The Carthaginians Page 16
LITERATURE AT CARTHAGE: DID IT EXIST?
When Carthage was sacked in 146, its libraries were handed over to ‘the minor kings of Africa’ (so Pliny the Elder writes), save for Mago’s agricultural encyclopaedia. The minor kings must have been the royal family of Numidia, Carthage’s close neighbour and enemy; perhaps the king of Mauretania received some books too. What was in the libraries is debated, since few Carthaginian authors are known, but along with Mago’s work that of his fellow-agronomist Hamilcar no doubt was in them, together with Hanno’s Periplus and any similar records (one by Himilco, for instance).
Other works in the libraries perhaps included the sources used for ‘the Punic books [or books in Punic: Punici libri] that were said to be King Hiempsal’s’, mentioned by the Roman historian Sallust. Hiempsal II of Numidia, a descendant of its unifier Masinissa, reigned from about 88 to 50 BC. Sallust cites Hiempsal’s work for a compressed, and fairly fanciful, account of how the North African peoples originated and how the Phoenicians settled there; perhaps too for his description of Lepcis Magna and the heroism of the Philaeni brothers. As inscriptions and buildings from Numidia show, by Hiempsal’s time and even earlier the kingdom – and especially its capital Cirta, modern Constantine – had extensively assimilated Carthage’s language and culture, so it would be natural to write works in Punic (Sallust needed an interpreter). He seems to suspect that the king was author only in name: whoever did compose the work probably drew on at least some Carthaginian materials as well as Greek ones. The late-Roman historian Ammianus in turn reports that Hiempsal’s grandson Juba II, an unusually bookish monarch and author, drew on Punici libri for the dictum that the Nile rises in a Mauretanian mountain near the Atlantic: maybe those books were his ancestor’s, or else Carthaginian treatises – plainly very speculative – like the ones that Hiempsal too had looked up.
Some works in Punic survived into much later times. Ammianus’ younger contemporary St Augustine, a self-consciously proud North African, comments ironically to a fellow African that, if disdainful of their old tongue, the friend then ought to deny the recognised value of the wisdom in ‘Punic books’. He thus implies that not only did such books still exist but they survived in their original language, and though he does not explicitly say that they were written in Carthaginian times, there is no good reason to doubt it. Incidentally, a tradition that sacred books survived the catastrophe of 146 BC through being hidden away is mentioned by Plutarch in a mystic-philosophical discussion – very Greek in content – about souls after death; but the claim may be a mere fancy to enliven his essay.
It is also hard to tell whether Polybius’, Diodorus’, Justin’s and other authors’ sporadic but sometimes detailed reports of events in Carthaginian history go back to Carthaginian accounts (in Punic or in Greek). Hannibal certainly wrote of his own campaigns in seeming detail, originally as a temple inscription in Hera’s temple at Cape Lacinium (Capo Colonna) near Croton in southern Italy; but he no doubt published it at home too. Twenty years later he issued a pamphlet in Greek about a booty-hunting Roman general’s recent actions in central Asia Minor, no doubt taking a critical view of them and him.
