17. Carthage - Empire of the Phoenicians

In 1858, French novelist Gustav Floyd arrived in North Africa hoping to find inspiration for his latest book. ER was an experienced traveler and about a decade earlier he had embarked on a grand tour of Cairo, Constantinople, Greece and Italy, but the writer who now set out on this new travel series was like a changed man, albeit only 37 years old. He was plagued by illness and prone to bouts of depression and the novel he had been working on for the past year was threatening to drive him mad - the publication of his most famous work two years before the novel Madame Bovary brought him fame and wealth, but now he was attempting to write a piece of fiction very different from anything he had ever attempted: it would be a story of classical history that would take place in an Empire that had once flourished in North Africa had become the most powerful society. of the ancient world and then had completely disappeared more than 2,000 years ago, an

empire

that had been largely forgotten alongside the better-studied societies of classical Greece and Rome.

In the Empire of Carthage, he had spent the last few months holed 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 wasn't coming the way he wrote. to his friend. Ernest Fado I'm done with my friend, I'm done for the last month. It was impossible for me to write. I can't find a single word. Just think what I've gotten myself into resurrecting an entire civilization with nothing to go on. flowbear made the decision that something would have to change and wrote about his intentions to his friend Madame Moiselle Laroye de Chant P.

I absolutely have to take a trip to Africa, so towards the end of March I will be returning to the land of dates once again. live on horseback and sleep under a tent. I only need to go to El Kef and explore the surroundings of Carthage to fully understand the landscapes that I will describe when I arrive in the French colony of Tunisia. Flauber hastily took impressions from him. in his notebooks while exploring the ruins of the ancient cities of Utica and Carthage, now almost buried under the modern Tunisian capital of Tunis, in the green wheat full of blooming poppies, the road climbs with a slight slope to the left and reaches a flat valley. in the middle at a distance of a league ruins like palm trees treason here and there blocks of masonry we are walking on the remains of a Roman road while walking between the ruined walls of this ancient city, Flauber felt connected to the ancient people who had been trying to write and see ways of life that must have remained almost unchanged since the days of Carthage in the south the town of sidibusaid the sea behind like a great block of indigo all of Carthage now spread before me a camel on a terrace spinning a well flies buzz 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 on the walls livid and thick water in some sinks when it finished its journey among the Carthaginian ruins from Tunisia Flauber had decided to completely rewrite the draft of his book as he writes to Mademoiselle de chant p everything I had done in my novel has to be done again I was on the wrong path so it turns out that a little over a year ago Since that I first had the idea of ​​the book and after working hard on it most of the time, I am still at the beginning armed with his Tunisian notebooks.

Flo Bear finished his book four years later and it was published under the title salambo the book. was a huge success, inspiring plays and, later, even silent films, and is credited with renewing public interest in a city and culture that had once been considered a side note in history as Flauber walked. through those ruined walls and sunken ports as he kicked his way forward. Through the dust and scree of the city's crumbling ruins, he must have wondered again and again what it was like to walk the streets of that ancient city, what it was like to see Carthage at the height of its golden age, and what It would have been hers.

I felt like seeing this entire city, its streets and houses, its temples and theaters, its ports and its houses completely destroyed and buried in dust and foreign Ash, my name is Paul Cooper and you are listening to the fall of civilizations podcast on every episode. civilization of the past that achieved glory and then collapsed into the ashes of History. I want to ask what they had in common, what led to their fall and how it felt to be a person alive at that time who witnessed the end of their world. In this episode I want to tell one of the most dramatic stories that has come down to us from the ancient world: The rise and fall of the

empire

of Carthage.

I want to show how this city emerged from the Phoenician states of the eastern Mediterranean. and undertake voyages of discovery and settlement that placed them at the center of the ancient world. I want to describe the unique culture that flourished on the coasts of North Africa and I want to tell the story of how the city of Carthage was destroyed and its memory almost erased from the Earth The Mediterranean Sea is a vast body of salt water that lies between the continents of Europe and Africa is by far the largest inland sea on the planet, stretching around 4,000 kilometers from end to end and in the west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a thin opening in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The coastline of this sea is over 46,000 kilometers long or enough to encircle the entire circumference of the planet and this coastline has provided home to countless cultures and civilizations throughout history. One of these cultures arose in the easternmost corner of the Mediterranean coast, on a rocky coastal strip of what is now Lebanon, dominated by imposing mountains covered in cedar forests. Here a series of city-states arose more than 4,000 years ago that would give rise to a culture that would one day be called Phoenicians, the largest of these cities was called Tire Sidon and Byblos as they stood between the waves to the west and the forested mountains to the east. , the territories they ruled were never large, but this relatively isolated geography also meant that they were somewhat protected from invaders.

The people we now consider Phoenicians would never have used that word. Phenicia is a term invented later by their great rivals, the Greeks, and it is not clear whether 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, including a heroic god called Melkart and his wife Astarte, but there is very little in the historical record to suggest an architecture or literature of common identity, even the Greek word. Phoenician has a somewhat mysterious origin in older texts such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

The word fornike is used to describe a particular color of purple or crimson and is also used to describe a date palm, possibly due to the reddish color of its fruit when ripe and so the word may have come to be used as a result of a of the first and most successful Phoenician industries. The Phoenicians of Tire and other cities were the first to dye their clothing with a particular type of dye derived from bodies. of the predatory sea snails known as murex or rock snail, these snails produce their dye as a defense mechanism against predators and, depending on the species, can produce a bright red or purple color very different from any other available in the ancient world from the time these dyes were first used by the Phoenicians around the 16th century BC.

C., its colors immediately became sought after, but the production process of these dyes was difficult and expensive. It could take more than 50 kilograms of these snails to make a single gram of dye, so these fabrics were extremely expensive. The Color Purple would soon be associated with enormous wealth and as a consequence with royalty this color would be known as Tyrion's Purple in honor of the Phoenician city of Tire and later Imperial Purple that would dye the Robes of the Emperors of Assyria Rome and later Byzantium the first . The 1st century Roman writer Pliny the Elder writes about the effect that this color had on anyone who saw it because the rods and axes of Rome open the way and also mark the Dignity of Childhood distinguishes the senator from the Noble and is summoned to obtain the favor of the gods illuminates each garment and in the triumphal tunic it is mixed with gold, but why is the price possible?

The Greeks then came to use the term foyinike to describe these traders from the rocky coast of Lebanon as the makers of purple. or the purple town the name of the mythical creature the Phoenix an immortal bird with red feathers also seems to derive from the same word with the rise of their dye industry the Phoenicians began to undertake increasingly longer journeys towards the Mediterranean Sea All in search Increasingly, these priceless snails and longer voyages would require new developments in shipbuilding as early as the third millennium BC. Phoenician sailors from the city of Byblos had developed boats with curved hulls perfectly adapted to sailing on waves and had developed waterproofing techniques. the hulls of their ships used bitumen or pitch in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Ezekiel from the 6th century BC.

C. contains a poetic description of a Phoenician ship. They made all their senior juniper woods. They took a cedar from Lebanon to make a mast. Oaks from Bashan made your oars from Cyprus Wood from the coasts of Cyprus made your cover adorned with ivory fine linen embroidery from Egypt was your sale and served as your banner your awnings were blue and purple from the coasts of Elisha were the Phoenicians Also some One of the first people to notice the North Star or Polaris, a star that aligns more or less perfectly with the Earth's axis of rotation, this means that, while all other stars appear to rotate in the sky during the night as that the Earth rotates.

The North Star remains more or less fixed in place, which made it exceptionally useful as a navigation tool. A fixed reference point in the sky. In Greek, this star would even become known as foinike or The Phoenician Star that led the Phoenicians' first voyages through the Mediterranean. They encountered many other peoples and among them began to cultivate a reputation as uncompromising merchants and astute businessmen, something which seems to have earned them a degree of unpopularity. Homer's Odyssey, probably written in the 7th or 8th century BC. from even older oral traditions. describes the Phoenicians as cunning and untrustworthy in contrast to the supposedly noble Greeks, there came Phoenician men famous for their ships, greedy scoundrels who brought countless trinkets on their black ship and it seems that the Phoenicians had also become experts at work of metals.

The next passage in Homer's Odyssey describes an ornate bowl brought by merchants from the Phoenician city of Sidon, then Peleus's son said other prizes a richly wrought silver bowl in Beauty VAR, the finest in all the Earth, sardons well skilled in manual labor had cunningly watered a man of the The Phoenicians brought him through the murky depths and landed him in the port. The Phoenicians had a clear preference for building their cities on narrow, easily defended peninsulas and, when possible, on islands located just off the coast. Its most influential city, Tyre, was a perfect example located on a small island just off the rocky coast.

In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Ezekiel gives us an idea of ​​the trade that the people of Tire carried out with their neighbors. Tarshish did business with you because of your great wealth of goods, they exchanged silver, iron, tin and lead. For your goods Greece to balance Meshech did business with you they exchanged human beings and bronze objects for your goods the men of Bet Tagama exchanged chariot horses Cavalry horses and mules Aram exchanged turquoise purple fabrics embroidery fine linen coral and rubies Judah and Israel traded with They traded wheat for tiny honey, olive oil and balm, while the natural defenses of their geography had kept cities like Tire independent for much of their history, this was not going to last forever.

The first millennium BC was an era. of iron and an age of empires and soon the Phoenicians found themselves in a world of increasingly violent and aggressive neighbors. Perhaps the most terrifying of these was the power of the Assyrian Empire from its heartland in what is now Iraq; The Assyrian War Machine periodically extended its power to the coast of the Mediterranean and threatened to engulf the Phoenicians. An inscription from the palace of an Assyrian king is just one example of the typical fate of a city conquered by the Assyrians. my soldiers like lightning upon them I piled up heaps of heads in front of their Great Gate I impaled groups of captive soldiers with stakes on each side of their city, I cut down their palm trees and from the city of Amidi I departed.

The Phoenicians had every reasonto be nervous at the beginning of the 8th century BC. The Assyrian king Adad Nurari III conquered the territory of northern Syria as boasted in the inscriptions of his Royal Palace, conquering from the Saluna mountain of the Rising Sun and from the banks of the Euphrates the country of Hattie Amura in all its extension the land of Tire the land of Saidon, the land of Israel, the land of Edom, the land of Philistia, I made them submit to my feet, imposing tribute on them, the Assyrians now breathed directly down the necks of the Phoenician cities on the coast, but as As time passed, the Phoenicians were able to carve out a niche that ensured that they were simply too useful for the Assyrians to destroy the Mediterranean Sea had long been an insurmountable challenge for many of the region's great powers;

The Assyrians referred to it as idmarati or the bitter river that was believed to flow around the entire Earth, while the Egyptians referred to it as waj, where or the great green river. These empires were freshwater rivers. Syria relied heavily on many of the products brought to the region by Phoenician traders (frankincense, silver, and purple diving) for its cultures and navigated its river waters on flat-bottomed barges. . palaces of bronze and iron for their armies, so Assyria offered the cities of Tire and Sidon a deal of sorts: they would be allowed a certain degree of independence as long as they ensured a constant flow of metals and other resources into Assyria and as long as they acted .

As a kind of hired navy that provided its ships and sailors to Assyria in times of war, the Phoenicians had no choice but to accept, but there was a problem: Assyria's demands for metal were truly staggering and, if it were to be met, it would require a drastic expansion of the Phoenician trade network: at first, the Phoenicians established simple trading posts wherever they could find good supplies of metals. Archeology shows that they established trading communities in Cyprus to take advantage of its rich copper reserves and in Sardinia, the second largest in the Mediterranean. island rich in copper, iron, silver and lead.

In these places, the local population usually did all the mining, while the Phoenicians simply showed up to buy the products and take them by boat from Cyprus and Sardinia. Phoenician sailors advanced to the western Mediterranean and established a small colony in North Africa in Utica and even reached southern Spain, where they discovered that the mines were practically overflowing with silver, iron and other metals. Archaeologists have found in this region enormous Phoenician furnaces used to melt metal ingots for transport on an industrial scale. To satisfy the demands of the fearsome Assyrian kings, before long the Phoenicians were sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar, then known as the Pillars of Hercules, and into the Atlantic Ocean, establishing a colony at Lexus, on the western coast of Morocco, and they advanced further.

Along the coast to settle in what is now the Moroccan port city of Esawira, more than 4,000 kilometers from their homeland, to finance these expeditions, the Phoenicians developed innovative monetary systems that in some ways represented a form of capitalism. ancient. Phoenician society was dominated by powerful commercial companies. usually run by a certain family and they pioneered the use of interest-bearing loans for travel, even developing marine insurance policies that paid out if their ships were destroyed in a storm or looted by pirates, but perhaps the greatest of their innovations was something we use. every day and that is the alphabet, until that time 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 hieroglyphs of the Egyptians were difficult to learn and depended on services. from a learned class of scribes who spent years of their lives learning them, but the Phoenician alphabet was a master class in simplicity, it had just 22 letters and could be used to spell words phonetically by omitting vowels and quite ingeniously letter shapes.

It also gave a clue as to how they were pronounced, the letter B, for example, was called bet, which was the Phoenician word for house and its symbol was drawn with a pointed roof. This simplicity dramatically reduced the amount of time it took to learn and meant that the commons. Traders and merchants may have had some ability to read and write and keep records essential to the complex business of buying and selling across the sea. The Phoenician alphabet was such a good idea that the Greeks adopted it almost wholesale, as noted by the Greek historian Herodotus.

It is said that these Phoenicians who came with Cadmus brought with them to Greece, among many other types of learning the alphabet, as time went by, the sound and shape of the letters changed and, after the Phoenicians taught them the letters, The Greeks who settled around them used them. them with some changes of four with the addition of some letters for vowels, the result was the Greek alphabet, which means that the Phoenician writing system is the basis of all Western alphabets used today. The oldest piece of Phoenician writing was found on a known inscribed tablet. such as the Stone of Nora unearthed in Sardinia which apparently commemorates a Phoenician captain who may have died in conflict with the local population fought with the Sardinians in Tarshish and expelled them among the Sardinians he is now at peace and his army is at peace son of milkaton of King Pumay's general shubna, but for the most part the Phoenicians seemed to have interacted with the people they met relatively peacefully and, above all, profitably.

Before long, the cities of Tire, Sidon and Byblos found themselves in the Far East. An expanding trade network that kept such a loose and disparate set of colonies together was no easy task, but it seems that Phoenician religion played a role here. Key, the people of Tire worshiped a heroic god known as Melkart, a warrior hero that the Greeks would later associate with the temples of Hercules Melkart. They settled in 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 in the Phoenician colony furthest from Tyre, known as Gadis, which is narrow, the Spanish city. from Cádiz, this colony was located on the Atlantic coast, just outside the Strait of Gibraltar, but it compensated for its extreme distance from Tire with its immense opulence.

