and the art-enthusiasts of the empire commended the frescoes of Caere, but with still greater emphasis those of Rome, Lanuvium, and Ardea, as masterpieces of painting. Engraving on metal, which in Latium decorated not the hand-mirror, as in Etruria, but the toilet-casket with its elegant outlines, was practised to a far less extent in Latium and almost exclusively in Praeneste. There are excellent works of art among the copper mirrors of Etruria as among the caskets of Praeneste ; but it was a work of the latter kind, and in fact a work which most probably originated in the workshop of a Praenestine master at this epoch,1 regarding which it could with truth be affirmed that scarcely another product of the graving of antiquity bears the stamp of an art so finished in its beauty and characteristic expression, and yet so perfectly pure and chaste, as the Ficoroni cista.
Character Ara
can art.
The general character of Etruscan works of art on the one hand, sort of barbaric extravagance material
Novius Plaulius (p. 8a) cast perhaps only the feet and the group on the lid the casket itself may have proceeded from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine, for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.
1 ;
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CHAr. IX ART AND SCIENCE
135
as well as in style ; on the other hand, an utter absence of original development. Where the Greek master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's diligence ; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of the work. Etruscan art cannot imitate with out exaggerating ; the chaste in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible hideous, and the volup tuous obscene ; and these features become more prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources. Still
more surprising is the adherence to traditional forms and a traditional style. Whether it was that a more friendly con tact with Etruria at the outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied on its first entrance. This, as is well known, forms the reason why Etruscan art, the stunted daughter, was so long regarded as the mother, of Hellenic art Still more even than the rigid adherence to the style traditionally transmitted in the older branches of art, the sadly inferior handling of those branches that came into vogue afterwards, particularly of sculpture in stone and of copper-casting as applied to coins, shows how quickly the spirit of Etruscan art evaporated. Equally instructive are the painted vases, which are found in so enormous numbers in the later Etruscan tombs. Had these come into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates decor ated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt they would have learned to manufacture them at
North Etruscan and South Etruscan art.
126 ART AND SCIENCE BOOK II
home in considerable quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction wholly failed —as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan inscriptions show — and they contented themselves with buying instead of making them.
But even within Etruria there appears a further remark able distinction in artistic development between the southern and northern districts. It is South Etruria, particularly in the districts of Caere, Tarquinii, and Volci, that has preserved the great treasures of art which the nation boasted, especially in frescoes, temple decorations, gold ornaments, and painted vases. Northern Etruria is far inferior; no painted tomb, for example, has been found to the north of Chiusi. The most southern Etruscan cities, Veii, Caere, and Tarquinii, were accounted in Roman tradition the primitive and chief seats of Etruscan art ; the most northerly town, Volaterrae, with the largest territory of all the Etruscan communities, stood most of all aloof from art While a Greek semi-culture prevailed in South Etruria, Northern Etruria was much more marked by an absence of all culture. The causes of this remarkable contrast may be sought partly in differences of nationality —South Etruria being largely peopled in all probability by non- Etruscan elements 156) — partly in the varying intensity of Hellenic influence, which must have made itself very decidedly felt at Caere in particular. The fact itself admits of no doubt. The more injurious on that account must have been the early subjugation of the southern half of
Etruria by the Romans, and the Romanizing—which there began very early—of Etruscan art. What Northern Etruria, confined to its own efforts, was able to produce in the way of art, shown by the copper coins which essentially belong to it
Let us now turn from Etruria to glance at Latium. The
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latter, it is true, created no new art ; it was reserved for a Character far later epoch of culture to develop on the basis of the ^
arch a new architecture different from the Hellenic, and
then to unfold in harmony with that architecture a new
style of sculpture and painting. Latin art is nowhere original and often insignificant; but the fresh sensibility and the discriminating tact, which appropriate what is good in others, constitute a high artistic merit. Latin art seldom became barbarous, and in its best products it comes quite up to the level of Greek technical execution. We do not mean to deny that the art of Latium, at least in its earlier stages, had a certain dependence on the undoubtedly earlier Etruscan 305) Varro may be quite right in supposing that, previous to the execution by Greek artists of the clay figures in the temple of Ceres 123), only "Tuscanic" figures adorned the Roman temples but that, at all events,
was mainly the direct influence of the Greeks that led Latin art into its proper channel, self-evident, and very obviously shown by these very statues as well as by the Latin and Roman coins. Even the application of graving on metal in Etruria solely to the toilet mirror, and in Latium solely to the toilet casket, indicates the diversity of the art-impulses that affected the two lands. It does
