CHAPTER IV.
PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS
Commerce of the Mediterranean.
I. ROME had required two hundred and forty-four years to form her constitution under the kings, a hundred and seventy-two to establish and consolidate the consular Republic, seventy-two to complete the conquest of Italy, and now it will cost her nearly a century and a half to obtain the domination of the world – that is, of Northern Africa, Spain, the south of Gaul, Illyria, Epirus, Greece, Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. Before undertaking the recital of these conquests, let us halt an instant to consider the condition of the basin of the Mediterranean at this period, of that sea round which were successively unfolded all the great dramas of ancient history. In this examination we shall see, not without a feeling of regret, vast countries where formerly produce, monuments, riches, numerous armies and fleets – all, indeed, revealed an advanced state of civilisation – now deserts or in a state of barbarism.
The Mediterranean had seen grow and prosper in turn on its coasts Sidon, and Tyre, and then Greece.
Sidon, already a flourishing city before the time of Homer, is soon eclipsed by the supremacy of Tyre; then Greece comes to carry on, in competition with her, the commerce of the interior sea; an age of pacific greatness and fruitful rivalries. To the Phœnicians chiefly, the South, the East, Africa, Asia beyond Mount Taurus, the Erythrean Sea (the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf), the ocean, and the distant voyages. To the Greeks, all the northern coasts, which they covered with their thousand settlements. Phœnicia devotes herself to adventurous enterprises and lucrative speculations. Greece, artistic before becoming a trader, propagates by her colonies her mind and her ideas.
This fortunate emulation soon disappears before the creation of two new colonies sprung from their bosom. The splendour of Carthage replaces that of Tyre. Alexandria is substituted for Greece. Thus a Western or Spanish Phœnicia shares the commerce of the world with an Eastern and Egyptian Greece, the fruit of the intellectual conquests of Alexander.
Northern Africa.
II. Rich in the spoils of twenty different peoples, Carthage was the proud capital of a vast empire. Its ports, hollowed out by the hand of man, were capable of containing a great number of ships.242 Her citadel, Byrsa, was two miles in circuit. On the land side the town was defended by a triple enclosure twenty-five stadia in length, thirty cubits high, and supported by towers of four storeys, capable of giving shelter to 4,000 horse, 300 elephants, and 20,000 foot soldiers;243 it enclosed an immense population, since, in the last years of its resistance, after a struggle of a century, it still counted 700,000 inhabitants.244 Its monuments were worthy of its greatness: among its remarkable buildings was the temple of the god Aschmoun, assimilated by the Greeks to Æsculapius;245 that of the sun, covered with plates of gold valued at a thousand talents;246 and the mantle or peplum, destined for the image of their great goddess, which cost a hundred and twenty.247 The empire of Carthage extended from the frontiers of Cyrenaica (the country of Barca, in the regency of Tripoli) into Spain; she was the metropolis of all the north of Africa, and, in Libya alone, possessed three hundred towns.248 Nearly all the isles of the Mediterranean, to the west and south of Italy, had received her factories. Carthage had imposed her sovereignty upon all the ancient Phœnician establishments in this part of the world, and had levied upon them an annual contingent of soldiers and tribute. In the interior of Africa, she sent caravans to seek elephants, ivory, gold, and black slaves, which she afterwards exported249 to the trading places on the Mediterranean. In Sicily, she gathered oil and wine; in the isle of Elba, she mined for iron; from Malta, she drew valuable tissues; from Corsica, wax and honey; from Sardinia, corn, metals, and slaves; from the Baleares, mules and fruits; from Spain, gold, silver, and lead; from Mauritania, the hides of animals; she sent as far as the extremity of Britain, to the Cassiterides (the Scilly Islands), ships to purchase tin.250 Within her walls industry flourished greatly, and tissues of great celebrity were fabricated.251
No market of the ancient world could be compared with that of Carthage, to which men of all nations crowded. Greeks, Gauls, Ligurians, Spaniards, Libyans, came in multitudes to serve under her standard;252 the Numidians lent her a redoubtable cavalry.253 Her fleet was formidable; it amounted at this epoch to five hundred vessels. Carthage possessed a considerable arsenal;254 we may appreciate its importance from the fact, that, after her conquest by Scipio, she delivered to him two hundred thousand suits of armour, and three thousand machines of war.255 So many troops and stores imply immense revenues. Even after the battle of Zama, Polybius could still call her the richest town in the world. Yet she had already paid heavy contributions to the Romans.256 An excellent system of agriculture contributed no less than her commerce to her prosperity. A great number of agricultural colonies257 had been established, which, in the time of Agathocles, amounted to more than two hundred. They were ruined by the war (440 of Rome).258 Byzacena (the southern part of the regency of Tunis) was the granary of Carthage.259
This province, surnamed Emporia, as being the trading country par excellence, vaunted by the geographer Scylax260 as the most magnificent and fertile part of Libya. It had, in the time of Strabo, numerous towns, so many magazines of the merchandise of the interior of Africa. Polybius261 speaks of its horses, oxen, sheep, and goats, as forming innumerable herds, such as he had never seen elsewhere. The small town of Leptis alone paid to the Carthaginians the enormous contribution of a talent a day (5,821 francs [£232 16s.]).262
This fertility of Africa explains the importance of the towns on the coast of the Syrtes, an importance, it is true, revealed by later testimonies, because they date from the decline of Carthage, but which must apply still more forcibly to the flourishing condition which preceded it. In 537, the vast port of the isle Cercina (Kirkeni, in the regency of Tunis, opposite Sfax) had paid ten talents to Servilius.263 More to the west, Hippo Regius (Bona) was still a considerable maritime town in the time of Jugurtha.264 Tingis (Tangiers), in Mauritania, which boasted of a very ancient origin, carried on a great trade with Bætica. Three African peoples in these countries lay under the influence and often the sovereignty of Carthage: the Massylian Numidians, who afterwards had Cirta (Constantine) for their capital; the Massæsylian Numidians, who occupied