17. Carthage - Empire Of The Phoenicians

Introduction to Carthage

0:00In the year 1858, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert arrived in North Africa, hoping to find inspiration for his latest book. Flaubert was a seasoned traveler, and a decade or so earlier had embarked on a grand tour of Cairo, Constantinople, Greece, and Italy. But the writer who now departed on this new set of travels

0:35was like a different man. Although only 37 years old, he was plagued by sickness and prone to fits of depression, and the novel he had been working on for the last year was threatening to drive him mad. The publication of his most famous work two years before, the novel Madame Bovary, had brought him fame and wealth, but now he was attempting to write a piece of fiction quite unlike anything he had ever attempted. It would be a story from classical history that took place in an empire that had

1:10once flourished in the north of Africa, had become the most powerful society in the ancient world, and then had vanished in its entirety more than 2,000 years ago. An empire that had been largely forgotten, beside the more well-studied societies of classical Greece and Rome, this was the empire of Carthage.

Flaubert's Writing Struggles

1:34He had spent the last months locked up in his study like a hermit, surrounded by the work of ancient historians, trying to bring the lost city of Carthage back to life. But the writing just wouldn't come, as he wrote to his friend, Ernest Fadeau. I'm done for, my friend. Done for. For the past month, I've found it impossible to write. I can't find a single word. Just think of what I've let myself in

2:04for, to resuscitate an entire civilization with nothing whatsoever to go on.

Flaubert's Decision to Travel

2:10Flaubert made the decision that something would have to change. He wrote of his intentions to his friend, Mademoiselle Le Royer de Chantepille. I absolutely must take a trip to Africa. So, toward the end of March, I'll return to the land of dates. Once again, I'll live on horseback and sleep under a tent. I need only to go to El Kef and explore the environs of Carthage, in order to acquaint myself thoroughly with the

2:43landscapes I'll be describing. When he arrived in Tunisia, Flaubert jotted down hurried impressions

Exploring Tunisia

2:51in his notebooks as he explored the ruins of the ancient cities of Utica and Carthage, now all but buried beneath the modern Tunisian capital of Tunis.

3:05In the green wheat full of flowering poppies, the road climbs little, sloping to the left, and arrives at a valley. Flat plains in the middle, at a league's distance. Ruins like palm trees, and here and there blocks of masonry. We are walking on the remains of a Roman road. As he walked among the ruined walls of this ancient city, Flaubert felt himself connected to the ancient people he had been trying to write about, and saw ways of life that must have remained

3:40almost unchanged since the days of Carthage. In the south, the village of Sidi Poussaid, the sea behind, like a great block of indigo. All Carthage now stretches out before me. A camel on a terrace, turning a well. Flies are buzzing. Weeds hang from the halls like chandeliers. A bird takes flight with the sound of a wing. Another sings. Very fine dust. Silence. Green marks

4:13on the walls. Livid and thick water in some basins.

Rewriting the Novel

4:20By the time he had finished his wanderings among the Carthaginian ruins of Tunisia, Flaubert had decided to completely rewrite the draft of his book, as he writes to Mademoiselle de Chantepille. Everything I had done on my novel has to be done over. I was on the wrong track entirely. So it turns out that a little over a year since I first had the idea for the book, and after working hard on it most of that time, I am still only at the beginning.

Finishing the Book

4:52Armed with his Tunisian notebooks, Flaubert finished his book four years later, and it was published under the title of Salambo. The book was an enormous success. It inspired plays and later even silent films, and it is credited with renewing public interest in a city and a culture that had once been considered a side note of history.

5:23As Flaubert walked those ruined walls and sunken harbors, as he kicked his way through the dust and scree of the crumbling city ruins, he must have asked himself again and again, what did it feel like to walk the streets of that ancient city? What was it like to see Carthage at the height of its golden age? And what would it have felt like to see this entire city, its streets and houses, its temples and theaters, its harbors and its homes, utterly destroyed and buried in dust and ash?

Fall of Civilizations Podcast

6:14My name's Paul Cooper, and you're listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast. Each episode, I look at a civilization of the past that rose to glory, and then collapsed into the ashes of history. I want to ask, what did they have in common?

6:50What led to their fall? And what did it feel like to be a person alive at the time, who witnessed the end of their world? In this episode, I want to tell one of the most dramatic stories to come down to us from the ancient world, the rise and fall of the empire of Carthage. I want to show how this city rose out of the Phoenician states of the eastern Mediterranean and set out on voyages of discovery and settlement that put them at the center of the ancient world.

7:22I want to describe the unique culture that flourished on the shores of North Africa, and I want to tell the story of how the city of Carthage was destroyed and its memory nearly wiped from the earth.

The Mediterranean Sea

7:34The Mediterranean Sea is a vast body of salt water that lies between the continents of Europe and Africa. It's by far the largest inland sea on the planet, stretching around 4,000 kilometers from end to end,

8:07and in the west, it's connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a thin opening at the Straits of Gibraltar. The coastline of this sea is more than 46,000 kilometers long, or enough to wrap around the entire circumference of the planet, and this coastline has provided a home to countless cultures and civilizations over history. One of these cultures emerged on the easternmost corner of the Mediterranean

8:37coast on a stony stretch of shore in what is today Lebanon, overlooked by towering mountains covered in cedar forest. Here, a series of city-states rose up more than 4,000 years ago that would give rise to a culture that would one day be called the Phoenicians. The largest of these cities were named Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. Pinched as they were between the waves to the west and the forested mountains to the east,

9:10the territories they ruled over were never large, but this relatively isolated geography also meant that they were somewhat protected from invaders. The people we now think of as Phoenician wouldn't have ever used that word. Phoenician is a term invented later by their great rivals, the Greeks. It's unclear if these cities ever thought of themselves as a unified people. They had a common Phoenician language and were united by the worship of certain gods, among them Baal-Hamon, a heroic god named

9:47Melkart, and his wife Astarte. But there's very little in the historical record to suggest a common identity, architecture, or literature. Even the Greek word Phoenician has a somewhat mysterious origin, In the earliest texts, such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the word phoenike is used to describe a particular color of purple or crimson, and it is also used to describe a date palm, possibly due to

10:17the reddish color of its fruit when ripe. And so, it's possible that the word came to be used as a result of one of the Phoenician's earliest and most successful industries.