not appear, however, to have been exactly at Rome that Latin art put forth its freshest vigour; the Roman asses and Roman denarii are far surpassed in fineness and taste of workmanship by the Latin copper, and the rare Latin silver, coins, and the masterpieces of painting and design belong
chiefly to Praeneste, Lanuvium, and Ardea. This accords completely with the realistic and sober spirit of the Roman republic which we have already described — spirit which can hardly have asserted itself with equal intensity in other parts of Latium. But in the course of the fifth century, and especially in the second half of there was mighty
activity in Roman art. This was the epoch, in which the
it,
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128 ART AND SCIENCE book ii
construction of the Roman arches and Roman roads began ; in which works of art like the she-wolf of the Capitol origin ated ; and in which a distinguished man of an old Roman patrician clan took up his pencil to embellish a newly constructed temple and thence received the honorary sur name of the " Painter. " This was not accident Every great age lays grasp on all the powers of man ; and, rigid as were Roman manners, strict as was Roman police, the impulse received by the Roman burgesses as masters of the peninsula or, to speak more correctly, by Italy united for the first time as one state, became as evident in the stimulus given to Latin and especially to Roman art, as the moral and political decay of the Etruscan nation was evident in the decline of art in Etruria. As the mighty national vigour of Latium subdued the weaker nations, it impressed its imperishable stamp also on bronze and on marble.
THIRD
FROM THE UNION OF ITALY TO THE
SUBJUGATION OF CARTHAGE AND THE GREEK STATES
VOL. II
4*
BOOK
Arduum res gestas scriierc. —SALLVST.
CHAPTER I CARTHAGE
The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof The Phoe- from, the nations of the ancient classical world. The true
centre of the former lay in the east, that of the latter in
the region of the Mediterranean ; and, however wars and migrations may have altered the line of demarcation and
thrown the races across each other, a deep sense of diversity has always severed, and still severs, the Indo- Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations. This diversity was no less marked in the case of that Semitic people which spread more than any other in the direction of the west —the Phoenicians. Their native seat was the narrow border of coast bounded by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, and called Canaan, that the "plain. " This was the only name which the nation itself made use of; even in Christian times the African farmer called himself Canaanite. But Canaan received from the Hellenes the name of Phoenike,
the "land of purple," or "land of the red men," and the Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites Punians, as we are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician or Punic race.
The land was well adapted for agriculture but its ex- Their cellent harbours and the abundant supply of timber and of commero*
;
a
is,
Their endow-
metals favoured above all things the growth of commerce ; and it was there perhaps, where the opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean so rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all its greatness upon man. The Phoenicians directed all the resources of courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of commerce and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and colonization, and thus connected the east and the west At an incredibly early period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall in the west, east ward to the coast of Malabar. Through their hands passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the
silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba. The Phoenician mariners brought to every nation whatever it could need or was likely to purchase ; and they roamed everywhere, yet always returned to the narrow home to which their affections clung.
The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the side of the Hellenic and Latin nations ; but their case affords a fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong primarily to the Phoenicians. While faith and knowledge in a certain sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can see, held an independent rank
13*
CARTHAGE book iii
chap, I CARTHAGE
133
among those of the Aramaean family. The religious con ceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth, and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to restrain lust and cruelty. No trace is discernible, at least in times of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their religion over other nations. As little do we find any Phoenician architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy, to say nothing of the lands where art was native. The most ancient seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates. It was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars ; it was there that they first dis tinguished and expressed in writing the sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time and space and on the powers at work in nature : the earliest traces of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and measures, point to that region. The Phoenicians doubtless availed themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of measures for their
commerce, and distributed many an important germ of civilization along with their wares ; but it cannot be demonstrated that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes were scattered by them more after the fashion of a bird dropping grains than of the husbandman sowing his seed. The power which the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians. In the field of Roman conquest the Iberian and the Celtic languages have disap-
Thdr qualities.
peared before the Romanic tongue ; the Berbers of Africa speak at the present day the same language as they spoke in the times of the Hannos and the Barcides.
Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life — the noble idea of self-governing freedom. During the most flourishing times of Sidon and
Tyre the land of the Phoenicians was a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians, sometimes to the Egyptians. With half its power Hellenic cities would have made themselves independent ; but the prudent men of Sidon calculated that the closing of the caravan-routes to the east or of the ports of Egypt would cost them more than the heaviest tribute, and so they
punctually paid their taxes, as it might happen, to Nineveh
or to Memphis, and even, if they could not avoid
with their ships to fight the battles of the kings. And, as at home the Phoenicians patiently bore the oppression of their masters, so also abroad they were by mo means inclined to exchange the peaceful career of commerce for policy of conquest. Their settlements were factories. It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult
work of colonization. They avoided war even with their rivals they allowed themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles, which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western
134
CARTHAGE book hi
BJ7. 474. Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), was the Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the struggle with the Greeks. If rivalry could not be avoided, they compromised the matter as best they could no attempt was ever made by the Phoenicians to
helped
;
;
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135
conquer Caere or Massilia. Still less, of course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war. On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on
the offensive — in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo
of Syracuse (274) —it was simply as dutiful subjects of the 480. great-king and in order to avoid taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that they entered the lists
the Hellenes of the west; just as their Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share
against
the defeat of the Persians at Salamis
This was not the result of cowardice navigation in
unknown waters and with armed vessels requires brave hearts, and that such were to be found among the Phoe nicians, they often showed. Still less was the result of any lack of tenacity and idiosyncrasy of national feeling on the contrary the Aramaeans defended their nationality with the weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the allurements of Greek civilization and all the coercive measures of eastern and western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals seems to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human. It was the result of that want of political instinct, which amidst all their lively sense of the ties of race, and amidst all their faithful attachment to the city of their fathers, formed the most essential feature in the character of the Phoenicians. Liberty had no charms for them, and they lusted not after dominion " quietly they lived," says the Book of Judges, "after the manner of the Sidonians, careless and secure, and in possession of riches. "
Of all the Phoenician settlements none attained more Carthage, rapid and secure prosperity than those which were established
by the Tyrians and Sidonians on the south coast of Spain
and the north coast of Africa—regions that lay beyond the
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reach of the arm of the great-king and the dangerous rivalry of the mariners of Greece, and in which the natives held the same relation to the strangers as the Indians in America held to the Europeans. Among the numerous and flourishing Phoenician cities along these shores, the most prominent by far was the "new town," Karthada or, as the Occidentals called Karchedon or Carthago. Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians in this region, and originally perhaps dependency of the adjoining Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, soon out stripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity of its inhabitants. was situated not far from the (former) mouth of the Bagradas (Mejerda), which flows through the richest corn district of northern Africa, and was placed on fertile rising ground, still occupied with country houses and covered with groves of olive and orange trees, falling off in gentle slope towards the plain, and terminating towards the sea in sea-girt promontory. Lying in the heart of the great North-African roadstead, the Gulf of Tunis, at the very spot where that beautiful basin affords the best anchorage for vessels of larger size, and where drinkable spring water got close
the shore, the place proved singularly favourable for agriculture and commerce and for the exchange of their respective commodities —so favourable, that not only was the Tyrian settlement that quarter the first of Phoenician mercantile cities, but even in the Roman period Carthage was no sooner restored than became the third city in the empire, and even now, under circumstances far from favourable and on site far less judiciously chosen, there exists and flourishes in that quarter city of hundred thousand inhabitants. The prosperity, agricultural, mercan tile, and industrial, of city so situated and so peopled, needs no explanation but the question requires an answer
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—In what way did this settlement come to attain a de
velopment of political power, such as no other Phoenician
city possessed ?
