The Carthaginians Page 12
The relations between workers and employers, and levels of wages, are virtually unknown. With coined money not used by the Carthaginians until the late 5th Century – and even then only in Sicily until the century following – wages would have been paid in goods or valuables. There seems to have been some, probably modest, flexibility in employment. Two Punic inscriptions record transactions in which a man ‘registered himself back into the employ of his master Esmunhalos of his own free will’ and ‘without asking for silver’. One is the Hannobaal mentioned earlier, and the other is named Hannibal of Miqne, possibly the same person (though the names are among the commonest at Carthage). In both the man acts – or claims to act – freely, and Hannobaal seals up the transaction with his own seal. Perhaps he and his namesake were freed slaves owning skills that led Eshmunhalos to entice or coerce them to come back and work for him; the denial of coercion may be just a formula. Even so it was an arrangement that earned written commemoration, no doubt for legal reasons.42
Other men with Carthaginian names, and of plainly low status, made dedications to Carthage’s chief deities, Tanit and Baal Hammon, like the Safot also mentioned earlier, a š bd – a slave ‘owned by’, or freedman ‘thanks to’, one Milkyaton son of Yatonbaal son of Milkyaton. So did Baalsillek, ‘š bd his master (’dnm) Baalhanno’. Meanwhile Gry, a fuller who was slave of, or worker for, a Hanno son of Abdeshmun, had a tomb of his own in Carthage with his name on it. There is no report of Carthaginian citizens becoming enslaved to other Carthaginians, though it may sometimes have happened (for example as a penalty for debt, as could happen in early Rome), but Carthaginian names could well be given to slaves from elsewhere – and very likely to slave children born and raised among Carthaginians.43
Why freedmen, if that is what these men were, should each be called ‘a man of Sidon’ (š ) can only be surmised. Diodorus’ report of the Libyphoenicians having intermarriage rights with Carthaginians may be a clue that migrants to Carthage from kindred cities enjoyed certain privileges (at Rome, citizens of her satellite Latin colonies did). Sidon, second only to Tyre in kinship to Carthage, perhaps gave its name to such a status, limited but still privileged in comparison to resident Libyans, Numidians and the like. That would place a thoroughly Punicised and maybe Carthage-born š like Safot, if he was a freedman, on a footing close to but not quite equal with Carthaginian citizens – a situation which these surely regarded as fit and proper.
Whatever their origins, the inscriptions of Hannobaal, Safot, Baalsillek and Gry suggest some degree of freedom in their doings. Hannobaal left his master or former master for other (unsuccessful?) activities and then returned. Safot and Baalsillek could make their own dedication (seemingly at their own expense, so it means they could earn money for themselves). Gry seems to have run his own fuller’s shop, even if he was supervised by his master or patron. There would be equal or greater flexibility for freeborn Carthaginians working for employers, and still wider opportunities if they had independent professions such as scribes, goldsmiths, statute-makers or builders – professions in which they in turn would have employees or slaves.
SLAVES
Slaves worked in the city and the countryside. Their numbers will have grown sizeably with the growth of both the city and the chora, and still more as Libya in turn became more prosperous. The Carthaginians built up a significant slave population of which only occasional glimpses emerge. As at Rome, rich citizens no doubt owned large numbers, less wealthy citizens fewer, and probably only quite affluent craftsmen and small farmers could expect to afford even one. Freed slaves surely existed too, as suggested above, but their numbers and the terms on which they might gain their freedom are not known.
Slaves originated from all round the Mediterranean and some no doubt from beyond. Slave-traders were a Mediterranean fixture at all times, and Phoenician slavers had been known even to Homer – one tried to kidnap Odysseus on his wanderings. Cassius Dionysius, says Varro, recommended slaves from Epirus in north-western Greece for their steadiness and loyalty: another piece of advice which may have come from Mago. Others were born to slave parents – as noted earlier, Mago approved of this – while still others may have been persons (perhaps even Carthaginians?) enslaved for debt or other penalties. Others who could become slaves were men, women and children carried off from their coastal homes by raiding pirates, as happened (in reverse) to the daughters of Hanno the ‘little Carthaginian’. Some children may have been sold into slavery by poverty-stricken parents who lacked means to raise them, a practice found in other cultures.
Foreign slaves could also be acquired as war-captives, either taken in battle or seized in attacks on enemy territory, especially in the sack of a city. Thanks to the Carthaginian campaigns in Sardinia, many slaves in the later 6th Century must have been natives of that island, while in the late 5th and through much of the 4th Century quite a number will have been Sicilian Greeks. Carthage’s off-andon wars with the Numidians must have brought in many Numidian slaves from time to time, too. The struggles with Rome between 264 and 201 meant that Roman and Italian slaves in their turn could be found in both city and countryside. Their fates were rather happier. The later historian Appian in fact mentions that Scipio, on invading Africa in 204, rescued Roman captives working the fields who had been sent there from Italy, Sicily and Spain. Ransoms, prisoner exchanges and, at the end of each war, enforced repatriations also took home other Roman and maybe Italian slaves.
