#38 Songs in the Key of V, part 4
Carthage, the Punic Wars and Malta
iv
Carthaginian Malta
In 814 BC the Phoenicians founded Carthage (from the Phoenician Kart-Hadasht, “New City”) on the north coast of what’s now Tunisia. According to legend, Tyre’s Queen Dido asked for land from a tribe local to that part of North Africa; they offered her as much as an oxhide could cover. Displaying the cunning for which her countrymen were (in)famous, she cut the oxhide into strips and laid out the perimeters of the new city.
Thanks to its highly strategic location guarding the sea between Sardinia and Sicily, and the effort, skill and expense that went into its construction, Carthage prospered, in time transcending its status as a colony to become a formidable Mediterranean power in its own right. The Carthagians came to dominate the other Phoenician settlements, and set up colonies of their own. All these towns and cities and the trade they facilitated they protected with a powerful fleet of war galleys; the ships wintered in an impressive artificial harbour at their capital.
The rise of Carthage coincided with an age of Greek colonial expansion. With their population increasing beyond what the land could easily support the Greeks, like the Phoenicians, pushed westward. Naturally this brought their civilisation and Phoenicia / Carthage into conflict. As both peoples settled on Sicily that island became the focal point of the struggle. In essence it was a conflict between Syracuse, which rose to become the most powerful Greek city-state in the Mediterranean, and Carthage, with the respective allies of the two powers also weighing in. In 580 BC Syracuse tried to conquer Motya and Panorma (Palermo), cities of the Phoenicians, prompting the Carthaginians to come to the latter’s aid. A century later there was renewed fighting on Sicily, and Carthage occupied Malta in support of their operations on and around the larger island. Here’s Dennis Castillo in his excellent The Maltese Cross: A Strategic History of Malta:
The Carthaginians allowed their Phoenician compatriots a form of partial home rule, including a senate and an assembly of the people as well as the authority to mint local coinage. Many historians believe that the increased number of rock-cut tombs in the center of the island is evidence that Carthage increased the population of Malta. What is certain is that under Carthage, settlement moved inland and towns were founded in the centers of both Malta and Gozo. These are modern Mdina in Malta and modern Victoria in Gozo, then known as Gaulos. Hamilcar Barca is thought to have resided in Malta in the vicinity of modern Rabat at a place known today as Hal-Barka, and some have argued that the great Carthaginian general Hannibal might have been born in Malta as well.
During the Carthaginian period, port facilities at Grand Harbour, which faces northeast toward Sicily, were constructed. In the eighteenth century, during drainage work on the silted-up inner basin at Marsa, the remains of this ancient port were found. These included large warehouses and a wharf that was approximately 1,400 yards long. Further excavations in 1947 and 1959 revealed additional wharves and storehouses in the same area.
While Carthage grew mighty, the fortunes of the Phoenicians’ proud home cities declined. For much of the 1st millennium BC these cities laboured as vassal states of aggressive land empires, a succession of them: the Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonians, the Persians and the empire of Alexander the Great. Periodic revolts against their imperial masters always ended in defeat for the Phoenicians, although enduring a 13-year siege did secure Tyre some concessions from the Neo-Babylonians in the 6th century BC. A fateful event occured in the 4th century during Alexander’s campaign of conquest. The Tyrians refused the Macedonian king’s request to visit New Tyre’s Temple of Melkart in order to sacrifice to Hercules, recognising in it a ploy to occupy that part of the city. They suggested he sacrifice in Old Tyre, a proposal Alexander naturally rejected. That part of the city, which was on the mainland, was undefended and strategically worthless. New Tyre, built on an island, was heavily fortified and a stronghold for the Persian fleet. As a siege was in the offing, Tyre evacuated most of her women and children (no point risking good sacrificial victims!). They departed for Carthage. The former colony also promised to send reinforcements, which never came. Alexander besieged Tyre for seven months. It was a bitter, grinding struggle which concluded with the Greeks breaking into New Tyre; there they massacred 6000 of the defenders. On the beach they crucified a further 2000. 30000 were sold into slavery. The only Tyrians spared were the king and his family; mercy was also shown to some Carthaginian pilgrims sheltering in the Temple of Melkart. The upshot of this disaster for Tyre was that Carthage became the undisputed leader of the Phoenician, or as the Romans called it, the Punic world.