That the Phoenician stock did not even in Carthage re- Carthage
nounce its policy of passiveness, there is no lack of evidence heads the to prove. Carthage paid, even down to the times of its Phoe- prosperity, a ground-rent for the space occupied by the city mcians
to the native Berbers, the tribe of the Maxyes or Maxitani to the and although the sea and the desert sufficiently protected HeUene'' the city from any assault of the eastern powers, Carthage
appears to have recognized — although but nominally — the supremacy of the great-king, and to have paid tribute to him occasionally, in order to secure its commercial com munications with Tyre and the East
But with all their disposition to be submissive and cringing, circumstances occurred which compelled these Phoenicians to adopt more energetic policy. The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring ceaselessly towards the west had already dislodged the Phoenicians from Greece proper and Italy, and was preparing to supplant them also in Sicily, Spain, and even in Libya itself. The Phoenicians had to make stand somewhere, they were not willing to be totally crushed. In this case, where they had to deal with Greek traders and not with the great-king, submission did not suffice to secure the continuance of their commerce and industry on its former footing, liable merely to tax and tribute. Massilia and Cyrene were already founded the whole east of Sicily was already in the hands of the Greeks was full time for the Phoeni cians to think of serious resistance. The Carthaginians undertook the task after long and obstinate wars they set
limit to the advance of the Cyrenaeans, and Hellenism was unable to establish itself to the west of the desert of Tripolis. With Carthaginian aid, moreover, the Phoeni cian settlers on the western point of Sicily defended them
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selves against the Greeks, and readily and gladly submitted
to the protection of the powerful cognate city
These important successes, which occurred in the second century of Rome, and which saved for the Phoenicians the south-western portion of the Mediterranean, served of themselves to give to the city which had achieved them the hegemony of the nation, and to alter at the same time its political position. Carthage was no longer mere mer cantile city aimed at the dominion of Libya and of part of the Mediterranean, because could not avoid doing so. probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed materially to these successes. That custom came into vogue in Greece somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among the Orientals and the Carians more especially was far older, and was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it By the system of foreign recruiting war was converted into vast pecuniary speculation, which was quite in keep ing with the character and habits of the Phoenicians.
It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad, that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their occupation in Africa from tenure of hire and sufferance to one of proprietorship and conquest
appears to have been only about the year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the natives. This change enabled them to prosecute husbandry of their own on great scale. From the outset the Phoenicians had been desirous to employ their capital
as landlords as well as traders, and to practise agriculture on large scale by means of slaves or hired labourers large portion of the Jews in this way served the merchant- princes of Tyre for daily wages.
Now the Carthaginians could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil system akin to that of the modern planters
184).
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do^ni""1 in Africa,
450.
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slaves in chains cultivated the land—we find single citizens possessing as many as twenty thousand of them. Nor was this all. The agricultural villages of the surrounding region —agriculture appears to have been introduced among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt — were subdued by force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting for the formation of a home Carthaginian army. Hostilities were constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (i/o/idtSes) on the borders ; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents. About the period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians. These formed the "towns and tribes (iOvrj) of subjects," which appear in the Carthaginian state-treaties ; the former being the non-free Libyan villages, the latter the subject Nomades.
To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage Libyphc* over the other Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby- mciaM- phoenicians. These included, on the one hand, the
smaller settlements sent forth from Carthage along the
whole northern and part of the north-western coast of Africa — which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists —and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona), Hadru- metum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa) —the second city of the Phoenicians in Africa — Thapsus (in the
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same quarter), and Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli). In what way all these cities came to be subject to Carthage —whether voluntarily, for their protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians, or by constraint —can no longer be ascertained ; but it is certain that they are designated as subjects of the Cartha ginians even in official documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage. They were not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but con tributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (,£90,000) ; moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms. 1 Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence preserved to less perhaps from its own power than from the pious feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations remark able feeling of reverence presenting thorough contrast to the indifference of the Greeks. Even in intercourse with
The most precise description of this important class occurs in the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other, they are called ol VLapxTI$ovlwi) virapxoi &r« Toil oiVois vbfj. au xpuyrat. Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied ((rvfifiaxlS( rAXeit, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62 Justin, xxii. 7, 3). Their cmubium with the Cartha ginians ia mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55 the cammercium implied in the
"like laws. " That the old Phoenician colonies were included among the Libyphoenicians, shown by the designation of Hippo as a Libyphoe- nician city (Liv. xxv. 40) on the other hand as to the settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, said in the Periplus of Hanno "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Libyphoenicians. " In substance the word " Libyphoenicians " was used by the Carthaginians not as a national de signation, but as a category of state-law. This view quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to the text of Polybius) in reality, at least in the institution of very exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians (Diod. xiii. 79 Cic. fro Scauro, 4a). The analogy in name and legal position between the Latins of Rome and the
Libyphoenicians of Carthage unmistakable.
