The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Carthage and Numidia
Let us first glance at Africa. The order of things established by
the Romans in Libya rested in substance on a balance of power between
the Nomad kingdom of Massinissa and the city of Carthage. While the
former was enlarged, confirmed, and civilized under the vigorous
and sagacious government of Massinissa,(6) Carthage in consequence
simply of a state of peace became once more, at least in wealth and
population, what it had been at the height of its political power.
The Romans saw with ill-concealed and envious fear the apparently
indestructible prosperity of their old rival; while hitherto they had
refused to grant to it any real protection against the constantly
continued encroachments of Massinissa, they now began openly to
interfere in favour of the neighbouring prince. The dispute which
had been pending for more than thirty years between the city and the
king as to the possession of the province of Emporia on the Lesser
Syrtis, one of the most fertile in the Carthaginian territory, was
at length (about 594) decided by Roman commissioners to the effect
that the Carthaginians should evacuate those towns of Eniporia which
still remained in their possession, and should pay 500 talents
(120,000 pounds) to the king as compensation for the illegal enjoyment
of the territory. The consequence was, that Massinissa immediately
seized another Carthaginian district on the western frontier of
their territory, the town of Tusca and the great plains near the
Bagradas; no course was left to the Carthaginians but to commence
another hopeless process at Rome. After long and, beyond doubt,
intentional delay a second commission appeared in Africa (597);
but, when the Carthaginians were unwilling to commit themselves
unconditionally to a decision to be pronounced by it as arbiter
without an exact preliminary investigation into the question of
legal right, and insisted on a thorough discussion of the latter
question, the commissioners without further ceremony returned to Rome.
The Destruction of Carthage Resolved on at Rome
The question of right between Carthage and Massinissa thus remained
unsettled; but the mission gave rise to a more important decision.
The head of this commission had been the old Marcus Cato, at that
time perhaps the most influential man in the senate, and, as a
veteran survivor from the Hannibalic war, still filled with thorough
hatred and thorough dread of the Phoenicians. With surprise and
jealousy Cato had seen with his own eyes the flourishing state of
the hereditary foes of Rome, the luxuriant country and the crowded
streets, the immense stores of arms in the magazines and the rich
materials for a fleet; already he in spirit beheld a second
Hannibal wielding all these resources against Rome. In his honest
and manly, but thoroughly narrow-minded, fashion, he came to the
conclusion that Rome could not be secure until Carthage had
disappeared from the face of the earth, and immediately after his
return set forth this view in the senate. Those of the aristocracy
whose ideas were more enlarged, and especially Scipio Nasica,
opposed this paltry policy with great earnestness; and showed how
blind were the fears entertained regarding a mercantile city whose
Phoenician inhabitants were becoming more and more disused to warlike
arts and ideas, and how the existence of that rich commercial city
was quite compatible with the political supremacy of Rome. Even the
conversion of Carthage into a Roman provincial town would have been
practicable, and indeed, compared with the present condition of the
Phoenicians, perhaps even not unwelcome. Cato, however, desired not
the submission, but the destruction of the hated city. His policy,
as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were
inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate
dependence on Rome, partly and especially in the mighty influence
of the Roman bankers and great capitalists on whom, after the
destruction of the rich moneyed and mercantile city, its inheritance
would necessarily devolve. The majority resolved at the first fitting
opportunity--respect for public opinion required that they should
wait for such--to bring about war with Carthage, or rather the
destruction of the city.