While he is the only Carthaginian known as writing on historical events, one or two other items may offer glimpses of a narrative tradition. A Punic inscription set up two centuries before his time briefly reports military actions in Sicily by ‘the rbm Adnibaal [Hannibal] son of Gisco the rb and Himilco son of Hanno the rb’, including the sack of Acragas and other measures. The events date to 406, for the two generals and the sack are recorded by Diodorus. More indirect glimpses come in from much later times, such as two verse inscriptions of perhaps the 1st Century BC, at Mactar about 180 kilometres south-west of Carthage. In Neo-Punic, the later form of the language, they were set up by the or citizens’ association there (or one of them) to praise two leaders who had defeated serious attacks on the town and its territory, maybe at different periods – one a revolt and one an incursion from outside – and restored prosperity to Mactar’s landowners. Further away and later still (the mid-4th Century ad or perhaps the later 3rd) Julius Nasif, a Romanised Libyan officer at a rural centre far to the south of Lepcis Magna, had a Neo-Punic poem incised on his burial stele, using the Latin alphabet, to commemorate what must have been the high point of his career: defeating a marauding tribe that had attacked the area and capturing its chieftain.59
It is interesting that all these accounts deal with military matters, even the verse inscriptions. Military verse is not a genre found in Roman inscriptions. Nor has the rhythmic structure of the poems anything to do with Greek or Latin versification: instead they show features of a distant ancestry in ancient Canaanite and Biblical poetry, as does some of their vocabulary. The biographical and autobiographical aspects of the accounts, both prose and verse, are also worth noting. A stele at Carthage records that the family of a citizen named Milkpilles honoured his memory with an inscriptional biography set up in the temple of Isis – which reminds us of Hannibal’s personal record in the temple of Hera, and indeed of how Hanno the navigator placed the original of his Periplus in Baal Hammon’s. Milkpilles need not have been a military man, even if his biography too was in verse: for Mactar is the origin of another verse autobiography of Roman times – this one in Latin – telling, in endearingly unsophisticated fashion, how a humbly-born farm labourer there advanced through hard work and enterprise to wealth and local honours. While poetic, or would-be poetic, life stories in Latin inscriptions are not unique to North Africa, the ‘rime of the ancient Mactarian’ looks like a civilian match for the Neo-Punic martial paeans.
It seems likely enough, then, that at least military-historical and biographical writing was well established at Carthage at any rate from the 5th Century on. The traditions may have gone back much further, for her close relations with Tyre should mean that educated Carthaginians knew their mother city’s ancient ‘annals’ if nothing else. We saw earlier that there is enough plausible detail in the story of Elissa to suggest that the foundation-account had some basis in fact, while the Carthaginians’ interest in family history is clear from the sometimes lengthy ancestral lists lovingly recorded by stele-dedicators. If written works in these fields have not survived to any extent, probably it is because Greeks and Romans were uninterested in reading or preserving Punic-language literature, not because literary composition was rare at Carthage.
Greeks and Romans did pay attention to authors who wrote on Carthaginian affairs in those languages. Some of them were surely read at Carthage too, for instance Philinus of Acragas, the 3rd-Century historian of the First Punic War, and Hannibal’s friends and biographers Silenus (another Sicilian) and Sosylus of Sparta. Even philosophical works found readers. A young Carthaginian philosopher, Hasdrubal, son of one Diognetus (a Greek migrant to Carthage, or a Carthaginian who took a Greek name), lectured at home on the subject, in his own language, till he left for Athens around 163 aged twenty-four. There he adopted the name Cleitomachus on becoming an Athenian citizen, enjoying a distinguished career until his death in 110/109. He became head of the Platonic academy after his teacher Carneades, and wrote a reported four hundred books – probably in the sense of rolled volumina – to make a lasting impact on philosophy. One of them was a treatise of consolation to his surviving countrymen after the destruction of the city. It was in Greek (Cicero read it) and is yet another pointer to Carthaginians’ familiarity with that language and culture. It would be interesting to know how many, if any, other Carthaginians made the same journey for philosophy’s sake.60
VISUAL ART, INCLUDING COINAGE
Works of art at Carthage go back to the city’s earliest centuries, though what remains of them is regrettably limited, consisting chiefly of finds in graves and tombs and, perhaps for this reason, mainly religious in their import. It was noted earlier that various offerings and mementoes could be placed in tombs, including figurines, lamps, ornaments and jewellery, as well as jars and bowls with food and drink to nourish th
e dead person’s spirit journey to the next world. Yadomilk’s pendant is one such item. From the start, artworks reflected many different cultures or were pieces imported from these, the earliest influence being of course Phoenicia’s and, almost equally early, Egypt’s. Thus from a 7th-Century grave on Byrsa comes a finely-worked ivory piece, the tiny remnant (less than five centimetres high) of an ornamental carving, showing a goat with head turned back, standing on a sacred tree – a long-established motif of plenty in eastern Mediterranean art. From a Douimès necropolis of about the same period there survives a cylindrical ivory handle, about 13 centimetres long, for a bronze mirror: it depicts a woman (probably a goddess) with Egyptian hairstyle and long robe, and hands clasped over her breasts (Illustration 13).