10:35The Phoenicians of Tyre and other cities were the first people to color their clothes with a particular kind of dye derived from the bodies of predatory sea snails known as the murex, or rock snail. These snails produce their dye as a defense mechanism against predators, and depending on the species, can produce a vivid red or purple color quite unlike anything else available in the ancient world. From the moment these dyes were first used by Phoenicians around the 16th century BC,

11:11their colors became immediately sought after. But the process of producing these dyes was difficult and costly. It could take more than 50 kilograms of these snails to make a single gram of dye, and so these fabrics were extremely expensive. The color purple would soon become associated with enormous wealth, and as a consequence, with royalty. This color would be known as Tyrean purple,

11:42after the Phoenician city of Tyre, and later imperial purple. It would dye the robes of the emperors of Assyria, Rome, and later Byzantium. The first century Roman writer Pliny the Elder writes about the effect this color had on anyone who saw it. For purple, the rods and axes of Rome clear a path, and it likewise marks the dignity of boyhood. It distinguishes senator from noble, and it is summoned to secure the favor of the gods.

12:16It illuminates every garment, and on the triumphal robe, it is blended with gold. But why the price?

12:25It's possible, then, that the term phoenike came to be used by the Greeks to describe these traders from the rocky coast of Lebanon as the makers of purple, or the purple people. The name of the mythical creature, the phoenix, an immortal bird with red feathers, also seems to derive from the same word.

12:49With their dye industry booming, the Phoenicians began to set out on ever longer voyages out into the Mediterranean Sea, all in search of ever more of these priceless snails. And these longer voyages would require new developments in shipbuilding. Since as early as the 3rd millennium BC, Phoenician sailors from the city of Byblos had developed ships with curved hulls, perfectly suited for traveling on the waves. And they had developed techniques for waterproofing the hulls of their ships using

13:25bitumen or pitch. In the Hebrew Bible, the 6th century BC Book of Ezekiel contains one poetic description of a Phoenician ship of a Phoenician ship. They made all your timbers of juniper from Senea. They took a cedar from Lebanon to make a mast for you. Of oaks from Bashan they made your oars. Of cypress wood from the coasts of Cyprus they made your deck, adorned with ivory. Fine embroidered linen from Egypt was your sail, and served as your banner.

14:01Your awnings were of blue and purple from the coasts of Elishar.

14:09The Phoenicians were also some of the earliest people to notice the pole star, or Polaris, a star that happens to align more or less perfectly with the rotational axis of the earth. This means that while all other stars appear to rotate in the sky throughout the night as the earth turns, the pole star remains more or less fixed in place. This made it exceptionally useful as a navigation tool, a fixed reference point in the sky. In Greek, this star would even come to be known

14:44as Phoenice, or the Phoenician star. The Phoenicians' early voyages around the Mediterranean led to them encountering many other peoples. Among these, they began to cultivate a reputation as uncompromising traders and shrewd businessmen, something that seems to have gained them some degree of unpopularity. Homer's Odyssey, probably written down in the 7th or 8th century BC from even more ancient oral

15:17traditions, describes the Phoenicians as cunning and untrustworthy, in contrast to the supposedly noble Greeks.

15:28Thither came Phoenicians, men famed for their ships, greedy knaves bringing countless trinkets in their black ship. And it seems the Phoenicians had become adept at metalworking too. The following passage in Homer's Odyssey describes an ornate bowl brought by traders from the Phoenician city of Sidon. Then the son of Peleus set forth other prizes, a mixing bowl of silver, richly wrought, in beauty far

16:01the goodliest in all the earth. Sidonians, well-skilled in deft handiwork, had wrought it cunningly, and men of the Phoenicians brought it over the murky deep and landed it in harbour.

16:18As a seafaring people, the Phoenicians had a clear preference for building their cities on narrow, easily defended peninsulas, and where possible on islands set just offshore. Their most influential city of Tyre was a perfect example, located on a small island just off the rocky coast. In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Ezekiel gives us a sense of the trade that the people of Tyre drove with their surrounding neighbours.

16:48Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of goods. They exchanged silver, iron, tin, and lead for your merchandise. Greece to Balandmeshek did business with you. They traded human beings and articles of bronze for your wares. Men of Beth Togama exchanged chariot horses, cavalry horses, and mules. Aram exchanged turquoise, purple fabric, embroidered work, fine linen, coral, and rubies. Judah and Israel traded with you. They exchanged wheat from minneth,

17:24honey, olive oil, and balm.

17:28While the natural defences of their geography had kept cities like Tyre independent for much of their history, this wasn't to last forever. The first millennium BC was an age of iron and an age of empires, and soon the Phoenicians found themselves in a world of increasingly violent and aggressive neighbours. Perhaps the most terrifying of these was the power of the Assyrian Empire.

18:00From its heartlands in what is today Iraq, the Assyrian war machine would periodically stretch

Assyrian Empire's Expansion

18:10its power right to the coast of the Mediterranean and threaten to engulf the Phoenicians. One inscription from the palace of an Assyrian king gives just one example of the typical fate of a city conquered by the Assyrians. That city I destroyed. I flung my soldiers like lightning upon them. I piled up heaps of heads in front of his great gate. Bands of captive soldiers I impaled on stakes on every side of his city.

18:46His palm trees I cut down, and from the city of Amidi I departed. The Phoenicians had every reason to be nervous. At the start of the 8th century BC, the Assyrian king Adad-Nirari III conquered the territory of northern Syria, as he boasts in his royal palace inscriptions. Conquering from the Saluna mountain of the rising sun, and from the banks of the Euphrates,

19:17the country of Hattie, Amurah in its full extent, the land of Tyre, the land of Sidon, the land of Israel, the land of Edom, the land of Philistia. I made them submit to my feet, imposing upon them tribute. The Assyrians were now breathing directly down the necks of the Phoenician cities of the coast. But as time went on, the Phoenicians were able to carve out a niche for themselves that ensured they were quite simply too useful for the Assyrians to destroy.

