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CARTHAGINIANS

The Carthaginians were a powerful Phoenician people based in the city of Carthage. Carthage was the most famous city of Africa in antiquity, capital of a rich and powerful commercial republic, situated in the territory now belonging to Libya. Carthage was the latest of the Phoenician colonies in this district, and is supposed to have been founded by settlers from Tyre and from the neighbouring Utica about the middle of the 9th century BC. The story of Dido and the foundation of Carthage is mere legend or invention.

The history of Carthage falls naturally into three epochs. The first, from the foundation to 410 BC, comprises the rise and culmination of Carthaginian power; the second, from 410 to 265 BC, is the period of the wars with the Sicilian Greeks; the third, from 265 to 146 BC, the period of the wars with Rome, ending with the fall of Carthage.

The rise of Carthage may be attributed to the superiority of her site for commercial purposes, and the enterprise of her inhabitants, which soon acquired for her an ascendency over the earlier Tyrian colonies in the district, Utica, Tunis, Hippo, Septis, and Hadrumetum, Her relations with the native populations, Libyans and nomads, were those of a superior with inferior races. Some of them were directly subject to Carthage, others contributed large sums as tribute, and Libyans formed the main body of infantry as nomads of cavalry in the Carthaginian army. Besides these there were native Carthaginian colonies, small centres and supports for her great commercial system, sprinkled along the whole northern coast of Africa, from Cyrenaica on the east to the Straits of Gibraltar on the west.

In extending her commerce Carthage was naturally led to the conquest of the various islands which from their position might serve as entrepots for traffic with the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Sardinia was the first conquest of the Carthaginians, and its capital, Caralis, now Cagliari, was founded by them. Soon after they occupied Corsica, the Balearic, and many smaller islands in the Mediterranean. When the Persians under Xerxes invaded Greece the Carthaginians, who had already several settlements in the west of Sicily, co-operated by organizing a great expedition of 300,000 men against the Greek cities in Sicily. But the defeat of the Carthaginians at Himera by the Greeks under Gelon of Syracuse effectually checked their further progress (480 BC).

The war with the Greeks in Sicily was not renewed until 410. Hannibal, the son of Gisco, invaded Sicily, reduced first Selinus and Himera, and then Agrigentum. Syracuse itself was only saved a little later by a pestilence which enfeebled the army of Himiico (396). The struggle between the Greeks and the Carthaginians continued at intervals with varying success, its most remarkable events being the military successes of the Corinthian Timoleon (345-340) at Syracuse, and the invasion of the Carthaginian territory in Africa by Agathocles in 310 BC. After the death of Agathocles the Greeks called in Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, to their aid, but notwithstanding numerous defeats (277-275 BC), the Carthaginians seemed, after the departure of Pyrrhus, to have the conquest of all Sicily at length within their power. The intervention of the Romans was now invoked, and with their invasion in 264 BC, the third period of Carthaginian history begins.

The first Punic war in which Rome and Carthage contended for the dominion of Sicily, was prolonged for twenty-three years, from 264 to 241 BC, and ended, through the exhaustion of the resources of Carthage, in her expulsion from the island. The loss of Sicily led to the acquisition of Spain for Carthage, which was almost solely the work of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal. The second Punic war, arising out of incidents connected with the Carthaginian conquests in Spain, and conducted on the side of the Carthaginians by the genius of Hannibal, and distinguished by his great march on Rome and the victories of Lake Trasimene, Trebia, and Cannae, lasted seventeen years, from 218 to 201 BC, and after just missing the overthrow of Rome, ended in the complete humiliation of
Carthage. The policy of Rome in encouraging the African enemies of Carthage occasioned the third Punic war, in which Rome was the aggressor. This war, begun in 150 BC, and ended in 146 BC, resulted in the total destruction of Carthage.

The constitution of Carthage, like her history, remains in many points obscure. The name of king occurs in the Greek accounts of it, but the monarchical constitution, as commonly understood, never appears to have existed in Carthage. The officers called kings by the Greeks were two in number, the heads of an oligarchical republic, and were otherwise called Suffetes, the original name being considered identical with the Hebrew Shofetim, judges. These officers were chosen from the principal families, and were elected annually. There was a senate of 300, and a smaller body of thirty chosen from the senate, sometimes another smaller council of ten. In its later ages the state was divided by bitter factions, and liable to violent popular tumults. After the destruction of Carthage her territory became the Roman province of Africa.

Twenty-four years after her fall an unsuccessful attempt was made to rebuild Carthage by Caius Gracchus. This was finally accomplished by Augustus, and Roman Carthage became one of the most important cities of the empire. It was taken and destroyed by the Arabs in 638. The religion of the Carthaginians was that of their Phoenician ancestors. They worshipped Moloch or Baal, to whom they supposedly offered human sacrifices; Melkart, the patron deity of Tyre; Astarte, the Phoenician Venus, and other deities, which were mostly propitiated by allegedly cruel or lascivious rites, though these accounts are most likely exagerated propaganda by enemies of the Carthaginians.
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