It is hard to say whether either of these was an import or was made at Carthage. A terracotta statuette in a more unsophisticated style, dated to the 7th or 6th Century, does look locally made: an abstractly stylised, flat-topped head and roughly cylindrical torso, complete with what seem to be nipples, depicting perhaps a protective goddess (Illustration 14). Perhaps later in date is a tiny terracotta sculpture – again from a necropolis, this time on Borj-el-Jedid – of a mother, in long robe and with a shawl covering her head, who kneels over an open-top bake-oven (or maybe a well) while her child, abstractly rendered with no features, peers over the top to see what is happening (Illustration 15). This simple piece has a
Illustration 13 Ivory mirror-handle depicting a goddess(?), c. 7th Century
Illustration 14 Terracotta statuette of a goddess, 7th–6th Century
Illustration 15 Mother and child at baking oven
particular appeal in its little scene of domestic life, something rare in surviving Carthaginian art. A contrast to its peaceful image is offered by a splendid tondo or disc in terracotta, only some nine centimetres in diameter and well preserved, from the 6th-Century necropolis on Douimès: it depicts a fully-armed cavalry warrior at full gallop, with crested helmet and round shield, his faithful dog racing alongside, while behind the warrior appears the sacred disc-and-crescent symbol of the sun and moon (Illustration 16). The image occurs elsewhere at western Phoenician sites like Utica and Ebusus, but the energy and sharply-drawn quality of the figures on the work from Douimès suggest that fine artistic activity was already going on at Carthage in that early period.
The mother and child theme, this time in firmly religious terms, recurs in a terracotta statuette of later date (perhaps as late as the 3rd Century) that represents a robed goddess wearing a tall, fez-like headpiece and bearing on her shoulder a daughter with similar headgear and an elaborate necklace. The pair may represent Astarte and Tanit, who are sometimes linked together in Phoenician art, or even Demeter and Kore. Other distinctive home-made pieces include many votive masks from graves, notably ones with negro features or with stylised aspects like ferocious grins or staring eyes: their aim
Illustration 16 Terracotta tondo: cavalryman and his hound
was to ward off unfriendly spirits. Wide-open eyes are notable, too, in a full-length statue of a robed male dedicator from Utica, perhaps of the 3rd Century, and 4th- or 3rd-Century ornamental trinkets like glass pearl-shaped pendants with huge painted eyes and intricately-fashioned glass spirals for hair and beard.
Eastern Mediterranean art forms survived more or less to the end: the so-called ‘Hannibal quarter’ on Byrsa’s slope yielded a small terracotta god – it may be Melqart – enthroned, wearing a conical cap, and with right hand raised in a gesture of blessing. Egyptian themes remained popular down the centuries. There is a fine gold amulet-case with engraved Egyptian motifs of 7th–6th Century date; Egyptian divinities like the distinctively ugly Bes and the maternal Isis are represented on amulets; stelae and small sculpted models (like the famous ones from Thuburbo Maius) depict the façades of Egyptian-style temples; and many of the terracotta votive masks placed in graves are Egyptian in style. Some items were probably brought to Carthage from the eastern lands, but others must have been made locally.
Other cultures beside Phoenicia’s and Egypt’s contributed to the artistic variety at Carthage. Etruscan objects and styles were always attractive, as shown for instance by a bronze figurine of a goddess or maiden found at Sidi bou Said and thought to have come over in the 6th Century if not earlier; by painted bowls with Etruscan-style motifs of the 4th Century; and by a small terracotta of a chubbily nude seated boy, found at Kerkouane (a 4th- or 3rd-Century version of a widely-spread Phoenician religious image, the ‘temple boy’).61 From around the 5th Century, however, the most pervasive influence was the Greek world.
With the Carthaginians carrying on trade with Greeks, warring with the Greeks of Sicily (and before them, the Phocaeans in Corsica) and intermarrying with Greeks even at the highest social levels – like the Greek mother of ‘king’ Hamilcar – this influence was predictable. It never supplanted all others, but its attractions grew as trade expanded, Greek culture flourished and, from Alexander the Great’s day onward, Greek and Macedonian dominance was imposed over more and more of the eastern Mediterranean, including Carthage’s motherland Phoenicia.