In the center of the temple stood an olive tree with its branches and leaves forged in solid gold that held emerald fruits on its branches. Women were prohibited from entering the temple as were pigs, and the priests of Melkart went barefoot with a band of Egyptian linen over their bare heads the Greek geographer Strabo relates the following description of the settlement of guardis now these islands are like this The side of the so-called pillars of Heracles Gades, however, is outside the pillars, here they rise The men who built the largest merchant ships, both for our sea and for the outer sea, say that the Tyrians believed that the two capes that formed the strait were From the confines of the inhabited world a great ceremony known as the speeches or Awakening in the temple of Guardis during this time all foreigners were asked to leave the city and a large effigy of the god Melkart was floated in 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 the metal ingots produced in gardies by giving them a special seal and acted as a guarantor between merchants who entered into contracts with punishments promised by melkart himself if anyone who dared to break their word, with the Phoenician trade moving further and further west, the center of their power would soon shift in that direction as well towards a place where they would finally be free of the imperious empires that were constantly stepping on their necks;

They would soon found a city. on the coast of North Africa, right in the center of the Mediterranean world, a city that would become one of the largest and richest 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. It is itself a distortion filtered through the accounts of others in Latin the city was known as Carthage while the Greeks called it Carcadon but its inhabitants knew it as Kat hadashed or in Phoenician the new city like many great cities of its time Carthage soon developed its own founding myth begins with a princess of Tire called Alyssa or Elishaya in legend the king of Tire promises that upon his death his kingdom would be divided between his two children his daughter Elisha and his son Pygmalion but when the Old King dies on The treacherous brother Pygmalion refuses to accept the division of the kingdom and moves to seize everything, even killing Elisha's husband to eliminate any potential rival.

Grief-stricken, Elisha flees to the docks along with a motley group of royal guards and temple women, and there they set sail west and head for Africa. The Roman writer Justineus, drawing on an earlier Greek text, writes his interpretation of this story along with a clever deception to stop the greedy pursuers. Alyssa brought in assistance who was sent by the king to assist in eliminating her. On board some boats in the early afternoon and sailing out to sea, he made them throw into the sea some loads of sand stuffed in bags as if it were money, this group of refugees sailed along the coast of North Africa until they finally landed near the Phoenician colony of Utica, camp on a nearby hill known as Bursa and the king who rules there, a man named Yarbrus, takes pity on them, but not too much, offering to sell them a piece of land on the no bigger hill. than an ox hide, but Elishaya is crafty, she cuts the rust into thin strips that line them up to enclose the entire hill, an area of ​​land much larger than the greedy king had intended.

Bound by his word, Yarbus has no choice but to give them the land he promised and thus the city of Carthage is born. Justineo recounts the early flowering of the city. Carthage was founded, an annual tribute was set for the land it was going to occupy when it began to dig. In the foundations, an ox's head was found, which was an omen that the city would certainly be rich but industrious and always enslaved, so it was moved to another place where the head of a horse was found, which indicated that the people would be warriors and powerful foreshadowed an auspicious sight in a short time as the people from the surrounding area gathered in the shapeless form that the inhabitants became numerous and the city itself spread from the top of the hill of Bursa, the city grows and grows soon eclipsing the city of Utica from King Ayabus, which makes him understandably jealous and demands that Elishaya marry him so that he can absorb his flourishing city and everything it possesses. in his kingdom, if she refuses, he will burn Carthage to the ground, faced with the choice of this capitulation or the destruction of his new city, Elishaya builds a large pyre and climbs on it saying that she must go with her husband, not to say a yarbus but the man her brother had killed on the other side of the sea waiting for her in the afterlife, this tragic but noble sacrifice has proven irresistible to generations of poets and the Roman poet Virgil offers an interpretation of this scene when the pyre of cut pine. and Oak rose high in an inner court open to the sky.

The queen hung the place with garlands and wrapped it with funereal foliage. She put her sword, her clothes, and her painting on the bed. She lingered for a while crying and thinking, then she threw herself down. in bed and spoke his last words this soul and take me away from my sorrows in honor of the sacrifice of Elishaya his people gave him the title of dido which means warrior woman or heroine and this is the name by which later Roman writers would know him in this baroque tale. of love and tragedy has all the characteristics of ancient literature and we cannot assume that it has any relationship with what really happened.

Some details of the story agree with what archeology tells us that the Carthaginian Phoenicians traced their origins to the city. of shot and that the city was founded near the oldest settlement of Utica, which it soon eclipsed in size, but perhaps more important than all this is the sense that this founding myth could give us about the way the Carthaginians thought about themselves and about his city. place in the world as a city of survivors who had found refuge here on the northern coast of Africa a city of sailors and adventurers they were resourceful and negotiated hard they were intelligent and liked to outwit their enemies they always found a way to make a little progress a long road and also perhaps that they would die before giving up their freedom, regardless of the truth of their origins.

From archeology it is clear that after its foundation in the 8th century BC. C., the new colony of Carthage grew exceptionallyfast in many ways. Carthage, the perfect Phoenician settlement, was built in a small bay that in turn belonged to a vast natural harbor known today as the Bay of Tunis. The city sat on a series of steep red cliffs overlooking the bright blue waters of the Mediterranean in the north and was also easily defended on its land side, where a range of rocky hills and a series of saltwater lakes and lagoons divide the land in a series of narrow approaches that protect the city from any possible attacker, the Roman writer Appian writes a description of the city's location the city was in a hollow of a Great Gulf and had the shape of a peninsula it was separated from the mainland Through an isthmus about five kilometers wide of this isthmus a narrow, elongated tongue of land about a kilometer wide extending westward between a lake and the sea near the site of Carthage flows a river known today as the most Originating in the high Atlas Mountains of North Africa, this river flows 460 kilometers to the sea and brings crucial fresh water to the bay, turning the otherwise arid landscape green and providing water for drinking and water. irrigation, as a result, the land here was abundant with wheat, grapes, olives and dates in the distance over the bay to the south.

Rising the blue outline of Jebel Rasas Mountain, literally the Mountain of Lead, a craggy outcrop of Jurassic limestone rising almost 800 meters above the plain, the hot desert winds known as sirocco blowing from the Sahara during the season in summer making the window shutters and the leaves of the date palms ring and at the end of summer storms would arrive from the sea, in addition to its ideal geography, the location of the city in the Mediterranean world was also perfect. Carthage was located at a crucial halfway point between the city of Tire and the rich 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. whose importance only grew.

Pottery found even in the earliest layers of Carthage shows a wide range of styles coming from Greece, Italy, Spain and all the Phoenician colonies. The Phoenician world was now a network with Carthage sitting right in its center. The city in these early days must have been a humble sight. Archeology paints a picture of a simple collection of adobe buildings that lined the seashore, but within a century it exploded, a cemetery soon had to be moved to make room for a neighborhood full of metal-working workshops, and settlers built a wall about three meters high to protect its flourishing more monumental buildings would soon be built the poet Rowan Virgil imagines the activity that must have accompanied the growth of this city from a small settlement to a prosperous city Aeneas found where the huts had lately been buildings wonderful gateways cobbled roads and the noise of chariots there were the tyrions working hard laying courses for the walls rolling stones to build the Citadel While others chose building sites and plowed a boundary Furrow laws were enacted, magistrates were elected and a sacred Senate here, men dredged harbors there, laid the deep foundations of a theater and massive quarried pillars, apart from what we can deduce from archaeology, we know very little about the early history of Carthage, apart from a few brief inscriptions, no Carthaginian text has survived to this day, so in terms of written history we have practically complete silence about it. part of the Mediterranean for the first 200 years or so of its existence and beyond that, we have to rely on the writings of others, from the works of Greek writers, we learned that Carthage was a republic that was governed under a sort of oligarchic system governed By In a council of its wealthiest citizens, the Greek philosopher Aristotle, writing in the 4th century, spoke approvingly of the Carthaginian system of government and compared it to that of the Greek city-state of Sparta.

Carthage also seems to have a good Constitution with many outstanding features in comparison. with those of other nations, but more like the Spartan in some points, many regulations in Carthage are good, and a proof of a well-regulated constitution is that the population remains voluntarily faithful to the constitutional system and that no civil conflicts have arisen to any degree. Not yet a tyrant is worth mentioning, but Aristotle also warns that the Carthaginian system placed too much emphasis on the wealth of its rulers rather than their competence and expresses concern that this could lead to corruption. They think that rulers should be chosen not only for their merits. but also because of their wealth, since it is not possible for a poor man to govern well or have leisure for his duties, it is bad that the greatest officials of the State, royalty and the ship in general are for sale, because this law creates wealth. more honest than valuable and makes the whole state greedy and it is likely that those who buy the position of him will gradually learn to profit from him.

The highest levels of Carthaginian society were divided between the civil leaders, the chauffeur Tim or the judges and rabim. or generals who dealt with military affairs, these higher positions, senators and committee heads, did not receive any salary for their work and therefore could only really be held by those who could support themselves on private income, usually successful merchants or rich landowners, but there was a To be fair, it seems that there was no barrier other than wealth, and people from ordinary backgrounds who became rich could quickly rise to the highest positions in government. Certain powerful families constantly competed for the most powerful positions, but there was no hereditary royalty in Carthage.

It is possible that the myth of Elishaya or Dido has played a role in maintaining this situation since according to legend the city was founded by a woman who had no children, no one could ever claim to be her true descendants or have any type of ancestral kinship. right to govern, instead the city was governed by several different semi-democratic bodies made up of wealthy citizens, one of them was called the court of 104 and another, the Council of Elders, a kind of Senate, the highest executive position was held by two elected officials ruling simultaneously and being elected each year the arrangement was complex and probably prone to corruption, but for the most part it appears to have worked.

The world of Carthage flourished. The Phoenician cities that had given rise to it began to falter. Tire and Sidon were still under the boot of Assyria and around 670 BC. BCE, the Assyrian king Esso Hadon began imposing harsh restrictions on who they could trade with when Assyria went to war with Egypt. Shrhadon forced the Phoenicians of Tire to impose a trade embargo on the pharaohs without access to their Once the most lucrative market in these cities went into decline, soon the king of Tire was not even allowed to open messages without an Assyrian official present. , as the following surviving fragment of a treaty shows, nor should you open a letter 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 from the town of Tire is wrecked off the coast of the land of the Philistines or anywhere on the borders of Assyrian territory, everything on the ship belongs to Essa Haddon, king of Assyria, as a result of the decline of cities such as Tire and Sidon, it is likely that a large number of Phoenicians If they had fled to what was the undisputed narrow capital of the Phoenician world, the flourishing port city of Carthage, they brought their language with them. their knowledge, their gods and their gold in the 6th century BC.

Carthage was one of the largest and richest cities in the Mediterranean and its sailors, the best in the world, would soon embark on voyages of exploration that would not be equaled for another 2,000 years. By this time the Phoenicians had already sailed to the end of their life. world through the Pillars of Hercules and into the Atlantic Ocean, but his exploration did not stop there; in fact, if ancient sources are to be believed, they may have been the first sailors to arrive. He successfully sailed around the entire coast of Africa Herodotus recounts an expedition that supposedly took place around 600 BC.

Sponsored by a pharaoh of Egypt called nekos, although frustratingly vague and short on details, the expedition apparently set sail from the Egyptian Red Sea coast and traveled around the Horn. of Africa and the South African Cape before sailing north through the Gulf of Guinea and returning to the Mediterranean via the Pillars of Hercules. The nekos of Egypt sent Phoenicians and ships instructing them to sail on their return journey past the pillars of Heracles until they reached the North Sea and then to Egypt, so the Phoenicians left the Red Sea and sailed towards the South Sea . Every time autumn came, they planted the land in whatever part of Libya they had reached and there they waited for the harvest and then they had gathered the harvest.

They continued sailing so that after two years it was the third year that they surrounded the columns of Heracles and arrived in Egypt. There they said what some may believe, although I do not believe it, that when sailing around Libya they had the sun on their right. Interestingly, it is this detail that Herodotus considers incredible that has caused modern scholars to take more seriously the claim that the change in the position of the sun relative to the ship suggests that the voyage did indeed cross the Tropic of Cancer and such once even the equator, causing the summer sun to appear in the north, modern estimates consider a three-year travel time to be a reasonable duration for a circumnavigation of Africa that would have been about twenty thousand kilometers long or half the length. way around the world, if this story is true, then This means that the Phoenicians may have rounded the Cape of Africa more than 2,000 years before the Portuguese explorer Bartolomé Díaz did the same in 1488, opening the passage to India and the era of European colonialism, most solidly attested.

The Phoenician voyages of discovery would see an explorer named Hano the Navigator sail into the Atlantic Ocean via the Pillars of Hercules and sail perhaps as far south as Cameroon or Gabon in West Africa. His journey is recounted in a Greek translation entitled The Journey or Travel Account of Hano. Supposedly an exact copy of an inscription that is actually hanging in the temple of Bal Haman in Carthage, it was decreed by the Carthaginians that Hano must undertake a further journey. of the pillars of Hercules and found Phoenician cities, we sailed accordingly with 60 ships or 50 years each and the body of men and women to the number of thirty thousand and provisions and other articles necessary before the sale of a day we reached the end of the lake that was dominated by large mountains inhabited by wild men dressed in wild animal skins who scared us away by throwing stones and hindered us.

From the Landing navigation vents we reached another river that was large and wide and full of crocodiles and hippos. Hano writes vivid descriptions of seeing active volcanoes spewing lava into the ocean, possibly the active volcano Mount Cameroon, and then sailing quickly past a fragrant burning land from which great torrents of fire ran down to the sea and we sailed at full speed in the grip of the afraid after a four-day trip we saw the earth covered in flames at night and in the middle there was a high fire larger than the rest that seemed to touch the Stars Hano even seems to have been the first to record an encounter with those who could have been the largest living primates on Earth with unfortunate results we arrived at a bay called the South Horn at the bottom of which there was an island full of wild people, most of whom were women with hairy bodies and whom our interpreters called gorillas, although we pursued the men, we could not capture any of them, but they all fled from us, escaping over the cliffs and defending themselves with stones.

However, they captured three women, but they attacked their drivers with their teeth and hands and could not convince them to accompany us. After killing them, we skinned them and brought their skins with us to Carthage. We sailed no further with our provisions as these furry ones failed us. The creatures may have been chimpanzee monkeys or what we would call gorillas today, all of which can be found in the Cameroon region upon return from Hano. The furry skins that he brought home were kept in the temple of the god Tanet in Carthage and, according to Pliny the Elder. would remain in the city as long as it existed in the 19th century, when American doctor and missionary Thomas Storton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman wrote the first scientific description of a gorilla, they were given the name troglodyte gorilla after the mysterious description in Hano's book .

