THE CARTHAGINIANS.
Although it is claimed in history that Carthage was settled by the
Phœnecians, or emigrants from Tyre, it is by no means an established
fact; for when Dido fled from her haughty and tyrannical brother,
Pygmalion, ruler of Tyre, and sailing down the Nile, seeking a place of
protection, she halted at Carthage, then an insignificant settlement
on a peninsula in the interior of a large bay, now called the gulf
of Tunis, on the northern shore of Africa (this was B. C. 880), the
population was made up mainly of poor people, the larger portion of
whom were from Ethiopia, and the surrounding country. Many outlaws,
murderers, highwaymen, and pirates, had taken refuge in the new
settlement. Made up of every conceivable shade of society, with but
little character to lose, the Carthaginians gladly welcomed Dido,
coming as she did from the royal house of Tyre, and they adopted her
as the head of their government. The people became law-abiding, and
the constitution which they adopted was considered by the ancients as
a pattern of political wisdom. Aristotle highly praises it as a model
to other States. He informs us that during the space of five centuries,
that is, from the foundation of the republic down to his own time, no
tyrant had overturned the liberties of the State, and no demagogue had
stirred up the people to rebellion. By the wisdom of its laws, Carthage
had been able to avoid the opposite evils of aristocracy on the one
hand, and democracy on the other. The nobles did not engross the whole
of the power, as was the case in Sparta, Corinth, and Rome, and in more
modern times, in Venice; nor did the people exhibit the factious spirit
of an Athenian mob, or the ferocious cruelty of a Roman rabble.
After the tragical death of the Princess Dido, the head of the
government consisted of the _suffetes_, two chief magistrates, somewhat
resembling the consuls of Rome, who presided in the senate, and whose
authority extended to military as well as civil affairs. These officers
appeared to be entirely devoted to the good of the State and the
welfare of the people.
The second was the senate itself, composed of illustrious men of the
State. This body made the laws, declared war, negotiated peace, and
appointed to all offices, civil and military. The third estate was
still more popular. In the infancy and maturity of the republic, the
people had taken no active part in the government; but, at a later
period, influenced by wealth and prosperity, they advanced their claims
to authority, and, before long, obtained nearly the whole power. They
instituted a council, designed as a check upon the nobles and the
senate. This council was at first very beneficial to the State, but
afterwards became itself tyrannical.
The Carthaginians were an enterprising people, and in the course of
time built ships, and with them explored all ports of the Mediterranean
Sea, visiting the nations on the coast, purchasing their commodities,
and selling them to others. Their navigators went to the coast of
Guinea, and even advanced beyond the mouths of the Senegal and the
Gambia. The Carthaginians carried their commerce into Spain, seized
a portion of that country containing mines rich with gold, and built
thereon a city which they called New Carthage, and which to the present
day is known as Carthaginia.
The Mediterranean was soon covered with their fleets, and at a time
when Rome could not boast of a single vessel, and her citizens were
entirely ignorant of the form of a ship. The Carthaginians conquered
Sardinia, and a great part of Sicily. Their powerful fleets and
extensive conquests gave them the sovereign command of the seas.
While Carthage possessed the dominion of the seas, a rival State was
growing up on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, distant about
seven hundred miles, under whose arms she was destined to fall. This
was Rome, the foundation of which was commenced one hundred years after
that of Carthage. These two powerful nations engaged in wars against
each other that lasted nearly two hundred years. In these conflicts the
Carthaginians showed great bravery.
In the first Punic war, the defeat and capture of Regulus, the
Roman general, by the Carthaginians, and their allies, the Greeks,
humiliated the Romans, and for a time gave the former great advantage
over the latter. The war, however, which lasted twenty-four years,
was concluded by some agreement, which after all, was favorable to
the Romans. The conclusion of the first Punic war (B. C. 249) was not
satisfactory to the more republican portion of the ruling spirits among
the Carthaginians, and especially Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal,
who, at that time occupied a very prominent position, both on account
of his rank, wealth, and high family connections at Carthage; also
on account of the great military energy which he displayed in the
command of the armies abroad. Hamilcar had carried on the wars which
the Carthaginians waged in Africa and Spain after the conclusion of
the war with the Romans, and he was anxious to begin hostilities with
the Romans again. On Hamilcar’s leaving Carthage the last time to join
his army in Spain, he took his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years,
and made him swear on the altar of his country eternal hatred to the
Romans, an oath that he kept to the day of his death.
