THE GLORY THAT ONCE WAS CARTHAGE
Carthage, redolent of the memories of Dido, of Æneas, of Hannibal, of
Cato, of Scipio, and a thousand other classic souvenirs of history, is
the chief sight for tourists in the neighbourhood of Tunis. All we have
learned to expect is there, deformed ruins and relics of a grandeur long
since past. The aqueduct which plays so grand a rôle in the opera of
"Salambo" is there, but it is manifestly Roman and not Punic. Thus did
Flaubert nod, as indeed did Homer before him.
Carthage, as Carthage is to-day, is not much. It is but a vast,
conglomerate mass of fragmentary ruins, a circus whose outlines can
scarcely be traced, a very much ruined amphitheatre, various
ground-plans of great villas of other days, the cisterns of the Romans,
some Punic tombs, and the two ports of Carthage around which history,
romance and legend have woven many tales. The rest is modern, the great
basilica of St. Louis, the palaces of the Bey, and the princes of his
family, the villas of the foreign consuls, the seminary of the White
Fathers and a hotel or two. That is Carthage to-day.
Thus the history and romance of a past day must supply the motive for
the visitors' emotions, for there is little else save the magnificent
site and the knowledge that one is treading historic ground. The tract
might well have been made a sort of national park, and kept inviolate;
but it has been given over to the land exploiter like Tottenham Park and
South New York, and the overflow from Tunis is already preëmpting choice
plots.
Through the gates of the Venice of Antiquity, all the wealth of the East
was brought to be stored in the warehouses of the ports of Carthage, but
to-day all this is only an historic memory. The palaces and warehouses
have disappeared, and the two mud-puddle "ports" have silted up into
circular pools which glisten in the African sunlight like mirrors of
antiquity,--which is exactly what they are.
Carthage, or what is left of it, is a dozen or fifteen kilometres from
Tunis, by a puffing little steam-tram (to be supplanted some day by an
electric railway, which will be even less in keeping).
[Illustration: _The Ports of Carthage_]
One gets off at La Malga, and, in a round of half a dozen kilometres
"does" Carthage, Sidi-bou-Saïd, and La Marsa in the conventional manner
in half a day. If he, or she, is an artist or an archæologist, he, or
she, spends a day, a week, or a month, and then will have cause to
return if opportunity offers.
According to tradition the Tyrians founded Carthage in 813 B.C., being
conducted thither by Elissa, a progressive young woman, the sister of
Pygmalion. _Cart-hadchat_ was its original name, which the Romans
evolved into _Carthago_, signifying "the new city," that is to say,
probably, the "_New Tyre_." Owing to its proximity to Sicily, to all the
vast wealth of Africa, and the undeveloped and unexplored shores of the
Western Mediterranean, Carthage was bound to prosper. As Tyre fell into
decadence, and the Greeks menaced the Phoenicians in the East,
Carthage came to its own very rapidly, not by a mushroom growth, as with
new-made cities of to-day, but still rapidly for its epoch.
The riches of the people of Carthage became immense, every one
prospered, and its merchants trafficked with the Soudan and sailed the
seas to Britain, while Hanno, the Carthaginian admiral, first discovered
and explored the full extent of the West African Atlantic coast.
In the first Punic war Carthage disputed the ownership of Sicily with
Rome, but without success; though indeed she was able to hold the
gateway of the Western Mediterranean, and thus remain mistress of the
trade with the outside world.
With the second Punic war Carthage lost further prestige, and her
military and maritime strength was reduced to such an extent that her
hitherto vast African Empire was restricted to the city itself and a
closely bounding suburban area.
Even then Carthage ranked as the richest city in the world, with a
population of 700,000 souls. In the year 146 B.C. the Romans rose again
and gave Carthage a sweeping knock-out blow so far as its independence
went.