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foreigners it is always " Carthage and Utica " that stipulate and promise in conjunction ; which, of course, did not preclude the far more important " new town " from practi cally asserting its hegemony also over Utica. Thus the Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the south. The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly expresses converted from Tyrians into Libyans. Phoenician civilization prevailed Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed in Asia Minor and Syria
after the campaigns of Alexander, although not with the same intensity. Phoenician was spoken and written at the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet
to Phoenicise them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor the policy of Carthage.
The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because the change doubtless took place
The author just mentioned names Hanno as the reformer of the nation. If the Hanno meant who
The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was and employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language —one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean one—certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its forms to the latter than the Phoenician alphabet but by no means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from deriving these from the Greek. We must rather assume that the Libyan alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician language that have reached us were written.
gradually.
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Spain.
lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.
The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline in the great cities of the Phoenician mother- country, in Sidon and especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities, particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome. The noble families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their intelligence, their capital, and their traditions. At the time when the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the Latin com munities.
But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage ; its maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period, a not less powerful development
In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian settlement at Gades (Cadiz). Besides this they possessed to the west and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of the silver mines ; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces. They made no effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations ; they were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for traffic and for shell and other fisheries ; and they had difficulty in maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes. It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned
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among the cities tributary to Carthage ; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades. Ebusus and the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged from these
stations.
In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of Sardinia,
the second century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya. While the natives withdrew into the mountainous interior of the island to escape from bondage as agricultural serfs, just as the Numidians in Africa with drew to the borders of the desert, Phoenician colonies were conducted to Caralis (Cagliari) and other important points, and the fertile districts along the coast were turned to account by the introduction of Libyan cultivators.
Lastly in Sicily the straits of Messana and the larger Sicily. eastern half of the island had fallen at an early period into
the hands of the Greeks ; but the Phoenicians, with the
help of the Carthaginians, retained the smaller adjacent islands, the Aegates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra — the settle
ment in Malta especially was rich and flourishing —and they kept the west and north-west coast of Sicily, whence the} maintained communication with Africa by means of Motya and afterwards of Lilybaeum and with Sardinia by means of Panormus and Soluntum. The interior of the island remained in the possession of the natives, the Elymi, Sicani, and Siceli. After the further advance of the Greeks was checked, a state of comparative peace had
prevailed in the island, which even the campaign under taken by the Carthaginians at the instigation of the
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480. Persians against their Greek neighbours on the island (274) did not permanently interrupt, and which continued on the whole to subsist till the Attic expedition to Sicily
415-418. (339-341)- The two competing nations made up their minds to tolerate each other, and confined themselves in the main each to its own field.
Maritime supremacy,
All these settlements and possessions were important enough in themselves ; but they were of still greater moment, inasmuch as they became the pillars of the Carthaginian maritime supremacy. By their possession of the south of Spain, of the Baleares, of Sardinia, of western Sicily and Melita, and by their prevention of Hellenic colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of
the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits. In the Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to admit the rivalry of other nations. This state of things might perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served to counter balance each other in these waters; with the former, as the less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against the Greeks. But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power—a fall which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had hardly exerted all her power to avert—and after the miscarriage of the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the Carthaginians also were com pelled to adopt a more energetic policy. The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius
Rivalry with Syracuse.
406-865. of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the intervening Sicilian states —a result which both
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parties had an interest in accomplishing —and the division
of the island between the Syracusans and Carthaginians.
The most flourishing cities in the island —Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana —were utterly destroyed
by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy con flicts : and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support
on foreign mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain,
he might rule in greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were occupied by military colonies.