War between Massinissa and Carthage
The desired occasion was soon found. The provoking violations of
right on the part of Massinissa and the Romans brought to the helm
in Carthage Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriotic
party, which was not indeed, like the Achaean, disposed to revolt
against the Roman supremacy, but was at least resolved to defend,
if necessary, by arms against Massinissa the rights belonging by
treaty to the Carthaginians. The patriots ordered forty of the most
decided partisans of Massinissa to be banished from the city, and made
the people swear that they would on no account ever permit their return;
at the same time, in order to repel the attacks that might be expected
from Massinissa, they formed out of the free Numidians a numerous army
under Arcobarzanes, the grandson of Syphax (about 600). Massinissa,
however, was prudent enough not to take arms now, but to submit
himself unconditionally to the decision of the Romans respecting
the disputed territory on the Bagradas; and thus the Romans could
assert with some plausibility that the Carthaginian preparations must
have been directed against them, and could insist on the immediate
dismissal of the army and destruction of the naval stores.
The Carthaginian senate was disposed to consent, but the multitude
prevented the execution of the decree, and the Roman envoys, who
had brought this order to Carthage, were in peril of their lives.
Massinissa sent his son Gulussa to Rome to report the continuance of
the Carthaginian warlike preparations by land and sea, and to hasten
the declaration of war. After a further embassy of ten men had
confirmed the statement that Carthage was in reality arming (602),
the senate rejected the demand of Cato for an absolute declaration
of war, but resolved in a secret sitting that war should be declared
if the Carthaginians would not consent to dismiss their army and
to burn their materials for a fleet. Meanwhile the conflict had
already begun in Africa. Massinissa had sent back the men whom the
Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to
the city. When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and
killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his
troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared
for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their
army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians
were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his
general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly
person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little
fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius
of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted.
Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military tribune
in the Spanish army, had been sent to Massinissa to bring over African
elephants for his commander, and who on this occasion looked down on
the conflict from a mountain "like Zeus from Ida," the Carthaginians
and Numidians fought a great battle, in which the former, though
reinforced by 6000 Numidian horsemen brought to them by discontented
captains of Massinissa, and superior in number to the enemy, were
worsted. After this defeat the Carthaginians offered to make
cessions of territory and payments of money to Massinissa, and
Scipio at their solicitation attempted to bring about an agreement;
but the project of peace was frustrated by the refusal of the
Carthaginian patriots to surrender the deserters. Hasdrubal,
however, closely hemmed in by the troops of his antagonist, was
compelled to grant to the latter all that he demanded--the surrender
of the deserters, the return of the exiles, the delivery of arms,
the marching off under the yoke, the payment of 100 talents (24,000
pounds) annually for the next fifty years. But even this agreement
was not kept by the Numidians; on the contrary the disarmed remnant
of the Carthaginian army was cut to pieces by them on the way home.
Declaration of War by Rome
The Romans, who had carefully abstained from preventing the war
Itself by seasonable interposition, had now what they wished: namely,
A serviceable pretext for war--for the Carthaginians had certainly
Now transgressed the stipulations of the treaty, that they should not
wage war against the allies of Rome or beyond their own bounds(7)--
and an antagonist already beaten beforehand. The Italian contingents
were already summoned to Rome, and the ships were assembled; the
declaration of war might issue at any moment. The Carthaginians made
every effort to avert the impending blow. Hasdrubal and Carthalo,
the leaders of the patriot party, were condemned to death, and an
embassy was sent to Rome to throw the responsibility on them.
But at the same time envoys from Utica, the second city of the
Libyan Phoenicians, arrived there with full powers to surrender
their Community wholly to the Romans--compared with such obliging
submissiveness, it seemed almost an insolence that the Carthaginians
had rested content with ordering, unbidden, the execution of their most
eminent men. The senate declared that the excuse of the Carthaginians
was found insufficient; to the question, what in that case would suffice,
the reply was given that the Carthaginians knew that themselves. They
might, no doubt, have known what the Romans wished; but yet it seemed
impossible to believe that the last hour of their loved native city had
really come. Once more Carthaginian envoys--on this occasion thirty
in number and with unlimited powers--were sent to Rome. When they
arrived, war was already declared (beginning of 605), and the double
consular army had embarked. Yet they even now attempted to dispel
the storm by complete submission. The senate replied that Rome was
ready to guarantee to the Carthaginian community its territory, its
municipal freedom and its laws, its public and private property,
provided that it would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for
Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the
children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders
which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue
to them. The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously,
as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves
pointed out. The circumstance that everything which they could ask
was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that
nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for
Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the
senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the
semblance of concession. The Carthaginians, however, would not open
their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move
the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or
to thorough resignation. When they heard at the same time of the
horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they
complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because
they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering
themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe.