Cæsar and Augustus came, and the city, peopled anew, was restored to
something resembling its former magnificent lines and made the capital
of the Roman African Province. A commercial city, wealthy, luxurious,
gay, and cultivated, it became, next to Rome, the first Latin city of
the Occident.
Christianity was introduced in the early centuries, and through the
gateway of Carthage was spread over all North Africa. Religious
partisanship was as rife and violent here as elsewhere, and Tertullian
tells how, in the great circus amphitheatre, whose scantly outlined
ruins are still to be seen as one leaves the railway at La Malga, Saint
Perpétua and her companions were put to death by ferocious beasts, and
how, in 258 A.D., Saint Cyprien, who was bishop at the time, was
martyred.
The Vandals captured the city in 439 A.D., and the Byzantine powers
under Justinian's general, Belisarius, got it all back again in 533
A.D., though they held it but a hundred and sixty years. The city
finally succumbed, in the seventh century, to Hassan-ben-Nomane, who
destroyed it completely. How completely this destruction was one may
judge by a contemplation of the ruins to-day. The Tunisians and the
Italians have used the site as a quarry for centuries, and Pisa's
cathedral was constructed in no small part from marbles and stone from
glorious Carthage.
Dido, Hannibal, and Salambo have passed away, and with them the glory of
Carthage. To-day tourists come and go, the "White Fathers" exploit
their vineyards, and the promoters sell land in this new subdivision to
the profit, the great profit--of some one.
The Punic remains at Carthage, the tombs and other minor constructions,
are of course few (the Musée Lavigerie on the height now guarding all
the discoveries of value). But the fragments of the great civic
buildings of the Romans are everywhere scattered about.
These ruins cannot even be detailed here, and the plan herewith will
serve as a much better guide than a mere perfunctory catalogue.
Various erudite historical accounts and guide-books have been written
concerning this historic ground; shorter works, of more interest to the
tourist, can be had in the Tunis book-shops.
The discoveries of the last ten years on the site of the ancient
Carthage have been many and momentous. They are of intense interest,
revealing a people who possessed a far higher development than had been
supposed, and who were, contrary to the general belief in modern times,
something more than mere traffickers and merchants, and who evolved an
art of their own, a unique and fascinating blend of the ideals of the
Semitic and the Greek.
Our knowledge of the Phoenicians is still
[Illustration: CARTHAGE]
shadowy and fragmentary; but the work conducted by the "White Fathers"
of Carthage, under the direction of Père Delattre, has provided at least
a foundation for further researches and comparisons, which no doubt will
soon be undertaken.
The recent discoveries of Carthage may well be described as fascinating.
Take for example the sarcophagus of a Phoenician priestess unearthed
in 1902. It is believed that she lived in the third century B.C. The
coloured marble sarcophagus is of the best period of Greek workmanship.
A Greek carved this tomb, no doubt, but in the representation of the
priestess we have a figure of a type unlike any Greek art known,--a type
of beauty delightfully strange, a countenance of a noble loveliness and
charm.
A sympathetic French _archéologue_ puts it in the following words:
"The brilliancy of colour and strangeness of attire, far from detracting
from the dignity of her presence, seem to enhance the noble simplicity
and reserve suggested by the figure. A rare and lovely personality seems
to have been the inspiration of the sculptor. She was not a Greek, nor
an Egyptian, and the Semitic features are hardly recognizable. The dove
in the figure's right hand may well be taken as a symbol of her own
gentle beauty and sweetness. Surely this is a pure type of Phoenician
womanhood. That majestic calm which is the outward and visible sign of
the highest courage within comports well with the reputation of the
women of Carthage, and their bearing in that terrible siege which tried
them unto death."
This is the sort of sentiment which still hovers over Carthage; but to
sense it to the full, one must know the city's history in detail, and
not merely by a hurried half a day round, out from Tunis and back
between breakfast and dinner. Another recent find is the unearthed Roman
palace built up over an old Punic burial-place. Luxurious, though of
diminutive proportions, this palace, or villa, possesses a pavement in
mosaic worthy to rank with that classic example of the Villa Hadrian at
Tivoli. It may be seen to-day at the Musée, and is one of the things to
be noted down by even the hurried traveller.