When not yet twenty years of age, Hannibal was placed second in
command of the army, then in Spain, where he at once attracted the
attention and the admiration of all, by the plainness of his living,
his abstinence from strong drink, and the gentlemanly treatment that he
meted out to the soldiers, as well as his fellow-officers.
He slept in his military cloak on the ground, in the midst of his
soldiers on guard; and in a battle he was always the last to leave
the field after a fight, as he was foremost to press forward in every
contest with the enemy. The death of Hasdrubal placed Hannibal in
supreme command of the army, and inheriting his father’s hatred to
Rome, he resolved to take revenge upon his ancient enemy, and at once
invaded the Roman possessions in Spain, and laid siege to the city of
Saguntum, which, after heroic resistance, yielded to his victorious
arms. Thus commenced the second Punic war, in which Hannibal was to
show to the world his genius as a general.
Leaving a large force in Africa, and also in Spain, to defend these
points, Hannibal set out in the spring of the year B. C. 218, with a
large army to fulfill his project against Rome.
His course lay along the Mediterranean; the whole distance to Rome
being about one thousand miles by the land route which he contemplated.
When he had traversed Spain, he came to the Pyrenees, a range of
mountains separating that country from Gaul, now France. He was here
attacked by wild tribes of brave barbarians, but he easily drove them
back. He crossed the Pyrenees, traversed Gaul, and came at last to
the Alps, which threw up their frowning battlements, interposing a
formidable obstacle between him and the object of his expedition.
No warrior had then crossed these snowy peaks with such an army; and
none but a man of that degree of resolution and self-reliance which
could not be baffled, would have hazarded the fearful enterprise.
Indeed, we turn with amazement to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps;
that great and daring feat surpasses in magnitude anything of the
kind ever attempted by man. The pride of the French historians have
often led them to compare Napoleon’s passage of the Great St. Bernard
to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; but without detracting from the
well-earned fame of the French Emperor, it may safely be affirmed
that his achievements will bear no comparison whatever with the
Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from
Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, and above the Lake of Geneva, he
found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of
two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very
good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was traversed by great
numbers of both at every season of the year.
Comfortable villages on the ascent and descent afforded easy
accommodation to the wearied soldiers by day and by night; the ample
stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of
the French generals had provided a meal for every man and horse that
passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage; the guns were drawn
up in sleds made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time
they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops,
without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters
of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and
under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different when Hannibal
crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po.
The mountain sides, which had not yet been cleared by centuries of
laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every
hollow by headlong Alpine torrents. There were no bridges to cross
the perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times
in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having
been hidden away by the natives, and a powerful army of mountaineers
occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valor
the gates of their country, and when dispersed by the superior
discipline and arms of Hannibal’s soldiers, still beset the ridges
about their line of march, and harassed his troops with continual
hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged
in the open mountain pastures, which led to the verge of perpetual
snow, fresh difficulties awaited them.
The turf, from the gliding down of the newly-fallen snow on those steep
declivities, was so slippery that it was often scarcely possible for
the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at
every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abyss beneath;
the elephants became restive amidst privation and a climate to which
they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers,
worn out by incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before
the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors formidable to all, but in
an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the
summit.
It was the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set
in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides, silent and melancholy
even at the height of summer, when enameled with flowers and dotted
with flocks, presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the lakes which
were interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen
over and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and
a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose at all sides, presenting an
apparently impassable barrier to their further progress. But it was
then that the genius of Hannibal shone forth in all its lustre.
“The great general,” says Arnold, “who felt that he now stood
victorious on the ramparts of Italy, and that the torrent which rolled
before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of cisalpine
Gaul, endeavored to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope.