19:57The Mediterranean Sea had long been an insurmountable challenge to many of the region's great powers. The Assyrians referred to it as Idmarati, or the Bitter River, which they believed to flow around the whole earth, while the Egyptians referred to it as Wajwer, or the Great Green. These empires were freshwater river cultures and navigated the waters of their rivers in flat-bottomed barges. For this

20:29reason, they had always remained wary of the rougher waters of the sea. Assyria relied heavily on many of the commodities brought into the region by Phoenician traders. Incense, silver, and purple dye for their palaces, bronze and iron for their armies. And so, Assyria offered the cities of Tyre and Sidon something of a deal, they would be allowed a degree of independence, so long as they ensured a constant

21:00flow of metals and other resources into Assyria, and so long as they acted as a kind of navy for hire, providing their ships and sailors to Assyria in times of war. The Phoenicians had little choice but to accept. But there was one problem. The Assyrian demands for metal were truly staggering, and if they were going to be met, it would require a drastic expansion of the Phoenician trade network.

21:36At first, the Phoenicians set up simple trading posts anywhere they could find good supplies of metal. Archaeology shows they set up trading communities in Cyprus to take advantage of its rich stores of copper, and in Sardinia, the Mediterranean's second largest island, rich in copper, iron, silver, and lead. At these sites, local people usually did all the actual mining, while the Phoenicians simply turned up to buy the goods and take them away by ship. From Cyprus and

22:10Sardinia, Phoenician sailors pushed on into the west of the Mediterranean, and set up the small colony of Utica in North Africa, and even reached southern Spain, where they found that the mines practically overflowed with silver, iron, and other metals. Archaeologists have found huge Phoenician furnaces in this region, designed for smelting metal ingots for transportation on an industrial scale, all to satisfy the demands of the fearsome Assyrian kings. Before long, the Phoenicians were sailing

22:46out through the Straits of Gibraltar, then known as the Pillars of Hercules, and out into the Atlantic Ocean. They set up a colony at Lixos on the western coast of Morocco, and pushed further down the coast to settle what is now the Moroccan port town of Essawira, more than 4,000 kilometers from their homeland. To finance these expeditions, the Phoenicians developed innovative monetary systems that in

23:17some ways represented a form of ancient capitalism. Phoenician society was dominated by powerful trading firms, usually run by a certain family, and they pioneered the use of interest-bearing loans for voyagers, even developing maritime insurance policies, which paid out if your ships were destroyed in a storm or plundered by pirates. But perhaps the greatest of their innovations was something that we use every day, and that is the alphabet.

23:50Up until that point, writing had been a cumbersome and difficult task. The cuneiform writing systems that had been developed by the Sumerians thousands of years before and the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were both difficult to learn and relied on the services of a learned class of scribes who spent years of their lives learning them. But the Phoenician alphabet was a masterclass in simplicity. It had only 22 letters and could be used to spell out words

24:25phonetically, leaving out any vowels. And quite ingeniously, the shapes of the letters also gave a clue as to how they were pronounced. Their letter B, for instance, was named bet, which was the Phoenician word for house, and its symbol was drawn with a pointed roof. This simplicity drastically reduced the amount of time it took to learn, and meant that common traders and merchants may have had some ability to read and write, and to keep records, essential for the complex business of buying and

25:01selling across the sea. The Phoenician alphabet was such a good idea that it was adopted almost wholesale by the Greeks, as the Greek historian Herodotus recounts. These Phoenicians who came with Cadmus brought with them to Greece, among many other kinds of learning, the alphabet. As time went on, the sound and form of the letters were changed, and after being taught the letters by the Phoenicians, the Greeks who were settled around them used them with a few changes of form.

25:38With the addition of some letters for vowels, what resulted was the Greek alphabet, which means that the Phoenician writing system is the foundation of all Western alphabets used today.

25:53The earliest piece of Phoenician writing was found on an inscribed tablet known as the Nora Stone, unearthed in Sardinia, apparently commemorating a Phoenician captain who may have died in conflict with the local people. He fought with the Sardinians at Tarshish, and he drove them out. Among the Sardinians, he is now at peace, and his army is at peace. Milkaton, son of Shubna, general of King Pumei.

26:27But for the most part, the Phoenicians seem to have interacted with the people they met relatively peacefully, and most of all, profitably.

26:40Before long, the cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos found themselves at the far east of a sprawling trade network. Keeping such a loose and disparate collection of colonies together was no easy task, but it seems that here, the Phoenician religion played a key role.

27:02The people of Tyre worshipped a heroic god known as Melkart, a warrior hero who the Greeks would later associate with Hercules. Temples to Melkart were set up at multiple Phoenician trading posts, and most had an olive tree, a symbol of the city of Tyre, growing in their central courtyard. The grandest of these temples was built at the furthest Phoenician colony from Tyre, then known as Gades, what is now the Spanish city of Cadiz.

27:35This colony sat on the Atlantic coast, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, but it made up for its extreme distance from Tyre, with its immense opulence. At the center of the temple stood an olive tree, with its branches and leaves wrought out of solid gold, holding emerald fruits in its branches. Women were forbidden entry to the temple, as were pigs, and the priests of Melkart went barefoot, wearing a band of Egyptian flax over their bare heads.

28:08The Greek geographer Strabo recounts the following description of the settlement of Gardes.

28:16Now these islands are this side of what are called the Pillars of Heracles. Gades, however, is outside the Pillars. Here live the men who fit out the most and largest merchant vessels, both for our sea and the outer sea. They say the Tyrians believed that the two capes which formed the strait were the ends of the inhabited world. A great ceremony known as the Agercis, or Awakening, was conducted each year in the Temple of Gades.

