Destroy Carthage (6 page)

In Italy, protests against conscription for Spain reached un­precedented proportions, while the plight of sick, often im­poverished war veterans contributed to a picture of economic
recession. It was against this background of frustration and
disgruntlement that Cato's commission exchanged the squalls
of Rome for its spell in the sun of the sub-continent. What it
found in the lands beyond the blue gulf roused strong emo­tions in the old chauvinist. Investigation of the African dispute
meant travelling through fruitful Carthaginian territories
which had never been richer in their produce.

Cato's national pride was affronted by the abundance he saw
there, more so by Carthage itself, a city whose manifest
prosperity and buoyancy was unclouded by the overseas
worries incurred by Rome. Recalling fallen comrades at Zama,
and the bloody battles preceding it, it must have seemed to
him that Rome had won the war, had gone on to master the
Mediterranean, only that Carthage should cream off the
benefits.

Embittered by past events, his reflections were exacerbated
by the city's approach to arbitration. When the commission
insisted that both sides bind themselves in advance to its de­cision, Masinissa agreed but Carthage dissented. Her experience
of Roman mediation scarcely made for confidence. As a token
of belated independence, the argument was trivial, yet for Cato
it portended danger of the gravest kind. From the moment the commission returned to Rome, the
dispute unsettled, its leader was obsessed with the threat, as
he saw it, of a revived Carthage. He is said to have shown the
members of the senate a ripe fig, picked in Africa three days
earlier, to emphasize the proximity of the old enemy - a con­tinuing enemy, he averred. Thereafter, unable to let it rest,
Cato reportedly concluded every speech he made, whatever its
subject, with the slogan 'D
elenda est Carthago'-'
Carthage must
be destroyed.'

Unsurprisingly,
considering its enormity, Cato's message was
not greeted with rapturous applause in Rome. Even today,
when weapon capabilities have made mass destruction common­place, the idea of blotting out a great city - not in war or under
dire provocation, but as an act of cold-blooded political ex­pediency - accords more with fantasy than reality.

Applied to ancient Carthage, with her uniquely formidable
ramparts, it verged on the preposterous.

All the same, the proposal found a following. That it was not
dismissed out of hand says much for Cato's personal standing,
and perhaps more about the diminishing equability of Roman
response to foreign problems. Little is known of complexions
in the senate at this period, but the repetitious obstinacy of the
old man's propaganda suggests both grim hope on his part and
lack of popularity.

The following year, 152, Cato was snubbed by the dispatch
of a further commission to Africa, this time headed by a pro­minent opponent of his views, Publius Scipio Nasica ('Scipio of
the Pointed Nose'). A close kinsman of 'Africanus,' Scipio
Nasica had no cause to love the Cato faction. According to one
source, he parodied the notorious 'Carthage must be destroyed'
exhortation by concluding his own addresses to the senate with
the words, 'And I think that Carthage should be left alone.'

At all events, he returned to Italy with inflammatory news
for the Catoists, having persuaded Masinissa to yield some
disputed ground to Carthage. Scipio Nasica did not deny the
renewed vigour of the African city, but took the view, not
original, that a buoyant rival was essential to Rome's inner
strength, to her traditional virility which, he claimed, would
degenerate - indeed, was so doing - without competition.

Another strategic possibility, seen by some as a stronger
incentive to pre-emptive action than Cato's fears, cast Masin­issa as the main threat, Carthage being the economic key the
king needed to possess an African nation of world account. By
this reckoning, the pro-Numidian party in Carthage, not her
popular movement, was the real barometer of trouble ahead
for Rome.

The support for these arguments in 152 is conjectural.
Nothing known suggests that Cato's campaign made much
ground in its first year. Certainly, it did not discourage Carth­age, at last a modest beneficiary of Roman mediation, from
further appeals to Rome for help against Numidia. Then, in
151, a number of diverse events combined with dramatic force.

For twelve hectic months the Roman legions in Spain had
been in almost ceaseless combat. Reports told of countless
deaths; of the impossibility of defeating the Celtiberians. Dis­illusion was widespread. Officers refused to volunteer for the
peninsula; veteran soldiers declined to march with their
leaders. To the consternation of a society which regarded army
service as a cause for pride, the number of youths evading en­listment was so great that punishment became impossible.

For the first time in a century, the senate had lost its grip
on men and methods.

At the same time, Rome complained that Carthage was re­building an army and naval force. The African city's dispute
with Numidia had reached flashpoint, embassies and counter-
embassies scuttling to Italy for crisis talks. Probably, a Carth­aginian army of some size had evolved from the territorial
skirmishes coinciding with the resurgence of the popular party.
Half a century of Numidian encroachment underlined the need
for it. Fighting ships were less important. Masinissa's was not a
seafaring nation, and it is doubtful if Carthage projected a large
fleet.  In a calmer moment, the formal protest Rome presented at
these breaches of a somewhat dated treaty might have led to
satisfaction. But the hour was fraught for both sides. That year,
Carthage was due to pay the final instalment of the war in­demnity. The knowledge that she would then have a substan­tial surplus revenue to devote to other things, possibly
armaments, did nothing to relieve the trauma occasioned in
Rome by bitter Spanish setbacks. Suddenly, the Roman climate,
xenophobic, vindictive, favoured Cato's call for violent action.

