Carthage

Carthage (Arabic: قرطاج‎, Ancient Greek: Καρχηδών Karkhēdōn, Berber: Kartajen, Latin: Carthago or Karthago, from the Phoenician Qart-ḥadašt meaning new town) refers both to an ancient city in present-day Tunisia, and a modern-day suburb of Tunis. The civilization that developed within the city's sphere of influence is referred to as Punic or Carthaginian. The city of Carthage is located on the eastern side of Lake Tunis across from the center of Tunis. According to Roman legend it was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician colonists under the leadership of Elissa (Queen Dido). It became a large and rich city and thus a major power in the Mediterranean. The resulting rivalry with Syracuse and Rome was accompanied by several wars with respective invasions of each other's homeland. Hannibal's invasion of Italy in the Second Punic War culminated in the Carthaginian victory at Cannae and led to a serious threat to the continuation of Roman rule over Italy, however Carthage emerged from the conflict at its historical weakest. After the Third Punic War, the city was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC. However, the Romans refounded Carthage, which became one of the three most important cities of the Empire and the capital of the short-lived Vandal kingdom. It remained one of the most important Roman cities until the Muslim conquest when it was destroyed a second time in AD 698.

Topography

Carthage was built on a promontory with inlets to the sea to the north and south. The city's location made it master of the Mediterranean's maritime trade. All ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence.

Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the city's massive navy of 220 warships and the other for mercantile trade. A walled tower overlooked both harbors.

The city had massive walls, 23 miles (37 kilometers) in length, longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were located on the shore and thus could be less impressive as Carthaginian control of the sea made attack from that direction difficult. The 2½–3 miles (4–4.8 kilometers) of wall on the isthmus to the west were truly large and in fact were never penetrated.

The city had a huge necropolis or burial ground, religious area, market places, council house, towers and a theatre and was divided into four equally-sized residential areas with the same layout. Roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa. It was one of the largest cities in Hellenistic times (by some estimates only Alexandria was larger) and was among the largest cities in pre-industrial history.

History

Source material

The historical study of Carthage is problematic. Because its culture and records were destroyed by the Romans at the end of the Third Punic War, very few Carthaginian primary historical sources survive. While there are a few ancient translations of Punic texts into Greek and Latin, as well as inscriptions on monuments and buildings discovered in North Africa, the main sources are Greek and Roman historians, including Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Herodotus. These writers belonged to peoples in competition, and often in conflict, with Carthage. Greek cities contested with Carthage for Sicily, and the Romans fought three wars against Carthage. Not surprisingly, their accounts of Carthage are extremely hostile; while there are a few Greek authors who took a favorable view, these works have been lost.

Recent excavation has brought much more primary material to light. Some of these finds contradict aspects of the traditional picture of Carthage, and much of the material is still ambiguous.

Legends of the foundation

Queen Elissa

Queen Elissa (also known as "Alissar", and by the Arabic name اليسار also اليسا and عليسا), who in later accounts became known as Queen Dido, was a princess of Tyre who founded Carthage. At its peak, her metropolis came to be called the "shining city," ruling 300 other cities around the western Mediterranean and leading the Phoenician (or Punic) world.

Elissa was a princess of Tyre. Her brother, King Pygmalion of Tyre, had murdered her husband, the high priest. Elissa escaped the tyranny of her own country and founded the "new city" of Carthage and subsequently its later dominions. Details of her life are sketchy and confusing, but the following can be deduced from various sources. According to Justin, Princess Elissa was the daughter of King Matten of Tyre (also known as Muttoial or Belus II). When he died, the throne was jointly bequeathed to her and her brother, Pygmalion. She married her uncle Acherbas (also known as Sychaeus) the High Priest of Melqart, a man with both authority and wealth comparable to the king. Pygmalion was a tyrant, lover of both gold and intrigue, who desired the authority and fortune enjoyed by Acherbas. Pygmalion assassinated Acherbas in the temple and kept the misdeed concealed from his sister for a long time, deceiving her with lies about her husband's death. At the same time, the people of Tyre called for a single sovereign, causing dissent within the royal family.