28:49During this time, all foreigners were asked to leave the city, and a great effigy of the god Melkart was set afloat on the sea and burned. And even this temple was a crucial part of the Phoenician trading system. The institution worked to guarantee the quality of metal ingots produced in Gardes by giving them a special stamp, and acted as a guarantor between merchants entering into contracts, with punishments

29:20promised from Melkart himself if any dared to go back on their word.

29:28With Phoenician trade increasingly drifting westward, the center of their power would soon also shift in that direction, to a place where they would finally be free of the overbearing empires constantly breathing down their necks. They would soon found a city on the shore of North Africa, right at the center of

Founding of Carthage

29:50the Mediterranean world, a city that would become one of the largest and wealthiest on earth. That city would one day be known as Carthage. Like so many aspects of our modern understanding of the Phoenicians, the name Carthage is itself a distortion, filtered through the accounts of others. In Latin, the city was known as Carthago, while the

30:22Greeks called it Carcadon. But to its inhabitants, it was known as Carthadast, or in Phoenician, the new city. Like many great cities of its time, Carthage soon developed its own founding myth. It begins with a princess of Tyre named Elissa, or Elishia. In the legend, the king of Tyre promises that upon his death, his kingdom would be split between his two children, his daughter Elishia and his son Pygmalion. But when the old king dies, the treacherous brother Pygmalion refuses to accept

30:59the splitting of the kingdom, and moves to seize everything for himself, even killing Elishia's husband to remove any potential rivals. Stricken with grief, Elishia flees down to the docks, along with a ragtag band of her royal guards and temple women, and there they set sail westwards and make for Africa. The Roman writer Justinus, drawing on an earlier Greek text, writes his rendition of this story, along with a cunning deception to slow down any greedy pursuers.

31:33Elissa put the attendants, who were sent by the king to assist in her removal, on board some vessels in the early part of the evening, and sailing out into the deep, made them throw some loads of sand put up in sacks, as if it was money, into the sea. This group of refugees sail along the coast of North Africa, until eventually they set ashore near the Phoenician colony of Utica. They camp on a nearby

32:04hill known as Birsa, and the king who rules there, a man named Yabus, takes pity on them, but not too much pity. He offers to sell them a plot of land on the hill no bigger than an oxhide. But Elishia is cunning. She cuts the oxhide into thin strips, lining them up to enclose the entire hill, a much larger area of land than the miserly king had intended. Bound by his word, Yabus has no choice but to give

32:36them the land he promised, and so the city of Carthage is born. Justinus recounts the city's early flourishing. Carthage was founded, an annual tribute being fixed for the ground which it was to occupy At the commencement of digging the foundations, an ox's head was found, which was an omen that the city would be wealthy indeed, but laborious and always enslaved. It was therefore removed to another place, where the head of a horse was found, which, indicating that the people would be warlike and

33:11powerful, portended an auspicious site. In a short time, as the surrounding people came together at the report, the inhabitants became numerous, and the city itself extensive.

33:28From the hilltop of Birsa, the city grows and grows, soon eclipsing King Yabus's town of Utica, which makes him understandably jealous. He demands that Elishia marry him so that he can absorb her flourishing town and everything she owns into his kingdom. If she refuses, he will burn Carthage to the ground. Faced with the choice of this capitulation or the destruction of her new city, Elishia builds a great pyre and climbs onto it, saying that she must indeed go to her husband,

34:04meaning not Yabus, but the man her brother had killed on the other side of the sea, waiting for her in the afterlife. This tragic but noble self-sacrifice has proven irresistible to generations of poets, and the Roman poet Virgil gives one rendition of this scene. When the pyre of cut pine and oak was raised high, in an innermost court open to the sky, the queen hung the place with garlands and wreathed it with funereal foliage. She laid his sword and

34:41clothes and picture on the bed. She lingered a while, in tears and thought, then cast herself on the bed and spoke her last words. Accept this soul and loose me from my sorrows.

35:02In honor of Elishia's sacrifice, her people gave her the title of Dido, meaning female warrior or heroine, and this is the name by which she would be known to later Roman writers. This Baroque tale of love and tragedy has all the hallmarks of ancient literature, and we can't assume that it bears any relationship to what actually happened. Some details of the tale do accord with what archaeology tells us, that the Carthaginian

35:33Phoenicians drew their origins back to the city of Tyre, and that the city was founded close to the older settlement of Utica, which it soon eclipsed in size. But perhaps more important than any of this is the sense that this founding myth might give us of the way the Carthaginians thought of themselves and their city's place in the world, as a city of survivors who had found refuge here on the North African coast, a city of sailors and adventurers. They were resourceful and drove a hard bargain.

36:06They were clever, fond of outwitting their enemies, always finding a way to make a little go a long way. And also, perhaps, that they would die before they gave up their freedom.

36:24Regardless of the truth of its origins, it's clear from archaeology that after its founding in the 8th

Carthage's Growth and Development

36:30century BC, the new colony of Carthage did grow exceptionally quickly. In many ways, it was the perfect Phoenician settlement. Carthage was built in a small bay that itself belonged to a vast natural harbor known today as the Bay of Tunis. The city sat on top of a series of sheer red cliffs that looked down over the glittering blue waters of the Mediterranean in the north, and it was also easily defended on its landward side, where a range of rocky hills and a number of lakes and saltwater

37:06lagoons break the land into a series of narrow approaches, protecting the city from any would-be attackers. The Roman writer Appian writes one description of the city's location. The city lay in a recess of a great gulf and was in the form of a peninsula. It was separated from the mainland by an isthmus about five kilometers in width. From this isthmus, a narrow and longish tongue of land, about a kilometer wide, extended towards the west, between a lake and the sea.

