Carthage Must Be Destroyed (61 page)

13
The Jeffersonian Encyclopaedia
1900, 305; reproduced in Schmidt 1953, 611 n. 35.

14
Bernal 1987, 350—52.

15
Schmidt 1953, 610–11; Bernal 1987, 352–5.

16
Lancel 1995, 441–4.

17
See Green 1982 for a useful contextualization of
Salammbô
.

18
Sainte-Beuve 1971, 437.

19
Cullingford 1996, 225–7, 234; Lennon 2004, 84–5.

20
Byron,
Don Juan
, 8.23.3–7.

21
See for instance Seamus Heaney’s
North
, published in 1975 (Cullingford 1996, 228–30), Brian Friel’s
Translations
(1980) or Frank McGuinness’s
Carthaginians
1988 (Van Weyenberg 2003).

22
For instance: Emanuel Omoh Esiemokhai,
Iraq the New Carthage: International Law and Diplomacy in the Iraq Crisis
(Ife-Ife, 2003); Richard Gwyn, ‘An iron-fisted foreign policy: Bush’s hard line on Iraq serves notice that no Carthage will be allowed to rise to challenge today’s Rome’ (
Toronto Star
, 18 September 2002). Even works such as Alan Wilkins’s play
Carthage Must be Destroyed
(London, 2007) that made no explicit reference to the Iraq war attracted reviews that made that connection.

23
Schurmann 1998.

24
In this context it is interesting to note the Tunisian journalist Mezri Haddad’s book
Non Delenda Carthago: Carthage ne sera pas détruite
(Monaco, 2002), which attacks the criticism directed at his country by the French press.

25
For the dangers of viewing the Carthaginians as merely passive victims of Roman aggression see Eckstein 2006, 158–76.

26
Rakob 1995, 420ff., 432 ff.

27
Hidden texts = Plutarch
Mor
. 942C; Krings 1991, 654–6. Recently a Carthaginian ‘strongbox’ was found by excavators, although it contained ritual vessels and ochre rather than traces of religious texts (Docter et al. 2006, 67–75). Punic histories = Servius
Aen
. 1.343, 1.738. Roman claims to have used Punic texts = Sallust
Jug
. 17.7. For modern speculation about an official history of Carthage see Huss 1985, 505. One particular Punic inscription (
CIS
i.5510) has been interpreted as a brief historical description of the conclusion of a Carthaginian military campaign against the Greek Sicilian city of Acragas in the winter of 406 BC. For a discussion of this inscription see Schmitz 1994.

28
Pliny,
NH
18.22. Two Greek translations were also independently made of the text (Devillers & Krings 1994, 492).

29
Devillers & Krings 1994, 490.

30
Heurgon 1976.

31
He also wrote a history of the war between Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and the Romans. For a full study of Timaeus see Vattuone 1991.

32
Pearson 1975, 172–8.

33
Pearson 1987, 157–63, 238, 245–50.

34
Diodorus 13.43.6.

35
Ibid. 11.1.4.

36
Ibid. 12.26a–b.

37
Ibid. 20.14.1–7, 13.86.3, 20.65.1.

38
Ibid. 13.3.4.

39
Ibid. 13.57.4–5, 13.86.2–3.

40
Ibid. 13.90.1–6.

41
Hoyos 2003, 212—22; Lancel 1999, 25—8.

42
Livy (21.38.3) had also read the work of Cincius Alimentus, who had actually been a prisoner of Hannibal during the Second Punic War.

43
For studies of Polybius’
Histories
see Champion 2004, Walbank 1957–79.

44
Walbank 1985, 262–79.

45
Ibid., 272, although one of the accusations that Polybius levelled at Timaeus was his own contemptuous treatment of other historians.

46
Walbank 1957—79, I: 63–130; 1985, 77–98; Scuderi 2002, 277–84.

47
Plutarch
Pomp
. 11.3–4.

48
Harden 1939, 12. For other archaeological evidence of the burning down of the city see Docter et al. 2006, 75–6.

49
Lancel 1995, 199–204.

50
Huss 1985, 481—3.

51
Lipiński 1988b, 169–74.

52
Ibid.

53
Dubuisson 1983; Starks 1999, 259–60.

54
Bernal 1987, 352, 355.

55
Like many Punic monuments, the monument has been extensively damaged by earthquakes and later urban development, but enough of it has survived for the building to be painstakingly re-created by archaeologists. The problem that any student of Punic architecture faces is the same as that of the literary scholar: a lack of material. Later Roman urban development and deliberate destruction have left little behind. The few remaining examples that have survived not only ancient but also modern vandalism tend to be located in North Africa on the eastern and western fringes of the Carthaginian territory. For the ongoing controversy over the origins of Leptis Magna, Oea and Sabratha see Longerstay 1995, 828–33. Nor was the Sabratha monument a one-off. A similar structure was excavated a mere 100 metres away from it in Sabratha, and another mausoleum has been found near Oran in western Algeria.