The writing and the name have stuck since another explorer named Himilko sailed into the Atlantic and went in the opposite direction sailing north along the coast of Spain andFrance and even to the British Isles, here he saw Celtic tribes sailing in coracles made of Dear skin, a site that seemed remarkable to him, they parted the stormy sea and the current of the ocean full of monsters with woven ships. In fact, these people do not know how to make keels with pine and maple, but in a miraculous thing they always build containers with skins. They stretched out together and often traveled across the vast sea in a fur coat.

They also brought stories of the vast expanse of the Atlantic to the west, a terrifying sight to sailors raised in the closed Inland Sea of ​​the Mediterranean. Beyond to the area to the west. there is an endless sea the ocean is open in a wide area and the sea extends no man has entered these seas because the sea has no winds to propel the ships and no breeze from the sky favors a ship also it seems that it is possible who has seen whales swimming in the ocean, which were then almost four times more numerous than today.

Here and there he sees monsters swimming. He admits the slow ships that crawl slowly. Himilko reported that he had once seen these creatures in the ocean and demonstrated. Its existence, which we have told you about, was revealed long ago deep in the annals of the Carthaginians. In 2019, a team of 20 modern sailors successfully piloted a replica of a single dominated Carthaginian merchant ship across the Atlantic Ocean departing from the siege of Carthage and landing in the Caribbean five months later, demonstrating that Phoenician ships had the ability to reach America two thousand years before Columbus. As the city of Carthage grew, its population grew, while some ancient writers record that it had a population of over 700,000 people at this time.

This is thought to be unlikely, but estimates based on the size of the city and the size of civil armies raised in times of crisis have suggested that the population may have reached four hundred thousand by 400 BC. C., the city walls had been rebuilt until now. On the land side, stands an imposing tower 15 meters high with a triple line of moats and defenses. The hill of Birsa, where legend has it that Elishaya played his trick with the oxskin, was now surrounded by an inner defensive wall and stood above the rest of the city as a fortified citadel.

The Roman writer Appian writes the following description of the city ​​on the seashore the city was protected by a single wall to the south and the mainland with a citadel of Bursa was located on the isthmus it was a triple war the height of each wall was 15 meters without counting the parapets and towers that were separated each other for a space of 60 meters. One of the most notable features of ancient Carthage was the innovative design of its port known as the kothon, probably built sometime in the 3rd or 2nd century BC. C., comprised a large rectangular commercial port for civilian ships that led to a single circular docking bay for the military ships of the Carthage War Fleet.

The port was so large that today you can still see the shape of its outline on the coast of the The city of Tunis Appian describes the unique layout of this port. The ports had communication with each other and a common entrance from the sea of ​​20 meters wide that could be closed with iron chains. The first port was for merchant ships and here all types of ship's gear were collected. The second port was an island that, together with the port itself, was surrounded by high embankments. These embankments were full. From shipyards that had capacity for 220 boats, above there were warehouses for their gear and furniture, two Ionic columns stood in front of each dock on the island, the admiral's house was built, from where the trumpeter left, gave signals, The Herald gave orders and the Admiral himself passed by.

Overlooking everything at that time Carthage had the largest and most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean and the military port was built to hide the ships docked inside and ensure that no spy could discover any of its secrets or watched its movements along the island line. near the entrance to the port and rose to a considerable height so that the Admiral could observe what was happening at sea while those approaching by water could not have a clear view of what was happening inside. Not even incoming merchants could see the docks because there was a double wall enclosing them and there were gates through which merchant ships could pass from the first port to the city without passing through the shipyards.

The search was for the appearance of Carthage at the time between the port and the Citadel of Birsa on the hill was the Agora, the large open market of the city where you could buy all kinds of goods and food. Archaeological studies of plant matter found in Carthage show that the ancient Carthaginians enjoyed a varied diet walking through the markets of the In the city you can buy wheat, barley and other cereals, numerous vegetables such as artichokes and cabbages, legumes, lentils and fruits, including pomegranates, grapes, figs, olives, peaches, plums and melons, as well as nuts such as pistachios and almonds.

Olives were pressed into oil and its people ate fish. such as mullet, perch, and dolphin, 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 spicy, salty source known archaeologists have also discovered remains of cannabis stems that may have been chewed by the ship's rowers and were probably similar to the fish sauce used today in the East Asian cuisine in the wreck of a Carthaginian ship found off the coast of Sicily at Masala. It could also be enjoyed in the ground, either chewed or brewed into tea.

Wine was also particularly prized and especially a particular type of sweet dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes. An agricultural manual written by a Carthaginian woman named Margot has survived in fragments of Greek and Latin translation and describes the process of making this wine: pick some very ripe early grapes, discard any that are moldy or damaged, place canes and spread the grapes on the sun on them, cover them at night so that the Jew does not wet them. when dry, remove the grapes from the stems and put them in a jug or pitcher, add a little unfermented wine, the best you have, until the grapes are just covered after six days, when the grapes have absorbed everything and they are swollen, put them in a basket.

Pass them through the press and collect the resulting liquid, bottle the liquid in jars with stoppers and after 20 or 30 days, when the fermentation is finished, cover the lids with plaster and cover them with leather like a typical Phoenician city. Carthage initially had a small footprint in North Africa. and initially depended on its overseas territories in Sardinia and Sicily for more than half of the food it brought across the sea in grain ships, but in the 6th century it began to expand its territory around the city, the Carthaginians They expelled the local population. or they made agreements with them and built a network of cities and forts to the southeast and west and began to cultivate the land themselves.

A later writer, Diodorus of Sicily, would give the following description of the Abundant Interior that would soon extend beyond the city. The land was populated with gardens and orchards irrigated by numerous springs and canals, there were country houses well built with lime along the Route, announcing great wealth. The land was cultivated with vines, olive trees, and a whole series of fruit trees on both sides. Herds of oxen and sheep grazed on the plain and near the main pastures and marshes there were horse studs in their outposts in Sardinia Spain and Sicily Carthage began a similar process converting what had once been small trading posts into territories More solid and fortified with their own agricultural lands soon the city of Carthage would be more or less self-sufficient as described by the Roman writer Appian, gradually gaining strength, they dominated Africa and most of the Mediterranean they took the war to Sicily and Sardinia and the other islands from that sea and also to Spain they sent numerous colonies, it became a rival for the Greeks in power and, together with the Persians in wealth, the typical Carthaginian house was built around a central patio and the richest homes have one floor upstairs and a terrace.

The finest houses had closets and shelves. Built into the walls and often a clay bread oven, we can imagine the smells of this baking bread wafting through the city streets along with the spicy aromas of tanneries and wineries, the smells of animals and incense. , the cooked fish and the salty garum sauce that the rich houses also contained. elaborate bathrooms with separate changing rooms and bathtubs plastered with waterproof stucco before bath oil was applied to the body and a bronze tool known as a stridgel was used to scrape dirt from the skin, while in Greek houses these bathrooms usually They were built outside the kitchen.

The Carthaginians built their baths next to the entrance to the house, suggesting that there was some kind of ritual purpose to the bath that separated the dusty, impure world outside from the clean interior space of the house. A variety of animals would have been visible in the crowded environment. city ​​streets, these would have included beasts of burden such as donkeys, oxen and horses, stray dogs and cats and noisy caravans of camels coming from the desert, but they also appear to have drawn animals such as Curiosities from all parts of Africa, a species of lion Huge monkey known as the Barbary lion could be found throughout this region and would later be captured for shows, including in Roman arenas, and a species of monkey known as the Barbary macaque is also native to this area.

Diodorous of Sicily records an account of the Carthaginians who kept these monkeys as apparently very beloved pets in these cities. Many of the customs were very different from those current among us because the apes lived in the same houses as men, being considered among them. as gods like the dogs among the Egyptians and of the stored provisions. In the warehouses the beasts took their food without hindrance when they wanted it. Whoever killed this animal as if he had committed the greatest sacrilege, death was established as a penalty. Around this time, monkeys began to appear as a motif in the art of the regions of Italy.

Sardinia and elsewhere it is suggested that the Carthaginians even exported this animal to other regions, some Barbary macaques were mummified in Egyptian tombs alongside the pharaohs and the skull of a Barbary macaque dating from this time has even been unearthed in places As far away as Northern Ireland and, 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, namely the elephant, The North African elephant is an extinct subspecies of the African elephant that lived north of the Carthaginian Sahara Desert.

Wall paintings, coins and mosaics show that these elephants had the sloping back and large ears typical of the African elephant roaming the savanna, but were considerably smaller and probably similar in size to another surviving subspecies, the elephant. of the African forest. These reach shoulder height. About eight feet tall, only slightly taller than the largest Shire horses, but of course, their thick, heavy build means they weigh over 15 times the average horse, which is why these elephants were used by the Carthaginians as fearsome firearms. During the war, some historians have speculated that Carthage may also have imported some much larger Indian elephants that were at the time being used by the Seleucid dynasty in Syria.

An elephant that was the pride of the later Carthaginian army was known by the name surus, which some have translated. to refer to the Syrian, if true, this Syrian elephant would have towered up to a meter above the smaller Carthaginian elephants and 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 carry heavy loads for construction, but it is unclear whether the Carthaginians used their elephants in this way or whether these precious animals were only reserved for their power and prestige to be used as tanks. living things on the battlefield, as the writer Pliny the Elder describes elephants when they are domesticated.

They are used in war and carry towers full of armed men into the ranks of the enemy and the final outcome of the battles fought in the east largely depends on them, they trample entire companies and crush men with their armor. but I think it is not difficult to imagine that, as in India, elephants were also used ceremonially in festivals and parades to carry kings and generals a living embodiment of thepower of this new Empire, while Carthage did not hesitate to go to war to defend itself. its interests and protect its trade, was not at heart a warrior culture and never allowed a conflict to continue longer than was absolutely necessary.

The Carthaginians often relied on diplomatic solutions and agreements to avoid fighting with their various neighbors in the Mediterranean. The agreement was reached in 509 BC. C. with a minor city-state in central Italy in the Lazio region, whose people spoke a small cursive dialect called Latin. The people of this city had just that year gotten rid of the rule of their Etruscan king and abolished kingship in the city forever. Instead of a king, they had brought in the rule of a couple of elected consuls from the aristocracy, a strikingly similar system and such Once even inspired by the Carthaginians the name of this city was Rome The Romans at that time were among several powers in central Italy facing rivals from the Etruscans to the north and powerful tribal confederations such as the Samnites, all fighting for dominance On 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 whose content the Greek historian Polybius records will be the friendship between the Romans and the Lies and the Carthaginians and their allies. Under these conditions, neither the Romans nor their allies will sail beyond the beautiful Peninsula unless driven by the stress of the weather or fear of enemies, if any of them are driven ashore, they will buy or take nothing for themselves except what necessary for the repair of his ship and the service of the gods, and will depart in five days. Carthage will not build any fort in Latium, and if they enter the district in arms, they will not spend a night there.

The theme of this treaty was simple, leave us alone and we will leave you alone, and while Rome was at this point very much on the Carthaginians' radar, it appears that they considered this Italian city. The Republic was little cause for concern around 410 BC. C. Carthage began to mint its own silver coins and each coin will be stamped with the symbol of a palm tree in Greek known as voynike, now becoming a symbol of Phoenician identity. Carthage now stood as the new champion of the Phoenician people, the capital of the Phoenician world, was now beginning to look a lot like an empire and, like all empires, soon found a growing need to defend and expand its territory.

It is often said that Carthage relied on mercenaries to fight. They are wars, but this is an oversimplification, while these types of hired armies made up a portion of their forces, in fact, there were all kinds of reasons why 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 to send their ships to fight for Assyria and when Carthage expanded to conquer new towns along the coast of North Africa and across the Mediterranean. More and more power and variety was added to their forces as war came each Allied and Province would send fighters of a particular type based on what they specialized in.

The North African power of Numidia to the west of Carthage would send powerful and experienced Cavalry and javelin throwers. while the colonies on the island of Majorca would send Peasant slingers and spearmen with large round shields were recruited from the fields of Libya in the east. The Celts of Spain were part of their forces and sometimes even Greeks and Italians ended up fighting in these armies. There was only one group of people who almost never fought for Carthage and they were the citizens of Carthage themselves. The Carthaginian system was largely based on making life as comfortable as possible for the people of the capital.

Few Carthaginian politicians ever risked the unpopular measure of conscripting their citizens into the army, so they built up their forces from brought units. From the four corners of the empire, each army of Carthage was its own unique mosaic and would have spoken dozens of different languages, as the Greek historian Polybius writes, so it was impossible to bring them together and address them as a body or do so by any means. By other means, how could a general be expected to know all of their languages ​​and address them through several interpreters repeating the same thing four or five times?

If anything more impractical, it was a system that had many weaknesses, but it allowed the Empire to raise large armies in a short time and meant that, since they could never be accused of sending good Carthaginian men to Die, the city's politicians were largely insulated from the consequences of going to war, but soon these armies would find themselves. Entangled in a bitter struggle that would test this system to its breaking point and threaten to bring the entire empire to the brink of destruction, these wars would break out over what would soon become the most contested piece of land in the Mediterranean: the island of Sicily Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, located at the southern tip of Italy, separated by the narrow waters of the Strait of Messina, only three kilometers wide at its narrowest point.

The most prominent landmark of Sicily is the Mount Etna volcano, which rises to three thousand meters. on its eastern coast and due to the particularly violent geology of the islands, this is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, although today we consider it part of Europe. Sicily is actually on the northern edge of the African continental plate, right at the point of impact. where the European plate is crushing it into the Earth's mantle the collision of these Titanic forces means that Mount Etna erupts an average of 200 times a year the volcanic ash spewed by this volcano gives the soil of Sicily incredible fertility, which Carthage had been rich at first and enjoyed an unrivaled position on the island trading with the Sicilian locals in the west, a short hop from their capital in Africa, but they would soon come into conflict with another group of people who for much of this story would be their greatest rivals at sea and on land are people who at the same time were also busy establishing colonies throughout the Mediterranean.

These were the Greeks. The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, were expert sailors and had built a number of prosperous colonies in what is now southern Italy. now Türkiye and in the Black Sea and from the 8th century BC. C., Greek explorers and merchants began to expand their interests on the island of Sicily like the Phoenicians. The Greeks at that time were not a unified people, they spoke four different dialects of Greek and countless subdialects and came from dozens of independent city-states and island kingdoms that often fought with each other more bitterly than with any foreigner, but despite these internal divisions, the Greeks would expand into the southern part of Italy and Sicily and join this series of colonies in an area they would call megali Halas or greater Greece wherever they went, the Greek settlers were partly inspired by the myth of their hero Heracles, whom the Romans would call Hercules, was a half-divine warrior who traveled the length and breadth of Europe performing his famous twelve labors and in the meantime he performed great feats wherever he went and wherever a new Greek colony arose around the Mediterranean it quickly became known. would add a new installment of the myth of Hercules to show that this had also been one of his stops in some places he was celebrated for slaying giants and mythical beasts while in others his exploits were more mundane in the Greek colonies of southern Italy he was remembered By banishing a plague of flies that harmed cattle in Crete he had rid the island of wild beasts and in Sicily he had trapped a wandering bull and had defeated the king in a wrestling match in Spain.

