Carthage Must Be Destroyed (19 page)

The Sant’ Omobono temple, however, does not vindicate but rather questions the scholarly orthodoxy that the cult of Hercules was simply a Latin/Roman adaptation of a purely Greek rite. The statue of Hercules discovered there, while following some of the standard Greek iconography associated with the hero, also shows clear artistic parallels with a series of statuettes of Heracles–Melqart produced in Kition. This raises the strong possibility that the Sant’ Omobono male figure is Heracles–Melqart, and the armed goddess his divine consort, Aphrodite–Astarte.
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The discovery of a deposit of Euboean, Pithecusan, Cycladic and Corinthian pottery dating to the eighth century BC close to the temple also strongly suggests that early Rome may have been connected into the Tyrrhenian trading circuit. Was early Rome, like Pithecusa and Sant’ Imbenia, a mixed community where Greek, Phoenician and indigenous populations lived and economically cooperated with one another, and is the Sant’ Omobono temple evidence of the same kind of cultural and religious syncretism that we witness in archaic Sicily?
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There are certainly other interesting parallels between the cult of Hercules at the Ara Maxima and what we know of the religious practices associated with the worship of Melqart at Tyre, Thasos and Gades, of which the most striking are the banning of flies and dogs from the precinct, the exclusion of female celebrants and pork from the sacrifices themselves, the giving of tithes of 10 per cent of profits by merchants and other wealthy individuals, and the choice of the autumn equinox–the time of the annual rebirth of Melqart–as the season to practise many of the rites associated with the cult.
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Other famous landmarks around the Forum Boarium hint at the presence in archaic Rome of deities and religious rituals associated with the Phoenician/Punic world, and Melqart was certainly not the only Punico-Phoenician deity to have a considerable impact on the central-Italian religious landscape of the archaic period. His consort, Astarte, came to be closely associated with a startling array of Greek, Etruscan and Italian goddesses, including the Latin warrior goddess Juno, later queen of the Roman divine pantheon.
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Another important Roman connection was between Astarte and the goddess Fortuna. Scholars have long recognized the intriguing parallels between the twin temples supposedly built in Rome by the seventhcentury-BC king Servius Tullius for Fortuna and Mater Matuta, a fertility goddess, and the religious complex at Pyrgi, where famous tablets promising part of one of the twin temples to the worship of Astarte were found. Indeed, the strange story that Servius Tullius actually engaged in sexual relations with Fortuna in her new temple may be an allusion to sacred prostitution taking place there.

Then there was the tomb of Acca Laurentia, which stood in the same area. A beautiful young woman of reputedly loose morals, Acca Laurentia had been won by Hercules in a game of dice and had been subsequently locked up in his temple with his other prize, a sumptuous feast. Later she would take Hercules’ advice and marry a rich man whose considerable wealth she bequeathed to the Roman people on her death. In gratitude, the Roman king Ancius Marcus supposedly set up a tomb for her in the Forum Boarium, as well as an annual festival that was held in her honour on 23 December. Another version of this story merely records that she was a prostitute who used her vast wealth for a public feast for the Roman people. Were these strange stories a distant memory of a time when Phoenician/Punic sacred prostitution was practised in Rome?
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Once again the sanctuary at Pyrgi provides some interesting parallels. It has been argued that the Pyrgi Tablets themselves allude to the sacred marriage of Melqart and Astarte through which the welfare of the people and the fecundity of the new season were guaranteed.
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The presence of a series of small rooms within the temple complex may confirm a brief Roman textual reference that sacred prostitution, a custom strongly associated with the worship of Astarte, was practised at Pyrgi.
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Later, Rome’s ancient history would be comprehensively rewritten in order to provide the city with a pedigree that befitted its new position as a great Mediterranean power. However, these fragmentary and often obscure reminders of a very different, long-forgotten past would remain embedded within this new triumphant narrative, hinting at an archaic Rome where the Carthaginian ambassadors sent to conclude the 509 treaty would have found much that was familiar to them. Whether in the end it was Phoenician, Punic or eastern-Greek merchants who first brought Heracles to Rome is in fact relatively unimportant.
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What is striking is the extent to which both Phoenicians and Greeks had brought to this new world not just the age-old rivalries that existed between them, but also the syncretism that had developed over the long centuries of interaction in the eastern Mediterranean.
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Very soon, however, these synergies would be challenged, and eventually eclipsed, by a far more dramatic, if erroneous, narrative of inter-ethnic hatred, and the brooding threat that Carthage supposedly posed to the very survival of the western Greeks.