37:42Near to the site of Carthage flows a river known today as the Magyarda, which originates in the high Atlas Mountains of North Africa. This river flows for 460 kilometers to the sea and brings crucial fresh water into the bay, turning the otherwise arid landscape green and providing water for drinking and for irrigation. As a result, the land here was abundant with wheat, grapes, olives, and dates. In the distance over the bay to the south rises the blue outline of the mountain Jebel Rassas,

38:20literally the mountain of lead, a rugged outcrop of Jurassic limestone climbing nearly 800 meters above the plain. The hot desert winds known as the Sirocco would blow in from the Sahara during the summer season, rattling the shutters on the windows and the leaves of the date palms. At the end of summer, thunderstorms would roll in from the sea.

38:49As well as its ideal geography, the city's location in the Mediterranean world was also perfect.

38:58Carthage sat at a crucial halfway point between the city of Tyre and the wealthy mines of Spain, but it was also only about 200 kilometers by boat from the island of Sicily and about 300 kilometers from Sardinia, two crucial sites of Phoenician industry that were only growing in importance. Pottery found in even the earliest layers of Carthage shows a huge range of styles coming from Greece, Italy, Spain, and all the Phoenician colonies. The Phoenician world was now a web, with Carthage sitting right at its center.

39:38The city in these early days must have been a humble sight. Archaeology paints a picture of a simple collection of mudbrick buildings lining the seashore, but within a century, this had exploded. One graveyard soon had to be moved in order to make space for a quarter filled with metalworking workshops, and the settlers built a wall about three meters in height to protect their burgeoning town. Soon, more monumental buildings would be constructed. The Roman poet Virgil imagines the activity that

40:14must have accompanied the growth of this town from tiny settlement to booming city.

40:21Aeneas found, where lately huts had been, marvelous buildings, gateways, cobbled ways, and din of wagons. There the Tyrians were hard at work, laying courses for walls, rolling up stones to build the citadel, while others picked out building sites and plowed a boundary furrow. Laws were being enacted, magistrates, and a sacred senate chosen. Here men were dredging harbors. There they laid the deep foundations of a theater, and quarried massive pillars. Other than what we can glean from archaeology,

40:58we know very little about the early history of Carthage. Apart from a few short inscriptions, no Carthaginian texts have survived into the modern day. In terms of written history, we have virtually complete silence from that part of the Mediterranean for the first 200 years or so of its existence. Beyond that, we have to rely on the writings of others.

41:24From the work of Greek writers, we learn that Carthage was a republic. It was ruled under a kind of oligarchic system governed by a council of its wealthiest citizens. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing in the 4th century, spoke approvingly of the Carthaginian system of government and compares it to that of the Greek city-state of Sparta.

41:52Carthage also appears to have a good constitution, with many outstanding features as compared with those of other nations, but most nearly resembling the Spartan in some points. Many regulations at Carthage are good, and a proof of a well-regulated constitution is that the populace willingly remain faithful to the constitutional system and that neither civil strife has arisen in any degree worth mentioning, nor yet a tyrant. But Aristotle also warns that the Carthaginian system put too much emphasis on the

42:26wealth of its rulers, rather than their competence, and expresses concerns that this could lead to corruption. They think that the rulers should be chosen not only for their merit, but also for their wealth, as it is not possible for a poor man to govern well or to have leisure for his duties. It is a bad thing that the greatest offices of state, the kingship and the generalship, should be for sale, for this law makes wealth more honoured than worth and renders the whole state avaricious, and it is probable that those

43:01who purchase their office will learn by degrees to make a profit out of it. The highest echelons of Carthaginian society were divided between the civil leaders, the shofatim or judges, and the rabbim or generals, who took care of military matters. These highest positions, senators and the heads of committees, drew no salary for their work, and so they could realistically only be held by those who could support themselves on private incomes, usually successful merchants or wealthy landowners. But there was a

43:37certain fairness to this. There seems to have been no barrier other than wealth, and people from common backgrounds who became wealthy could quickly rise to the highest parts of government. Certain powerful families were constantly vying for the most powerful positions, but there was no hereditary royalty in Carthage. It's possible that the myth of Elishia or Dido may have played a role in maintaining this situation. Since, according to the legend, the city was founded by a woman who had no children,

44:12no one could ever claim to be her true descendants or have any kind of ancestral right to rule.

44:21Instead, the city was governed by a number of different semi-democratic bodies, made up of wealthy citizens. One of these was called the Tribunal of the 104, and another the Council of Elders, a kind of senate. The highest executive position was held by two elected officers, who ruled simultaneously, and who were elected each year. The arrangement was complex and likely prone to corruption, but for the most part, it seems to have worked.

45:00While Carthage flourished, the Phoenician cities that had given birth to it began to flounder. Tyre and Sidon were still under the boot of Assyria, and around 670 BC, the Assyrian king, Esarhaddon began to place harsh restrictions on who they could trade with. When Assyria went to war with Egypt, Esarhaddon forced the Phoenicians of Tyre to place a trade embargo on the pharaohs. Without access

45:31to their once most lucrative market, these cities went into decline. Soon, the king of Tyre was not even allowed to open messages without an Assyrian official present, as the following surviving fragment of one treaty shows. Nor must you open a letter which I send you without the presence of the royal deputy. If the royal deputy is absent, wait for him and then open it. If a ship of the people of Tyre is

46:02shipwrecked off the coast of the land of the Philistines or anywhere on the borders of Assyrian territory, everything that is on the ship belongs to Esarhaddon, king of Assyria. As a result of the decline of cities like Tyre and Sidon, it's likely that large numbers of Phoenicians would have fled to what was now the undisputed capital of the Phoenician world, the booming port town of Carthage. They brought with them their language, their knowledge,

46:35their gods, and their gold. By the 6th century BC, Carthage was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean, and its sailors, the finest in the world, would soon embark on voyages of exploration that would not be matched for another 2,000 years. By this time, the Phoenicians had already sailed right to the end of their world, through the

47:08pillars of Hercules and out into the Atlantic Ocean. But their exploration didn't stop there. In fact, if ancient sources are to be believed, they may have been the first navigators to successfully sail around the entire coast of Africa. Herodotus recounts one expedition that supposedly took place around 600 BC, sponsored by a pharaoh of Egypt named Nekos, although he is frustratingly vague and short on detail. The expedition apparently set sail from Egypt's Red Sea coast, voyaged around