In Carthage, an atmosphere of mounting crisis overrode
Roman strictures as public indignation centred on the op­probrious Numidians. Late in 151, the government, losing
patience, expelled the leading members of the pro-Masinissa
faction in the city and, prompted by Carthalo and other
fervent nationalists, insultingly rejected the king's protests.
The popular party denied his envoys entry to Carthage and
even attacked them on their way home.

Having threatened for decades, the conflict exploded.

Masinissa promptly attacked a town of Carthaginian con­nection named Oroscopa, while forces under Carthalo and
another captain, Hasdrubal, marched against the king. Masin­issa was now almost ninety. Anticipating his death, the princes
he had ruled with patriarchal rigidity jockeyed for the dynastic
struggle they saw ahead. Two of his sons joined Hasdrubal,
doubtless hopeful of repayment in kind later.

Weakened by the desertions, Masinissa withdrew to a region
remote from Carthaginian supply routes. Confidently,
Hasdrubal followed. A number of preliminary engagements had
gone his way and he sought the major battle. It remains, in
its obscurity, one of the phantom epics of Africa, remarked
chiefly for the presence of a notable spectator: a young Roman
officer seeking elephants for the Spanish war.

The son of a distinguished soldier (Aemilius Paullus, con­queror of Macedon) and adopted member of the Scipionic
family, the talented Scipio Aemilianus had already won a name
for intrepidity in Spain when he found himself perched on a
hillside in North Africa watching a sprawling battle on the
plain below. He relished the experience. 'It was a privilege,' he
declared later, 'such as only two had enjoyed before me, Zeus
from the top of Mount Ida and Poseidon from Samothrace, in
the Trojan War.'Masinissa, grey from more years even than Cato, commanded
the Numidians in person, riding without saddle or stirrups in
the native style. But the day proved indecisive, and the Roman
witness was at length asked to mediate. Negotiations faltered
over the deserters, Masinissa demanding the surrender of his
sons, the Carthaginians refusing to co-operate. Imprudently,
since the terrain itself was hostile, Hasdrubal postponed break­ing camp in expectation of further talks.

They failed to materialize. Instead, the Carthaginians dis­covered that the artful Numidian had exploited the delay to
blockade their return routes. Trapped in barren country,
Hasdrubal's troops were first weakened by famine then swept
by epidemic. In the end, they agreed to purchase a passage by
surrendering their arms and the deserters, and promising an
indemnity.

Even so, disaster awaited the survivors. As they trudged defencelessly from camp, Masinissa's horsemen harried them
savagely, leaving few to reach safety. The affair might have
been planned to suit Cato. By embarking on war against
Numidia in contravention of the treaty of 201, Carthage had
absolved Rome of her legal obligation as co-signatory. By losing
that war, and her army to boot, Carthage had left herself
naked. Walls she possessed, but no battalions to man them.

Also, she had reinforced the old bogey of Carthaginian per­fidy. Romans on the whole might not share Cato's hatred of
Carthage, but they did regard her people with mistrust. Like
Plautus's Hanno, they were thought to be tricky rogues.
Trickery could be amusing in a pedlar, but when it came to
breaking treaties the legalistic Roman had a meagre sense of
humour. The public, as one Roman avouched, was not discrim­inatory in what it believed about the Punic race.

By 150, 'Destroy Carthage!' had ceased to seem an outrage­ous slogan. Against the drift of sentiment, Scipio Nasica warned
of the need to have regard for world opinion. But to many
minds the destruction of an untrustworthy city would be a
salutary message to the world, succinct in any tongue: a
timely counter to wrong ideas which might be drawn from
the intransigence of Spanish savages. Contrary to recruiting problems apropos of Spain, raising an
army for the seemingly profitable picnic of demolishing a rich
and cultivated state was all too easy. 80,000 Italians, unde­ceived by official secrecy about their destination, quickly
volunteered for the campaign. It could hardly have come at a
more opportune moment. Masinissa, having smashed the
Carthaginian army, was fast approaching the end of his own
life.

In the struggle for succession which must follow, Numidia
would be ill-placed either to exploit the demise of her rival
or to contest a Roman stake in Africa.

How far the ruthlessness of Roman intentions toward
Carthage was part of a wider strategy of supremacy, or in fact
a crude reaction in the absence of any real policy, is question­able. The ancient world was divided in opinion. According to
Polybius, one school of thought held the assault on Carthage
an astute and far-sighted action on Rome's part, while others
saw it as the brutal aberration of a normally civilized nation,
a treacherous and profane act.

Its immensity was not doubted. The sands of Punic history
were running out.

Legend
has it that Carthage was founded in the 9th century
b.c.
by a princess of Tyre named Elissa, or Dido. When Dido's
brother, Pygmalion, became king, the princess married her
uncle, Acherbas, the wealthiest member of the royal house.
Coveting his fortune, Pygmalion had Acherbas murdered, but
Dido escaped to sea with the riches and her followers.

According to the story, told with several variations, Dido
sailed to Cyprus where the high priest of the Semitic goddess
Astarte agreed to join her on condition that his family should
be granted the priesthood in perpetuity of any colony founded.
A number of sacred prostitutes embarked with him, to provide
women for the men and, in time, regenerate the company.
In Justin's version of the legend, Dido went to Africa where