In the western Mediterranean, Sicily remained the chief flashpoint. War erupted several times in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, with fluctuating fortunes for both sides and Sicilian real estate changing hands repeatedly. As regards Malta’s role in this ongoing hot / cold war, it may have been more complex than one might think. Though the highly developed northern harbour would obviously have supported the Carthaginian war effort, an interesting theory concerning a site near the southern harbour of Marsaxlokk has been put forward. Pablo Gonzalez conjectures that the Temple of Astarte at Tas-Silġ may have been a neutral zone during the conflict. There’s a satisfying link back to the Temple Builders here, this place of worship having been a renovation of a prehistoric temple. Here’s Castillo on the theory advanced by Gonzalez:
Basing his argument on the abundance of Greek artifacts at the temple, from both Sicily and Italy, he argues that the Temple of Astarte was an international sanctuary where both Punic and Greek visitors could visit under the protection of the goddess. Malta was thus not only a military base but also a safety valve for the interaction between two cultures, Punic and Greek, a bridge between North and South.
It’s interesting to recall how in Pynchon’s novel, we’re told V. was once a beneficent spirit:
She nursed the shipwrecked St. Paul—as Nausicaa and Odysseus—taught love to every invader from Phoenician to French. Perhaps even to the English…
Is Pynchon here alluding to Gozo’s mythical identification with Ogygia, the island of Odysseus’s captivity? Perhaps, although that leaves unexplained the author’s mention of Nausicaa—she’s encountered by the resourceful Greek on an entirely different island, Scheria aka Phaeacia.
v
The First Punic War
Rome truly entered the stage of History with the three Punic Wars, an extended period of conflict which saw it transform from rising republic to one of the Mediterranean’s mightiest imperial powers.
As often happens, it was the belligerents’ involvement in the affairs of a third party that sparked the first war. Richard Miles in Carthage Must Be Destroyed, his history of the North African state:
The catalyst for hostilities between Carthage and Rome was a group of troublesome mercenaries who had decided to make Sicily their home once their services were no longer required by Agathocles [a Greek tyrant of Syracuse]. The Mamertines, or ‘followers of Mamers’ (the Italian god of war), had originally hailed from Campania, but on demobilization they had made a new home for themselves by massacring the citizens of the Sicilian city of Messana and taking over their wives and property. However, by the mid 260s they were themselves under sustained pressure from Syracuse, which was enjoying a resurgence under the dynamic leadership of a new populist leader, Hiero. In 265, with their future in serious jeopardy, the Mamertines hedged their bets by appealing for assistance not only to Carthage but also to Rome.
Dennis Castillo describes the results of this in a brief sketch of the whole episode, offering a slightly different account of the Mamertines’ diplomatic strategy:
In 288 BCE, Campanian mercenaries hired by the Greeks seized the town of Messana on the straits separating Sicily from Italy. These mercenaries, who called themselves Mamertines (derived from the Oscan name for Mars, the god of war), used Messana as a base for raiding nearby towns. They, in turn, were attacked by Hiero of Syracuse. The Mamertines turned to Carthage for help against Syracuse and received a Carthaginian garrison. Other Mamertines thought this was a mistake and requested Roman assistance against the Carthaginians. Rome feared a Carthaginian foothold so close to its territory. The Romans eventually agreed to protect the Mamertines and went to war with Carthage in 264 BCE, beginning the First Punic War.
That conflict was protracted, lasting 23 years. The full Punic War period continued until 146 and involved a total of 43 years of warfare. Lest this deep dive end up being even longer than that, I’ll try to be brief. But if I can’t be brief, I’ll try to be interesting.
The First Punic War started very badly for the Carthagians. Messana quickly fell to the Romans, Hiero joined Rome, and within a couple of years the Carthagians had lost another major Sicilian city, Agrigentum. Dominant on land, Rome then set about closing the naval power gap. A yawning gap at that point, since the Carthagians were the principal naval power of the western Mediterranean while the Romans completely lacked a fleet. According to Polybius, the latter built one for themselves with remarkable speed, using a beached Carthagian vessel as the basis for their design. Though the Romans’ lack of experience with naval combat spelled defeat for them in the first engagements, they turned things around by introducing the corvus, a boarding bridge with a spike at the end that could be dropped onto Carthaginian ships. This allowed the superior Roman troops to board their enemies’ ships and seize them. Rome thus achieved her first naval victory in 260 at Mylae, where 143 of her own ships faced 130 Carthaginian. Carthage suffered 14 ships sunk and 31 captured.