47:45the Horn of Africa and the South African Cape, before sailing north through the Gulf of Guinea and back into the Mediterranean through the Pillars of Hercules. Nekos of Egypt sent Phoenicians in ships, instructing them to sail on their return voyage, past the Pillars of Heracles, until they came into the Northern Sea and so to Egypt. So, the Phoenicians set out from the Red Sea and sailed to the Southern Sea. Whenever autumn came, they would put in and plant the land in whatever part of Libya they had

48:21reached, and there await the harvest. Then, having gathered the crop, they sailed on, so that after two years had passed, it was in the third that they rounded the Pillars of Heracles and came to Egypt. There they said, what some may believe, though I do not, that in sailing around Libya, they had the sun on their right hand. Interestingly, it is this detail that Herodotus personally finds unbelievable

48:55that has caused modern scholars to take the claim more seriously. The change in the position of the sun relative to the ship suggests that the voyage did indeed cross the Tropic of Cancer, and perhaps even the equator, causing the summer sun to appear in the north. Modern estimates consider a journey time of three years to be a reasonable duration for a circumnavigation of Africa that would have been about 20,000 kilometers long, or half the way around the world. If this story is true, then it means the

49:27Phoenicians may have rounded the Cape of Africa more than 2,000 years before the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Diaz would do the same thing in 1488, opening up the passage to India and the age of European colonialism.

49:50More solidly attested voyages of Phoenician discovery would see an explorer named Hanno the Navigator sail out into the Atlantic Ocean through the Pillars of Hercules, and sail perhaps as far south as Cameroon or Gabon in West Africa. His voyage is recounted in a Greek translation entitled The Periplus or Travel Account of Hanno, supposedly an accurate copy of an inscription that actually hung in the Temple of Baal Hamon in Carthage.

50:21It was decreed by the Carthaginians that Hanno should undertake a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found Phoenician cities. We sailed accordingly, with 60 ships of 50 oars each, and a body of men and women to the number of 30,000, and provisions and other necessaries. Proceeding a day's sail, we came to the extremity of the lake, that was overhung by large mountains. Inhabited by savage men clothed in the skins of wild beasts, who drove us away by throwing stones and hindered us from landing. Sailing thence, we came to another river, that was large and broad, and full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses.

50:53Hanno writes down vivid descriptions of seeing active volcanoes spewing lava into the ocean, possibly the active volcano Mount Cameroon. And then quickly sailing forth, we passed by a burning country full of fragrance, from which great torrents of fire flowed down to the sea,

51:28and we sailed along with all speed, being stricken by fear. After a journey of four days, we saw the land at night covered with flames, and in the midst there was one lofty fire, greater than the rest, which seemed to touch the stars. Hanno even seems to have been the first to write down an encounter with what may have been Earth's largest living primates, with unfortunate results. We arrived at a bay called the Southern Horn, at the bottom of which lay an island full of savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called guerrillae.

52:14Though we pursued the men, we could not seize any of them, but all fled from us, escaping over the precipices, and defending themselves with stones. Three women were however taken, but they attacked their conductors with their teeth and hands, and could not be prevailed upon to accompany us. Having killed them, we flayed them, and brought their skins with us to Carthage. We did not sail farther on, our provisions failing us. These hairy creatures may have been chimpanzees, monkeys, or what we today would call gorillas, all of which can be encountered in the region of Cameroon.

52:56On Hanno's return, the hairy skins he brought home were kept in the temple to the god Tanit in Carthage, and according to Pliny the Elder, would remain in the city for as long as it existed. In the 19th century, when the American physician and missionary Thomas Stoughton Savage and the naturalist Jeffries Wyman wrote the first scientific description of a gorilla, they gave them the name Troglodytes Gorilla, after the mysterious description in Hanno's writing, and the name has stuck ever since.

53:33Another explorer named Himilco sailed out into the Atlantic and went in the opposite direction, sailing north up the coast of Spain and France, and even on to the British Isles. Here, he saw Celtic tribespeople sailing in coracles made of deer skin, a sight he found remarkable. They cleave the tempestuous sea and the current of the ocean, abounding in monsters with woven boats. Indeed, these people do not know how to fashion keels with pine and maple.

54:09But in a miraculous thing, they always fit out vessels from hides stretched together, and often travel through the immense sea in a skin.

54:20Himilco also brought back stories of the vast expanse of the Atlantic to the west, a frightening sight to the sailors brought up in the enclosed inland sea of the Mediterranean. Beyond, towards the area to the west, there is a sea without end. The ocean lies open across a wide area, and the sea stretches out. No man has entered upon these seas, because the sea lacks winds that would drive the ships along,

54:53and no breeze from the sky favors a ship. It also seems that he may have seen whales swimming out there in the ocean, which were then nearly four times more numerous than they are today. Here and there, see monsters swim amid the slow ships sluggishly crawling along. Himilco reported that he had once seen these creatures in the ocean and proved their existence.

55:24These we have related to you, revealed a long time ago, deep in the annals of the Carthaginians. In 2019, a team of 20 modern sailors successfully piloted a replica of a single-masted Carthaginian merchant vessel across the Atlantic Ocean, departing from the site of Carthage and landing in the Caribbean five months later, demonstrating that Phoenician ships had the ability to reach the Americas 2,000 years before Columbus.

56:00As the city of Carthage grew, its population boomed. While some ancient writers record it as having a population of more than 700,000 people, this is thought to be unlikely. But estimates based on the size of the city and the size of civilian armies drawn up in times of crisis have suggested that the population may have reached 400,000. By the year 400 BC, the city walls had been rebuilt to now stand a towering 15 meters high,

56:36with a triple line of ditches and defenses on the landward side. The hill of Birsa, where legend has it that Elishaia played her trick with the oxhide, was now itself ringed with an inner defensive wall, and loomed over the rest of the city as a fortified citadel. The Roman writer Appian writes the following description of the city. On the seaside, the city was protected by a single wall. Toward the south and the mainland, where the citadel of Birsa stood on the Ithmus,

57:09there was a triple wall. The height of each wall was 15 meter without counting parapets and towers, which were separated from each other by a space of 60 meters. One of the most remarkable features of ancient Carthage was the innovative design of its harbor, known as the Cothon.