Queen Dido

In the Roman epic of Virgil, the Aeneid, Queen Dido, the Greek name for Queen Elissa, is first introduced as an extremely respected character in his legend. In just seven years, since their exodus from Tyre, the Carthaginians have rebuilt a successful kingdom under her rule. Her subjects adore her and present her with a festival of praise. Her character is perceived by Virgil as even more noble when she offers asylum to Aeneas and his men, who have recently escaped from Troy. A spirit in the form of the messenger god, Mercury, sent by Jupiter, reminds Aeneas that his mission is not to stay in Carthage with his new-found love, Dido, but to sail to Italy to found Rome. Virgil ends his legend of Dido with the story that, when Aeneas tells Dido, her heart broken, she orders a pyre to be built where she falls upon Aeneas' sword. As she lay dying, she predicted eternal strife between Aeneas' people and her own: "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" (4.625, trans. Fitzgerald) she says, an obvious invocation of Hannibal.

Carthaginian Empire

The Carthaginian Empire was one of the longest-lived and largest empires in the ancient Mediterranean. Reports relay several wars with Syracuse and finally, Rome, which eventually resulted in the defeat and destruction of Carthage in the third Punic war.

Army

According to Polybius, Carthage relied heavily, though not exclusively, on foreign mercenaries, especially in overseas warfare. The core of its army was from its own territory in Africa (ethnic Libyans and Numidians, as well as "Liby-Phoenicians" — i.e. Punics proper). These troops were supported by mercenaries from different ethnic groups and geographic locations across the Mediterranean who fought in their own national units; Celtic, Balearic, and Iberian troops were especially common. Later, after the Barcid conquest of Iberia, Iberians came to form an even greater part of the Carthaginian forces. Carthage seems to have fielded a formidable cavalry force, especially in its African homeland; a significant part of it was composed of Numidian contingents of light cavalry. Other mounted troops included the now extinct North African elephants, trained for war, which, amongst other uses, were commonly used for frontal assaults or as anti-cavalry protection. An army could field up to several hundreds of these animals, but on most reported occasions fewer than a hundred were deployed. The riders of these elephants were armed with a spike and hammer to kill the elephants in case they charged toward their own army.

Navy

The navy of Carthage was one of the largest in the Mediterranean, using serial production to maintain high numbers at moderate cost. The sailors and marines of the Carthaginian navy were predominantly recruited from the Punic citizenry, unlike the multi-national allied and mercenary troops of the Carthaginian armies. The navy offered a stable profession and financial security for its sailors. This helped to contribute to the city's political stability, since the unemployed, debt ridden poor in other cities were frequently inclined to support revolutionary leaders in the hope of improving their own lot. The reputation of her skilled sailors implies that there was in peacetime a training of oarsmen and coxswains, giving their navy a cutting edge in naval matters. The trade of Carthaginian merchantmen was by land across the Sahara and especially by sea throughout the Mediterranean and far into the Atlantic to the tin-rich islands of Britain and to West Africa. There is evidence that at least one Punic expedition under Hanno sailed along the West African coast to regions south of the Equator, describing how the sun was in the north at noon.

Polybius wrote in the sixth book of his History that the Carthaginians were "more exercised in maritime affairs than any other people." Their navy included some 300 to 350 warships. The Romans, who had little experience in naval warfare prior to the First Punic War, managed to finally defeat Carthage with a combination of reverse engineering captured Carthaginian ships, recruitment of experienced Greek sailors from the ranks of its conquered cities, the unorthodox corvus device, and their superior numbers in marines and rowers. In the Third Punic War Polybius describes a tactical innovation of the Carthaginians, augmenting their few triremes with small vessels that carried hooks (to attack the oars) and fire (to attack the hulls). With this new combination, they were able to stand their ground against the superior Roman numbers for a whole day.

Fall

The fall of Carthage came at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC. In spite of the initial devastating Roman naval losses at the beginning of the series of conflicts and Rome's recovery from the brink of defeat after the terror of a 15-year occupation of much of Italy by Hannibal, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus. The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and enslaving the people. Fifty thousand Carthaginians were sold into slavery. The city was set ablaze, and in this way was razed with only ruins and rubble to field the aftermath. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis, Lixus, Chellah, and Mogador. Through a series of misunderstandings, a belief that the Carthaginian farmland was salted to ensure that no crops could be grown there developed in the modern period.

