Destroy Carthage
DESTROY CARTHAGE!
Books by Alan Lloyd
antiquity
Destroy Carthage!
The Taras Report
Marathon
general history
The Spanish Centuries
(Espana a Traves de los Siglos)
The Year of the Conqueror
(American title: The Making of the King 1066)
biography
King John
(American title: The Maligned Monarch)
The Wickedest Age
(American title: The King Who Lost America)
Franco
military history
The Scorching of Washington
The Drums of Kumasi
The War in the Trenches
The Hundred Years War
The Zulu War
novels
The Eighteenth Concubine
DESTROY CARTHAGE!
The Death Throes of an Ancient Culture
ALAN LLOYD
BOOK CLUB ASSOCIATES
LONDON
Copyright © 1977 by Alan Lloyd
First published 1977 by Souvenir Press Ltd,
43 Great Russell Street, London WCiB 3 PA
and simultaneously in Canada
This edition published 1977 by
Book Club Associates
By arrangement with Souvenir Press
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the Copyright owner
ISBN o 285 62235 8
Printed in Great Britain by
Bristol Typesetting Co. Ltd,
Barton Manor, St Philips, Bristol
Contents
BOOK ONE
12
Dionysius 80
16
BOOK TWO
25
Repulse 154
BOOK ONE
Surveying
the Bay of Carthage from the modern
Plage
d'Annibal,
it is difficult to believe that here, in its age, stood the
greatest merchant centre of the western world; that from the
sands of that tawny, inert shore sailors sought mysterious
Thulsa in the northern mists, traders braved the Sahara for
Pigmy gold, generals marched turreted elephants to distant
wars.
Few cities of such stature have disappeared so profoundly,
more violently. The relics are minimal. This is the story of that
disappearance, of the extinction at a stroke of a civilized, thriving state; the history that lingers on a haunted coast. Among
the ghosts to be discovered as the tale unfolds, not the least
assertive may be the first.
Two centuries before Christ, the plateau of Maktar, in present-day Tunisia, was the territory of Masinissa, king of the
Numidians. To the writers of antiquity, Masinissa was a barbarian, a cunning savage with a varnish of culture acquired
from neighbouring Carthage and the Romans. His prurience, an
alleged distinction of the Numidians, was catalogued. He was
said to have fathered forty-one sons among his progeny, the last
in the eighty-seventh year of a prodigious life.
Masinissa's ambition matched his procreative energies. In his
youth, Numidia comprised two kingdoms, the Massylian to the
east, with a royal town at Zama - identified with Jama, north
of Maktar - and a western realm based on Cirta, now Constantine. Masinissa coveted Cirta from an early age. Scarcely beyond boyhood, the precocious prince led his followers,
sanguinary horsemen who rode their barbary ponies bareback,
into western Numidia, first driving its ruler, Syphax, to seek
refuge with the Moors; somewhat later, seizing his capital and
his wife. At the same time, Masinissa flirted dangerously with Mediterranean power politics. The skill and ferocity of his mounted
warriors gave his friendship a value to greater states. In the
stormy relationship between Rome and Carthage, he switched
alliances according to the run of luck, fighting for one then the
other with equal zest. Each wooed him, yet, with justification,
distrusted him. Dismayed by his passion for Sophonisba, the
nubile Carthaginian wife he took from Syphax, the Romans induced him to engineer her suicide. For the major powers, confrontation was a grim game with heavy costs. For Masinissa, it
meant profit, the fulfilling of his appetites.
His kingdom prospered wonderfully. Its treasury multiplied,
its army grew, it even obtained a fleet. Despite turbulent chieftains, whom he checked with a heavy hand, Masinissa increasingly turned his eyes to distant parts. His envoys made
overtures in Egypt and Libya. Perhaps his dreams were pan-
African. Certainly, his subjects, once a plundering tribe of the
meseta, became an organized and flourishing people: a force,
some feared, which might unite the entire north of the subcontinent.
As the 3rd century
bc -
a century of desperate violence in
the western Mediterranean - approached its conclusion, Masinissa was in his prime. Below his native plateau, on the gulf of
Tunis, a hundred miles or so from Zama, lay Carthage, the
templed queen of Africa, her lands and associates established
on the coastal plain. Masinissa envied her markets, her busy
harbours, her influence and knowledge.
Beyond the city, across the sea Carthaginian traders had
once called their own, republican Rome, still shaken by Hannibal's aggression, stubbornly reaffirmed her role of expansion
in world affairs: a role Masinissa was ready to utilize. These
were the fulcrums of his strategy; the first, rich in the resourcefulness and enterprise of her Phoenician heritage, a gem worth
all the stones in Numidia; the second, a steely tool which might
yet chip the prize from bedrock into its neighbour's lap. To the east, Greece and Egypt continued their long decline,
secondary on Masinissa's skyline, while westward, Spain, the
uncivilized object of colonial rivalry, marked the end of the
ancient world
-
at least for all save a tiny band of daring men.
It was from the settlements in Spain that the latest clash of the
great powers, the Second Punic War of history, had spread to
Italy and, now in its final throes, swayed to Africa.