The glimpses we have of slave numbers are hard to evaluate. Hanno, one of the city’s chief men in the 4th Century, armed a supposed twenty thousand slaves when facing arrest for plotting a coup d’état around 350 – a suspect number, though, because he and they in their futile attempt at resistance supposedly shut themselves up in a single ‘fort’ (which may have been his country mansion). It is fairly improbable too that, grand though he was, Hanno alone owned so many, especially as the narrative requires these to be males only. He very likely gathered slaves from around the countryside and even perhaps from the city, but Justin’s figure would be more plausible, even then, if divided by ten.
The same figure of twenty thousand is given, this time by Polybius, for the ‘slaves’ whom Regulus’ army a century later captured on its march through the Cape Bon region towards Tunes. Romans rarely discriminated, all the same, between seizing slaves and seizing freeborn enemy locals as human booty, so it may be that these were country folk both slave and free, who were later sold off into Roman slavery. Appian offers a third figure: towards the end of the second war with Rome and with Scipio’s invasion looming, the general in command at Carthage bought 5,000 slaves to serve as rowers on his warships. If this report is true, most of them were probably bought within North Africa or even from owners in Carthage’s chora, given the urgency of the situation. Since almost no sea-fighting took place and all the warships were burnt by Scipio at war’s end, these ad hoc oarsmen were perhaps returned to their masters afterwards.
As noted earlier, Mago the agronomist recommended sensibly liberal treatment of farm slaves, but actual practice no doubt varied widely. When in 396 the Libyans launched a great rebellion against Carthage – one of the greatest in their history – they were joined by a large number of slaves in besieging the city. This obviously suggests that many slaves were unhappy with their lot, though their grievances were no doubt different in detail from those of the free Libyans. These must have promised their new allies their freedom at the very least. It could be significant that many slaves in 396 must have been Sicilian Greeks, for a new series of wars which had begun in 409 was marked by wholesale sackings of many important Greek cities, Acragas above all. It was in turn a succession of serious reverses at Greek hands in 398–396 which encouraged Libyans and slaves to revolt. The chief or sole grievance of the slaves who followed Hanno the traitor fifty or so years later was most likely again their enslaved condition. This time, though, the hopes of the rebels were centred on a charismatic Carthaginian, not on crushing Carthage herself. Memor
ies of the failed revolt in 396 no doubt persisted, and not only among the slaves. Hanno at first had support from Libyans and even Numidians, though there are no details and they seem to have dropped him quickly.44
On the other hand, the idea that the Carthaginians suffered a constant, destabilising fear of and risk from the slave population has nothing else to go on. The invasion of Agathocles from 310 to 307 caused fresh Libyan unrest, but none is mentioned among slaves. Nor is any heard of during the Roman invasion of 256–255, whereas defections from Carthage by at least some Libyans and Numidians took place. Even more marked is the total silence about slave unrest during the massive rebellion by Carthage’s unpaid mercenaries and heavily oppressed Libyan subjects that followed the First Punic War, even though it lasted over three years and is recounted in some detail by Polybius. None, again, is reported during Scipio’s invasion late in the Second Punic War, during which he made extensive raids into the Libyan countryside and won a series of major battles. By contrast, as mentioned just now, we read of the Carthaginians buying slaves to row warships of the Carthaginian fleet. Finally, in the crisis of 149 when it was made plain that the Romans encamped outside the city meant to end its existence, the Carthaginian senate offered freedom to the slaves, obviously to recruit them for the resistance. Of course this was a risk, but one that proved to be justified, for everyone in the city fought to the end – in striking contrast to the sister colonies and the Libyan hinterland.
VI
THE CITYSCAPE OF CARTHAGE
THE GROWTH OF THE CITY
By the 4th Century, the roadstead along the shore of the lake of Tunis had been supplemented by an artificial channel extending for nearly a kilometre northward through the marshy lagoons to the area of pottery works and iron foundries next to Carthage’s southern walls. Not much of this facility remains, for it was later replaced by the famous and still visible enclosed artificial ports. But wooden docks, for example, have been identified from evidence of post-holes in the soil of the Îlot de l’Amirauté, the little island in the circular port – now a shallow lake – which was built at the northern end of the old lagoon area in the late 3rd or early 2nd Century.
The channel was about two metres deep and some 15 to 20 metres wide – probably wider still where it met the lake – with the earliest datable pottery finds from it dating to the second half of the 4th Century. At the docks in its northern part the Carthaginian shipwrights built their vessels, both commercial and naval, which could then be launched down the channel. Given its width, this may also have received merchant shipping, which would be more sheltered than in the lake and nearer to the city proper.45
The defeat at Himera in Sicily in 480, at the hands of Gelon and Theron, prompted the Carthaginians to consolidate and then develop their position in North Africa – to the sorrow, we have seen, of the hitherto independent Libyans. Investigations in the central sectors of the old city have shown that its defences were improved: for although there was peace with the Sicilians and Libya was coming under control, Carthaginians could not help but be conscious of the vulnerability of the site if left unprotected. During the 5th Century powerful fortifications were built along the sea-front east of Byrsa, as shown by the discovery in recent times of the remains of imposing stone walls, over five metres thick, and a mighty double gate opening onto a narrow beach. These fortifications extended along the shore as far as the edge of the lagoons: nor would it make sense if the landward sides of the city were still left open, though so far no traces of land walls have been found (Illustration 1).