A city of survivors

Byrsa

On the top of the hill Byrsa location of the Roman Forum, was unearthed a residential area punic the last century of existence of the city, more precisely dated from the early second century. It was excavated by archaeologist french Serge Lancel. By visiting this site is interesting for that can not go to Kerkuane (Punic city of Cape Bon). Indeed, the neighborhood between houses and shops and private spaces is particularly significant .

The habitat is typical, even stereotypical, with a local street may be used as a store, a tank is installed in the basement to collect water for domestic use, and a long corridor on the right side which leads to a courtyard pierced by a sump and around which successive small parts in variable. Some soils are covered with mosaics calledpaviment punica, sometimes in the middle of a characteristic red mortar.

The remains have been preserved through the embankments Roman substructures forum whose foundation piles dot the district. The different housing blocks are separated by orthogonal streets of a width of approximately six meters, including the roadway consists of clay. We also notein situstairs to compensate the drop of the hill. Édilitaire this program, which required an organization and political will, has inspired the name of the neighborhood, called "Hannibal district", referring to suffétat Major General at the beginning (of the second century BC. J.-C.).

Roman Carthage

When Carthage fell, its nearby rival Utica, a Roman ally, was made capital of the region and replaced Carthage as the leading center of Punic trade and leadership. It had the advantageous position of being situated on the Lake of Tunis and the outlet of the Majardah River, Tunisia's only river that flowed all year long. However, grain cultivation in the Tunisian mountains caused large amounts of silt to erode into the river. This silt was accumulated in the harbor until it was made useless, and Rome was forced to rebuild Carthage.

By 122 BC, Gaius Gracchus founded a short-lived colonia, called Colonia Iunonia, after the Latin name for the punic goddess Tanit, Iuno caelestis. The purpose was to obtain arable lands for impoverished farmers. The Senate abolished the colony some time later, in order to undermine Gracchus' power. After this ill-fated attempt, a new city of Carthage was built on the same land, and by the 1st century it had grown to the second largest city in the western half of the Roman empire, with a peak population of 500,000. It was the center of the Roman province of Africa, which was a major breadbasket of the empire.

Carthage also became a center of early Christianity. In the first of a string of rather poorly reported Councils at Carthage a few years later, no fewer than seventy bishops attended. Tertullian later broke with the mainstream that was represented more and more by the bishop of Rome, but a more serious rift among Christians was the Donatist controversy, which Augustine of Hippo spent much time and parchment arguing against. In 397 at the Council at Carthage, the biblical canon for the western Church was confirmed.

The political fallout from the deep disaffection of African Christians is supposedly a crucial factor in the ease with which Carthage and the other centres were captured in the 5th century by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who defeated the Roman general Bonifacius and made the city his capital. Gaiseric was considered a heretic too, an Arian, and though Arians commonly despised Catholic Christians, a mere promise of toleration might have caused the city's population to accept him. After a failed attempt to recapture the city in the 5th century, the Byzantines finally subdued the Vandals in the 6th century.

During the emperor Maurice's reign, Carthage was made into an Exarchate, as was Ravenna in Italy. These two exarchates were the western bulwarks of Byzantium, all that remained of its power in the west. In the early 7th century, it was the Exarch of Carthage, Heraclius (of Armenian origin), who overthrew Emperor Phocas.

Islamic Carthage

The Byzantine Exarchate was not, however, able to withstand the Muslim conquerors of the 7th century. Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik in AD 686 sent a force led by Zuhayr ibn Qais who won a battle over Byzantines and Berbers led by Kusaila, on the Qairawan plain, but could not follow that up. In AD 695 Hasan ibn al-Nu'man captured Carthage and advanced into the Atlas Mountains. A Byzantine fleet arrived, retook Carthage but in AD 698 Hasan ibn al-Nu'man returned and defeated Tiberios III at the Battle of Carthage. The Byzantines withdrew from all of Africa except Ceuta. The Roman Carthage was destroyed, just as the Romans had done in 146 BC. Carthage was replaced by Tunis as the major regional center. The destruction of the Exarchate of Africa marked a permanent end to Roman or Byzantine influence there, as the rising tide of Islam took root.

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