544
pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-0670022663
The
Mediterranean is, perhaps, one of the most diverse regions of the world, shared
as it is by Africans, Arabs, Greeks, Israelis, Turks, and by Eastern and
Western Europeans. In Carthage Must Be
Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, Richard Miles, the
British historian and archaeologist, studies an era of the ancient
Mediterranean when other, no-less diverse peoples also shared the region: Egyptians,
Gauls Greeks, Libyans, Phoenicians, Romans, and Spaniards all lived around the
sea, both competing and cooperating with one another other. Miles’ study
arguably is the definitive history of another of those peoples: the
Carthaginians.
The
narrative commences with the foundation of the city from Tyre by the legendary
Queen Elissa (or Dido). Over time, the Carthaginians gained control of the area
that today is Tunisia and from that base became a successful trading and
maritime power. A key asset that the Carthaginians exploited early on was the
silver mined in Spain, providing an early foundation for the city’s vast wealth
(the Rio Tinto area southwestern Spain still has huge slag heaps produced by
the mining operations of the time). One of the original reasons for the
expansion into the Western Mediterranean by Tyre was the need to find resources
– such as silver – to feed the “Assyrian Beast”, Tyre’s hated overlord at the
time. However, it was eventually Carthage that inherited these resources and
its “renown would soon come to far outshine the faded luster of its Phoenician
parent”.
The
events of the Punic wars are well known but, briefly, during the First Punic War
Rome successfully transformed itself from a land power into a sea power and
defeated Carthage. Carthage lost Sicily but expanded in Spain to try to make up
for its losses, an expansion that once again brought the two cities into
conflict. Despite Hannibal’s epic march across the Alps and early victories
over Rome, the Romans eventually wore the Carthaginians down, took the war to
Africa, and won. Carthage was left with just its hinterland and a huge war
indemnity. Even then, she was thought to be too much of a threat to Rome, who again
went to war and destroyed the city in 146 BCE after three years of heroic
defense by its citizens. The narrative, however, does not stop at 146 BCE.
Miles looks at Roman “war guilt” and how that worked itself through the
following centuries (for example in the Aeneid
of Virgil). Miles’ narrative of these events is compelling and easy to read but
with a lot more.
Miles
looks at the problems with writing a history of Carthage. There are no Punic
sources, the great library of Carthage having vanished after the destruction of
the city. Instead, the historian needs to rely on hostile Roman and Greek
sources, as well as some pro-Carthaginian Greek sources. Miles does a
convincing job of cutting through the hostile propaganda and constructing a
more even handed and broadly sympathetic picture of the Carthaginians and their
story. He explores the Roman stereotype of “Punic Faith”, the supposed
treachery and deviousness commonly attributed to Carthaginians, as well as
their reputation as cunning and deceitful traders. Miles however shows a
pattern of behavior that is not too different to that of the Romans and Greeks.
The accusations of child sacrifice that the Romans levelled at their Punic foes
are also explored. The conclusion is that these accusations were not without
foundation but are also highly exaggerated. In his study of stereotypes, Miles
looks at Greek and Roman literature as sources. Miles also uses the limited
sources available and archaeological evidence to examine the intellectual,
cultural and religious life of Carthage, a difficult task in view of the
scarcity of sources. The Carthaginians appeared to have worshipped a number of
West Semitic deities such as Baal, Tanit and Melqart. The culture of the city
appears to have been quite syncretic in its final centuries, absorbing much
from the Hellenistic world.
Despite
Miles’ compelling effort to reconstruct from the debris and try to tell us how
Carthaginians saw themselves and their world, one is left with the feeling that
one would like to know more. But it was Rome, not Carthage, which established
its dominion over the Mediterranean world; the common elite culture of the Mediterranean
became Greco-Roman, not Punic culture. For Miles, nevertheless, the history of
Carthage is also a history of Rome. The Carthaginians were the first to try to
build an empire spanning both shores on the Mediterranean. Though it was the
Romans who succeeded in the end, to do so they had to take over Carthage’s
empire and build upon it. The early overseas provinces of Rome (with the
exception of Macedon) were all inherited from Carthage and with it, presumably,
some of its structures of governance and law. The quinquereme of the Roman navy were based on the design of a
captured Carthaginian ship. The Romans valued the technical expertise of the
Carthaginians and had translated all 28 volumes of Mago’s agricultural treatise
said to be the “agronomic bible of the ancient world”. The foundations of the
Roman Empire were, to a great extent, laid by Carthage, but whether the Romans
themselves recognized their Punic inheritance is less clear.
The
Romans did not set out to destroy Punic culture, but to destroy a political
rival. Punic culture continued to exist in North Africa for centuries along
with the other cultures that fell under Roman rule. The continual process of
the mixing of ideas, cultures and peoples in the Mediterranean which under
Carthage began, continued under the Roman imperium. The westward road that the
early Tyrians took to found Carthage was followed during Roman times by other
west bound peoples from the Levant. These included the early Christians such as
Paul. These later travelers, unlike their Tyrian and Carthaginian predecessors,
left a more permanent cultural and religious imprint on the Mediterranean world
and Europe – Christianity.
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