The Maltese islands, previously protected by Carthaginian naval hegemony, were now vulnerable. By 257 the Romans were ready to move against Carthage’s naval base at what is now Grand Harbour, but first they decided to engage the Carthaginian fleet near the Lipari Islands (the islanders were allies of Carthage) north of Sicily. Rome’s aim was to isolate the remaining Carthaginian forces on Sicily.
Winning another decisive naval victory (14 enemy ships destroyed), the Romans then turned their attention to Malta, landing an army there and proceeding to devastate the islands. Roman poet Gnaeus Naevius (264-195) describes the raid in Bellum Punicum. This epic poem recounts the First Punic War, in which Naevius served. While most of the text is lost, fortunately the part about Malta is not:
The Roman force crossed Malta, burned the island which had been untouched before then, destroyed it, and laid waste to it, and made spoil of the enemies' goods.
Here is a theme we see repeated throughout Malta’s history: the Maltese being subjected to great sufferings in wartime, a test of faith and endurance they bear with stoic dignity. Pynchon, to my mind, celebrated the fortitude of the Maltese in chapter 11 of V.:, Fausto’s confessions, a section I’ll examine in detail, along with Malta’s key role in the 1940-45 war in the Mediterraean, in the last part of this deep dive.
The Roman consul who’d led the plundering of Malta, Regulus, was rewarded with a triumph. That is, he and his army were recalled to Rome to ride into the city in celebration of their victory, and we can assume they showed looted Maltese treasures to the cheering crowds.
In 255 it looked like the Carthaginians were about to be defeated—Roman armies invaded North Africa and besieged Carthage. A Greek mercenary general turned out to be Carthage’s saviour, at least temporarily: his army routed the Romans and the war continued. Hamilcar, of the noble Barca family which could trace its lineage back to Dido, played a prominent part in this second phase of the war, commanding the Carthaginian armies on Sicily. His more famous son Hannibal was born during this time.
The 14 years that followed the failed siege of Carthage were very costly for both sides, but ended finally with Carthage surrendering. Castillo recounts the conclusion of this First Punic War:
The treaties which brought the twenty-three-year war to a conclusion ceded to Rome all of Carthaginian Sicily and the Lipari Islands to the north of Sicily, and compelled Carthage to freely restore Roman captives while having to pay ransom for their own compatriots, refrain from attacking Syracuse and its allies, and give Rome 1,000 talents immediately and 2,200 more over ten years. As for the Maltese Islands, they were retained by Carthage. With Rome in control of Sicily and Carthage struggling to rebuild after the devastating war, Malta was now on the front line between the two powers.
vi
The Second Punic War
The first sequel conflict saw Hannibal—in his twenties but already a general—enter the stage. It also produced another Roman attack on Malta.
Hannibal had been born in 247. According to legend, when he was a young boy his father Hamilcar had held Hannibal over a fire and made him swear to never to be a friend of Rome. True or not, the son certainly never looked likely to extend the hand of friendship to the Romans, quite the opposite. It was the 28-year-old Hannibal’s actions—sacking the pro-Roman Iberian city of Saguntum in 219—that led to the Second Punic War. The Romans formally announced the recommencement of hostilities the following year. The Carthaginians decided to fight on two fronts. Hannibal would march his army from Hispania overland to cross the Alps, and then invade Italy. A Punic fleet of 55 quinqueremes, with several thousand troops aboard, would attempt to recover Sicily and raid the Italian coast.
The fleet action did not go well, partly due to bad luck: a storm dispersed one of the fleet’s two task forces, which then became easy prey for Syracusan ships from Messana. Three Punic ships were lost and prisoners were taken. The Carthagians’ plans, which depended on the element of surprise, were thus compromised. The second task force’s would-be surprise attack on Lilybaeum failed, leaving the fleet as a whole defeated.