He called them together; he pointed out to them the valley beneath, to
which the descent seemed but the work of a moment.
“That valley,” said he, “is Italy; it leads to the country of our
friends, the Gauls, and yonder is our way to Rome.” His eyes were
eagerly fixed on that part of the horizon, and as he gazed, the
distance seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy he was crossing
the Tiber, and assailing the capital. Such were the difficulties of
the passage and the descent on the other side, that Hannibal lost
thirty-three thousand men from the time he entered the Pyrenees till
he reached the plains of Northern Italy, and he arrived on the Po with
only twelve thousand Africans, eight thousand Spanish infantry, and six
thousand horse.
Then followed those splendid battles with the Romans, which carried
consternation to their capital, and raised the great general to the
highest pinnacle in the niche of military fame.
The defeat of Scipio, at the battle of Ticinus, the utter rout and
defeat of Sempronius, the defeat of Flaminius, the defeat of Fabius,
and the battle of Cannæ, in the last of which, the Romans had
seventy-six thousand foot, eight thousand horse, and many chariots,
and where Hannibal had only thirty thousand troops, all told, and
where the defeat was so complete that bushels of gold rings were taken
from the fingers of the dead Romans, and sent as trophies to Carthage,
are matters of history, and will ever give to Hannibal the highest
position in the scale of ancient military men. Hannibal crossed the
Alps two hundred and seventeen years before the Christian Era, and
remained in Italy sixteen years. At last, Scipio, a Roman general of
the same name of the one defeated by Hannibal at Ticinus, finished
the war in Spain, transported his troops across the Mediterranean;
thus “carrying the war into Africa,” and giving rise to an expression
still in vogue, and significant of effective retaliation. By the aid
of Masinissa, a powerful prince of Numidia, now Morocco, he gained two
victories over the Carthaginians, who were obliged to recall Hannibal
from Italy, to defend their own soil from the combined attacks of the
Romans and Numidians.
He landed at Leptis, and advanced near Zama, five days’ journey to the
west of Carthage. Here he met the Roman forces, and here, for the first
time, he suffered a total defeat. The loss of the Carthaginians was
immense, and they were compelled to sue for peace. This was granted by
Scipio, but upon humiliating terms.
Hannibal would still have resisted, but he was compelled by his
countrymen to submit. Thus ended the second Punic war (B. C. 200),
having continued about eighteen years.
By this war with the Romans, the Carthaginians lost most of their
colonies, and became in a measure, a Roman province. Notwithstanding
his late reverses, Hannibal entered the Carthaginian senate, and
continued at the head of the state, reforming abuses that had crept
into the management of the finances, and the administration of justice.
But these judicious reforms provoked the enmity of the factious nobles
who had hitherto been permitted to fatten on public plunder; they
joined with the old rivals of the Barcan family, of which Hannibal was
now the acknowledged head, and even degraded themselves so far as to
act as spies for the Romans, who still dreaded the abilities of the
great general.
In consequence of their machinations, the old hero was forced to fly
from the country he had so long labored to serve; and after several
vicissitudes, died of poison, to escape the mean and malignant
persecution of the Romans whose hatred followed him in his exile, and
compelled the king of Bithynia to refuse him protection. The mound
which marks his last resting-place is still a remarkable object.
Hannibal, like the rest of the Carthaginians, though not as black
as the present African population, was nevertheless, colored; not
differing in complexion from the ancient Ethiopians, and with curly
hair. We have but little account of this wonderful man except from
his enemies, the Romans, and nothing from them but his public career.
Prejudiced as are these sources of evidence, they still exhibit him as
one of the most extraordinary men that have ever lived.
Many of the events of his life remind us of the career of Napoleon.
Like him, he crossed the Alps with a great army; like him, he was
repeatedly victorious over disciplined and powerful forces in Italy;
like him, he was finally overwhelmed in a great battle; like him, he
was a statesman, as well as a general; like him, he was the idol of the
army; like him, he was finally driven from his country, and died in
exile.[12] Yet, no one of Napoleon’s achievements was equal to that
of Hannibal in crossing the Alps, if we consider the difficulties he
had to encounter; nor has anything in generalship surpassed the ability
he displayed in sustaining himself and his army for sixteen years in
Italy, in the face of Rome, and without asking for assistance from his
own country.
