The Carthaginians Read online

  While a Carthaginian citizen probably had the same rights as his fellows, inequalities of wealth, birth, education and opportunity were as present as in democratic Athens or at Rome. Greek writers stressed the importance of wealth as well as ancestry and merit. Effective and sometimes official supremacy remained for lengthy periods in the hands of one or other influential family: Mago’s in the later 6th and the 5th Centuries, Hamilcar Barca’s two hundred years later. Ordinary Carthaginians could at times play an important or even crucial part in decision-making, as will be shown, but it was invariably under the leadership or instigation of an aristocrat and his equally aristocratic friends.

  According to Aristotle, Carthaginians belonged to ‘associations’ (in Greek, hetairiai). These probably were the (mizrehim) attested on inscriptions both of Carthaginian times and at North African towns later. He mentions them in the context of communal meals (syssitia), a social custom that he compares to a similar one that he has been discussing at Sparta in Greece. Regular communal meals often feature in social relations ancient and modern, especially when practised by specific groups – Oxford and Cambridge colleges today come to mind, their Hellenistic equivalent being perhaps the syssition of scholars at the Museum of Alexandria. Spartan associations each had a fixed, small number, were governed by strict rules, and all citizens were required to be members partly because the practice was linked to military service.

  Whether every Carthaginian citizen had to belong to an ‘association’ is not known. The ‘Marseilles Tariff’, a Carthaginian inscription found in the French city, extensively details the payments in cash and in kind due to priests performing sacrifices on people’s behalf, then affirms in comprehensive fashion that ‘a mizreh, or a family’ [sometimes translated ‘a clan’], ‘or a mizreh of a god’, or indeed ‘all persons who shall offer a sacrifice’ must pay the amounts set down in the official register. Even on a cautious interpretation, the associations seem to have been quite numerous: some were devoted to the cult of a particular deity (its priests and attendants, most likely), while others were secular – guilds of craftsmen, groups of ex-magistrates, and maybe men who had served closely together in war. For them to share a common meal on particular occasions would be a natural instinct. It would also contribute to social interaction and mutual support if, as in Spartan hetairiai, members of a mizreh came from a range of economic and family circles.

  There are isolated mentions of group dinners which could be syssitia: for instance an ambitious and wealthy Hanno in the mid-4th Century was accused of plotting a coup d’état by scheming to poison the entire senate at a banquet in his house on his daughter’s wedding day, while distracting the common people with feasts ‘in the public colonnades’ (see Chapter VIII). In 193 a Tyrian agent of Hannibal’s, sent to contact the exiled general’s supporters in the city, aroused much comment ‘at social gatherings and dinners’, Livy reports; these probably included such meals, though obviously not them alone. Beyond this, the role of communal meals and mizrehim at Carthage is opaque. No Carthaginian commemorates himself or herself on an inscription as a member of one or as acting in connection with one, or is so described by an ancient writer. If the associations played any specific part in the assembly of the citizens, we are not told of it either.12

  CARTHAGINIAN NAMES

  Family groups and political friendships at Carthage are inadequately known, partly because written sources only occasionally specify them (like the Magonids, and Hannibal’s family the ‘Barcids’), and partly because Carthaginians bore only single names, like Greeks, and leading historical figures made use of only a narrow range of these. A good five hundred different names, men’s and women’s, are known from stelae and other documentary materials, with nearly all of them derived from the name of one or other deity. So for instance Yadomilk bore a name connected with Melqart, Tyre’s city-god, and Pygmalion is based on the (obscure) Pumay, a god commemorated on the ancient Nora stone. Names compounded with Baal, Astarte, Melqart and other divinities were especially common, although the great Carthaginian goddess Tanit seems never to be called on in this way.

  In Greek and Roman narratives, many Punic names were modified into forms conventionally used today. Abdmilqart or Habdmilqart (servant of Melqart) became Hamilcar, Abdastart (servant of Astarte) was reduced to Bostar, Bodmilqart (in Melqart’s service) to Bomilcar, Gersakun (fear of Sakun, another obscure god) to Gisco and Gesco, Saponibaal (may Baal watch over me) to Sophoniba – the name of the most famous Carthaginian woman after Elissa-Dido – and, as noted earlier, Zakarbaal (Baal, remember me) to Sicherbas and Acherbas. On the other hand the names Hannibal (Baal be gracious to me), Hanno (grace be to him), Himilco (Milkot or Melqart is my brother), Maharbal (hasten, Baal), and Mago (a shortened form of Magonbaal, ‘may Baal grant’) stayed more or less the same.