Although during the fifth century BC there was still no sign of what we might conventionally view as a Carthaginian imperial structure, with the old western Phoenician settlements apparently keeping their political autonomy, there is plenty of evidence that Carthage was becoming increasingly assertive and interventionist, particularly in pursuing its economic goals in the central Mediterranean.

On Sardinia and Ibiza, territorial occupation and agricultural exploitation by a new influx of Punic settlers from North Africa rapidly took place during the later decades of the fifth century.
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As well as the farmsteads built by these settlers to exploit the fertile plains, larger fortified settlements were also established to act as market centres and to control the countryside.
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Such colonial ventures would have served a number of key purposes. First, they allowed the relocation of surplus populations who were potential malcontents with few prospects in Carthage or its North African territory. Second, they helped to expand the agricultural base of Sardinia–a key exporter of food to Carthage–by increasing the amount of land under intensive cultivation. Finally, they helped secure Carthaginian influence in a territory that was strategically vital in terms of both trade and food production.

Although most of Carthage’s foodstuffs continued to come from North Africa, from the 430s onwards Sardinia became an increasingly vital source of food, its agricultural economy seeming to have become ever more keyed into the needs of Carthage. Large numbers of Sardinian ‘sack’- and ‘torpedo’-shaped amphorae used for the transportation of foodstuffs such as wine, olive oil, corn, salted meat and fish, and salt are found in Carthage during the fifth and fourth centuries BC.
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According to a treatise by Pseudo-Aristotle, the Carthaginians were even supposed to have ordered the destruction of fruit trees in Sardinia and forbade the planting of new ones, presumably because they did not fit into the wider economic plan for the island as Carthage’s main producer of cereals.
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The strengthening of the economic ties between Carthage and Sardinia brought great prosperity to the Punic cities on the island, as shown by the large number of opulent public and private buildings that were now built, and the fine imported objects and other luxury goods with which the wealthy elite were now buried.
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At the city of Tharros, the fifth century BC in particular brought about a dramatic change in the cityscape, with the construction of a new quarter consisting of private residences and temples, as well as the building of imposing new fortifications on its landward side.
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The source of this new wealth was not only agricultural produce and other raw materials, but also, increasingly, the manufacture of luxury goods such as decorated precious stones, amulets, jewellery, ceramic statuettes, perfume burners and masks, which were then exported throughout the Punic world.
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Indeed, the increase in manufacturing output at Tharros may have been connected to the construction of a new industrial quarter in the fifth century.
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There were also very close ties between local Punic elites and Carthage, including the apparent bestowal of a type of honorary citizenship of the city.
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Despite the increasing influence that Carthage wielded over the island, however, there is no evidence of a Carthaginian provincial administration ruling over Sardinia, and each city and its hinterland was governed by its own autonomous municipal authority.