Diodro of Sicily says that, depending on who you asked, Hercules was credited with creating the Strait of Gibraltar by tearing the land apart or narrowing it to keep out sea monsters. Considering that before that time there was a great space between Africa and Europe, he now narrowed the passage so that, by making it shallow and narrow, he might prevent the great sea monsters from leaving the ocean and entering the Inner Sea; However, some authorities say that it is just the opposite that the two continents were originally joined and that he opened a passage between them that the ocean mixed with the sea in this matter however it would be possible for each man to think as he wanted about one of the most dramatic episodes of these Tales during his tenth labor Hercules is tasked with stealing the red cattle of the ogre Gerion who lived in Arithia in southern Spain near the Phoenician colony of Gadis since he lived so far in the west it was said that the hides of his cattle had been dyed red from their proximity to the setting sun after killing garyon.

Hercules takes his cattle and drives them to his home in Greece on a winding route that took him from Spain through the south of France and over the towering snow-capped mountains of the Alps. and then to Italy, as Diodorus tells, Hercules then headed to Italy and, while going through the mountain pass through the Alps, he made a road from the route, which was difficult and almost impossible. The barbarians who had inhabited this mountainous region were accustomed to Butcher and to plunder passing armies when they reached difficult parts of the road, but he subdued them all. The story of Hercules bringing these cattle from Spain across these mountains was the dramatic pinnacle of a series of myths that would become known as the Heraklion Way, it was a series of stories that would be told to countless generations of Greek settlers and then to the sons of the Romans who followed them and, as the Phoenician hero God Melkart became increasingly associated with Hercules in later years, these stories were also told to the sons of Carthage with stories of this wandering hero on their lips, the Greek settlements in eastern Sicily grew for several centuries and maintained an uneasy peace with the Carthaginian colonies in the west of the island, but as both powers began to require greater quantities of land they would soon find themselves on a collision course.

The exact date and details of these wars are still fiercely disputed, but it is clear that by the end of the 5th century BC. C. Sicily had broken out into war between Carthage and the Greeks and would soon resemble a piece of meat. When it was destroyed by two hungry dogs, the island's economy suffered. Warlords established themselves as the tyrannical rulers of their cities and banditry and anarchy raged throughout much of these centuries of fighting. The Carthaginians were happy to let the wars with the Greeks leave Cimarron the citizens of their capital never went to war and as long as the peace and comfort of their city was never disturbed, it must have felt to them that these wars were a long way from home, but The final episode of these conflicts known as the Seventh Sicilian War would pierce this sense of invulnerability because Carthage would find itself in a life and death struggle with a man who would bring the war to its shores in dramatic fashion.

He was a king of Syracuse, a Greek city-state on the southeast coast of Sicily. Her name was Agatha Cleese Agathicles began life as a commoner In the Sicilian colonies, the son of a potter in the port city of Syracuse, he initially learned his father's trade, but soon entered the army and rose through its ranks until he was able to promulgate a military coup and took the throne of the city in 317 BC. C. Agathicles had a high opinion of himself and, as tyrant of Syracuse, he minted silver coins that presented himself as the heir of Alexander the Great, the greatest of all Greeks and as Alexander.

Agatha Cleese had dreams of conquest and soon set about subjugating the cities around him, as the historian Diodorus of Sicily recalls. Agatha Cleese began without hindrance to subjugate the cities and fortresses to himself, dominating many of them quickly, he secured his power, in fact, he built for with a large number of allies, abundant income and a considerable army, he had chosen a mercenary force composed of 10,000 foot soldiers and 3,500 horsemen, he also prepared a warehouse of weapons and missiles of all kinds, since he knew that the Carthaginians would soon wage war against As he had predicted, it was not long before the Carthaginians began to see agathicles as a serious threat.

Carthage amassed a huge army in its usual way. He gathered mercenaries and dikes from all his territories and allies. Slingers, spearmen, elephant cavalry, probably speaking a dozen different languages ​​and They all sailed to Sicily along the way, many of their ships were wrecked in a storm, but the force that arrived was easy enough to defeat the tyrant Agatha Cleese, as Diodorus tells it, like a Gothic, saw that the forces of the Carthaginians were superior to his own. He supposed that not a few of the fortresses could pass to the Phoenicians and also those of thecities that had resented him after a severe defeat at the Hymera River in central Sicily.

Agathicles retreated east to his port capital of Syracuse, where the Carthaginians surrounded the city and laid siege to the Agathicles. It seems that all hope was lost, but it is here, in this desperate moment, that he decided to take a truly daring action, He devised a plan to free himself from the siege on a ship, set sail for Africa and made a desperate blow to the heart of his enemy, the city of Carthage itself, when he saw that all his allies had changed sides and that the barbarians owned almost all of it. Sicily except Syracuse and were far superior in land and sea forces, carried out a company.

As this was unexpected and very unwise, he decided to leave a suitable garrison for the city to select those of the soldiers who were fit and with them to cross into Libya because he hoped that if he did this those in Carthage who had been living luxuriously in a prolonged peace would and therefore, inexperienced in the dangers of battle, they would be easily defeated. When the Carthaginians saw the Greek fleet leaving Ciracusa, they believed that the Goths were fleeing and gave chase, they pursued the Greeks and hurried them across the sea ​​for hundreds of kilometers. throwing arrows and stones at them with a sling but luck was on the side of the Greeks and Agatha Cleese and her soldiers were able to land on the beaches of Africa Agatha Cleese must have been afraid that her soldiers would lose their courage and try to flee and so she ordered her ships to be burned as an offering to the gods, as Diodorus tells it, standing in the stern, paid the others also to follow his example, then, while all the captains threw the fire and the flames burned rapidly, the trumpeter sounded the battle signal and The army raised the war cry as they prayed for a safe return home, this was done by Agatha Cleese, for it was clear that if the ships in Victory were cut off from retreat, they would have hope of being safe, even so, when all the ships were on fire and the flames.

The fire was spreading widely. Terror gripped the Sicilians as they considered the immensity of the sea separating them from their home of the city walls of Carthage. The fires of burning ships would have been visible on the horizon and now fear. Amaya was beginning to spread. For them, the citizens, the war was something that happened elsewhere, the city had never been significantly threatened before and there were practically no forces there to defend it. Panic and great confusion gripped the city, crowds rushed to the market and the Council of Elders consulted what In fact, there was no army available that could take the field against the enemy.

The mass of citizens who had no experience in war were already desperate and the enemy was thought to be close to the walls for the first time. The Carthaginians would really have to fight, they were recruited en masse, given long spears and shields, perhaps given some rudimentary training and, along with the small complement of city guards, marched to meet the Greeks in battle, The Carthaginians hoped to compensate for the poor quality of their troops. Their citizen troops were very numerous and greatly outnumbered Agatha Cleese, they were confident of victory, but that was not the case when they encountered the experienced and now desperate Greeks, they crushed the citizen soldiers of Carthage, expelled them from the field of battle and invaded their camp and Here Diodro writes that they made a revealing discovery in the Carthaginian camp: they found, along with other goods, many carts in which more than 20,000 pairs of wives were transported, since the Carthaginians, who were waiting easily dominate the Greeks, they had spread the word. between them to take as many alive as possible and after chaining them up to throw them into slave pens with this defeated army, the city of Carthage was now completely surrounded by hostile forces and Diodorus cannot help but comment on the ridiculous nature of the situation in Sicily.

The Carthaginians who had defeated Agathicles in a great battle were besieging Syracuse, but in Libya Agatha Cleese had besieged the Carthaginians. It is here that the Carthaginians, in their desperation, appear to have resorted to an ancient ritual that forms one of the darkest and most controversial aspects of their history, which is the right to sacrifice children, human sacrifice was at certain times a feature of various societies in the ancient world. Rituals of this type have been attested in various Native American societies and in the early histories of Israel and Judah, as well as in cities. of Phoenicia as Tire and Sidon the Book of Kings records a king of the Levantine kingdom of Moab sacrificing his firstborn when a war was not going well in Ireland Great Britain and northern Germany during the Iron Age the sacrificial victims were ritually strangled and thrown into swamps where the acidic waters mummified them in a perfect state of preservation.

This idea of ​​a mortal exchange with the gods seems recurrent in human psychology and the idea has arisen independently in multiple cultures that if we want to ask the gods for a great favor we have to give them something truly precious in return and what could be more precious that a human life with the writing of the Hebrew Bible and the law codes of Moses this practice was condemned and prohibited in much of the Levant and since then animals were sacrificed instead of whole human victims and in other Phoenician cities the practice too It seems to have died out in the first millennium, but there is one place where it seems to have continued well into the second century BC.

C. and it is Carthage. These were violent times in which human life was cheap, but even so these rituals were mentioned with some disgust by several ancient writers, including the Greek philosopher. For Plato, for example, human sacrifice is not legal but impious, while the Carthaginians perform it as something they consider completely legal and furthermore, when some of them even sacrificed their own children at the beginning, these rituals seem to have been a genuine sacrifice he renounced. the life of one of your own children in the hope of receiving the favor of the gods, but before long the rich Carthaginians found a way to avoid this, in fact, they seem to have developed a macabre industry, a trade with the children of other people for sacrifice, the writer Plutarch describes this. system and gives an idea of ​​the atmosphere of these horrible rituals, those who did not have children bought children from the poor and cut their throats as if they were lambs or little birds, while the mother stood still without a tear or a moan, but she should she uttered a single moan or let a single tear fall, she had to lose the money and her son was sacrificed anyway and the entire area in front of the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums so that the cries of lamentation These stories were long assumed to be exaggerations, pieces of Greek propaganda designed to demonize their enemies in Carthage, but more modern archaeological discoveries have more or less confirmed that child sacrifice took place at least at some times. and by at least some people in the city, large collections of buried urns containing the cremated remains of children have been found at large temple sites known as tofetz.

Some of these temples are extremely large with collections of cremation urns exceeding 2000 in number. Archeology has discovered masks and symbols. At these sites there are incense burners and other ritual paraphernalia suggesting that the ceremonies were highly structured. It pays to be cautious with these findings at most sites. Analysis has shown that the vast majority of these children's remains are from babies who were stillborn or have died. Due to natural causes, at a time when infant mortality was estimated at between 30 and 40 percent, the Carthaginians may have considered the tragedy of infant death as a kind of sacred sign of a human life recovered by the gods and the bodies of these children. were burned in the toffits as a result of the relative lack of children's remains in the city's usual cemeteries seems to show that these tofettes were at least in part cremation sites for the remains of children who had died of other causes, but the analysis The ages of other remains at other times do not seem to fit patterns of infant mortality, however, the ritual had begun at least in the city's last years and had evolved into something much darker and crueler.

The inscriptions left at these last sacrifice sites. cremation urns do not seem to leave much room for interpretation, as this typical example shows Lady Tenet and Lord Bal Hamon, what the Irish son of Boshtot, son of Balshalem, maker of stridgels, swore because the Lord heard his voice . There are countless of these inscriptions. and they all follow this pattern the child was not offered in advance but promised in advance if the gods fulfilled their request the greek historian clay tarkus seems to confirm this order of events the

phoenicians

and especially the carthaginians whenever they were eager for a great thing to have success made a vow for one of his sons if they would receive the desired things they would sacrifice to the gods having erected a bronze Cronus extended with his hands up over a bronze furnace to burn the child the flame of the burning child reached his body until the limbs shriveled and the smiling mouth seemed almost laughing, it slid into the oven, we can't imagine the kinds of things people might have asked for in return for these sacrifices, perhaps in some cases we can imagine that the ritual was out of desperation you took an extreme measure other times perhaps the wishes were trivial good weather on a trip perhaps good fortune and wealth in the coming year or the fall of a business rival whatever your wish it seems that if it came true If it came true, The boy's fate would be sealed only by fragmentary second-hand accounts, and the little that can be gleaned from archaeological sites leaves us guessing at questions that desperately need answers: how widespread was this practice in society, why and when did people engaged in it and how the majority of the Carthaginian citizens felt about it with Agathicles' army approaching and their last citizen defenders defeated on the field, the Carthaginians began to believe that their gods must be angry with them and at least some people in the city.

They believed that it was this practice of sacrificing the children of the poor instead of their own that was to blame, as related by Deodorus of Sicily. They also alleged that Cronus had turned against them, since in ancient times they had been accustomed to sacrifice to this most noble God. of their children, but more recently buying and raising children in secret, they had sent them to sacrifice when they thought of these things and saw their enemy meet before their walls, they were filled with a superstitious fear because they believed that they had neglected the honors of the gods who had been established by their parents in their Zeal to amend their Omission selected 200 of the noblest children and publicly sacrificed them and others who were under suspicion were sacrificed voluntarily in number not less than 300.

In this time of danger The citizens of Carthage They returned to a kind of suicidal religious fundamentalism, but this would not be the end of the city. Agatha Cleese rampaged through the Carthage countryside for years, but the city's formidable triple defenses kept her at bay and soon the Greek king fled. Powerless in his absence, some of his Sicilian vassals were taking the opportunity to declare independence, he hastened to return home leaving his inexperienced son in charge of his army, who was easily outmatched by the Carthaginian generals when Agatha Cleese returned to Africa saw that the situation had become untenable and fled back to Sicily, but its achievements had been significant.

He had left a lasting impression on the people of Carthage. He devastated his field. She terrified them so deeply that they massacred their own children and probably left them behind. The peace treaty on the verge of bankruptcy in 307 BC. C. essentially returned the situation exactly to how it had been before the war began. The agathicles example of a daring blow to the heart of your enemy just at the least expected moment. It was an example that later Carthaginian generals would remember and learn from, but it was also an episode to which other powers in the region paid special attention.

Carthage had once been considered the region's leading power, but a small Greek army had come close to bringing it to its knees, according to the historian. Plutarch bluntly puts it in the mouth of one of his characters who could keep his hands off Libya or Carthage when that city came within reach, a city that our Gothic stealthily escapes from Syracuse and crosses the sea with only a few ships blending in. narrowly. The first who would seek to take advantage of this weaknessperceived was a Greek king named Piris Piris was the king of the Greek Kingdom of Epidos around what is now southern Albania.