  Despite the many other names, six hundred or so, that were available to Carthaginians – Baalshillek, Esmunhalos, Hannesmun, Milkyaton, Mittunbaal, Pumayyehawwiyo, Safot, Salombaal (the origin of the name ‘Salammbô’), Yadomilk and Yatonbaal are only some less-known examples – the written historical records offer an often baffling repetition of just a dozen or so borne by leaders, generals, politicians and priests: Adherbal, Bomilcar, Bostar, Carthalo, Gisco, Hamilcar, Hannibal, Hanno, Hasdrubal, Himilco, Mago and Maharbal. On Carthaginian inscriptions too, some of these names are found by the hundred, for instance nearly eight hundred Hamilcars and over six hundred Bomilcars, four hundredodd Magos, and a relatively spare three hundred or so Hannibals.

  Prominent Carthaginians took pride in their ancestry and so must have kept up some form of family records, but nothing remains save for some claims on stelae. This makes it hard, or impossible, to work out family connections more closely than across two or occasionally three generations, unless a source expressly gives details. The powerful descendants of the city’s 6th-Century leader Mago carried on his dominance of the republic down to the early 4th; but although one of these Magonids was named Hamilcar and his grandson was a Hannibal, no link is known with the family of Hamilcar nicknamed Barca and his sons Hannibal, Hasdrubal and Mago, who with their kinsmen were prominent – and mostly dominant – in Carthaginian affairs for the half-century from 247 on. Wider connections across aristocratic society, such as those which can be worked out for many periods in Roman history, are entirely elusive.

  PRAISE FROM GREEKS

  In the ancient versions of the foundation of Carthage, as shown earlier, the city’s establishment began with a queen, a high priest of Baal (so we may interpret Justin’s ‘Jupiter’), an admiral (if Livy was correct), and a number of high-ranking other Tyrians. Virgil or, more likely, someone later interpolating a line into the Aeneid, depicts Elissa-Dido’s people as framing a constitution and choosing magistrates and a senate while Carthage is still being built – in other words, setting up a republican system. This is fanciful yet significant, since it shows the impact made on later memory by that system.

  The political structure of the republic is not very satisfactorily known. It is a noteworthy object lesson, in fact, of the difficulties posed by evidence varying in depth, time and language. It has to be pieced together from Aristotle’s limited 4th-Century description, and some few statements in other writers from Herodotus to Justin. It was praised by more than one Greek thinker. Around 368, the political theorist and orator Isocrates called it and the Spartan system the best of any state (he liked their authoritarian aspects). Aristotle in the 340s and 330s praises it in his turn, along with Sparta again and the cities of Crete, as a mainly sound blend of his three basic political schemas – monarchy, aristocracy (rule by the best men, the aristoi) and democracy, each one limited by the functions of the other two. Monarchy for him was embodied in the chief magistrates who were elected by citizens for fixed terms; aristocracy in the gerousia (body of elders, or senate) who needed the guidance of the magistrates and could be contradicted by the people; and democracy in the shape of the citizen assembly, which was guided by the other tw
o arms of government but could still make up its own mind.

  This is an idealised, or at least theorised, portrait of Carthage’s political system. Aristotle leaves a great deal out that could help to clarify how it actually worked, and in places is generalised or opaque on what officials and institutional bodies did in practice. Nor does he mention the dominance of the Magonid family in the republic’s affairs – from the middle or later 6th Century until only a few decades before he wrote – unless he refers to it when remarking cryptically that Carthage had changed from ‘tyranny’ (in other words arbitrary autocracy) to aristocracy. On the other hand, this would make his much-admired Carthaginian constitution a coin of very recent minting, an aspect not hinted at in his overall treatment of it. Rather, then, he may be referring to the abolition or neutralisation of the kingship at some much earlier time.13

  CHIEF MAGISTRATES: THE SUFETES

  The chief officials of the republic were an annually elected pair of ‘sufetes’, a title which Punic inscriptions and some Latin writers attest, although Greeks – and even Carthaginians writing in Greek, as we shall see – invariably use the term ‘king’ or ‘kings’ (basileus, basileis). Aristotle stresses that wealth and birth were both needed in seeking high office, plainly implying that both were legally required. On the other hand he mentions no details about a minimum requisite level of wealth, for instance, or how distinction of birth was defined. We can infer that Carthaginian ancestry on both parents’ sides was not essential, for Hamilcar the ‘king’ in 480 had a Greek mother; but notable ancestors on at least one side must have been.