The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed
the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in
Africa. The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the
provisions demanded were supplied. When the gerusia of Carthage
appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the
further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the
disarming of the city. To the question of the Carthaginians, who
was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants--
against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command
of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by
flight--it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans.
Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the
consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the
public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of
private persons--to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of
armour--and inquired whether anything more was desired. Then the
consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council,
that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the
existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were
at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose,
provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.
Resistance of the Carthaginians
This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the--shall
we say magnanimous or frenzied?--enthusiasm, which was displayed
previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the
Jews against Vespasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which
this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was
now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population,
when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the
beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear
home beside the sea. Hope and deliverance were out of the question;
political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission.
But the voice of the few who counselled the acceptance of what was
inevitable was, like the call of the pilot during a hurricane,
drowned amidst the furious yells of the multitude; which, in its
frantic rage, laid hands on the magistrates of the city who had
counselled the surrender of the hostages and arms, made such of the
innocent bearers of the news as had ventured at all to return home
expiate their terrible tidings, and tore in pieces the Italians who
chanced to be sojourning in the city by way of avenging beforehand,
at least on them, the destruction of its native home. No resolution
was passed to defend themselves; unarmed as they were, this was
a matter of course. The gates were closed; stones were carried
to the battlements of the walls that had been stripped of the
catapults; the chief command was entrusted to Hasdrubal, the grandson
of Massinissa; the slaves in a body were declared free. The army
of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal--which was in possession of
the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on
the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Hadrumetum, Little
Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an
invaluable support for the defence--was entreated not to refuse its
aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency. At the same time,
concealing in true Phoenician style the most unbounded resentment
under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy.
A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days'
armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians
were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this
request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were
confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak
of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly
postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing
catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or
sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms; the public
buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal; women cut off
their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults; in
an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed.
That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few
miles off, learning anything of it, is not the least marvellous feature
in this marvellous movement sustained by a truly enthusiastic, and in
fact superhuman, national hatred. When at length the consuls, weary
of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they
should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their
surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and
the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open
village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.
Situation of Carthage
Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its
situation(8) and by the art of its inhabitants, who had very often
to depend on the protection of its walls. Into the broad gulf of
Tunis, which is bounded on the west by Cape Farina and on the east
by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a
promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is
connected with the mainland only towards the west. This promontory,
at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat,
again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two
heights of Jebel-Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends
the plain of El Mersa. On its southern portion which ends in the
height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The pretty steep
declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and
shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the
gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there. On the
wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature
afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art
of fortification in those times was expended. It consisted, as its
recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of
Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense
casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent;
these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet
broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back
walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad.(9) This enormous wall,
composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories,
exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high,
to a height of 45 feet,(10) and furnished in the lower range of the
casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper
range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks.(11) The citadel-hill,
the Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable
rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference
of fully 2000 double paces,(12) was joined to this wall at its
southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined
to the city-wall of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the
God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps. The south
side of the city was washed partly by the shallow lake of Tunes towards
the south-west, which was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a
narrow and low tongue of land running southwards from the Carthaginian
peninsula,(13) partly by the open gulf towards the south-east.