His name meant fiery or red-haired and came from the same root as English. He rambles on and Plutarch remembers that he appears to have suffered some kind of developmental disorder that fused the teeth of his upper jaw giving him a disturbing look to the appearance of his face. Paris had more terror than majesty of royal power. she did not have many teeth, but her upper jaw was one continuous bone in which the usual intervals between the teeth were indicated by slight depressions, just like Agatha Cleese. Piris had an immensely high opinion of himself and considered himself the heir to Alexander's legacy.

In his later life he called himself a hero of the Hellenic world, the defender of all things Greek, and right at that time the Greeks who most needed defense were the besieged colonies in southern Italy, the region known as megali Halas or greater Greece, these city-states. They were suddenly being threatened by a powerful new force in the region, a people from the river plains of central Italy who the Greeks considered barbarians and who had recently emerged as something of a regional superpower. This was the once small and insignificant city-state. of Rome throughout the 4th century BC.

C., this strange Republic had begun to expand into the interior lands of its region of Latium and had brought several other cities under its control; From there they had managed to upset the balance of power in central Italy and overthrew several well-established cities. Rivals absorbed all of Latium and the Campania region and wherever they went, the Romans took a remarkably clever and pragmatic approach to absorbing other peoples. in their society. World empires like Carthage maintained full citizenship only for people living in their home city, Rome was much more generous with citizenship unlike the armies of Carthage.

Rome's legions were made up of citizen soldiers and since every free man was now a citizen, they were able to draw on vast reserves of manpower as Rome grew in size and influence. Carthage realized this about 160 years later. The first treaty they signed they drafted a new expanded agreement with Rome. This new treaty added the condition that Rome would not attempt to found any cities on Carthaginian territory, suggesting that Roman expansion had become at least a small concern for the region's main power, but for most relations between Rome and Carthage were friendly if Carthage, distrustful, welcomed the rise of Rome as a potential ally against their mutual enemies, the Greeks, and a district of the city of Rome was known as vikas Africa or African quarter, suggesting that a population of Carthaginian merchants already lived and traded in the city.

It seems that Carthage saw Rome not as an unwanted rival but as a potential new source of customers, but for the Greek colonies of southern Italy, Rome was a new voracious predator. As Roman power expanded, the Greeks found themselves surrounded. and many of them began to send letters of help to the fierce Greek king Piris. One of these colonies was the city of Taranto, as Plutarch remembers, the Romans were at war with the people of torrentum, who could not continue the war or end it. In the end he wanted to make the Pirates his leader and summon them to war believing that they were a formidable genus.

Piris could not resist this opportunity to position himself as the brave defender of Greek civilization against these Latin barbarians. He assembled a navy and a large army complete with 20 war elephants and in 280 BC. C. he sailed towards southern Italy with all his forces. A sophisticated Greek piris was expected to face a rebellious barbarian horde on the battlefield, but Roman troops were already hardened by their long wars of expansion in Italy and were already exhibiting the kind of organization that would one day make them famous when Learning that the Romans were nearby and camped on the other side of the river, Cyrus rode to the river to see them and when he observed their discipline, the appointment of their guards, their order and the general layout of their camp.

He was surprised and told the friend closest to him. The discipline of these barbarians is not barbaric, but these early Roman legions were still no match for the Greek phalanxes. and the siege of the elephants of Purus terrified the Roman horses together Paris defeated the Romans in two battles at Heraklia and Auskalum in 279 BC. C. and believed that Rome must soon concede the war and accept the terms of his demands, but slightly to the bewilderment of piris Rome simply refused to admit defeat, this refusal to sue for peace would become a kind of Roman seal. Some have argued that the very nature of Rome as a citizen democracy actually contributed to its immense obstinacy in war; its leaders were politicians and they existed in a state of constant competition with each other for the support of the voting public.

Any politician who signed a damaging peace treaty could be eviscerated in the Senate as a coward, a fool, or even a traitor. This meant that Roman senators would often vote overwhelmingly to continue a war. Rather than admit defeat, this willingness to continue along with its large reserves of citizen manpower meant that Rome could often absorb terrible defeats by losing entire armies and simply carry on, this often had the effect of simply crushing the will to fight. of his enemies, according to Plutarch, who was fond of inventing dialogues for his historical figures, Piris made the following joke after his third victory with Rome, we are told that Paris told one that he congratulated him on his victory, if we were victorious in One more battle with the Romans and we will be completely ruined. because he had lost a large part of the forces with which he came and all his friends and generals except a few, he had no others whom he could summon from home and he saw that his allies in Italy were becoming indifferent while the army of the Romans like Si A fountain gushing from within easily filled again after this series of Pyrrhic victories, Piris soon realized that the conquest of Italy would elude him, he reached miles from Rome, but the city's high Serbian walls meant that His beleaguered Force had no hope of capturing him, yet he could not bear the thought of returning home empty-handed.

Piris decided that he would head to Sicily and see if he could have more success helping the Greek colonies there fight the Carthaginians. He arrived in Greece. The city of Syracuse receives a hero's welcome every year. The Greek colony on the island sent troops to complete its army and Pierce would discover that the Carthaginian forces in Sicily were a much easier target than the legions of Rome. The Carthaginian response to Paris could not have been more different for the Romans, who had little desire to be dragged back into another war in Sicily, offered to pay him handsomely to leave them alone, but Piris refused, as Plutarch describes, When the Carthaginians were willing to come to an agreement and were willing to pay him money and send him ships, he replied his With his heart set on more important things, there could be no agreement or friendship between him and them unless they abandoned all of Sicily. , but Sicily also finally defeated him after years of war.

His men were tired. The Carthaginians and Romans were now working together, so he stood up to the powerful. armies of Rome on land and the vast Armada of Carthage at sea, after finally suffering defeat in southern Italy, he cut his losses and sailed home with little to show for the years of war as he sailed away. of the. Plutarch imagines Piris reflecting on the situation in which he found himself. has left behind he could not dominate Sicily which was like a ship shaken by a storm but he wanted to leave it and it is said that at the moment of his departure Piris looked towards the island and said to those around him my friend what a field of struggle for the Carthaginians and Romans we are leaving behind the Paris campaign had ended in failure when he left Rome quickly laid waste to the remaining Greek city-states of Italy and solidified its rule in the south of its peninsula.

The Romans built roads connecting these rich Greek cities to the Roman Network and used the treasure they confiscated to build a large series of new temples in the capital, as well as a huge second aqueduct for Rome, the aqua aniovatus, meanwhile Carthage recovered many of the cities that Piris had taken in Sicily but without a common enemy, the The twin powers of Carthage and Rome faced each other in 270 BC. C. Rome had captured the city of the regium just across the Strait of Messina. Now they could look over the water and see directly the Sicilian coast, the fighting ground that Piras had left behind in Sicily would set the stage for the next dramatic period of Mediterranean history.

It was a scenario where a conflict would develop there. They would eclipse the Sicilian wars in intensity and scale. They would last a hundred years and would unite both powers. on the verge of bankruptcy and cost more than a million lives, this was the beginning of the Punic Wars. The word Punic comes from Latin and is a mutation of the Greek word fornike or Phoenician and at this time the Romans had come to use it to describe the Phoenician superpower of Carthage, which lay just three days' journey across the sea from them, historian Cassius Dion summarizes the situation.

As the powers of Rome and Carthage slid toward war, the once-powerful Carthaginians for a long time and the Romans who were now growing stronger and looked at each other with jealousy were driven to war partly by the desire to continually acquire more and partly also by the fear that it was a chance incident that broke the truce and plunged them into war, the main source of almost all One aspect of the First Punic War is the historian Polybius, a Greek who was sent to Rome in 167 BC. C. as a hostage. Polybius was writing about the events of the First Punic War a century after they occurred, but he was meticulous in his research and traveled widely.

He gathered all the first-hand knowledge and archival material he could and, as a Greek, was something of an outsider in Rome, meaning his interpretation of the war is considered relatively unbiased. The story Polybius tells begins on the volcanic island. from Sicily, where at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. C. trouble was once again threatening to break out, at this time Sicily had something of the Wild West, much of it was lawless and between the influences of Carthage and the Greeks, both sides often used mercenaries to fight for them , but when a particular war ended it was not always so easy to get rid of these bands of rough and violent men.

One of those gangs was a group of mostly southern Italians who called themselves the Mamateanos or the Children of Mars. the Roman god of war in the past, they had been hired by Agathicles to fight against Carthage in Sicily, but when the tyrant of Syracuse died they were left without a job, the Mamateans wandered around the island for some time, probably engaging in robberies and petty banditry to survive. until they reached the walled Greek city of Messina Messina was a small settlement on the northeastern tip of Sicily with the shadow of Mount Etna looming over the horizon and its location was of great strategic importance because Messina was next to the most important crossing point.

Strait between Sicily and Italy are located on the coast, there you can see the Italian mainland right over the water and a boat could cross in less than 30 minutes. Whoever controlled Messina would also control this junction and this meant that both Carthage and Rome were anxious about the future of the city when the group of Mamateans arrived in Messina they must have caused quite a pitiful spectacle and the people of the city originally took pity on them. They welcomed them and even gave them shelter in their own homes, but soon these hired swordsmen became restless and jealous of the comfortable life of the people, in fact, they began to plot to take over the city, Polybius recounts what happened afterwards, certain companions serving under Agathicles had long cast covetous eyes on the beauty and prosperity of Messina and seized as the first opportunity to capture for treason, after being admitted as friends and occupying the city, they first expelled or massacred the citizens and then took possession of the wives and families of the dispossessed victims and then divided the land and all other property among themselves for the next 20 years or so.

The Mamateans would run Messina as a sort of pirate fortress, using it as a base to raid nearby cities and towns and to rob ships sailing through the narrow strait, but soon the last remaining Greek king in Sicily was named king of Syracuse. . yero had had enough in 265 BC. C. movedTo attack the city of Messina to put an end to these troublesome pirates, fearing being executed for their crimes, the Mamateans played the only card they had left by negotiating with the strategic importance of the city, they sent requests for help to the two big players in the region To Rome and Carthage, the Carthaginians, who were nearest, came to their aid first, delighted as always to kick sand in the faces of the Greeks, moved a small army to Messina and helped the Mammatians defend it.

This was just the latest move in the nearly two-century game of chess between Carthage and the Greeks of Sicily, but for the Romans it was a worrying move. With control of the crossing into Italy, the Romans began to fear that Carthage was planning an invasion of the territory. On the continent, as Polybius recalls, the Romans saw all this and felt it was absolutely necessary not to let Messina escape or allow the Carthaginians to secure what would be like a bridge allowing them to cross into Italy. The Roman Senate was bitterly divided over what to do. Many expressed displeasure at coming to the aid of what amounted to a band of pirates, but eventually their fears prevailed and they voted to send a force to Messina to secure the crossing led by a consul named Appius Claudius.

Rome was an inland city situated on the Tiber River, so the Romans were not a naturally seagull people with few ships of their own, they borrowed as many as they could from the coastal cities of southern Italy when they first took the initiative to send troops to Messina, not only did they have no deck ships, but no warship, not even a single galley, but they borrowed quinquareems and trains from tarantum and lochry and even from Alaya and neapolis. The Romans, under the command of Appius, successfully made the short crossing in 264 BC. C. capturing the powerful Carthaginian navy.

When they reached Messina, the Italian Mamatians expelled the Carthaginians who had come to their aid and welcomed the Roman army into the city. Instead, the Roman capture of Messina immediately changed the balance of power in Sicily. The Greeks of Syracuse formed a hasty alliance. With his former enemies in Carthage overthrowing two centuries of war to repel this new invader, but to no avail, the Roman commander Appius descended on Syracuse at lightning speed, as Polybius writes, having managed to engage the enemy since then, he swept through the territory of Syracuse and its allies. He with impunity and devastated it without finding anyone to dispute the possession of the Open Country and finally he sat down before Syracuse itself and besieged it.

The hero king saw no other way out, he surrendered, changed sides and swore allegiance to the Romans. This was the end of the last independent Greek states in Italy and Sicily and the future of the Mediterranean would now be decided by Carthage or Rome. Both sides now marched to war in this first Punic War. The Carthaginians were clearly worried and raised a large army. of the Celts, Iberians and other peoples and sent him to Sicily, but they also trusted in their general strategy that had served them well in previous Sicilian wars, as the warships of Carthage commanded the waves, their commercial empire would continue to fill their treasury. with gold and which meant that there would always be soldiers ready to fight for them and at first it seemed that the Romans had no hope of changing this situation, they had practically no Navy and their own shipbuilding technology was behind perhaps by centuries, as the historian Polybius, but while the Carthaginians had undisturbed command of the sea, the scales of success could not tilt decisively in their favor, so they took it upon themselves to confront the Carthaginians at sea, in which they had held for generations. undisputed supremacy.

The Carthaginian Navy benefited for a thousand years. of Phoenician shipbuilding and navigation, but their centuries of relatively unchallenged mastery of the sea had also made them somewhat complacent. Their method of fighting on water relied primarily on the use of heavy bronze battering rams attached to the front of their ships. The Phoenician sailors relied on overtaking their enemies on the waves with their Superior navigation by approaching with their oars and crashing into the sides of enemy ships with these Rams hitting them on the hulls below the waterline, it was a method of warfare that was had remained unchanged for the last 500 years and the Carthaginians were among the best in the world at this complicated way of fighting, but soon the Romans encountered a stroke of good luck after a skirmish at sea a Carthaginian galley ran aground on the coasts of Italy. in a unique opportunity to learn what made the Carthaginian Navy so effective that the Romans rushed to secure the ship to transport it and study its secrets while Polybius records that the Carthaginians put to sea in the strait to attack a ship of theirs with deck loaded with so much fury. which ran aground and fell into the hands of the Romans served as a model on which they built their entire fleet and if this had not happened it is clear that they would have been completely prevented from carrying out their design.

What the Romans found in this ship would have intrigued and excited at that time the Carthaginians were legendary not only for their navigation and the size of their fleet but also for how quickly they could build ships the writer Pliny the Elder recounts what was possible in those days Pisa recounts the 220 ships were Built completely in 45 days in the Second Punic War 2 the fleet was at sea on the 40th day after the acts were hung on the tree, this was long considered an exaggeration by ancient writers, but the discovery of the shipwreck Phoenician ship known as The Marsala ship has shed light on how this type of mass manufacturing may have been possible When the wreck was discovered, archaeologists discovered that the ship had each section of its hull marked with certain Phoenician letters, it is believed that these sections would have been built separately.

Produced in separate factories and then assembled at their final location with a level of coordination not seen again before the Industrial Revolution, these ships were a kind of ancient flat furniture. Armed with this new knowledge, the Romans began the process of copying the Carthaginian ship exactly, but they did not fare very well in their first confrontation with Carthage, the inferior mobility of these Roman ships and the inexperience of their sailors meant that a squadron of 17 Roman ships were destroyed, easily overwhelmed by the Phoenicians and dealt deadly blows. After this, the Romans began to change their tactics to become accustomed to the time-consuming task of outmaneuvering and ramming enemy ships, so they attempted to bring battles at sea to more familiar territory.