The peace, which was concluded after the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and which 888. subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae
(the ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus,
and a part of the territory of Agrigentum as far as the
Halycus, was regarded by the two powers contending for
the possession of the island as only a temporary accommoda
tion ; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their
attempts to dispossess each other. Four several times—
in 360 in the time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that 894. 844. of Timoleon; in 445 in that of Agathocles; in 476 in 809. 278. that of Pyrrhus — the Carthaginians were masters of all
Sicily excepting Syracuse, and were baffled by its solid walls ; almost as often the Syracusans, under able leaders, such as were the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally on the eve of dislodging the Africans from the island. But more and more the balance inclined to the side of the Carthaginians, who were, as a rule, the aggressors, and who, although they did not follow out their object with Roman steadfastness, yet conducted their attack with far greater method and energy than the Greek city, rent and worn out by factions, conducted its defence. The Phoenicians might with reason expect that a pestilence or a foreign condottitre would not always snatch the prey from their hands ; and for the time being, at least at sea,
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43
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the struggle was already decided 41) the attempt of Pyrrhus to re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last After the failure of that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded without rival the whole western Mediter ranean and their endeavours to
occupy Syracuse, Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of their power and the objects at which they aimed. Hand in
hand with these attempts went the endeavour to mono polize more and more the maritime commerce of this region, at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own subjects and was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from any violence that might help forward their purpose. A contemporary of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes,
476-194. the father of geography (479—560), affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Cartha ginians, was thrown by them into the sea and with this statement the fact completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 41) declared the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading vessels, whereas
818. 806.
Constitu tion of Carthage.
Council.
that of 448 44), totally closed them, with the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.
Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the com mencement of the first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having changed from monarchy to an aris tocracy, or to democracy inclining towards oligarchy, for he designates by both names. The conduct of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council of
Ancients, which, like the Spartan gerusia, consisted of the two kings nominated annually by the citizens, and of twenty- eight gerusiasts, who were also, as appears, chosen annually the citizens. was this council which mainly transacted the business of the state —making, for instance, the preliminary arrangements for war, appointing levies and enlistments, nominating the general, and associating with
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him a number of gerusiasts from whom the sub-commanders
were regularly taken ; and to it despatches were addressed.
It is doubtful whether by the side of this small council
there existed a larger one ; at any rate it was not of much importance. As little does any special influence seem to MagU- have belonged to the kings ; they acted chiefly as supreme trate*' judges, and they were frequently so named (shofetes,
The power of the general was greater. Iso- crates, the senior contemporary of Aristotle, says that the Carthaginians had an oligarchical government at home, but a monarchical government in the field ; and thus the office of the Carthaginian general may be correctly described by Roman writers as a dictatorship, although the gerusiasts attached to him must have practically at least restricted his
power and, after he had laid down his office, a regular official reckoning —unknown among the Romans —awaited him. There existed no fixed term of office for the general, and for this very reason he was doubtless different from the annual king, from whom Aristotle also expressly distin guishes him. The combination however of several offices in one person was not unusual among the Carthaginians, and it is not therefore surprising that often the same person appears as at once general and shofete.
But the gerusia and the magistrates were subordinate to the corporation of the Hundred and Four (in round numbers the Hundred), or the Judges, the main bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy. It had no place in the original constitution of Carthage, but, like the Spartan ephorate, it originated in an aristocratic opposition to the monarchical elements of that constitution. As public offices were purchasable and the number of members forming the supreme board was small, a single Carthaginian family, eminent above all others in wealth and military renown, the clan of Mago 413), threatened to unite in its own hands the management of the state peace and war and the
praetores).
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administration of justice. This led, nearly about the time of the decemvirs, to an alteration of the constitution and to the appointment of this new board. We know that the holding of the quaestorship gave a title to admission into the body of judges, but that the candidate had nevertheless to be elected by certain self-electing Boards of Five (Pentarchies) ; and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called " senators" by the Greeks and Romans. Obscure as are the details, we recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board constituted by aristocratic cooptation ; an isolated but characteristic indication of which is found in the fact that there were in Carthage special baths for the judges over and above the common baths for the citizens. They were primarily in tended to act as political jurymen, who summoned the generals in particular, but beyond doubt the shofetes and gerusiasts also when circumstances required, to a reckoning on resigning office, and inflicted even capital punishment at pleasure, often with the most reckless cruelty. Of course in this as in every instance, where administrative function aries are subjected to the control of another body, the real centre of power passed over from the controlled to the controlling authority; and it is easy to understand on the one hand how the latter came to interfere in all matters of administration —the gerusia for instance submitted import ant despatches first to the judges, and then to the people — and on the other hand how fear of the control at home,
which regularly meted out its award according to success, hampered the Carthaginian statesman and general in council and action.