At this last spot was situated the double harbour of the city,
a work of human hands; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish
rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance,
only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides,
and the inner circular war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island
containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached
through the outer harbour. Between the two passed the city wall,
which turning eastward from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of
land and the outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that
the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable of being
closed like a gate. Not far from the war-harbour lay the
marketplace, which was connected by three narrow streets with
the citadel open on the side towards the town. To the north of,
and beyond, the city proper, the pretty considerable space of
the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied in great part by
villas and well-watered gardens, and then called Magalia, had a
circumvallation of its own joining on to the city wall. On the
opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near the modern
village of Ghamart, lay the necropolis. These three--the old
city, the suburb, and the necropolis--together filled the whole
breadth of the promontory on its side next the gulf, and were only
accessible by the two highways leading to Utica and Tunes along
that narrow tongue of land, which, although not closed by a wall,
yet afforded a most advantageous position for the armies taking
their stand under the protection of the capital with the view of
protecting it in return.
The difficult task of reducing so well fortified a city was rendered
still more difficult by the fact, that the resources of the capital
itself and of its territory which still included 800 townships and
was mostly under the power of the emigrant party on the one hand,
and the numerous tribes of the free or half-free Libyans hostile to
Massinissa on the other, enabled the Carthaginians simultaneously
with their defence of the city to keep a numerous army in the field--
an army which, from the desperate temper of the emigrants and the
serviceableness of the light Numidian cavalry, the besiegers could
not afford to disregard.
The Siege
The consuls accordingly had by no means an easy task to perform,
when they now found themselves compelled to commence a regular siege.
Manius Manilius, who commanded the land army, pitched his camp
opposite the wall of the citadel, while Lucius Censorinus stationed
himself with the fleet on the lake and there began operations on the
tongue of land. The Carthaginian army, under Hasdrubal, encamped on
the other side of the lake near the fortress of Nepheris, whence it
obstructed the labours of the Roman soldiers despatched to cut
timber for constructing machines, and the able cavalry-leader in
particular, Himilco Phameas, slew many of the Romans. Censorinus
fitted up two large battering-rams on the tongue, and made a
breach with them at this weakest place of the wall; but, as evening
had set in, the assault had to be postponed. During the night the
besieged succeeded in filling up a great part of the breach, and in
so damaging the Roman machines by a sortie that they could not work
next day. Nevertheless the Romans ventured on the assault; but
they found the breach and the portions of the wall and houses in the
neighbourhood so strongly occupied, and advanced with such imprudence,
that they were repulsed with severe loss and would have suffered
still greater damage, had not the military tribune Scipio Aemilianus,
foreseeing the issue of the foolhardy attack, kept together his men
in front of the walls and with them intercepted the fugitives.
Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of
the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in
the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler
general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally
far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty
which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of
ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the
offensive operations of the Romans. They had enough to do in
protecting their ships against the Carthaginian incendiaries and
their camp against nocturnal surprises, and in securing food for
their men and horses by the construction of a harbour-fort and by
forays in the neighbourhood. Two expeditions directed against
Hasdrubal remained without success; and in fact the first, badly
led over difficult ground, had almost terminated in a formal defeat.
But, while the course of the war was inglorious for the general
and the army, the military tribune Scipio achieved in it brilliant
distinction. It was he who, on occasion of a nocturnal attack by
the enemy on the Roman camp, starting with some squadrons of horse
and taking the enemy in rear, compelled him to retreat. On the
first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had
taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned
the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved
the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and
heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as
lost While the other officers, and the consul in particular,
by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were
inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in inducing one of the
ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans
with 2200 cavalry. Lastly, after he had in fulfilment of the charge
of the dying Massinissa divided his kingdom among his three sons,
Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, he brought to the Roman army in
Gulussa a cavalry-leader worthy of his father, and thereby remedied
the want, which had hitherto been seriously felt, of light cavalry.
His refined and yet simple demeanour, which recalled rather his own
father than him whose name he bore, overcame even envy, and in the
camp as in the capital the name of Scipio was on the lips of all.
Even Cato, who was not liberal with his praise, a few months before
his death--he died at the end of 605 without having seen the wish of
his life, the destruction of Carthage, accomplished--applied to the
young officer and to his incapable comrades the Homeric line:--