To do this, they developed an ingenious new technology: a kind of boarding bridge that they called corvus, the Latin word for crow. These rose like a drawbridge at the front of the ship and when approaching an enemy ship these gangways would have fallen onto the enemy's death where a metal spike at the bottom would work its way into the wood. These bridges would now hold the two ships together, neutralizing the speed and agility of the Carthaginian ships, preventing them from ramming and allowing the Roman legionaries to board. It was a crude but surprisingly effective tactic, the Romans kept their new inventions hidden and now, with a secret naval weapon of their own, they risked a full-scale confrontation at sea.

The Virginia fleet was busy plundering a place called Malay on the coast of northern Sicily when they saw the Romans. With sails on the horizon, they were delighted that their enemies had finally risked a battle and were extremely confident in sending the entire fleet of this problematic Italian power directly into battle. At the Bottom of the Ocean Polybius tells what happened to continuation. As soon as the Carthaginians summoned him, they joyfully set to sea with 130 sails feeling supreme contempt for the Roman ignorance of nautical, so they all sailed with their prows aimed directly at their enemy, they did not.

They think the confrontation was worth even the trouble of arranging their ships in any order. As they approached the enemy they saw crows perched on the bows of several ships. The Carthaginians were for a time in a state of perplexity because they were quite strange to such devices. However, as these machines felt complete contempt for their opponent, they charged undeterred, but as soon as they came within a short distance, their ships were invariably held tightly by these machines, the enemy boarding by means of the crows and engaging them on their covers and in the end, some of the Carthaginians were killed while others surrendered bewildered by terror at the battle in which they were involved, which eventually turned into exactly a ground fight, finally the Carthaginians turned and fled disconcerted by the novelty of the event and were the loss of 50 ships.

For Carthage this was a total disaster that blew up from its successes. The Romans soon mounted invasions of the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, Carthaginian possessions for centuries that had never been seriously threatened. They even organized an invasion of North Africa itself in the hopes of following in the footsteps of Agatha Cleese and her march towards the Carthaginian capital of Carthage, things were beginning to get out of control when the Roman invasion force descended on the coast. Carthage sent its entire fleet to meet them on the open sea. Polybius relates that as the Roman sails rose on the horizon the commanders of Carthage spoke to their sailors and soldiers and expressed a fear that must have been on the lips of every man and woman in the Phoenician territories that this war was now on. danger of returning home while the Carthaginian commanders briefly addressed their man, they pointed out to them that victory in this battle would ensure that the war in the future would be limited to the question of the possession of Sicily, while if they were defeated they would have to fight in the future for their homeland and for all that they held in high esteem Polybius records that more than 600 ships joined in the battle that followed when he was writing his history of the Punic Wars, more than a hundred years later, the size of the warships had increased dramatically, so he probably vastly overestimates the number of men involved placing it at over three hundred thousand;

However, the battle was enormous and probably involved at least 120,000 sailors, soldiers, rowers, and marines; the vast battlefield would have become a chaos of clashing oars and screaming rams, men and the thud of corvus bridges crushing the decks the clash of shields and swords the crash of waves and the screech of seagulls at the end of the day the outcome of the battle was a decisive defeat for the Carthaginians with the Carthaginian fleet dispersed by the Romans. Had he successfully crossed into Africa and landed on the Cape Bonn peninsula, across the bay from the city, The citizens of Carthage would now have been able to see the bonfires of the Roman army in the distance, at night, some of the city's inhabitants.

The oldest residents would still have remembered when Agathicles' army had threatened the city only half a century earlier, when they had seen those ships burning on the coast. The Carthaginians had had enough, they asked the Romans to sign a peace treaty, but the Roman demands were so punishing that the Carthaginians, even in their desperate state, could not accept it and that is why the war was prolonged, but the Romans, as Agathicles, found themselves unable to take the city of Carthage. The Roman expeditionary force sent to capture the city was disastrously defeated by a smaller Carthaginian. The army at the battle of Tunis and the Roman consul who led it were captured and killed in this way, the fortunes of each side swung back and forth like a pendulum, another naval battle at Cape Hermayum saw another Roman victory and another hundred Carthaginian ships sunk, but the Romans did not have time to celebrate on their journey home, the victorious Roman fleet was hit by a devastating storm, as Polybius records, the disaster was truly extreme, since of its 364 vessels, only 80 remained, the rest were flooded or washed away by the waves on the rocks. and headlands where they broke into pieces and filled the entire coast with corpses and debris, no greater catastrophe can be found in all of history, as it happened to one fleet at a time, 284 ships were lost and an estimated 60,000 sailors were lost.

They sank to the bottom of the sea. It was one of the worst naval disasters in history. Some historians have speculated that the Romans' secret weapon, the Corvus boarding bridges, may actually have made their ships very heavy and prone to capsizing in stormy conditions. After this disaster, there are no mentions of the Corvus being used.Again on Roman ships, the war would continue for another 14 years with most of the fighting taking place in Sicily and the surrounding seas, but in 241 BC. C. Carthage was exhausted, the Carthaginian Senate ordered its general in Sicily to sign any peace treaty that the Romans demanded that no matter how punishing this general was, a man named Hamilton Barker, he was proud to be a competent general and had been winning some of his battles in Sicily, he believed that signing such a punishing treaty was folly and that is why he rejected the order to negotiate.

Instead the Senate sent a minor commander to capitulate to Rome. The first Punic War ended in 241 BC. C. 23 years after it began with the signing of the Treaty of Lutashus it was one of the longest continuous wars ever to take place in the The ancient world exhausted both Rome and Carthage and brought them both to the brink of bankruptcy. , but Rome, as the victor, had at least gained something from all the years of slaughter under the terms of the treaty. Carthage was forced to give up all of its remaining territory. in Sicily to Rome and possibly also to the island of Corsica, Carthage was forced to release all Roman prisoners without ransom, while heavy ransoms were charged for any Carthaginians held by Rome and were forced to pay a staggering 82 tons of silver in reparations to Rome for the Over the next 10 years, all this meant that Carthage could no longer afford to pay its armies, many of these were foreign mercenaries to whom it was already in debt and, in the same year that it was signed the treaty, a large group of these mercenaries, around twenty thousand men.

They roughly camped outside the city and refused to give in until they were paid, but the state was practically bankrupt when the Carthaginian Senate delayed paying them, they mutinied and began looting and burning the countryside while the two decades of war had been harsh on the citizens of Carthage had been even harsher on the rural regions of Africa that ruled over Carthaginian provinces like Libya had sent large numbers of men to fight for Carthage and were subjected to punitive taxes to pay for all their resentment had been slowly building up. and Now it boiled over when news of this army of mutinous mercenaries reached some of these disaffected cities, they saw their chance to completely free themselves from Carthage's rule, many of them rebelled and soon Carthage was embroiled in a civil war that seemed for the first time. as if the entire Empire could crumble, as Polybius writes, for three years and about four months the mercenaries waged a war against the Carthaginians that far surpassed any I have ever heard of in cruelty and inhumanity, the many battles in those who have been.

Fighting at sea had naturally left them poorly supplied with weapons. Sailors and ships, they had no reserves of provisions ready and had no expectation of outside help from friends or allies. In fact, they were now thoroughly taught the difference between a foreign war waged beyond the seas. and the internal insurrection, the Civil War that followed, which would be known as the Mercenary War, would unfold with incomparable brutality, the bodies of crucified rebels would have become a common site along the roads, instability caused a famine and Carthage was forced to raise an army from its citizens forced the common people of the capital to fight against the man whom the Carthaginian Senate had charged with carrying out the Civil War was the proud General Hamalkar Barker, the man who had refused to sign the treaty with Rome throughout these years of violence, would have seen his homeland burning, his people starving to death, and all this time fueled his hatred for his Roman enemies at enormous cost.

Hamel Car Barker would eventually crush the rebels and at times did so literally, many insurgents captured in the final years of the war were executed under the legs of the elephants of Carthage, the greatest living symbol of the Empire's power, after four years of War Civil, some measure of order returned to the scorched countryside that the Carthaginian Empire had survived, but they were cramped and in an even worse state than before, meanwhile the Romans had passed. four years recovering and extracting wealth from their new lands in Sicily and Corsica at the time of Carthage's weakness Rome moved to capture the island of Sardinia II which had escaped its reach during the war and was now rebelling against the weakened government of Carthage .

The Carthaginians could do nothing to stop them, as Polybius recalls when the Carthaginians expressed their indignation at this on the grounds that the lordship over Sardinia more properly belonged to them. The Romans voted to declare war on them. The Carthaginians, however, had just almost miraculously escaped annihilation in the recent Civil War. They gave in to the needs of the moment and not only abandoned Sardinia, but also paid the Romans 1,200 talents so that they would not be forced to wage war for the time being. The new balance of power in the Mediterranean was clear. Carthage was now an emptied country.

If they were to regain some of the power they once held, the next generation of Carthaginian military leaders would need to produce a general of such genius that he could change the hopes and fortunes of this faltering Empire. carried out a campaign so daring that it is still studied in military academies to this day that the man would carry a name that information meant by the grace of Baal his name was Hannibal Hannibal was the son of General Hamalkar Barker when he finished the first Punic War. He was a boy of only six years old and would have watched with the formative mind of a child as the world he knew was torn apart by violence and his father struggled to end the rebellions when Rome had taken the island of Sardinia from him. .

Carthage lost the last of its profitable islands in the central Mediterranean and with the Empire so weakened its economy was in free fall, if Carthage was to be written it would need to find vast resources of minerals, metals and people, and Hannibal's father knew that the only way to To find them was Expanding, Carthage's last remaining overseas territories were in southern Spain, as Polybius writes to Hamilton with the anger that all his countrymen felt at this latest outrage, as soon as the mercenary mutiny was finally crushed and He ensured the security of his country immediately throughout.

In his efforts to conquer Spain, Hamoka gathered an army and set out for the Spanish colonies. Rome now ruled the seas and Carthage's navy was so weakened that he could not travel all the way to Spain by ship, but had to march all the way. across North Africa and transport his army across the sea in the Strait of Gibraltar. When he left, he took his own young son, Hannibal, with him to teach the boy the art of war and ensure that he passed on his burning hatred of Rome in the moment his father was about to depart with his army on his expedition to Spain, nine-year-old Hannibal was standing by the altar while Hamelkar sacrificed for his use, his father took him by the hand, led him to the altar and did so. he laid his hand on the victim and swore never to be a friend of the Romans.

He turned his own son Hannibal into such an enemy of Rome that none could be more bitter despite the weakened state of Carthage. Hamalkar managed to conquer the Celtic tribes of Spain that he built. a new city there that became known as New Cartago (now the city of Cartagena, in southern Spain), while young Hannibal grew up in Spain, he would probably have visited the Temple of Melkart or Hercules in Gardis, that temple with the Olive Tree golden in its center. He would have heard stories about Hercules and his legendary journey through the Alps herding the cattle of Garyon the Giant, perhaps he would even have learned the story of the Greek Agatha Cleaves and her daring strike right through the heart of her strongest enemy and all this while he He would have dreamed of one day leaving his own mark on history.

When his father Hamalkar died and his successor was murdered, it would soon fall to young Hannibal to lead the Carthaginian armies in Spain. He continued his father's work of expanding his territories by pushing back the locals. The Celtic tribes opposed him and it is clear that he developed a taste for war when he was 27 years old. Hannibal controlled more than half of the Iberian Peninsula, a vast and rich territory of almost a quarter of a million square kilometers. His father had inherited an army of sixty thousand battle-hardened soldiers, the best in the Empire, and a stable of 200 war elephants.

He had also forged alliances with several Celtic tribes in Spain who he knew would come to his aid if necessary. He now he was at the head of the richest. and most powerful province of the empire Hannibal and his father's success in Spain restored the blood of Carthage and Silva once again flowed through the empire it is said that only one Spanish mine in the Bay Bello region with its shafts more than two kilometers away within the Mountainside produced almost a thousand kilograms of silver each week for analysis of the Hannibal Hoard showing that the coins being minted in Spain at the time had an exceptionally high silver content, while those minted in Carthage were still diluted with cheaper metals.

All this meant that Hannibal was beginning to feel more and more confident about testing the limits of what he could achieve. eliminated both with the Senate at Carthage and with his sworn enemy at Rome, the Roman poet sileus italicus gives a description of his character, he was won over by Nature, eager for action, but an oath-breaker, cunning beyond all, although of dubious equity, armed, he was not. respectful of the gods, bold to do evil, despising the virtues of peace and thirsting for living human blood in his deepest marrow, especially in the flower of his youth, he longed to erase that defeat, the shame of a generation and drowned their peace treaty in the depths of the ocean.

Sicilian Sea The site of the flashpoint that would trigger the Second Punic War was the city of Saguntum, just north of what is now Valencia, in southern Spain. Saguntum was a Roman ally and Rome had been watching with concern as Carthage's Spanish borders drew ever closer. They made it very clear that they would not tolerate a Carthaginian attack on the city of Segundum, but Hannibal was willing to call his bluff in 219 BC. C., at the age of 28, he led his army against the city and put it under siege. The fighting did not go well, the people of Sagunto put up a fierce defense from their walls and Hannibal was even wounded in the thigh by a javelin, but his move to take the city was a clear spit in the eyes of the Romans when he They found out what was happening. happening Rome sent some envoys who appeared at Hannibal's Siege camp in secondum and demanded to speak with him.

Their man who fired them told them that he was too busy to talk to them. The Romans must have gone furious at Carthage. The news of Hannibal's actions was probably greeted with enthusiasm by his supporters and with a frenzy of dismay by others. One of his great opponents, a man called Hanno, is supposed to have made a blistering speech against him in the Carthaginian Senate, the words of which the later Roman historian Livi imagines that as long as a single representative of Barker's blood and name survives, our treaty with Rome will never be left without the impulse that you have sent to the army as if providing fuel to send off a young man who is consumed by a passion for sovereign power and who recognizes that the only way to achieve it is to spend his life surrounded by legions armed and constantly provoking new wars it is against Carthage that Hannibal now raises his towers it is Carthage whose walls he shakes with his battering rams the ruins of saguntum will fall on our heads and the war that began with segundum will have to continue with Rome, but Hannibal also had many Supporters and even his strongest opponents in the Senate found themselves in a kind of bind that many would probably have preferred. arrest Hannibal and hand his armies over to some more predictable general, but they really had no idea how to do it.