This left Malta, the closest Carthaginian possession to Roman territory, in a precarious position in 218. There was a garrison of 2,000 on the islands, commanded by Hamilcar son of Gisco. But that was woefully inadequate to face Roman general Sempronius’s force of over 26,000. Aware of Malta’s strategic importance, Sempronius wasted no time—he set sail from Sicily with a large portion of his army and landed on the islands. The Carthaginians offered no resistance, but scholarly opinion is divided as to why. There is but one extant source for the invasion, Livy, but his various translators interpret his account differently, giving us one of those ambiguities of history so central to Pynchon’s thinking. In some translations we have the Carthaginians surrendering, while others have them being “delivered up” to the Romans by the Maltese. It’s interesting that another writer, Cicero, in places refers to the Maltese as Roman allies, though it may be a later period of the Second Punic War that he has in mind. Perhaps, then, the Maltese disliked their Carthaginian rulers and overthrew them. Or it may have been that Hamilcar was disinclined to surrender and the natives made a pragmatic choice to avoid their islands being devastated again. Alternatively, they remained loyal to the Carthaginians, and the latter simply decided to give themselves up.
Whatever the reason for the garrison’s capture, there is no doubt the loss of their naval base on Malta was yet another serious setback for the Carthaginians, perhaps the most serious yet. However, thanks to Hannibal and his army on the continent, the war now began to go Carthage’s way. After reaching Italy, the great general inflicted there a demoralising series of defeats on the Romans. This included the worst debacle Rome had ever suffered on the battlefield, or would ever suffer. The Battle of Cannae in 216 saw the Carthaginian cavalry outflank the Roman army, leading to the loss of almost 50,000 Romans out of an army of 86,000.
Hannibal’s spectacular run of success led many cities in the region to switch sides and throw their lot in with Carthage. Even Syracuse was among them. The death of the loyal Hiero in 215 led to a civil war between the pro-Roman and pro-Carthage factions, with the latter emerging victorious after 2 years. However, the roster of turncoats did not include Melita, which was what the Romans called Malta’s capital city, founded, as noted earlier, by the Carthaginians (the main island they also called Melita). The Maltese remained loyal to their new masters.
Reading up on the Punic Wars can be an eye-opening experience. I was startled by a realisation about the sophisticated and grand-scale warfare we tend to think of as modern, that is, as being unique to the past three centuries or so. What I’d not grasped previously was that warfare of a similar scale and complexity had been seen in the world before, 2,000 years prior. Consider the sheer size of the theatre of operations during the Punic Wars: the whole of the Western Mediterranean, including Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, southern Gaul, Spain and North Africa. There’s also both sides’ use of combined land / sea operations and the coordination of war efforts with allies, including allies from outside the main theatre. Following his victory at Cannae, Hannibal was allied with Philip of Macedon for some years.
Accounts of these wars can also surprise in a very different way: by underscoring how dissimilar, in some respects, the centuries before Christ were to the Christian period, let alone to our time. In part 3 of Songs in the Key of V I described how the Phoenicians and Carthaginians may well have practiced child sacrifice. A number of other, similarly unusual beliefs and practices shaped how both the Carthaginians and the Romans of the Republic period waged war.
For example, generals were highly receptive to signs and portents, such as spells of unusual weather. Such messages from the gods might lead them to chance a risky attack, or call off one that earlier they’d judged likely to succeed.
Polytheist religion and mythology were important in other ways too. In written accounts, and on coinage, great leaders were presented as incarnations of mythical figures. For instance, archaeologists have found coins depicting Hannibal as Hercules. Such casting (in both senses) was an important part of propaganda efforts, though presumably it also had a religious or magical purpose more difficult for us to grasp.
Somewhat easier to get a handle on is the belief both sides had about the importance of winning and retaining the gods’ favour. Pleasing a god, typically through sacrifice, might bring them over to one’s own side. But were an enemy more adept at this one might become the target of a god’s hostilty. Due to a series of disqueting events, this is what many Romans came to believe had happened to them. Richard Miles in Carthage Must Be Destroyed:
…in Frusino a hermaphrodite child was born the same size as a four-year-old. Diviners summoned from Etruria announced that the monstrous infant should be banished from Roman territory without any contact with the earth. After being placed in a box, therefore, the unfortunate child was taken out to sea and thrown overboard.
..