Apart from the pottery goods imported from the city’s earliest days, the Carthaginians’ interest in things Greek was no doubt partly stimulated, ironically enough, by the artworks looted from Sicilian cities in the 5th and 4th Centuries’ wars. A notorious prize acquired in 406 was the hollow bronze bull made for Phalaris, tyrant of Acragas in the 560s (allegedly for roasting his political enemies alive). Other carefully kept booty included portrait busts, statues – Cicero describes a splendid one of Artemis the huntress, which the Romans restored to Segesta in 146 – and sacred objects of gold and silver. Another stimulus must have been coinage, which Carthage began to produce only late in the 5th Century, to pay her military forces in Sicily: from the start, Carthaginian coins were under Greek influence. Her adoption of Demeter and Kore in 396 gave further impetus.
An early example of Greek or Greek-influenced art in a western Phoenician setting was found in quite recent times, not at Carthage but at Motya: the marble statue of a curly-haired youth or ‘ephebe’ wearing a close-fitting cap and standing in a full-length robe of realistically chiselled folds, intended to represent fine cloth – so fine that the viewer is no doubt about his sex – while one hand rests on his hip and the other was perhaps raised in blessing or greeting (the arms do not survive). A remarkable sculpture of early 5th-Century classical style, this represents a young god receiving (or maybe a young priest making) an offering. Motya was of course much nearer and much more exposed to the appeal of Greek Sicily’s art and aesthetics, but it is entirely believable that Carthage too would import similar pieces, or commission resident Greek sculptors and designers to make them – and that eventually there would be Carthaginian workers skilled in the same arts.
One such artist was Boethus ‘the Carthaginian’: his and his father Apollodorus’ names are Greek, but on a statue-base at Ephesus bearing their names he terms himself a Carthaginian. The later Greek travel writer Pausanias saw a gilded statue by ‘Boethus the Carthaginian’ at Olympia, surely the same man. His father may well have been an immigrant to Carthage from Sicily or Greece, while it looks as though Boethus in turn left his native city to seek his fortune in that world. Not every Greek migrant or Carthaginian craftsman skilled in Greek methods need have done the same.62
From around the year 400 art in Greek forms proliferated at Carthage and in the Carthaginian world. Remnants of buildings show Greek types of ornament, like the surviving upper part of an Ionic sandstone pillar in the ‘tophet’ intricately carved with inter-twined palm fronds and acanthus leaves in its capital, reminiscent of 3rd-Century Greek decoration, and the remains of an Ionic column from the ‘Hannibal quarter’ on the slopes of Byrsa. Ataban’s Carthaginian-descended mausoleum at Thugga makes use of Ionic columns, just as the ships’ docks in the naval port, as Appian describes them, were each marked out by a pair of them.
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bsp; Elements or wholesale borrowing of Greek styles characterise votive figurines, stelae and other objects: thus a 4th-Century terracotta statuette, found at Kerkouane, depicts a woman musician in Greek garments, their folds realistically rendered (chiton robe, and a himation cloak drawn up over the back of her head), one leg bent slightly forward as she beats her tambourine drum. A grave at Carthage produced another 4th-Century statuette still more in Greek style, of an attractive young woman playing a double flute, swathed in flowing robes and this time with one leg bent slightly back (Illustration 17). Both wear decorated high caps. These make a sharp contrast with another tambourine-player of much the same period: a formal Phoenician-style sacred image, the face abstractly rendered, with ringleted hair and flat painted robe, both hands clasping the tambourine to her breast. This is a valuable reminder that Greek influence did not push aside other forms.
Much Greek and Greek-influenced work at Carthage is of memorable quality. On the back of a small bronze mirror there survives a masterful profile, done in high relief, of a goddess with an elaborate coiffure, a silver-inlay earring, and a rather engaging halfsmile: again a work of the 4th Century or perhaps the 3rd, and fully Greek in style even though it must represent a Carthaginian goddess (Illustration 18). Ivory intaglios – ornaments with incised figures or busts, as usual found in graves – of the same period or a little later depict rather sedately dancing maenads (women practising the frenzied ritual worship of Dionysus) and a sensitively realised one of Dionysus himself. The carefully-wrought head of Demeter, or else
Illustration 17 Fluteplayer from Carthage: terracotta statuette, 4th Century