Hannibal's soldiers were loyal to him and any move against him would cause a civil war that could cause Carthage to lose all the rich Spanish provinces. On which their entire economy now rested, but the Romans were also paralyzed by indecision during the eight months of the segundum siege. Rome did nothing but complain. When Hannibal finally took the city, the Romans sent a delegation of ambassadors to Africa to demand an explanation. The clouds of War were once again brewing over the sea when these men arrived, spoke before the Carthaginian Senate, and demanded to know whether Hannibal's capture of Saguntum was the official policy of Carthage or simply the work of a rebel general. if he had acted alone.

They demanded that Hannibalbe arrested and handed over to be punished if Carthage did not comply with that Rome would declare war the historian Appian described this moment when the Carthaginian Senate made its choice. The Romans now sent ambassadors to Carthage to demand that Hannibal be handed over to them as a rapist. of the treaty they will not hand it over the war had to be declared with the head of the embassy pointing to the fold of his togar and smiling he said here Carthaginians I bring you peace or war you can take what you choose the latter responded that you can give us whatever you want when the Romans offered war, everyone shouted, we accept it, the poet Sileus Italicus, who wrote some centuries after the conflict, offers an even more florid interpretation, he told them that he carried war and peace in his hands, demanding that they choose and when the senators They refused to accept, he responded by waving his tunic as if he were spilling battle and ruining from his arms take the war of unhappy Libya with a result like the first.

The Roman historian Levy describes the conflict that followed in the following terms, the most memorable of all. Wars never waged the war that under the leadership of Hannibal the Carthaginians waged with the Roman people, because neither the stakes nor the nations engaged in arms possessed broader resources nor was their own power in power so great as it grew among the fires of the civil War. War Hannibal had learned to never let his homeland become a battlefield. He knew that if he waited in Spain, his lands would soon become home to a Roman invasion force, his fields would burn, his silver mines would dry up and his people would suffer, so he decided.

To bring his war to Rome he retreated to his capital of New Carthage during the winter to prepare and plan and here Livy describes him giving the following speech to his soldiers: You are on the eve of an expedition that will take you very far and it is not sure. of when you will see your homes again with the first signs of spring. With the good help of Heaven we can begin a war that will bring us great renown and treasure. The trip from New Carthage to Italy was one of about 1,500 kilometers, so Hannibal knew that a long and dangerous March awaited him once spring arrived and at the end of this trip a monumental problem loomed before him, this is because Because the geography of the Italian peninsula turned it into a kind of natural fortress starting in the Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago, the constant movement towards the north of the African continental plate crushed under the Eurasian plate in the region of Sicily had caused the Earth's crust to bend and fold, causing a spectacular series of mountains that form a steep wall between the Italian peninsula and Celtic Western Europe that the Romans called Gaul.

These mountains known as the Alps can rise up to five kilometers above sea level. of the sea with permanent snow-capped peaks, drowned by frozen glaciers and with only a few narrow crossing points the Roman writer Amianus Marcolinus describes the appearance of the Alps at this time in this country Gaul, due to its high mountain ranges always covered with formidable snow, was formerly almost unknown to the inhabitants of the rest of the globe except where it borders the coast and the mountainous walks enclose it on all sides, surrounding it naturally as by the art of man. The most used roads were those that surrounded this natural wall, the narrow corridor. which follows the coast passing through what is now the French port city of Nice, but as the only way in and out of Italy, these roads were heavily defended and lined with forts packed with Roman legionaries, here the Romans could have organized a fearsome defense against this problem.

Hannibal would need a bold solution and this is where those stories may have come back to him, stories he must have heard when he was the son of the Great Hero Hercules leading his herd of cattle directly over the Alps, the Romans believed it was impossible to cross the Alps with an army loaded with provisions, horses and oxen and with a herd of 37 elephants, it would be crazy to even try and that's why. For this reason, it was the last thing they would have expected when spring arrived and the Romans learned that the Carthaginian army was beginning its march.

They sent ambassadors along the coastal roads and, in what they called Transalpine Gaul, there were Celtic tribes of Gauls living in both. the Italian side and the north of the Alps and that is why the Romans used the Latin word sis meaning on this side and trans meaning on the other side to differentiate them. The Roman ambassadors approached the leaders of these Transalpine Ghouls and informed them about the Carthaginian army. Then, turning towards them, they asked these demons to block the way for Hannibal and his troops, but they did not obtain the reception they expected, as Livy describes when the envoys boasted of the renown and valor of the Roman people and the extent of their dominion asked the demons to deny the Phoenician a passage through their lands and cities if he attempted to bring the war to Italy.

It is said that they burst into such laughter that the magistrates and elders could barely subdue the younger ones. An order of mind so stupid and insolent that it seemed to propose that the demons should bring war upon their own heads, and offer their own fields to be plundered instead of those of other men; This was perhaps the first sign that things were not going to go well. Going as the Romans would have wished, his march southwards, Hannibal encountered significant resistance from the local towns who did not welcome the presence of his army and in France it was only through the excessive distribution of gifts that the Gauls allowed him pass him and his men.

The first real obstacle was the Rhône River, one of the largest rivers in France, here Hannibal's army crossed with difficulty building rafts to cross his man and his team, but the elephants he opposed. A major challenge: these animals were terrified of water, so the Carthaginians managed to cross. They built huge rafts made from whole tree trunks and covered them with dirt and grass so the elephants would believe they were still on dry land. That way they were able to convince two of the females to get on the rafts and cross the river and from there.

The rest of the herd was transported through Hannibal. He then followed the river's path north and found a tribe of Gauls who agreed to help him achieve his impossible plan of crossing the vast natural barrier of the Alps. These demons gave Hannibal and his men supplies and warm clothing. for the mountain crossing, but the task ahead was still staggering, at that time it was October, winter was approaching and the passes of the Alps were choked by ice and snow, writes the later Roman writer Amianus Marcolinas An account of these treacherous alpine passes in these Alps their elevations are high ridges that almost no one can cross without danger because, when coming from Gaul, it falls with a steep slope, terrible to behold because of the cliffs that jut out on both sides, the steep ravines of Nova on both sides and the chasms that have become treacherous due to the accumulation of The ice men and animals descend with faltering steps and slide forward and also the chariots in winter the ground covered with ice and as if polished and by The march to the top of the pass took nine days and we can only imagine the difficulties that these men, their horses , oxen and elephants endured during those days, but on the ninth day they reached the summit and now looked down through the Alpine pass towards the The green lowlands of Italy stretched beneath them, but the descent of the mountains would prove to be even more treacherous than the climb.

They discovered that a recent landslide had turned what was already a difficult path into an impassable precipice, as historian Livi describes. The obstacle they faced resulted in a horrible struggle, the ice allowing no foothold in any case, at least on a steep slope, when a man tried to get back to his feet on his hands or knees, even those useless supports. They were slipping under him and I let him fall there were no stumps or roots anywhere to buy a hand or a foot in short there was nothing but rolling and sliding on the soft ice and melting snow the decision was made to cut a stepped path on this steep wall and the episode has become one of the most famous in the mythical account of these events that would take place over the following centuries.

The story goes that Hannibal ordered his men to gather large quantities of firewood and light a large fire in front of the Cliff Rock while the fire burned and the flames licked the frozen stone. The rock was heated, then the soldiers poured their rations of sour wine against the heated rock, causing its temperature to drop rapidly and the rock to crack with iron tools which they then worked on. These fissures were not cut in the Rock until after four days of work, as Livy tells it, after thus heating the Rock with fire, they opened it with iron tools and alleviated the slope of the slope with easily sloping zigzags, so that Not only pack animals, but even elephants could be taken down.

Four days were consumed on the cliff and the animal almost died of hunger because the tops of the mountains are practically bare and that grass grows is buried under the snow, if this episode developed in this way. or not from the perspective of Hannibal's followers the purpose of telling this story was clear here was a new Hercules it was said a man who has crossed the Alps with his herd of elephants a man who accomplishes great tasks wherever he goes a man for whom The very rock of the mountain does not present any obstacle to descending to the foothills;

The men must have felt the heat of the lowlands bathe their skin for the first time with a feeling of enormous relief as Livy relates that further down you reach valleys and sunny slopes and streams and nearby. In them, forests and places that are beginning to be suitable for the habitation of man, there the beasts were allowed to graze and the man, exhausted by the work on the road, was allowed to rest, but the audacity of Hannibal's plan had had a cost, as Polybius writes when Hannibal crossed. On the Rhône he had 38,000 infantry and more than 8,000 cavalry, he lost almost half in the past, while the survivors had due to these prolonged and continuous sufferings, his general aspect and appearance became almost savage;

However, Hannibal and his men now stood and looked out over the lands of Italy. They had taken the Romans completely by surprise when war with Carthage broke out. Rome knew that Hannibal's army was on the way, they sent messengers to find out something about the location of his forces, but they had recently returned empty-handed after crossing the Rhône River. The Carthaginian general had disappeared, he was not in Gaul, he was not in Spain. For the Romans the situation must have been disconcerting and a little worrying when the news reached them of what Hannibal had done the first note of panic began to appear in Polybius recounts the reaction of a Roman general Publius had not expected Hannibal to even attempt the crossing the Alps or trying to escape total destruction, he was immensely astonished by his courage and adventurous daring when he learned that not only had he managed to cross safely but that he was actually besieging certain cities in Italy, the Roman government It was typically the slow movement and the speed of Hannibal's attack had stunned them.

As soon as the latest rumor about the capture of Saguntum by the Carthaginians had ceased to attract attention, then came the news that Hannibal had arrived in Italy with his army, which What made matters worse was that Hannibal was now recruiting allies from the CIS Alpine Gauls in the foothills of the Alps, Celtic tribes on the Italian side of the mountains who had fought with the Romans before the Roman senate panicked, Bringing reinforcements from Sicily from an army that at the time had been preparing to invade Africa, General Sempronius Longus led this army of over forty thousand people to intercept Hannibal's forces in northern Italy.

They met at the Battle of Trebia in December 218 BC. C. and here the powerful and determined forces of Hannibal completely crushed the Roman army by killing. At least 20,000 soldiers When news of this defeat reached Rome, the atmosphere in the Senate must have been somber. Hannibal marched south and crossed the Apennine mountains that run through central Italy and crushed another Roman army on the shore of Lake Trasamine, killing another 15,000 Romans and capturing 10,000 prisoners. From there, his march seemed unstoppable. Hannibal would ravage Italy for a total of 15 years. Chastened by his defeats, the Romans now avoided any battle with him, attempting instead to suffocate his army and cut off hissupplies.

He even resorted to a scorched Earth campaign in which they burned his own countryside in a desperate attempt to starve Hannibal's troops. Hannibal's strategy was to march south in the hope that the conquered Greek cities of southern Italy would welcome him as a liberator and get rid of their country's government. Roman Masters, but the journey was hard on his path, all but the largest of his elephants would die as a result of the harsh Italian winter and while riding through the marshes of central Italy, Hannibal himself contracted an infection that caused him to lose his legs. one of his eyes.

When he reached southern Italy, he seized a large supply depot at Kane's Taran and the Roman Senate realized that their strategy of suffocating him would not work and ordered a vast army of 86,000 soldiers to be raised, the largest they had ever seen. had never risen in Roman history and with this Force they sent the best and brightest of Roman society to March South to meet Hannibal at Kane. Hannibal, now frustrated by these battleless months, was all too eager to accept once again that the Roman army was completely crushed and defeat was final. so total that even high members of Roman society were massacred on the battlefield.

Livi describes the consequences; It is said that 45,500 feet and 2,700 horses were killed in an almost equal proportion of citizens and allies in number were the conquerors of both consoles and 29 military tribunes, some of consular rank, some of praetorian and in addition to these 80 senators or men who had They had officers who would have given them the right to be elected to the Senate but they had volunteered to serve as soldiers in the legions, prisoners taken in this battle. It is said that he had 3,000 foot soldiers and 1,500 cavalry when the news of this astonishing defeat reached Rome, the city panicked and the people of Rome began to see bad omens and portents everywhere.

A senator was sent to Greece to consult the Oracle of Delphi and as the Carthaginians had done once under threat from Agatha Cleese, the Romans resorted to rituals of human sacrifice to appease their angry gods, as Livy describes following the lead of In the books of Destiny, some unusual sacrifices were offered, among others, a Gaul man and woman and a Greek. man and woman were buried alive at the cattle market in a stone-walled place that even before this time had been desecrated with human victims a sacred sacrifice foreign to the Roman spirit to form a new army the Romans reduced the age of the children who They were allowed to serve in the 217th army and began recruiting criminals, those with overwhelming debts and even slaves, but their situation seemed bleak after the Battle of Kane, many of the ancient Greek cities of southern Italy began to join Hannibal. and rebel against Rome.

Sicily seemed to be able to do it. free themselves as well and for the next 11 years the war would devastate all of southern Italy in 211 BC. Hannibal even marched against Rome itself causing great panic in the city, but like the Greek king Paris before him, Hannibal saw no hope of breaking the imposing city. Serb walls the Carthaginian Senate made several attempts to open a new front in this war and capitalize on Hannibal's surprising success. They sent armies to northern Italy and Sicily in the hope of recovering some of their former territories, but none of their other generals had the same ability and all of these attempts ended in defeat.

Rome now realized that trying to stop Hannibal was futile and that the only way they could turn the tide of this war was to attack Carthage. In exchange, they sent an army to Spain led by a general named Publius Cornelius Scipio who had been among the few survivors of the Battle of Kane and had notable success in 209 BC. C. with a devastating blow. Scipio managed to capture the Spanish capital of New Carthage. Three years later he defeated the last remaining Carthaginian army in Spain, essentially taking over everything. Province and its abundant silver mines for Rome despite everything Hannibal had achieved, the war began to tilt in Rome's favor four years later, in 205 BC.

C., with Hannibal still ravaging Italy, the Romans gave Scipio command of the armies of Sicily and ordered him to set sail. In order for Africa to bring this war to the gates of Carthage, after a year of preparation, Scipio set sail in 204 BC. C. faced with this invasion that could decapitate his entire society, Hannibal was forced to take his army and leave Italy to quickly return to Carthage and defend. The city as described by the Roman poet Silius Italicus Carthage, with all its limbs amputated, now depends on a single man, only the name of Hannibal prevented his great kingdom from falling into total ruin.

The envoys quickly set sail across the sea to call him with a plea from the country of his warning that if he decided to stay, the city of Carthage could cease to exist. Hannibal gathered all the forces of Carthage and met Publius Scipio in North Africa in October 202 BC. C. in a place called Zama here on the eve of the battle. and Hannibal finally met for the first time and Hannibal seems to have presented a dejected and tired face, as Polybius writes, the next day both commanders advanced from their camps assisted by some horsemen, at that moment they left these escorts and met in the intervening space , each one accompanied. by an interpreter Hannibal was the first to speak after the usual greeting, he said that he wished that the Romans had never coveted any possession outside Italy nor the Carthaginians outside Libya for this battle.