Soon after events at Frusino, the temple of Juno Regina on Rome’s Aventine Hill was struck by lightning. In response to her apparent anger, the goddess was propitiated with a solid-gold basin, paid for out of the dowries of the matrons of Rome, and celebrated with solemn sacrifices. Juno’s implacable hostility to the Romans (and favour for the Carthaginians) became a very familiar theme in later Roman literature, but this was the first public acknowledgement of that supposed enmity. Contemporary evidence suggests that Hannibal was at least partly responsible for the development of this tradition. While later Roman writers would identify Juno and Tanit, in this period an association had already been drawn in central Italy between Iuni, the Etruscan version of Juno, and the Punic goddess Astarte (on the Pyrgi Tablets). On at least two occasions, Hannibal performed sacred rites at Lake Avernus, a volcanic-crater lake in Campania, widely thought to be the gateway to the underworld and sacred to Avernus, god of death, the husband of the goddess Juno Averna. While it seems likely that Hannibal was worshipping Astarte at Avernus (or perhaps her divine consort Melqart), the Romans may have perceived his actions as an attempt to win over Juno to the Carthaginian cause. The religious rituals conducted at the temple of Juno Regina, therefore, once again point to the success of Hannibal’s assault upon the sacred landscape of Italy.
Although Hannibal continued to enjoy military success—he occupied most of southern Italy for fifteen years, with Capua as his base—he wasn’t able to deliver the killing blow. He marched on Rome with a sizeable army but, after riding up to the Colline Gate in the company of 2,000 Numidian horsemen (but a portion of his entire force), was uncertain whether to attempt an assault. A colourful detail is included in some accounts. Hannibal supposedly learned that the very land on which his army was camped had just been sold, there having been no shortage of Roman buyers—such was the Romans’ assurance that the Carthaginian army posed no real threat to the capital. Livy claims Hannibal responded by ordering a herald to auction off all the financiers’ pitches around the Roman forum.
However, Hannibal finally decided against an assault. It appears to have been the combination of an ill omen (severe hailstorms on three consecutive days) and his lack of siege equipment that made up his mind. The general often had to wage war with fewer resources than was ideal. It seems his political masters were not willing to extend to him all the assistance he asked for—sources mention that Carthage’s support for Hannibal was grudging. The evidence suggests the North African state’s resources were stretched to the limit, which is not surprising given how heavily it relied on mercenaries. It may be that victory over the Romans demanded greater economic might than the gods had seen fit to grant the Carthaginians, child sacrifice or no child sacrifice.
Incidentally, it shouldn’t be assumed that the Romans were above human sacrifice in this period. The first recorded instance of it came in 228 BC, when the Republic was seriously menaced by the Gauls. The same rite was enacted in 216, during Hannibal’s campaign. The Romans decided on it after consulting the oracle of Delphi. The ritual consisted of the burying alive of four people—a Gallic man and woman and a Greek man and woman—in the Forum Boarium. Two centuries later this rite was condemned by Livy as “a sacrifice wholly alien to the Roman spirit.”
Whether that grim ceremony had anything to do with it or not, around 212—6 years in to the 17-year Second Punic War—fortune began to swing back Rome’s way. That was the year Syracuse was captured by the Romans (an event that brought the death of Archimedes, killed, against orders, by a Roman soldier). Also around this time a young superstar general who might prove Hannibal’s equal, Scipio, arose on the Roman side. After driving the Carthaginians out of Spain in 206 when he was just 30, he turned his attention to Africa. Scipio and his army landed in North Africa in 205 and by 203 they had some decisive victories under their belts. In response, Carthage recalled Hannibal and Mago (a brother of Hannibal and another important general) from Italy. The stage was set for the final confrontation, which turned out to be the Battle of Zama. Mago had died from a battle wound at sea, before reaching Africa, so Hannibal faced off against Scipio alone. It could almost have been scripted by Hollywood.
Hannibal had 50,000 troops at his disposal, Scipio 29,000. However, the Roman side was experienced and could, in addition, boast 6,000 well-trained Numidian cavalry, while the Carthagians lacked cavalry entirely, though they did have elephants. In short, the situation did not look that promising for Hannibal. Since most of his infantry were untested, the general lacked the key advantages—battle-hardened troops and a larger cavalry force than his opponent—he’d so often enjoyed in Italy.
