CARTHAGE AND THE CARTHAGINIANS

The pages which follow are an attempt, within moderate limits, but from a careful study of all the materials which have come down to us, to give as complete a picture as possible of ancient Carthage and of her two greatest citizens, the only two of whom we have any minute or personal knowledge, Hamilcar Barca and Hannibal. The materials themselves are extremely fragmentary. The medium through which they are presented to us is distorted, and I am only too conscious of my own want of skill in handling them; but, whatever the deficiency of the materials and whatever my own shortcomings, I cannot help feeling that I have worked to ill effect if I have failed to awaken in the minds of my readers something of that enthusiasm for the subject, and that keen desire to pursue it further, which for some years past has made the labour I have imposed upon myself a labour of love.

Whether any such enthusiasm or desire can ever be adequately gratified is a different question, and one which I venture to think does not necessarily affect its intrinsic value. In history, as in other pursuits—more especially, perhaps, in those branches of history in which the present age has made such rapid advances, the study of long-buried seats of empire, of extinct creeds, and of vanished civilisations—the chase is, in a certain sense, worth more than the game and the effort than the result. If by such studies—by the endeavour to picture to ourselves whole races which have long since disappeared, and altars which have long been overturned—the imagination, as we cannot doubt, is awakened and the sympathies enlarged; if we are driven to take a wider and therefore a truer view of the dealings of God with man, to recognise more frankly amidst the endless diversities of the human race its fundamental and substantial unity; to press more closely home to ourselves those questions which are never old and never new—questions always to be asked and never adequately to be answered—of the Why and the What, the Whence and the Whither of a being who has such grovelling desires and such noble aspirations, whose capacities are so boundless and whose performances are so sorry, who is so great and yet so little, so evanescent and yet so lasting— we may well rest content if we rise from the attempt with a feeling of stimulus rather than of satiety, of unrest rather than repose.

It is possible, indeed, that more extensive excavations on the site of the Byrsa and its neighbourhood may hereafter prove that the Romans did not complete their work of destruction so thoroughly as they imagined, and that the very rapidity with which they endeavoured to carry out old Cato’s resolve—destroying everything at Carthage which they could see—was the means of preserving something at least which they did not see. It is possible that the further discovery of Phoenician inscriptions among the numerous islands and coasts over which the influence of that ubiquitous people once extended may increase our knowledge of the Carthaginian language, and may give us a longer list of Carthaginian proper names. It is possible that Marseilles may contain other tablets like that famous one discovered in 1845, when a house was being pulled down—a tablet which actually fixes the tariff of prices to be paid for the victims offered to Baal—and that the recesses of the Lebanon may still conceal another priceless remnant of Phoenician antiquity, such as that statue of Baal in a sitting posture, which perished only a few years ago, just before a great Phoenician scholar arrived in the country, and by a cruel fate which is not without precedent in such matters, heard at the same moment of its existence and destruction. If so, we may one day be able to picture to ourselves more vividly that worship of Baal and of Ashtoreth which is as interesting to the student of Biblical as of Carthaginian history. It is possible, once more, that some of the lost books, or fragments of the lost books, of the Greek and Roman historians who treated of Carthage may yet be discovered, and may complete the picture, such as it is, which the Greek colonists in Sicily, or the Romans who had tested for themselves the indomitable patience of Hamilcar, and had felt the weight of Hannibal’s arm, were able to form of their redoubtable antagonist.

All these things are possible, even if they are not very probable. But we cannot venture to hope that any such discoveries, whatever their kind or number, will ever enable us to know Carthage, as we know Athens or Rome, from its own citizens; or will do more than throw a few scattered lights upon that imperial city which—all but unknown to us during five centuries of her growth and her true grandeur—blazes forth into the light of day only in that century which witnessed her heroic struggles and her fall.