57:32Likely built sometime in the 3rd or 2nd century BC, this comprised a large rectangular commercial harbor for civilian ships that led into a unique circular docking bay for the military ships of Carthage's war fleet. The harbor was so large that today the shape of its outline can still be seen in the coast of the city of Tunis. Appian describes the unique design of this harbor. The harbors had communication with each other

58:03and a common entrance from the sea 20 meters wide, which could be closed with iron chains. The first port was for merchant vessels, and here were collected all kinds of ships' tackle. Within the second port was an island, which, together with the port itself, was enclosed by high embankments. These embankments were full of shipyards, which had capacity for 220 vessels. Above them were magazines for their tackle and furniture. Two ionic columns stood in front of each dock.

58:35On the island was built the admiral's house, from which the trumpeter gave signals. The herald delivered orders, and the admiral himself overlooked everything.

58:47At this time, Carthage had the largest and most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean, and the military port was built to conceal the ships docked within, and ensure that no spies could glean any of their secrets, or keep tabs on their movements. The island lay near the entrance to the harbor and rose to a considerable height, so that the admiral could observe what was going on at sea, while those who were approaching by water could not get any clear view of what took place within.

59:17Not even the incoming merchants could see the docks, for a double wall enclosed them, and there were gates by which merchant ships could pass from the first port of the city without traversing the dockyards. Such was the appearance of Carthage at the time. Between the harbor and the citadel of Birsa on the hill stood the Agora, the large open marketplace of the city,

59:48where all manner of goods and foods could be bought. Archaeological studies of plant matter found in Carthage show that the ancient Carthaginians enjoyed a varied diet. Walking through the markets of the city, you would be able to buy wheat, barley, and other grains, numerous vegetables like artichokes and cabbages, pulses and lentils, and fruits including pomegranates, grapes, figs, olives, peaches, plums, and melons, as well as nuts like pistachios and almonds.

1:00:21Olives were pressed into oil, and its people ate fish like gray mullet, sea perch, eels, and dolphins, as well as the meat of sheep, pigs, goats, chickens, and occasionally even dogs. The Carthaginians, like most people in the ancient world, were obsessed with a pungent salty sauce known as garum, which was brewed from the fermenting of fish entrails, and which was probably similar to the fish sauce used today in East Asian cuisine.

1:00:52In the wreck of one Carthaginian ship, found off the coast of Sicily in Marsala, archaeologists have also uncovered the remains of cannabis stalks, which may have been chewed by the ship's rowers, and could also have been enjoyed on land, either chewed or brewed into a tea. Wine was particularly beloved too, and especially a particular kind of sweet dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes.

1:01:22One agricultural handbook, written by a Carthaginian named Margo, has survived in fragments of Greek and Latin translation, and it describes the process of making this wine. Pick some well-ripened early grapes. Discard any that are mildewed or damaged. Lay down reeds and spread the grapes out in the sun on top. Cover them at night so that the dew will not moisten them. When they are dried, pick the grapes off stems and put them in a jar or pitcher.

1:01:56Add some unfermented wine, the best you have, until the grapes are just covered. After six days, when the grapes have absorbed it all and are swollen, put them in a basket, put them through the press, and collect the resulting liquid. Bottle the liquid in stopper jars, and after 20 or 30 days, when the fermentation is over, coat the lids with plaster and cover them with leather.

1:02:22As a typical Phoenician city, Carthage initially had a small footprint in North Africa, and in its early days, it was reliant on its overseas territories, in Sardinia and Sicily, for more than half of its food, brought across the sea on grain ships. But in the 6th century, it began to expand its territory around the city. The Carthaginians either expelled local people or came to agreements with them, and built a network of towns and forts

1:02:53to the south, east, and west, and began to farm the land themselves.

1:02:59A later writer, Diodorus of Sicily, would pen the following description of the abundant hinterland that would soon stretch beyond the city. All the lands were set with gardens and orchards, watered by numerous springs and canals. There were well-constructed country houses, built with lime along the route, announcing widespread wealth. The land was cultivated with vines, olive trees, and a whole host of fruit trees.

1:03:31On both sides, there were herds of oxen and sheep grazing on the plain, and near the main pastures and the marshes, there were studs of horses. In its outposts in Sardinia, Spain, and Sicily, Carthage began a similar process, turning what had once been small trading posts into more solid and fortified territories, with their own agricultural land. Soon, the city of Carthage would be more or less self-sufficient,

1:04:02as the Roman writer Appian describes.

1:04:06Gradually acquiring strength, they mastered Africa and the greater part of the Mediterranean, carried war into Sicily and Sardinia and the other islands of that sea, and also into Spain. They sent out numerous colonies. They became a match for the Greeks in power and next to the Persians in wealth. The typical Carthaginian house was built around a central courtyard, and the wealthier dwellings had an upstairs and a terrace.

1:04:37Finer houses had cupboards and shelves built into the walls, and often a clay-bred oven. We can imagine the smells of this baking bread wafting through the city streets, along with the pungent aromas from the tanneries and wineries, the smells of animals and incense, cooked fish, and salty garum sauce.

1:05:00Wealthy houses also contained elaborate bathrooms with separate changing facilities and baths plastered with water-resistant stucco. Before bathing, oil would be applied to the body, and a bronze tool known as a strigil was used to scrape dirt from the skin. While in Greek houses, these bathrooms were usually built off the kitchen, the Carthaginians built their bathrooms next to the entrance to the house, suggesting that there was some sort of ritual purpose

1:05:31to the bathing, separating the dusty, unclean world of outside from the clean inner space of the home.