Zama was an extremely hard-fought battle, with the infantry evenly matched. The Roman and Numidian mounted troops, though, proved far more effective than the Carthaginian elephants, the beasts being panicky and hard to control. In fact Scipio’s cavalry turned out to be the decisive factor at Zama, securing victory for the Romans. Though many of Hannibal’s famed veterans were killed or captured, the man himself survived to play his part in treaty negotiations. Rome imposed especially harsh conditions on its vanquished foe. Carthage was:
stripped of all of its overseas territories and some of its African ones
required to pay an indemnity of 10,000 talents of silver over 50 years. Hostages were taken to ensure compliance
forbidden to possess war elephants and had its fleet restricted to ten warships
prohibited from waging war outside Africa and in Africa only with Rome's permission
Hannibal urged the Council of Elders to accept this treaty as relatively lenient, and despite longstanding tensions between the elders and the general, they did. The agreement was ratified in the spring of 201 BC. Carthage was clearly now politically subordinate to Rome. The victorious Roman general returned home to a triumph and henceforth was known as “Scipio Africanus".
vii
Hannibal’s last years and the Third Punic War
With peace having been secured, albeit on onerous terms, Hannibal opted to enter Carthaginian politics. He was elected to the office of Sufet, a leadership role that functioned like that of a chief magistrate. In that capacity he set about tackling endemic corruption, enacting political and financial reforms without which it would be impossible to pay the Romans what they demanded. Hannibal’s initiatives proved unpopular with the Carthaginian aristocracy. The Council of Elders also worried the former general had his sights set on autocratic rule. Deciding they’d be better off shot of him, a number of elders informed Rome that Hannibal was a secretly negotiating with Antiochus, the Seleucid king. The Seleucid Empire, which was not on friendly terms with Rome, was one of the successor states to Alexander the Great’s vast empire. Although the claim may well have been untrue, it did ironically lead to Hannibal going into exile in 195 and seeking refuge in the Seleucid Empire. He travelled to Tyre, Carthage’s mother city, then on to Antioch and finally to Ephesus, where Antiochus had his court. What he attempted there shows just how obsessive Hannibal’s enmity towards Rome was—at least the equal of Herbert Stencil’s monomania. Hannibal tried to persuade the King Antiochus to wage war on Rome. His hugely ambitious plan involved inciting a rebellion back in Carthage. The homeland won back, from there he’d lead a new war against the Romans, one he envisaged waging, once again, in Italy. The rebellion was actually attempted but was the dampest of damp squibs, the Carthaginians failing to rise. Naturally, the rest of the plan fell by the wayside, although war did break out between the Seleucids and the Romans in 192. Before that occurred though, there was one more meeting between Hannibal and Scipio, the latter having been sent to Ephesus to discover the king’s attitude and intentions. The old enemies talked of past times, with Scipio asking Hannibal who he regarded as the greatest general in history. Ernle Bradford in his Hannibal:
‘Alexander the Great,’ Hannibal replied, adding that with only a small force he defeated armies many times greater in number than his own, and that he overran the remotest regions of the earth. Asked whom he would put next, Hannibal thought for a moment and said ‘Pyrrhus’ (the King of Epirus who had invaded Italy in 280 B.C.), citing his brilliant judgement in his choice of ground and his careful disposition of his troops. The Roman (and Scipio was clearly seeking for a compliment) pressed on: ‘And the third?’ ‘Myself without doubt.’ Scipio laughed, ‘And what would you have said had you beaten me?’ ‘Then,’ replied the Carthaginian, ‘I would have placed myself first of all commanders.’
This nicely turned compliment no doubt delighted Scipio, which is probably the reason that we have it reported by both Livy and Plutarch.
With the onset of war with Rome, Hannibal served as military adviser to Antiochus, who politely ignored his rather quixotic advice. However, the king did find a role for the ex-general, mustering and preparing a small fleet—Hannibal being popular in the Phoenician cities that would provide many of the ships. Richard Miles:
This Seleucid naval force clashed with the Roman fleet off the coast of Pamphylia in Asia Minor, and for some time the left wing, commanded by Hannibal, managed to hold its own against far more experienced and skilful opponents. Eventually, however, the Seleucid ships were driven back and were effectively blockaded in the port of Side. One can only imagine Hannibal’s shock and sorrow to see Carthaginian ships among the Roman fleet.