The historical documents which might have thrown a real light upon Carthage have perished irrevocably. Philinus, the Greek of Agrigentum, who wrote a Carthaginian, or quasi-Carthaginian, account of the First Punic War, we know only from some criticisms of Polybius. Sosilus and Silanus, two other Greek historians, who, if only they had been worthy of their opportunities, might have given us from their daily personal observation as complete an account of Hannibal’s life and conversation as Boswell has given us of Dr. Johnson, have left behind them not a word; and the contents of the native Carthaginian libraries, which the Romans, like rich men who know not what they give, carelessly handed over to the tender mercies of Numidian chieftains, and which Sallust, a century afterwards, must have had in his own hands, have perished by a destruction as complete as that which overtook the Alexandrian library itself. We cannot pretend to contemplate the fate of these Carthaginian libraries with the philosophic indifference which it pleased Gibbon to affect with regard to that of Alexandria; for we cannot suppose that the destruction of the Punic literature was in any way a benefit, or that its preservation would have been anything but of deep interest and value to posterity. A few words of explanation as to the general treatment of my subject, and the comparative prominence which I have allotted to its different parts, may, perhaps not unfitly, find a place here.

As regards the method of inquiry, I have in all cases gone direct to the fountain-head, reading carefully every passage which has come down to us from the ancients, comparing conflicting statements with each other, and always endeavouring in the first instance to form an independent judgment upon them. On points which seemed in any degree doubtful I have afterwards consulted the chief modern writers on the subject, such as Gesenius, Heeren, Niebuhr, Arnold, Movers, Kenrick, Lenormant, Mommsen, Beulé, and Ihne. Where, as is often the case, I am conscious of any distinct debt to these or any other modern writer, I have of course made it matter of special acknowledgment in the notes; but, as a general rule, the references I have given are to those to whom I really owe them—to the ancient authorities themselves.

I have avoided all prolonged discussion of disputed points, such, for instance, as the route of Hannibal over the Alps, the battlefield of the Trebia, the minutiae of the topography of ancient Carthage, or the exact position of its Spanish namesake. On such subjects I have endeavoured to weigh the arguments on either side, and have often, as in the case of the passage of the Alps, waded through what is, in fact, a literature in itself, a very sea of treatises and rejoinders, of observations and counter-observations; but have been compelled to content myself with giving, in a few lines, the results themselves rather than the process by which I have arrived at them. The limits of the book make any other treatment impossible; and, indeed, it seems to me that the minute discussion of such points belongs to a continuous history, or to a series of monographs, rather than to a book which is not intended to be exhaustive, and which is addressed as much to the general reader as to the classical scholar.

As regards the treatment of particular parts of my subject, in the two opening chapters on Carthage I have attempted to give a general sketch of the Carthaginian influence and civilisation, and to bring together into as small a compass as is consistent with any degree of accuracy or completeness, all the hints dropped by the writers of antiquity which seem to throw any clear light on the city in the days of its birth, its growth, and its greatest prosperity.

In the third chapter it has been my object to set forth the main differences between Carthage and her great rival, and to point out the foundations on which the achievements and greatness of Rome principally rested. It is the more necessary to do this pointedly at the outset, because, since Carthage can no longer be heard in her own defence, the historian is bound, throughout his treatment of the Punic Wars, continually to point out those statements which he considers to be coloured by the bias or the ignorance, by the fears or the pride, of the Roman writers. He is thus driven sometimes to appear as the advocate, while he is, in fact, only acting or wishing to act the part of the judge. That Rome was better fitted for empire than Carthage, and that her victory is, on the whole, with all its drawbacks, the victory of progress and civilisation, is a fact to which all history seems to point; but it is none the less the duty of the historian to dwell upon these drawbacks, and to bring into full relief what little may be said on the other side.

The history of the First Punic War I have treated at considerable—perhaps some of my readers may think at disproportionate—length. I have more than one reason for doing so. To begin with, the first Punic War seems to me to throw much more light on the energies and character of the Carthaginians as a whole than does the Second. The Second Punic War brings Hannibal before us; the First the State which produced him. The First Punic War shows us Carthage as still, in some sense, the mistress of the seas and islands; in the Second she hardly dares to show herself on the waters which were so lately all her own. We have, moreover, throughout the history of the First Punic War the guidance of Polybius, who had before him in the preparation of his history the accounts given by at least two writers who were all but contemporaries or eye-witnesses of the events which they described, one of them, strange to say, not unfavourable to Carthage. Our knowledge, therefore, of the First Punic War is more complete than that of any portion of the Second, unless it be that of its first three years.