The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of the state, appears to have had but a very
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slight amount of practical influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open corruption was the rule ; in the nomination of a general the people were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by pro posal on the part of the gerusia ; and other questions only went to the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree. Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in Carthage. The powerless- ness of the citizens probably in the main resulted from their political organization ; the Carthaginian mess-associa tions, which are mentioned in this connection and com pared with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical management. Mention is made even of a distinction between " burgesses of the city " and " manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.
On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian constitution appears to have been a govern- ment of capitalists, such as might naturally arise in a burgess- community which had no middle class of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers. The system of repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the subjects, by despatching them as tax- assessors and taskwork-overseers to the dependent communi ties —that infallible token of a rotten urban oligarchy —was not wanting in Carthage ; Aristotle describes it as the main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution. Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in Carthage either from above or from below. The multitude remained without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
Character
govern. menu
ISO
CARTHAGE BOOK III
Capital and Its power In Carthage,
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the rich. A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a government to emerge ; but at the time of the first Punic war it was still quite powerless. At a later period, partly under the influence of the defeats which were sus tained, its political influence appears on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the similar party at the same period in Rome ; the popular assemblies began to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy. After the termination of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office for two consecutive years ; and thereby a complete democracy was introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm ; but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared by well- informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so dis orderly that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless ; and it might well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in Carthage, the boys helped to make them.
From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect the first place among the states of antiquity. At the time of the Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony of the first of Greek his
to all the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the great-king ; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world. The
intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry —which, as was the case subsequently in Rome, generals and states men did not disdain scientifically to practise and to teach
torians, financially superior
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—is attested by the agronomic treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended to the Italian landholders. A characteristic feature was the close connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of capital : it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage. The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of great advantage to the Carthaginians. As these were the instructors of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects ; by virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the " best part of Europe, " and of the rich—and in some portions, such as in Byzacitis and
on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive —region of northern Africa. Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of things golden harvests annually to the settlers there ; and we have already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and ever growing system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that single harbour.
Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been mainly dependent on Hellenic influ ences, but they do not appear to have been neglected. There was a respectable Phoenician literature ; and on the
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conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of art —not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from Sicilian temples —and considerable libraries. But even
intellect there was in the service of capital ; the prominent features of its literature were chiefly agronomic and geo graphical treatises, such as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and which is still extant in a translation. Even the general diffusion of certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign languages,1 as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood almost on a level with Rome
under the empire, forms an evidence of the thoroughly
turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage. It is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital accumulated in this London ofantiquity, but some notion at least may be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state property, the contri butions of its subjects and the customs-revenue completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were levied from the citizens ; and further, that even after the second Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of ,£48,000 could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat stricter manage ment of the finances, and fourteen years after the peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six
1 The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i. 17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture. In the pro logue of the " Poenulus " of Plautus, it is said of the hero of the title : —
El is omnes lingual scit ; sed dissimulat scient Se scire; Poenus plane est 1 quid verbis opuitt
practical
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remaining instalments. But it was not merely the sum total of its revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration at Carthage. The economical principles of a later and more advanced epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable states of antiquity. Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a token-money having no intrinsic value—a species of currency not used elsewhere in antiquity. In fact, if government had resolved itself into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.
Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome. Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect Carthage had made greater progress than Rome. But in Carthage the moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the burgesses still tilled their fields in person. The majority of the population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative ; the majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for reform. In Carthage there already pre vailed all that opulence which marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of the olden times. When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome, they told their colleagues that the relations of
intimacy among the Roman senators surpassed all con ception ; that a single set of silver plate sufficed for the whole
Compari-
^ween Carthage *" om*"
I" their
In their constitu tion.
senate, and had reappeared in every house to which the envoys had been invited. The sneer is a significant token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.