The Seleucids held out for another three years, but were eventually defeated at Magnesia in Asia Minor in 189. This set Hannibal adrift again, and he wandered the courts of the Hellenistic East. Though we don’t know his ports of call for sure, there’s anecdotal evidence he visited Crete; he may also have helped build a new city in Armenia. His final refuge, however, is known: Bithynia, a kingdom in north-western Asia Minor. Here he is supposed to have founded another city, a new capital for the kingdom. He later reprised his role as military adviser, lending assistance to Bithynia in its war with Pergamum, a prosperous city in Asia Minor that had become a client of the Roman state. Hannibal developed a tactic that changed the course of the war and secured a victory for Bithynia at sea. Ernle Bradford:
It had occurred to Hannibal that in the semi-open vessels of that time, where the oarsmen were naked and even the marines were only lightly clad, nothing could be more fearsome than the explosion on board of ‘bombs’ of poisonous snakes. The countryside of Bithynia was scoured for them and they were then packed in slithery heaps inside pottery jars. When the two fleets engaged, and the jars bursting on the decks of the opposing ships released their venomous contents, there was widespread panic—and the Bithynians secured their victory.
But Hannibal would be undone by his own ingenuity. The year was sometime between 183 and 181. The travails of their client state alarmed the Romans, who summoned envoys of Prusias, the Bithynian king, to explain his quarrel with Pergamum. Prusias had kept Hannibal’s presence in Bithynia secret, but one of the envoys let the cat out of the bag (or the snake out of the jar). The Roman Senate immediately demanded that Prusias hand Hannibal over, as he was an enemy of the Rome.
When a Roman general, Flaminius, came to Bithynia with troops to drag Hannibal back to Rome, the Carthaginian was ready. He took the poison he always carried on his person. When the Roman soldiers burst into Hannibal’s house, they found Rome’s great nemesis already dead.
Was Hannibal really a son of Malta? If he was, he was surely the island country’s most famous son.
A little over thirty years after Hannibal’s death came the relatively brief, ignoble Third Punic War. In truth, Carthage had already been decisively defeated during the Second Punic War. The Romans fought this last conflict to finally obliterate their old enemy. The reader will recall that the peace terms of the Second Punic War stipulated that Carthage was not to wage war without Rome’s permission. Thus, when, in 149, the Carthaginians finally lost patience with King Masinissa of Numidia—a Roman ally who had long exploited the situation to raid and seize Carthaginians territory with impunity—and sent an army to attack his forces, the consequences were disastrous. Not only did the Punic army suffer defeat at the hands of the Numidians, but Rome also used the breach of the treaty conditions as a pretext to declare war.
A large Roman army duly arrived in Carthaginian territory, commanded by Scipio Aemilianus (Scipio Africanus had been his adopted grandfather). Though the Carthaginians surrended all their weapons, the Romans weren’t to be appeased. They marched to Carthage and commenced to besiege it. Despite the Carthaginians managing to produce some surprises—for instance, having partially rebuilt their fleet, they sent it out to engage the Romans’ ships—, and despite, too, the Romans taking more time to penetrate Carthage’s fortifications than expected, the eventual outcome was never in doubt. In 146 Scipio Aemilianus launched his final assault; over the next few days his men systematically destroyed the city and slaughtered the inhabitants. On the final day, and on that day alone, they took prisoners. These 50,000 people they sold into slavery. Carthaginian territory was annexed by Rome, becoming the Roman province of Africa.
Thus Carthage’s long, proud history was brought to a brutal end. However, the Punic culture would continue in some form, not least on Roman Malta, as we will see in part 5 of Songs in the Key of V.
Sources used:
Castillo, Dennis, The Maltese Cross: A Strategic History of Malta, Praeger Security International, 2006.
Bradford, Ernle, Hannibal, E-Reads, 1981.
Miles, Richard, Carthage Must Be Destroyed, Penguin, 2011.
Kinder, Hermann and Hilgemann, Werner, The Penguin Atlas of World History Volume 1: From Prehistory to the Eve of the French Revolution, Penguin Books, 2004.