Again, most historians seem to have looked upon the First Punic War as a dull and tedious war, and have accordingly been content to give it a very cursory notice. Dr. Arnold, for example, who has dedicated a whole volume to the Second Punic War, has given only one chapter to the First. There is no greater mistake—unless indeed it be mine in hazarding an opposite opinion—than to suppose that the First Punic War is dull and tedious. In respect of its battles and its sieges, its surprises and its catastrophes, the Herculean exertions made by both States, and the frightful sacrifices it entailed upon them both; above all, in the consummate genius of one at least of the generals it produced, it seems to me to be one of the most interesting wars in history. If I have failed to make it in some measure interesting to my readers, I repeat that, in my opinion, it is the fault not of the subject but of the writer.

Once more, the dazzling genius of Hannibal, and the comparative fulness—not necessarily the trustworthiness—of our authorities for his history, have hitherto tended to throw into the shade the man who, if he was inferior to Hannibal, was inferior to him alone, the heroic Hamilcar Barca. In point of fulness of treatment Hamilcar has fared at the hands of his historians much as has the war in which he bore so large a part. Dr. Arnold, whose noble history was cut short by his untimely death when he had only reached the turning-point in the Hannibalian war, the fatal battle of the Metaurus, has given four hundred pages to that much of Hannibal's career alone, while he has given barely twenty to Hamilcar; and Dr. Mommsen himself, though he is in no way sparing of his admiration for Hamilcar, has, in point of fulness of treatment, dealt with the father and the son in a manner which, as it seems to me, is hardly less disproportionate to their comparative merits and achievements. It seemed, therefore, desirable to lay rather less stress on what has been done so fully and so exhaustively before, and to give more time and space to what has hitherto, perhaps, received less generous treatment, and also throws more light on the great city which is my special subject.

The chapters relating to Hannibal himself, to the Third Punic War, and to the destruction of Carthage, speak for themselves. One more chapter only requires special comment here. In the spring of 1877, after I had finished the first draft of the book, and was far advanced in its revision, I was enabled to pay a visit to the site of Carthage and its neighbourhood. It was a short visit, but was full of deep and varied interest It was my first sight of an Eastern city, and it brought me for the first time into direct personal contact with that vast religious system which is one of the greatest facts of human history, and which, from causes deep as human nature itself, seems destined, whatever the upshot of the present Eastern difficulties, always to maintain its hold on the Eastern world. I was able several times to visit the site of the Phoenician city and to study, as far as my limited time would permit me, oh the spot those questions of its topography and history with the general bearings of which I had been so long familiar in books. I walked round the harbours of Carthage, bathed in water which half preserves and half conceals its ruins, explored the Byrsa and the cisterns, traced for many miles the course of the aqueduct, crossed the river Bagradas, and examined, amongst other spots renowned in ancient story, the site of the still more ancient city, the parent city of Utica. In the concluding chapter of this volume I have endeavoured to gather up some of the impressions which I derived from these varied sights and scenes; and I hope I have been able by these means, as well as by various touches which I have inserted subsequently in other portions of the book, to communicate to my readers what, I think, I gained for myself, a more vivid mental picture of that ancient city, whose chequered fortunes I have endeavoured to relate.

I wish to return my hearty thanks to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, Bart., for having carefully revised my book, both in manuscript and in proof, and for having made several valuable suggestions.

The Knoll, Harrow :

Nov. 26, 1877.

CARTHAGE

CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE

REMAINS OF ANCIENT HARBOURS AT CARTHAGE

SMALLER CISTERNS AT CATHAGE

SICILY

ITALY DURING THE SECOND PUNIC WAR