Two years before the new century, the dust of advancing
armies accented the Numidian marches. A Roman column was
moving from the coast up the valley of the river Bagrades
(Medjerda), penetrating the elevated hinterland behind Carthage. At its head rode the brilliant Publius Cornelius Scipio, distinguished later as 'Africanus Major.' His father and uncle had
died in Spain campaigning against the Carthaginians. Scipio,
succeeding to their command, had been conspicuous in wresting
the initiative from Hannibal.
Simultaneously, Hannibal himself, returned from Italy, advanced to intercept the foe. The battle which followed their
conjunction near Zama was preceded by a celebrated interview.
Bringing the rival generals face to face for the first time, the
meeting captured the imagination of the ancient world. 'Mutual
admiration struck them dumb,' exclaimed Livy. 'They gazed at
each other in silence.'
Hannibal Barca, reflected in numismatic portraiture as
craggily handsome with a curly mane, already a byword for
audacity, was willing to make peace. Hope of winning the war
with Rome had faded, but an awesome reputation supported the
proposition he essayed. A Roman defeat now would blemish his
rival's fame. Better an amicable compromise, he declared, than
to gamble for more on the battlefield.
Scipio, whose thin-lipped, shaven-headed effigy suggests a
practical and penetrating intellect, was a move ahead. Numerically, the armies were balanced, though Hannibal alone possessed elephants, the heavy assault vehicles of the age. Scipio's
confidence reposed in a pact with Masinissa whereby the king's
mounted warriors would provide the Romans with cavalry
ascendancy. Unfortunately, Masinissa had been occupied chastising a factious chief, and was late arriving with his horsemen. Ostensibly
disposed to negotiate, Scipio was more concerned to kill time
than reach a settlement. Masinissa's approach assured the
failure of the interview. The battle of Zama was fought next
day.
It was autumn in the year 202
b.c.
Scipio deployed his legions in three lines, the companies
dressed by the front with passages between them from van to
rear. As Hannibal's elephants, eighty-strong, lumbered forward,
many passed harmlessly into the corridors, to be harried by
missile-hurling skirmishers. Others, inadequately trained for
warfare, ran amok at the blare of battle. Prepared for the contingency with lethal bolts to drive into the heads of their ungainly mounts, the handlers found it hard to effect instant
execution. Threshing and squealing, the maddened animals
stampeded into Hannibal's cavalry which, disordered, was pursued from the field by Masinissa's horse.
The contest devolved on infantry. With neither side abundant in seasoned troops, Hannibal was handicapped additionally by the heterogeneity of his force. The Carthaginian army
- matching the enemy at about 40,000 men - comprised a
mixed bag of Africans, Ligurians, Gauls, Macedonians, Balearic
Islanders and others, the majority mercenaries. Apart from
some veterans brought back from Italy, they were unaccustomed to campaigning together, prone to factional distrust.
Hannibal chose to hold his seasoned men in reserve. His
front line, following the elephants, contained Gauls, Ligurians,
Balearians and Moors. They attacked boldly, but Scipio had
closed his companies behind the tuskers, and the enemy recoiled, mauled, from a solid wall of legionaries. There was
momentary confusion as the Carthaginian lines coalesced. The
second comprised levies from the city and its territories.
Angered by the repulse of the mercenaries, the home troops
drove them roughly to either flank.
At this juncture, Hannibal and Scipio brought their units
into single line. With the cavalry absent in flight and pursuit,
the opposing infantry surged together across ground slippery
with blood to form an attenuated mass of struggling warriors. The conflict was desperate. Then Masinissa reappeared.
Having abandoned the mounted chase, the Numidian
wheeled his foam-flecked cavalcade round the battling host
and, accompanied by Scipio's cavalry captain, Laelius, charged
Hannibal's infantry in the rear. It was the decisive stroke.
Shocked and divided, the Carthaginian force disengaged and
fled leaving heavy losses on the battlefield. Roman victory was
complete.
As Scipio advanced on an apprehensive Carthage, he was
forestalled by a deputation of citizens bearing olive branches
and ready to receive his terms. His immediate requirements
were soldierly. All Roman deserters and prisoners were to be
handed over; all war elephants to be surrendered; all naval
vessels given up except for ten galleys. Scipio demanded money
and grain for the Roman troops.
Then came the indemnity. Carthage was held liable for a
sum of ten thousand talents of silver payable by instalments
over fifty years. For a city of vast resilience and wealth-accruing capability, it was hard but not ruinous. Worse were the
territorial clauses. On the one hand, Carthage was to surrender
all lands which had ever belonged to Masinissa and his ancestors, nomadic tribes whose wanderings raised issues of
dispute.
On the other hand, she was forbidden to make war, even in
Africa, without Roman consent. Whether this precluded resort to arms in defence of her own boundaries was ambiguous,
but it certainly ruled out retributive or pre-emptive movements across them. Thus, plainly exposed to contentious claims,
Carthage no longer had the right of direct redress. With such
despair did some regard these terms that there was talk of continued resistance. A certain Gisco, arguing this course in the senate at
Carthage, was manhandled by those who saw the uselessness
of further fighting. For a contrary reason, Rome lacked unanimity over the treaty. The consul, then Cnaeus Lentulus, opposed a settlement, loath to let Scipio get all the glory. If the
war continued, at least in formality, Lentulus might himself
gain credit for delivering the
coup de grace,
or exacting even
tougher terms.