56
Di Vita 1976.

57
For instance the Aeolic style of capital with its scrolled volutes that resembled ram’s horns with a palm leaf in between, which had been long unfavoured in the Greek world, was from the fourth century BC very popular in Punic architecture (Lancel 1995, 311).

58
Clothes = Maes 1989. Language = Thuillier 1982; Lancel 1995, 275–6. Literature = Cornelius Nepos
Hann
. 23.13.2; Dio 13.54.3. Philosophy = Diogenes Laertius
Herillus
7.1.37.3.165; Iamblichus
Pythagorean Life
27, 36.

59
For a study of archaic Greece’s debt to Near Eastern cultures see Burkert 1992.

1
Grayson 1991, 193—223. (Tr. in Melville et al. 2006, 288—9.)

2
The Assyrian king Tiglathpileser I (r. 1114–1076 BC) had marched into Phoenicia and received a vast amount of tribute from the rulers of the city states there (Moscati 1968, 10).

3
Kuhrt 1995, 483—7.

4
Ibid., 473–8 on Assyrian annals and other historiographical sources. Liverani 1979, 297–317 and Reade 1979 on ideology and propaganda in Assyrian art. Kuhrt 1985, 501–23 on Assyrian imperial ideology and empire. Oded 1979 on the extensive use of deportation by Assyrian monarchs.

5
Documents exist from as early as the fifteenth century BC recording how the Egyptian pharaoh Tuthmosis III, conscious of the lack of large trees in his homeland, marched his troops into Phoenicia and set about organizing annual wood shipments back to Egypt (Markoe 2000, 15).

6
Aubet 2001, 6–13; Huss 1985, 5ff.; Gubel 2006, 86–7. It is likely that for the Greeks ‘Phoenicians’ meant the people not just of the Levantine coast but also of the states of northern Syria (Röllig 1992, 93). For recent attempts to distinguish between northern-Phoenician/Syrian and southern-Phoenician enterprises see Fletcher 2004; 2006, 187–92; Peckham 1998. I accept that the coastal cities of northern Syria were also involved in many of the same overseas enterprises as the Levantine states, so I have included them under the Phoenicians’ aegis.

7
Aubet 2001, 144–58; Moscati 1968, 27—9. Some experts have argued that the dialect written and spoken in the northern cities of Byblos and Arvad was noticeably different from the Tyro-Sidonian dialect that predominated in the southern coastal region (Krahmalkov 2001, 7–9).

8
Liverani 1990.

9
Horden & Purcell 2000, 10–11. Harris (2005, 15) doubts the ubiquity of this name in the Near East.

10
Ezekiel 27:4.

11
Frankenstein 1979, 264.

12
Kochavi 1992, 8—13.

13
Aubet 2001, 105–14; Frankenstein 1979, 264–8.

14
Isaiah 23:8; Ezekiel 26:16. Aubet 2001, 145–7.

15
Kochavi 1992, 13–15.

16
For a general study of Phoenician material culture see Markoe 2000, 143–66.

17
Against whom spells dated to the seventh century BC have been found written in Phoenician (Clifford 1990, 58).

18
Aubet 2001, 6–9.

19
Moscati 1968, 83—4; Markoe 2000, 163–4.

20
Aubet 2001, 39–43.

21
2 Samuel, 5:10–11.

22
Josephus
JA
8.50–60.

23
Ibid. 8. 58—60.

24
Ibid. 8. 76—83.

25
Josephus (ibid. 8.57) mentions grain, oil and wine.

26
Frankenstein 1979, 268.

27
Aubet 2001, 43—6.

28
Handy 1994, 3.

29
L’Heureux 1979, 69–79; Handy 1994, 65–102.

30
Clifford 1990, 59–61. She is also known as
Rabbat
(
RBT
), ‘The Lady’ or ‘The Mother’ (Krahmalkov 2000, 441).

31
In the Old Testament, the Tyrian king unsurprisingly earns himself a stern rebuke for attempting to elide the temporal and celestial worlds (Ezekiel 28:1–10).