_En route_ from Tunis to Bizerta, thirty-five kilometres from the former
city and about the same from Carthage, is the ancient Utica, founded by
the Phoenicians centuries before the beginning of the Christian era,
and which, after the destruction of Carthage, became the first city of
Africa.
[Illustration: _ANCIENT UTICA_]
To-day the domain of Bou-Chateur, belonging to a M. Chabannes, contains
all that remains above ground of this vassal city of Carthage. Once a
seaport of importance, like Carthage, it gradually succumbed to a sort
of dry rot and is no more.
The remains existing to-day are extensive, but very fragmentary. Only
bare outlines are here and there visible; but from them some one has
been able to construct a plan of the city on something approaching its
former lines.
Immediately neighbouring upon Carthage is Sidi-bou-Saïd, easily the most
picturesque village around Tunis, if one excepts the low-lying fishing
village of La Goulette, better known by its Italian name of La Goletta.
La Goulette itself played an important rôle in the sixteenth century.
Charles V occupied it in 1535, and it became a fortified stronghold of
the Spanish; but in spite of the fact that it was further fortified by
Don Juan of Austria, after the battle of Lepanto, it was captured by the
Turks under Sinan-Pacha the following year after a memorable siege. For
the devout, La Goulette is of great interest from the fact that Saint
Vincent de Paul was a captive here in the seventeenth century.
The little _indigène_ village of Sidi-bou-Saïd sits on the promontory
called Cap Carthage and has a local colour all its own. It is purely
"native," the land agent not yet having marked it for his own. The
panorama of the snow-white walls and domes and turrets of the little
town, the red-rock base on which it sits, the blue sea offshore, and the
blue sky overhead, is a wonderful sight to the person of artistic
tastes. Certainly its like is not in Africa, if elsewhere along the
shores of the Mediterranean.
Beyond Sidi-bou-Saïd is La Marsa, without character or history, save
that the Bey's summer palace and the country residences of the foreign
consuls are here. The site is delightful and looks seaward in most
winning fashion. On the hillsides round about is grown the grape from
which is made the celebrated "_vin blanc de Carthage_," as much an
accompaniment of the shrimps of the Lac de Tunis as is the "vin de
Cassis" of _bouillabaisse_, or Chablis of oysters. In the neighbourhood
are numerous caves, forming the ancient Jewish necropolis of Carthage
under Roman domination.
Due north from Tunis a matter of nearly a hundred kilometres is Bizerta,
now a French Mediterranean naval base as formidable, or at any rate as
useful, as Gibraltar. It was the Hippo-Diarrhytus of the ancients, whose
inhabitants were at continual warfare with those of Carthage. Under the
Empire it was a Roman colony, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries became one of the refuges of the Moors expelled from Spain.
The French occupation has made of Bizerta and its lake a highly active
and prosperous neighbourhood, where formerly a scant population of the
mixed Mediterranean races gave it only the dignity of a fishing village.
It is very picturesque, its waterside, its canals, and its _quais_, but
the primitiveness of other days is giving way before the moves in the
game of peace and war, until everywhere one hears the bustle and groan
of ships and shipping, and sees clouds of smoke piling up into the
cloudless sky from the gaping chimneys of machine-shops on shore and
torpedo boats and battle-ships on the water. It is old Bizerta rubbing
shoulders with new Bizerta at every step.
Bizerta is now the most important strategic point in the Mediterranean.
Gibraltar is covered by the Spanish fortifications at Algeçiras and
Ceuta, and Malta is merely a rock-bound fortress that could be starved
out in a month. The Mediterranean is French,--a French lake if you
will,--as it always has been, and as it always will be. Tripoli in
Barbary and Morocco, when they come under the French flag, as they are
bound to do, will only accentuate the fact.