  Cicero’s contemporary Cornelius Nepos mentions that there were two sufetes – he too writes ‘kings’ – elected each year, and several Carthaginian inscriptions date a year by a pair of sufetes’ names. Two yearly sufetes are also recorded, most of them in Roman times, at Libyan and Sardinian cities that retained Carthaginian cultural usages. A passing comment by Plato the philosopher shows him, too, taking for granted that Carthaginian magistrates served annually. A pair a year can thus be accepted as Carthage’s historical norm. Evidence for more than two is fragile – for instance Cato the Censor, in the 2nd Century, seeming to write of four sufetes collaborating in some action like levying or paying troops. Unfortunately we have only a very scrappily preserved sentence with no context; Cato may perhaps have been reporting an action taken over two successive years. If more than two a year ever were elected, most likely this happened seldom.14

  Sufetes as supreme magistrates were a development of the 6th Century or, possibly, the late 7th. A damaged Punic votive stele of around 500–450 seems to be dated – though the reading is debated – to ‘the twentieth year of the rule of the sufetes in Carthage’. There is no independent evidence to confirm this information, and another reading of the stele gives ‘in the one hundred and twentieth year’ while a third interpretation sees no dating in it at all. If either of the numerals is correct, it implies that the monarchy had lasted at least two or maybe even three hundred years, until 620 or later. If not, the best we can infer is that by the later 4th Century, Aristotle’s time, the sufeteship was certainly the supreme office.15

  In an earlier period of Carthage’s history, it is just possible that only one sufete existed: for instance, perhaps ‘Malchus’ in the 6th Century (if he existed) and perhaps the ‘basileus’ Hamilcar who fought the Sicilian Greeks in 480 were sole sufetes as well as generals. One person holding more than one office at a time was common enough at Carthage when Aristotle wrote, and more than likely was a long-established usage. It is just as conceivable, though, that in the first centuries of the republic there were already two sufetes: one could take the field as military commander when necessary, while the other remained at home in charge of civil affairs. Limiting their functions to civil and home affairs would then have occurred later. When they do appear in Greek and Roman accounts, they are running the affairs of the republic in consultation with the senate, and – in later times at least – judging civil lawsuits.

  Sufetes is Livy’s Latin version of Punic (shophetim, shuphetim or softim), a title often mentioned in inscriptions at Carthage and other Phoenician colonies which had the same office. It is equivalent to the biblical shophetim, conventionally translated ‘judges’. The difficulty with tracing developments is Greek writers mentioning a Carthaginian ‘king’ or ‘kings’ but never a ‘sufete’. Herodotus describes Hamilcar, the general who fought the Sicilian Greeks in 480, as ‘king of the Carthaginians’ – ‘because of his valour’, he explains – while Diodorus reports how in 410 the city chose its leading man Hannibal, who was ‘at that time king by law’, as general for another Sicilian offensive. For another Sicilian war in 396 they ‘appointed Himilco king by law’; and did so again with Mago in 383, except that this time Diodorus leaves out the term ‘by law’. Himilco was already in Sicily as general, so Diodorus’ report of his appointment as ‘king by law’ is best explained as Himilco’s being elected sufete for the new year while continuing in the Sicilian command. The other men too, with the possible exception of Hamilcar, can hardly be anything but sufetes: how a sufete could also be a general will be explored later.16

  Obvious family pride appears in inscriptions that list a dedicator’s ancestors going back three or more generations. One document naming the two sufetes together with two generals in an unknown year includes six generations of the forefathers of one general, Abdmilqart, and three for the other, Abd’rš (Abdarish). On another, a man named Baalay lists five generations, of whom the earliest had been a sufete and his son perhaps a rab (another office, soon to be looked at). Women also commemorated their forebears, as does Arishat daughter of Bodmilqart son of Hannibaal on a votive stele. Rather overdoing it, in turn, was one Pn ‘of the nation of Carthage’, dedicator of a stele at Olbia in Sardinia, who lists no fewer than sixteen forefathers – a family record going back a good four hundred years. None of these, nor Pn himself, held an office, but this vividly illuminates the ancestral claims that ambitious men might parade in their political careers. A candidate who could point to sufetes or at least ‘great ones’ (senators) among his forebears surely found it an advantage.