The city itself was expanding, although the stages can only be partially and tentatively traced. It used to be supposed that Carthage’s defeat in Sicily in 480 caused seventy years of reduced trade, limited state activity and general introspection. This was inferred largely from a serious drop in archaeological finds of datable 5th-Century Greek pottery at Carthage, as well as her lack of adventurousness abroad. More recent investigations have not only found new evidence but re-evaluated older finds. It now appears that 5th-Century Attic pottery remains were misdated, or wrongly ascribed to regions like southern Italy (south Italian pottery actually became prominent only in the 4th Century). In addition, substantially more Attic ware has been unearthed in the past few decades at both Carthage and Kerkouane. The continuing business activity thus revealed fits Diodorus’ report about Carthage in the later 5th Century importing
Illustration 1 Sea walls, c. 400 BC: artist’s reconstruction
olives on a large scale from Acragas. Trade with the Etruscans too did not suffer. These re-evaluations are paralleled by the evidence of the Carthaginians imposing and extending dominance over their Libyan neighbours, and carrying out important building projects in and outside the existing city.
Around the end of the 5th Century or rather later, new structures were built just inside the new sea-walls east of Byrsa but separated from them by open ground some 30 metres or more wide: houses and warehouses. Two centuries later at least some of these were enlarged or replaced to create prosperous city mansions, with the built-up area moving right up to the walls (Illustration 1). All this points to a growing urban population, just as it was probably during a stage of vigorous urban development that the New Gate project was launched. This was plainly a large project, for it brought in the (seemingly enthusiastic) participation of a notable range of craftsmen and workers, among them the craftsmen of ‘the plain of the town’, which (as we saw earlier) probably meant the district around the so-called industrial area south of Byrsa and around the lake of Tunis’ harbourage. The New Gate itself, whatever its precise site, could be one stage in the building of land fortifications around the burgeoning city.46
Another important, though less traceable, feature of urban expansion was the development of the garden suburb Megara (M‘rt). Appian almost certainly relies on Polybius, who had been to Carthage, in describing Megara as it was in the mid-2nd Century: a large district next to the city walls, ‘planted with gardens and full of fruit-bearing trees divided off by low walls, hedges, and brambles, besides deep ditches full of water running in every direction’, with properties belonging to Carthaginian citizens. It seems to have been the broad district north of Byrsa and the necropoleis on the hills overlooking the city: the area today from the resort village of Sidi bou Said along the cliff-edged upland called La Marsa and, though probably not from the start, as far as Cape Gammarth (Map 1B). The archaeological land surveys mentioned earlier have found five sites, dating before 300, in this district; from the period following 300, as many as eleven.
Westward Megara extended, eventually, to the start of the isthmus that bound Carthage’s arrowhead to the mainland. In the north this was about a kilometre wide, while from Sidi bou Said the district was up to six kilometres wide, and nearly four beyond the lagoon area and the ‘tophet’. Across that neck of level terrain were built, at some date, the massive triple-wall fortifications described by Appian – perhaps in the aftermath of Agathocles’ invasion but conceivably much earlier, for instance after the great Libyan rebellion in 396 when the city had been put under siege. Such secure defences would have encouraged Carthaginians to develop the area within them still further, even if tracts just beyond the city’s hills had quite likely been exploited for orchards and other produce from the earliest times.
Megara in Appian’s description was not a district of houses, apartment blocks and streets, although lanes and perhaps a few wider roads must have run through it for access. In other words it was not an area of planned urbanisation, but was allowed to continue as a semi-rural district. When the city’s great fortifications were built enclosing almost the entire arrowhead of Carthage, from the lake of Tunis to the lake of Ariana and over to Cape Gammarth, the district was at least fifteen times the size of the built-up city (which by then covered roughly 1½ square kilometres).
Megara was probably, too, the ‘new city’ which figures in Diodorus’ telling of the foiled coup of Bomilcar in 308. This overambitious ge
neral assembled his army ‘in what was called the New City, lying a short distance outside Old Carthage’, then dismissed all but a picked force and with it marched into the old city to seize the market square (the agora in Greek) – only to be driven back with losses through the narrow streets into the ‘new city’, where he and his surviving followers took refuge on ‘a piece of high ground’ but were forced to surrender. The details would fit: an area separate from the old city, but next to it and big enough to parade several thousand soldiers, and with a hilltop for a last stand. If it did count as a ‘new city’, the term suggests that already – during the Agathoclean invasion – it too had fortifications, though these may not as yet have been the elaborate in-depth structures described by Appian.47