#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.