Punic colonization had a far less beneficial impact on the island’s indigenous population. Throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the Nuragi were pushed further and further into the mountainous central and northern areas of Sardinia, as new settlers took over their land and founded new fortified settlements not only as market areas, but also to control the countryside.
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Other sites pushed even further into Nuragic territory, and probably acted as commercial emporia for the exchange of goods.
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However, this trade was increasingly one-way, with Phoenician goods beginning to predominate over indigenous artefacts in many Nuragic sites. Other important aspects of this ancient culture were also steadily eroded. Large numbers of the ‘complex’ multi-towered nuraghi that had studded the plains and hills of the island were abandoned by their inhabitants, suggesting that the chieftains that had controlled the territory and population were no more.
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Punic colonization and economic consolidation on Sardinia also had a notable impact on the religious landscape of the island, and there is some evidence for an organized initiative to represent Carthage’s new relationship with the island through the establishment of new religious centres. The temple of Sid Babi at Antas, although on one level a symbol of the cultural and religious syncretism that had developed between colonial and indigenous communities on the island, was also a sophisticated attempt to inculcate a Punic god with the properties and authority of a Nuragic deity, which also played into the wider project of legitimating the Punic colonization of the island.

At the same time that the Carthaginians were becoming increasingly involved in Sardinia, they also intervened militarily in Sicily. The catalyst was a plea for assistance made in 483 BC by Terillus, the Greek autocrat of Himera, a city in the north of the island, to his guest-friend Hamilcar, the leader of the Magonids, the pre-eminent political clan in Carthage. Terillus had been driven out of Himera when it had been attacked and captured by the forces of Gelon, ruler of Syracuse, the most powerful Greek city in Sicily, who with his allies had been engaged in a campaign of aggressive expansionism directed mainly against other Greek cities on the island.

The Magonids had close ties with Sicily, and Hamilcar’s own mother was Syracusan. The solemn ties of guest-friendship (which involved the bestowal of hospitality and gift-giving), perhaps combined with concerns for the island’s western ports (vital for Carthaginian trading operations), prompted the Magonids into action. Yet it appears that the expedition remained a private enterprise, underwritten by the Magonids rather than by the Carthaginian state. The huge army that Hamilcar raised contained not only Carthaginians but also large numbers of mercenaries from across the central and western Mediterranean, including Libya, Spain, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica.
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These forces were further supplemented by those of Anaxilas, the Greek tyrant (autocratic ruler) of Rhegium in southern Italy, who was married to Terillus’ daughter.

In 480, after disembarking his army at the port city of Panormus, Hamilcar, wishing either to maintain an element of surprise or to advertise the very limited scope of this operation, marched directly to Himera. However, any hoped-for advantage created by catching Gelon unawares was lost when secret letters, setting out the Carthaginian tactical plans, were intercepted. Furthermore, by setting off in such haste, Hamilcar had not spent sufficient time preparing his troops. The two forces met at Himera, and the result was a total disaster for the Magonids, their army being obliterated and Hamilcar killed. One version of events, by Polyaenus, a later Greek writer, told how Gelon had ordered his commander of the archers, who closely resembled him, to impersonate him. Leading out his company of archers dressed as priests, with their bows hidden behind myrtle branches, the commander went out to make a sacrifice. When Hamilcar similarly came forward, the archers pulled out their bows and killed the Carthaginian general as he was making a libation to the gods.
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In another version of this story, recounted by Herodotus, during the battle Hamilcar remained in his camp, where he sought to enlist divine assistance by burning the bodies of whole animals on a great sacrificial pyre.
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Yet even as he received favourable signs, his defeated men were fleeing from the battlefield, making it clear that these divine omens were false. Seeing that all was lost, Hamilcar made a new offering to the Punic gods by throwing himself into the searing flames. The defeat was so total that only a few bedraggled survivors made it back to Africa to bring news of the disaster.

Diodorus goes on to emphasize the scale of the defeat that the Magonids suffered at Himera. On learning of the terrible disaster, the Carthaginians kept close guard over their city, terrified that Gelon would now mount an attack there.
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Labouring under this false expectation, they also immediately dispatched their ablest citizens as ambassadors to Sicily. These envoys sought the assistance of Gelon’s queen, Damaretê, and when a satisfactory peace had been concluded they showed their gratitude by giving her a crown created from 100 gold talents. The audience that the Carthaginian embassy had with Gelon himself was later portrayed as a triumph for the Syracusan tyrant, with his Punic visitors tearfully begging that their city be spared.
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