32
Josephus
JA
8.144–6, citing Menander of Ephesus.

33
Aubet 2001, 150–58; Lipiński 1970. Sacred prostitutes in the temple of Astarte also enacted the ceremony with their clients.

34
Clifford 1990, 61.

35
Ibid., 57.

36
Herodotus 2.44.

37
Nonnus
Dion
. 40.429–68.

38
Ibid., 40.469–534. Other Greek authors also allude to a Tyrian myth that told of how the temple was built at the same time as the city was founded 2,300 years before (Herodotus 2.44).

39
Herodotus 2.44. The emerald pillar is also mentioned in Pliny
NH
37.75. Evidence from Tyre and Tyrian colonies across the Mediterranean strongly suggests that the twin pillars in the temple represented the olive tree and the eternal flames which appear in Nonnus’ foundation tale. Certainly the temple of Melqart at the Tyrian colony of Gades (Cadiz) housed a sacred fire which always burnt and a golden olive tree. It has been argued that the emerald column may have acted as a lighthouse (Katzenstein 1973, 87). However, evidence from other sites suggests that the columns were actually located inside the temple complex.

40
Another Greek myth also attributed the discovery of Tyre’s greatest export, purple dye, to the god. It was said that while the god had been strolling along the shell-strewn seashore with his lover, the nymph Tyros, his dog had bitten into one of these molluscs. Quickly realizing the potential of his pet’s stained canines, Melqart had a robe dyed to a deep purple and presented it to Tyros as a gift. Another version of the same story had the dog brought before Phoenix, the legendary king of Tyre, who decreed that this purple dye should be manufactured and used as a badge of his royal office. Later Tyrians, shrewd businessmen that they were, would do much to market this story by putting a image of the murex and the purple-toothed dog on their coinage (Aubet 2001, 6–9).

41
Cross 1972a, 36–42.

42
Hiram and then Ithobaal would also take the title of ‘king of the Sidonians’ (
CIS
56).

43
Gras, Rouillard & Teixidor 1991, 136.

44
Aubet 2001, 166–75.

45
Ibid., 123–126. Much of this information comes from the Book of Ezekiel, a work written at a considerably later date in the sixth century BC, a period when Tyre no longer ruled the waves. There are sections of the text which many scholars now believe are part of an older document dating to the ninth and eighth centuries BC (Ezekiel 27:9–25; see Aubet 2001, 121–2 for these arguments).

46
Aubet 2001, 50–51.

47
Markoe 1992. Boardman (2004, 154—5) thinks that the perfume enterprise on Rhodes is more likely to be Greek, although he does not take enough account of the Levantine shape of the perfume flasks.

48
Shaw & Shaw 2000; Boardman 1980, 57ff. The considerable quantity of Levantine pottery discovered at the site suggests a great deal of trading activity between Kommos and Phoenicia.

49
Coldstream 2003, 358–66. Röllig 1992, 95 for the idea that these were Phoenicians and other people from the Near East at Athens and Crete, fleeing the conquest of the Assyrian king Sargon II. Burkert 1992, 21–4 for the suggestion that these craftsmen probably travelled over with merchants. On different aspects of the orientalizing phenomenon in the archaic Mediterranean world see the assortment of essays in Riva & Vella (eds.) 2006.

50
Copper ingots as well as considerable quantities of pottery from Cyprus were being exported to the Levantine coast from the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC. Cypriots are also listed as residents of the merchant quarters of Ugarit from this period (Kochavi 1992, 10–13).

51
Aubet 2001, 147. An inscription records a Tyrian governor of ‘Carthage’ on Cyprus (
CIS
56). However, it is as yet unclear whether Kition was in fact this Carthage or another, as yet undiscovered, site.

52
Josephus
JA
8.146. An early-ninth-century Cypriot inscription has been interpreted by one translator as a memorial to a Tyrian commander who boasts how his troops devastated the island (
KAI
30, ll. 1–3). An even earlier inscription, from the twelfth century BC, found near Ghaza proclaims that the god Baal had devastated Cyprus and has been interpreted as showing a history of violent Phoenician intervention on the island (Cross 1980, 2—3).