We now pass to the destruction of Carthage, and the dispersion of
its inhabitants. Fifty years had intervened since Hannibal with his
victorious legions stood at the gates of Rome; the Carthaginian
territory had been greatly reduced, the army had witnessed many
changes, Hannibal and his generals were dead, and a Roman army under
Scipio, flushed with victory and anxious for booty, were at the gates
of Carthage.
For half a century the Carthaginians had faithfully kept all their
humiliating treaties with the Romans; borne patiently the insults and
arrogance of Masinissa, king of Numidia, whose impositions on Carthage
were always upheld by the strong arm of Rome; at last, however,
a serious difficulty arose between Carthage and Numidia, for the
settlement of which the Roman senate dispatched commissioners to visit
the contending parties and report.
Unfortunately for the Carthaginians, one of these commissioners
was Cato the elder, who had long entertained a determined hatred
to Carthage. Indeed, he had, for the preceding twenty years,
scarcely ever made a speech without closing with,--“_Delenda est
Carthago_.”--Carthage must be destroyed. Animated by this spirit, it
can easily be imagined that Cato would give the weight of his influence
against the Carthaginians in everything touching their interest.
While inspecting the great city, Cato was struck with its magnificence
and remaining wealth, which strengthened him in the opinion that the
ultimate success of Rome depended upon the destruction of Carthage; and
he labored to bring about that result.
Scipio demanded that Carthage should deliver up all its materials of
war as a token of submission, which demand was complied with; and
the contents of their magazines, consisting of two hundred thousand
complete suits of armor, two thousand catapults, and an immense number
of spears, swords, bows and arrows. Having disarmed themselves, they
waited to hear the final sentence. The next demand was for the delivery
of the navy; this too was complied with. It was then announced that the
city was to be razed to the ground, the inhabitants sent elsewhere for
a residence, and that the Carthaginian name was to be blotted out. Just
then the navy, the largest in the world, containing vessels of great
strength and beauty, was set on fire, the flames of which lighted up
with appalling effect the coast forty miles around.
The destruction of this fleet, the naval accumulation of five
centuries, was a severe blow to the pride of the conquered
Carthaginians, and taking courage from despair, they closed the gates
of the city, and resolved that they would fight to the last.
As in all commonwealths, there were two political parties in Carthage,
struggling for the ascendency; one, republican, devoted to the liberty
of the people and the welfare of the State; the other, conservative in
its character, and in favor of Roman rule. It was this last party that
had disarmed the State at the bidding of the Roman invaders; and now
that the people had risen, the conservatives who could, fled from the
city, to escape the indignation of the masses.
Unarmed and surrounded by an army of one hundred thousand men,
resistance seemed to be madness; yet they resisted with a heroism that
surprised and won the esteem of their hard-hearted conquerors.
Everything was done to repair the damage already sustained by the
surrender of their navy and munitions of war. The pavements of the
streets were torn up, houses demolished, and statues broken to pieces
to obtain stones for weapons, which were carried upon the ramparts
for defence. Everybody that could work at a forge was employed in
manufacturing swords, spear-heads, pikes, and such other weapons as
could be made with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all
the iron and brass that could be obtained, then melted down vases,
statues, and the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an
inferior pointing of silver and gold.
When the supply of hemp and twine for cordage for their bows had
failed, the young maidens cut off their hair, and twisted and braided
it into cords to be used as bow-strings for propelling the arrows which
their husbands and brothers made. Nothing in the history of war, either
ancient or modern, will bear a comparison with this, the last struggle
of the Carthaginians. The siege thus begun was carried on more than
two years; the people, driven to the last limit of human endurance,
had aroused themselves to a hopeless resistance in a sort of frenzy of
despair, and fought with a courage and a desperation that compelled the
Romans to send home for more troops.
Think of a walled city, thirty miles in circumference, with a
population of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls, men, women, and
children, living on limited fare, threatened with starvation, and
surrounded by the sick, the dying, and the dead!