  When Aristotle describes the ‘kings’ (basileis) as the city’s chief magistrates, who act in consultation with the Carthaginian senate, he plainly means elected office-holders. Nor does he suggest anywhere that a titular king still existed too, even though he discusses other official bodies like the senate and the ‘pentarchies’. In a famous confrontation with Roman envoys in 218, the Carthaginian spokesman in the senate is termed the basileus by Polybius: this must mean a sufete. An inscription in Greek, set up by a Carthaginian named Himilco (‘Iomilkos’ in the text) on the Aegean island of Delos in 279, terms him a basileus too, so the term was not simply a literary usage. Again, it should mean that Himilco was or had been a sufete.17

  The sufete is sometimes called a ‘praetor’ by Latin writers (including Livy once), borrowing the title of Roman magistrates with judicial authority, and once or twice a ‘king’ as in Greek writers – or even a ‘consul’, the name of the highest office at Rome. It may be that the sufete or sufetes began under the kings as judicial officers, hence their title; then acquired greater authority over time, until the king was sidelined and eventually not replaced (though some scholars think that the office survived at least in name). His replacement by elected sufetes may well have come about from pressure, if nothing worse, by Carthage’s council of elders or senate, whose predecessors at Phoenician cities had always been a powerful makeweight to the monarchs.

  ADIRIM: THE SENATE OF CARTHAGE

  Phoenician kings always had to collaborate with their city’s leading men, who from early times formed a recognised council of advisors as the ‘mighty ones’ or ‘great ones’ (’drm, approximately pronounced adirim). At Carthage this became the senate, as the Romans called it; in Greek terminology the gerousia. As just noted, the ‘great ones’ quite possibly were responsible for the effective end of the monarchy, wi
th the sufeteship as a limited substitute for it – like the consulship at Rome – which at least some leading men could look forward to holding turn by turn. Whether they were always elected by the whole citizen body, or at first by the ’drm with popular election developing later, is not known. Nor how senators themselves were recruited, or even how many there were at any time, although two or even three hundred is likely as we shall see. The building where they usually met seems to have been close to the great market square (agora to Greeks) which was the hub of business and administration, but we do read of two meetings held in the temple of ‘Aesculapius’, in other words of Eshmun on Byrsa hill.

  The senate had varied and broad authority, to judge from our sources. As usual the glimpses are given by writers from Herodotus in the 5th Century to much later ones like Appian and Justin, so that generalisations have to be fairly careful. Again Aristotle gives the fullest sketch. The ‘kings’ convened and consulted the body on affairs of state; if they unanimously agreed on what action to take, this could be taken without any need to put the issue before the assembled citizens. On the other hand, some decisions taken by sufetes and senate in agreement could still be put before the assembly, which had the power to reject them. Again, if both sufetes – or by implication even one – disagreed with the senate on a matter, the question would go to the assembly. How often this happened, and what questions might be put to the people, the philosopher avoids stating.

  What procedures and protocols governed the senate’s debates is not known, nor is it clear whether changes in its protocol and range of functions took place over the centuries. Polybius does claim that by the time of the Second Punic War the republic had become ‘more democratic’ – something he is not enthusiastic about, even hinting that it cost Carthage the war – which would suggest that in earlier ages senate and sufetes had seldom needed to involve the assembly in decision-making. His claim, however, seems overdone. During and after the war the senate can be found directing diplomatic, financial and even military measures, just it had done for centuries. And on the other hand, Aristotle sees fit to describe the Carthage of his own time, a century before Polybius, first as a blend of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (with aristocracy dominant), and later as ‘democratically ruled’: perhaps a clumsy generalisation, but a noteworthy one.