In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of police-control. The strict state of dependence in which the governing board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government at Rome ; but in com
parison with the cruel harshness and the absolute precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and reasonable. The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able also to trust and had no need to fear the magis trates. The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on jealous control of administration the govern ment, and represented exclusively the leading families its essence was mistrust of all above and below and therefore
could neither be confident that the people would follow whither led, nor free from the dread of usurpations on the part of the magistrates. Hence the steady course of Roman policy, which never receded step in times of misfortune, and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or indifference whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle when last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed building to fall to pieces, only to begin in few years anew. Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on good
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with his government; in Carthage he was frequently at decided feud with his masters at home, and
understanding
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was forced to resist them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the opposing party of reform.
Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of In the lineage kindred with their own, and over numerous others ^5,^ of alien race. But Rome had received into her citizenship subjects, one district after another, and had rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities ; Carthage from the
first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some
day placed upon an equal footing. Rome granted to the communities of kindred lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired domains ; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and noble, to
gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other
subject states. Carthage not only retained for herself the produce of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of their freedom of trade. Rome, as a rule,
did not wholly take away independence even from the
subject communities, and imposed a fixed tribute on none ; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves. In this way there was not in the compass of the Carthagino- African state a single community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme measures challenged political opposition to conflict. If Carthaginian statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt and all the land holders by means of token-money, they transferred
in finance.
mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply. Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwith standing its seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil. It was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage. In Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule, and to have attained on that account better results. They granted to their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade, and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency ; far greater freedom of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the Sardinians and Libyans. Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands, their policy would doubtless soon have changed. But that result did not take place ; and so, owing to the well-calculated mild ness of the Carthaginian government and the unhappy dis tractions of the Sicilian Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to the Phoenicians ; for example, even after the island had passed to the Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in a thoroughly Phoenician spirit Nevertheless on the whole the Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites and Tarentines were to the Romans,
In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless far surpassed those of Rome ; but this advantage was partly neutralized by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue —tribute and customs— dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed) than those
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chap, I CARTHAGE
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of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war was far more costly than the Roman.
The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians In their were very different, yet in many respects not unequally jSJJJf balanced. The citizens of Carthage still at the conquest
of the city amounted to 700,000, including women and children,1 and were probably at least as numerous at the
close of the fifth century ; in that century they were able in
case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites. At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome
had in similar circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army
equally strong (p. 55, note); after the great extensions of
the burgess-domain in the course of that century the number
of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at least have doubled. But far more than in the number of men capable
of bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condi
tion of the burgess-soldier. Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its citizens to take part in
military service, it could neither furnish the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the husbandman,
nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to
warfare. In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians
as a guard for the general ; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted, was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain. The Roman
farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-
1 Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number, and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account the avail able space, has been reckoned at 250,000. Apart from the uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is doubtless to be under stood in a political, not in an urban, sense, just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other lands. There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in the case of Carthage ; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher dumber than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.
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roll, but also in the field of battle. It was the same with the cognate races of both communities ; while the Latins rendered to the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Libyphoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and, as may easily be sup posed, still less desirous of and so they too disappeared from the armies the towns bound to furnish contingents presumably redeemed their obligation by payment of money. In the Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of Libyphoenicians. The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained under able officers into good infantry, and whose
light cavalry was unsurpassed in its kind. To these were added the forces of the more or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between allied contingents and mercenary troops and finally, case of need, the hired soldiery enlisted abroad. So far as numbers were concerned, such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired strength and
the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with arms, and in courage might be capable of coping with that of Rome. Not only, however, did dangerously long interval elapse, in the event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready, while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but —which was the main matter — there was nothing to keep together the armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common fatherland. The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men in modern warfare estimate cannon- balls; hence such disgraceful proceedings as the betrayal
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of the Libyan troops by their general Himilco in 358, 394. which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the Carthaginians no small injury. Carthage ex perienced in full measure all the evils which armies of fellahs
and mercenaries could bring upon a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous than her foes.
The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by every available means. They insisted on maintaining full chests and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip mercenaries.