Even in this condition, so heroic were the Carthaginians, that they
repulsed the Romans, sent fireships against the invaders’ fleet, burned
their vessels, and would have destroyed the Roman army, had it not been
for the skill of Scipio, who succeeded in covering the retreat of the
Roman legions with a body of cavalry.
On the arrival of fresh troops from Rome, the siege was renewed; and
after a war of three years, famine reduced the population to a little
more than fifty thousand.
The overpowering army of Scipio finally succeeded in breaking through
the gates, and gaining admission into the city; the opposing forces
fought from street to street, the Carthaginians retreating as the
Romans advanced. One band of the enemy’s soldiers mounted to the tops
of the houses, the roofs of which were flat, and fought their way
there, while another column moved around to cut off retreat to the
citadel. No imagination can conceive the uproar and din of such an
assault upon a populous city--a horrid mingling of the vociferated
commands of the officers, and the shouts of the advancing and
victorious enemy, with the screams of terror from affrighted women
and children, and the dreadful groans and imprecations from men dying
maddened with unsatisfied revenge, and biting the dust in agony of
despair.[13]
The more determined of the soldiers with Hasdrubal, the Carthaginian
general at their head, together with many brave citizens of both sexes,
and some Roman deserters, took possession of the citadel, which was in
a strongly-fortified section of the city.
The Romans advanced to the walls of this fortification, and set that
part of the city on fire that lay nearest to it; the fire burned for
six days. When the fire had ceased burning near the citadel, the Roman
troops were brought to the area thus left vacant by the flames, and the
fight was renewed.
Seeing there was no hope of successfully resisting the enemy, Hasdrubal
opened the gates, and surrendered to the Romans. There was, however,
a temple in the citadel, capable of holding ten or fifteen thousand
persons; in this, many of the brave men and women took refuge; among
these were Hasdrubal’s wife and two children. The gates of the temple
had scarcely been closed and securely barred, ere some one set the
building on fire from within. Half-suffocated with the smoke, and
scorched with the flames, these people were soon running to and fro
with the wildest screams; many of whom reached the roof, and among
them, Hasdrubal’s wife.
Looking down and seeing her husband standing amongst the Roman
officers, she loaded him with reproaches for what she conceived to
be his cowardice, stabbed her children, threw them into the flames,
and leaped in herself. The city was given up to pillage, and set on
fire. After burning for seventeen days, this great city, the model of
beauty and magnificence, the repository of immense wealth, and one of
the chief States of the ancient world, was no more. The destruction of
Carthage, previously resolved upon in cold blood, after fifty years of
peace, and without any fresh provocation from the defenceless people,
who had thrown themselves on the generosity of their rivals, was one of
the most hard-hearted and brutal acts of Roman policy. The sequel of
the history of Carthage presents a melancholy and affecting picture of
the humiliation and decline of a proud and powerful State.
Meroe, the chief city, and fountain-head of the Ethiopians, was already
fast declining, when Carthage fell, and from that time forward,
the destiny of this people appeared to be downward. With the fall
of Carthage, and the absorption of its territory by Rome, and its
organization into a Roman province, the Carthaginian State ceased. Of
the seven hundred and fifty thousand souls that Carthage contained at
the time that the Romans laid siege to the city, only fifty thousand
remained alive at its fall. The majority of these, hating Roman rule,
bent their way towards the interior of Africa, following the thousands
of their countrymen who had gone before.
After Carthage had been destroyed, the Romans did everything in their
power to obliterate every vestige of the history of that celebrated
people. No relics are to be seen of the grandeur and magnificence of
ancient Carthage, except some ruins of aqueducts and cisterns.
In the language of Tasso:--
“Low lie her towers, sole relics of her sway;
Her desert shores a few sad fragments keep;
Shrines, temples, cities, kingdoms, states decay;
O’er urns and arch triumphal, deserts sweep
Their sands, and lions roar, or ivies creep.”
FOOTNOTES:
[12] “Famous Men of Ancient Times,” p. 154.
[13] “Abbott’s History of Hannibal.”