1:05:42A variety of animals would have been visible on the crowded city streets. These would have included beasts of burden, like donkeys, oxen, and horses, stray dogs and cats, and noisy caravans of camels coming in from the desert. But they also seem to have drawn animals as curiosities from all parts of Africa. A species of huge lion known as the Barbary lion could be found all across this region and would later be captured for spectacles,

1:06:15including in the Roman arenas. And a species of monkey known as the Barbary macaque is also native to this area. Diodorus of Sicily records one account of Carthaginians keeping these monkeys as apparently much-beloved pets. In these cities, many of the customs were very different from those current among us. For the apes lived in the same houses as the men, being regarded among them as gods,

1:06:45just as the dogs are among the Egyptians, and from the provisions laid up in the storerooms, the beasts took their food without hindrance whenever they wished. For any who killed this animal, as if he had committed the greatest sacrilege, death was established as the penalty.

1:07:05Around this time, monkeys began appearing as a motif in the art of regions of Italy, Sardinia, and elsewhere, suggesting that the Carthaginians were even exporting this animal to other regions. Some Barbary macaques were mummified in Egyptian tombs alongside pharaohs, and the skull of a Barbary macaque dated to around this time has even been unearthed as far away as Northern Ireland.

1:07:34And of course, in vast stables to the south of the city were kept the animals that in most people's minds are most inseparably associated with the city of Carthage, that is, the elephant. The North African elephant is an extinct subspecies of the African elephant that lived north of the Sahara desert. Carthaginian paintings on walls, coins, and mosaics

1:08:05show that these elephants had the swooping backs and large ears typical of the African elephant that roams the savannah, but it was considerably smaller and was likely similar in size to another surviving subspecies, the African forest elephant. These reach a shoulder height of about two and a half meters, only a little taller than the largest shire horses, but of course, their thick and heavy frames mean they weigh more than 15 times

1:08:36the average horse. For this reason, these elephants were used by the Carthaginians as fearsome weapons of war.

1:08:46Some historians have speculated that Carthage may also have imported some much larger Indian elephants, which were at that time being used by the Seleucid dynasty in Syria. One elephant that was the pride of the later Carthaginian army was known by the name Surus, which some have translated to mean the Syrian. If true, this Syrian elephant would have towered as much as a meter over the smaller Carthaginian elephants

1:09:16and would have been a truly terrifying sight on the battlefield. In India and Southeast Asia, it has always been common to use elephants as work animals to transport heavy loads for construction, but it's not clear whether the Carthaginians used their elephants in this manner or whether these precious animals were only reserved for their power and prestige to be used as living tanks on the battlefield, as the writer Pliny the Elder describes.

1:09:49Elephants, when tamed, are employed in war and carry into the ranks of the enemy towers filled with armed men and on them in a very great measure depends the ultimate result of the battles that are fought in the east. They tread underfoot whole companies and crush the men in their armor.

1:10:10But I think it's not hard to imagine that, as in India, elephants may also have been used ceremonially in festivals and parades to carry kings and generals, a living embodiment of the might of this new empire. While Carthage didn't hesitate to go to war to defend its interests and protect its trade,

1:10:41it was not at heart a warrior culture and it never suffered a conflict to continue any longer than it absolutely had to. The Carthaginians often relied on diplomatic solutions and agreements to avoid fighting with their various neighbors in the Mediterranean. One such agreement was settled in the year 509 BC with a minor city-state in central Italy in the region of Latium, whose people spoke a small Italic dialect

1:11:12called Latin. This city's people had just that year thrown off the rule of their Etruscan king and abolished kingship in the city for good. In place of a king, they had brought in the rule of a pair of elected consuls drawn from the aristocracy, a system strikingly similar to and perhaps even inspired by the Carthaginians. This city's name was Rome.

1:11:41The Romans at that time were among several powers in central Italy, facing rivals in the Etruscans to the north and powerful tribal confederacies like the Samnites, all fighting for dominance in the plains of central Italy. The Carthaginians seem to have taken note of this regional development and proceeded to sign a treaty with this new Roman Republic, the contents of which the Greek historian Polybius records.

1:12:12There shall be friendship between the Romans and their allies and the Carthaginians and their allies on these conditions. Neither the Romans nor their allies are to sail beyond the fair peninsula unless driven by stress of weather or the fear of enemies. If any one of them be driven ashore, he shall not buy or take anything for himself save what is needed for the repair of his ship and the service of the gods

1:12:42and he shall depart within five days. Carthage shall build no fort in Latium and if they enter the district in arms, they shall not stay a night therein.

1:12:57The theme of this treaty was simple. You leave us alone and we will leave you alone. And while Rome was at this point very much on the Carthaginians' radar, it seems that they considered this Italian city republic to be little cause of concern.

1:13:23Around the year 410 BC, Carthage began minting its own silver coins and each coin would be stamped with the symbol of a palm tree in Greek known as phoenike, now becoming a symbol of Phoenician identity. Carthage was now presenting itself as the new champion of the Phoenician people, the capital of the Phoenician world. It was now beginning to look a lot like an empire and like all empires,

1:13:53it soon found an increasing need to defend and expand its territory. It's often said that Carthage relied on mercenaries to fight its wars, but this is something of an over-simplification. While these kinds of armies for hire did make up one part of their forces, in fact, there were all kinds of reasons that people came to fight for the empire of Carthage. Many of their soldiers were sent to fight for them as part of treaties, just as the Phoenicians had once promised

1:14:23to send their ships to fight for Assyria. As Carthage expanded to conquer new peoples all along the North African coast and across the Mediterranean, ever more power and variety was added to its forces. When war came, each ally and province would send fighters of a particular kind based on what they specialized in. The North African power of Numidia to the west of Carthage sent powerful and experienced

1:14:53cavalry and javelin throwers, while colonies in the island of Mallorca would send slingers and peasant spearmen with large round shields were conscripted from the fields of Libya in the east. Celts from Spain