Hannibal brought 80 elephants from the stables of Carthage, but recently one from Carthage. His most important allies, the New Media kingdom in the West, had seen the sign on the wall and had switched sides, declaring for Rome for centuries. The Numidian had provided Carthage with its crucial cavalry and now Carthage found itself facing these same Numidian horsemen on the battlefield at the top. Because of this, the Romans had developed new tactics to neutralize Carthage's large force. The fearsome war elephants When the battle began, the elephants of Carthage charged but the Roman lines opened to swallow them, containing them with spears and throwing javelins at them, these animals panicked and retreated in a stampede.

Through the Carthaginian lines, in the chaos, the Numidian cavalry now fighting with the Romans headed towards the rear of the Carthaginian ranks and Hannibal's army was driven from the field. He narrowly escaped with his life after 17 long years of war. Carthage was once again decisively defeated. After the years of destruction that Hannibal had caused in Italy, Rome was in no mood to be lenient, Carthage was forced to sign a peace treaty even more crushing than the first, all of its overseas territories in Spain and elsewhere were given to it. Dispossessed and many of their lands in North Africa were given to the Numidians and Carthage was ordered to pay more than 370 tons of silver, almost five times the amount they had paid after the first Punic War.

The treaty also sought to destroy Carthage's ability to wage war in the future. It prohibited them from having war elephants, all of which were given to the Romans, and restricted the size of their fleet to just 10 ships, barely enough to protect them. of the pirates. The rest of the Carthaginian Navy was burned in its port. The poet Salius Italicus describes the scene, then Carthage witnessed a frightful sight, its fleet was set on fire, the waves glittered with the sudden conflagration while Nerius, lord of the ocean, trembled before the glare, the Carthaginians could not declare war at any time. place outside Africa and only in Africa.

If they obtained permission from Rome first, the new political situation was clear. Carthage was now completely subordinate to Rome. Hannibal would live another 20 years after the Battle of Zama, although he would go into exile in the East and retire to Tyre, the mother city of Carthage. and then to the Salukid Empire and Armenia, the writer Pozanius states that he died when he cut his finger with the drawn sword and developed septicemia from the wound. Other more dramatic stories describe him taking poison when he finds his abode surrounded by soldiers loyal to the Romans who came to capture him and take him back to Rome in chains.

The Second Punic War ended and once again peace returned to that part of the Mediterranean which would last another 50 years during this time despite its diminished situation. Carthage continued to flourish, ironically. It seemed to do them good to be freed from the responsibilities of defending colonies and remote territories that for centuries had depleted their Treasury. Nothing about the war had changed the city's central role in the Mediterranean trade network. Money was still flowing towards her from every corner. of the sea to such an extent that the Carthaginians offered to pay in full the reparations they owed to Rome just 10 years after the end of the war, when the treaty had given them 50 years to pay for some of the largest and grandest buildings in Rome.

Carthage was built during these decades after the Second Punic War. For the people of the city, it must have been a time of renewed hope as the wounds of the long conflict began to heal, but its deteriorating political situation did have its downsides. Roman Permission Carthage repeatedly found itself defenseless against ambitious rivals in North Africa and one of them was the new Roman ally and king of the new media called Massanissa Massiniso was the king who had betrayed the Carthaginians before the Battle of Zama sending his powerful Numidian cavalry to fight. for the Romans and possibly tilting the entire battle in his favor as a result, he had lived a long and prosperous life;

He was now 86 years old and his long reign had seen Numidia free itself from Carthage and become a North African power in its own right and a loyal ally of Rome, but Masonisa was not happy with this and always coveted more land for her The growing Kingdom, with the power of Rome now behind it and with Carthage's hands tied behind its back, moved repeatedly to seize rich lands. From the weakened ancient Empire, the Carthaginians bound by their treaty had to appeal to the Romans to allow them to defend themselves, but Rome considered Massanissa a crucial ally and always ruled in his favor.

Carthage was like a large wounded whale that was slowly being eaten alive by sharks. In the year 152 BC. C., half a century after the end of the Second Punic War, the Numidian king Massanissa seized a particularly rich area of ​​farmland that had belonged to Carthage for centuries and the Carthaginians were understandably upset, as Roman historian Appian writes shortly. then Massinisa. raised a dispute over the lands known as the great fields and the territory belonging to 50 towns called tiska again the Carthaginians turned again to the Romans the latter promised to send envoys to arbitrate the matter but they delayed until it seemed likely that the interests Carthaginians would be completely ruined.

Rome eventually agreed to send a delegation to Carthage to mediate this dispute. One of the men sent as part of this delegation was an irascible Roman senator named Cato the Elder. Cato at the time was 81 years old and he spent much of his time in the Senate criticizing what he perceived as the increasingly lax morals of Roman society. As a young man, he had fought against Hannibal's armies in Italy and, as a result, had come to test the Carthaginians and All they represented. When he arrived in Carthage Cato expected to find the city a barbarian backwater impoverished by his two defeats. later at the hands of Rome, but what he found horrified him.

Carthage was a booming city that seemed to be doing better than ever and To his surprise, the visible wealth of the city seemed to surpass that of Rome itself, in Plutarch's biography of Cato, describes the old senator's reaction: the city did not It was by no means in a poor and humble state as the Romans supposed, but rather full of vigorous combatants brimming with enormous wealth, full of weapons of all kinds and military suppliers. and more than a little emboldened by all this, the writer Appian records another version of this moment as the senators rode through the rich landscape outside the city, carefully observing the country, seeing how diligently it was cultivated and what larger estates it possessed, They entered the city and saw how much it had increased in wealth and population since it was overthrown by Scipio not long before, when they returned to Rome they declared that Carthage was to them an object of apprehension rather than jealousy, since the city was so badly affected. so close to them and growing so rapidly that old Senator Cato was shaken by his experience since then he would dedicate the last years of his life to a single cause now in every debate in the Senate Cato would finish each of his statements whether it was about the price of thegrain or the wars in Gaul, whether over the appointment of new consoles or the response to a flood in the South, with a single sentence: furthermore I believe that Carthage must be destroyed, many in the Roman senate began to agree With him finally, a year after Cato's visit to Carthage, the Carthaginians grew tired of the Numidian king Massanissa, taking advantage of their situation and sent an army of 50,000 men to recover part of the farmland he had taken, but his army was decisively defeated by the The last attempt by the Numidians of Carthage to defend themselves had been a failure, but for the Romans it was also a violation of their treaty and was a sufficient pretext to go to war one last time to definitively destroy their ancient rival.

In the year 149 BC. C., the ancient Phoenician city of Utica seems to have felt the change in the winds, they also changed allegiance declaring their allegiance to Rome and in the same year a large Roman army used the port of Utica to land in North Africa and prepared to march on the city of Carthage upon the news of this army landing. The Carthaginians were distraught they sent envoys to meet the Romans and when the Romans arrived they demanded that the city be completely demilitarized and hand over all their military equipment the Carthaginians complied and returned with every piece of armor and weaponry they could find offering their total surrender and with the Roman generals sitting above them on their high seat begged the Romans not to go to war.

Carthage was now completely disarmed and in response the Romans offered them peace on one condition, but it was such an absurd condition that even they demanded that the Carthaginians abandon their city so that it could be demolished in its entirety and moved. about 16 kilometers by land and far from the sea. Appius relates these Roman demands sensorinus Rose and with a stern countenance spoke Cedan Carthage to us and go wherever you want within your own territory at a distance of at least 10 miles from the sea because we are determined to raise your city to the ground. Such a task would be practically impossible and, of course, for the sea.

The Phoenicians of Carthage would have essentially ended their livelihood forever, moving out of the city would have meant abandoning their temples, the cemeteries where their ancestors were buried, every street and corner they knew. Appius records the outpouring of grief when the Carthaginians were informed of the Roman plans. While he was still speaking, the unions of Carthage raised their hands towards the sky with loud cries and invoked the gods, they threw themselves on the ground and beat him with their hands and heads, some of them even tore their clothes and tore their throats. flesh as if they were Absolutely devoid of their senses, after the first frenzy passed, there was a great silence and prostration as of men lying dead.

So pitiful was this mixture of public and private pain that it had brought tears to the eyes of the Romans themselves, the Carthaginians withdrew to their city and the entire city. civilian population prepared to resist their attackers the historian Appian summarizes the terrible situation that the citizens of Carthage faced and reflected that their city was without weapons but was empty of defenders that it did not have a ship nor a catapult nor a javelin nor a sword nor a sufficient number of combatants, they had no mercenaries, no friends, no allies, no time to get them, their enemies were in possession of their children, their weapons and their territory, their city was besieged by enemies equipped with ships, infantry, cavalry and machines, while Masanissa, their other enemy, was on their flank. but the city remained a formidable fortress, its triple line of defensive walls could withstand any assault and it had complex systems for collecting rainwater and storing it in vast cisterns that allowed it to maintain a continuous supply of drinking water.

They prepared for a siege, but soon discovered that it was much more difficult than they expected. They controlled the seas, but the swift Carthaginian sailors could still smuggle food into the city's port at night. The Romans tried again and again to storm the city walls, but each time they were counterattacked by the citizens who now fight tooth and nail for their survival with every improvised tool and weapon they could find, while Appian recounts all the sacred places, temples and all other unoccupied spaces became workshops where men and women worked together. day and night without pause taking their food in turns at a fixed time each day they made a hundred shields 300 swords a thousand missiles for catapults 500 darts and javelins and as many catapults as they could for ropes to bend them the women cut their hair In lack of other fibers, The siege of Carthage lasted for three years in 147.

Command of the besieging army was given to a new consul (in fact, the 36-year-old adopted grandson of the great Publius Scipio who had defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama, About 50 years earlier, a man named Scipio Emilianus came with him, his personal friend and official documenter of the expedition, the Greek historian Polybius, who writes this part of his story as an eyewitness enraged by the smugglers still supplying the besieged city. by order of the Roman general Scipio. A large stone barrier was built at the mouth of the port of Carthage, blocking any further attempts to resupply it, food became scarce in the city, but still the defenders continued to fight, but in the spring of the year 146 BC C. the spirit of the Carthaginians was exhausted.

Scipio launched a full scale assault on the city from the port area and the great Carthaginian Wars finally broke out, the Roman legions invaded the city and began massacring everyone they could find. Appian describes the scenes that followed, then came new scenes of Horror as the fire spread and demolished everything, the soldiers did not wait to destroy the buildings little by little, but all in a heap, so the roar became louder and Many corpses fell with the stones in the middle, others were seen still alive, especially older men and women. and small children who had hidden in the most remote corners of the houses, some wounded, others more or less burned, uttering pitiful cries, others thrown and falling from such a height with the stone beams and the fire were destroyed in every way Of horror. the crushed and shattered trenches were filled with men, the tug of war, the glory of imminent victory, the avalanche of soldiers, the orders of the officers, the sound of trumpets, the tribunes and centurions marching with their cohorts from here There, all together, they made everyone become frantic and careless before the spectacle before their eyes.

The massacre of the citizens of Carthage lasted for six days during which it is believed that some 60,000 people were put to the sword. The Roman general Scipio made work his soldiers in shifts so that they would not get tired of the slaughter and on the seventh day Scipio ordered his soldiers to begin taking prisoners. From this point, another 50,000 Carthaginians were rounded up and sold into slavery. From there they will be sold and dispersed to all corners of the Roman Republic. Carthage was burned to the ground and demolished brick by brick some Carthaginians resisted for some time in the citadel of Birsa the fortified hill on which legend has it that Elishaya once cut off its rust at the foundation of the city according to Appian when the Carthaginian general Drupal finally gave up his wife, set fire to the main temple and climbed to its roof as the mythical figure of Elishaya, then threw herself and her children into the flames.

It is said that when the fire was kindled, Hazard's wife, in full view of Scipio, made a raid in her best attire. possible in such circumstances and with his children at his side, he said in Scipio's audience, for you Roman, the gods have no cause for indignation since you exercise the right of war over this danger on the traitor of his country and his temples of me and his children that the gods of Carthage take revenge and be his instrument, having reproached him for this, he killed his children, threw them into the fire and threw himself after them, such as they say was the death of the astronaut's wife, writes the historian Polybius who accompanied Scipio throughout the siege with few details about what happened, but he does note that at the moment of his victory the Roman general turned to him and said something strange in the burning ruins of Carthage.

Scipio emilianus seems to have felt a spark of apprehension, a sudden fear or the realization that one The day when the same fate could befall his great city of Rome, turning to me immediately and taking my hand, Skipio said a glorious moment. , Polybius, but I have terrible sailing, that one day the same doom will be pronounced on my own country, it would be difficult. to mention a more declaration-like and deeper assurance at the time of our greatest Triumph and disaster to our enemies, to note that the season of success, the mutability of Fortune Appian records that Scipio is said to have wept in the place of Carthage burning and which a lion recited from Homer's great epic, The Iliad, in which Andro Maki, Hector's wife, laments the coming destruction of Troy.

Scipio contemplates this city that had flourished 700 years since its founding and had ruled over so many lands, islands and seas. Rich in arms and fleets, elephants and money, equal to the mightiest monarchies, but far surpassing them in bravery and high spirit, it now comes to an end in total destruction. Scipio, celebrating this spectacle, is said to have shed tears and publicly lamented the fortunes of the enemy afterwards. meditating alone for a long time and reflecting on the rise and fall of cities, nations and empires, as well as individuals, on the fate of Troy, that once proud city, on that of the Assyrians, the Medes and the Persians, the greatest of all and later The Splendid Macedonia.

Empire, whether willingly or not, the poet's words escaped his lips, the day will come when our sacred Troy and our pream and the people over whom the pream rules with a spear will perish, but in Rome there was no such sense of foreboding : the city exploded. To celebrate the news, when the people of Rome learned of the victory early in the afternoon, they took to the streets and spent the entire night congratulating and hugging each other like people newly freed from a great fear newly confirmed in its Supremacy. world. now assured of the permanence of their own city and winners of such a victory as never before, they spoke of the height of the walls and the size of the stones, they imagined to each other the entire war as if it were simply taking place under their own control. eyes in the following days Ash would have settled on the charred ruins of Carthage following its final victory in the Punic Wars Rome would emerge as the sole remaining superpower in the Mediterranean the remaining scattered Greek kingdoms were absorbed one by one by it and in In the following centuries it would grow to encompass the entire coast of that sea, cover almost all of Western Europe except the furthest reaches, and shape the entire course of European history, but Carthage would become just a name, a currency that had lost its value, an emblem of an era. which had been left in nothingness after the carnage of the siege, the blackened ruins of the city were emptied of all life, but for the Romans this was still not enough;

In the following years they sent more delegations to the city to systematically dismantle it. in parts to ensure that no population returned to repopulate its ruins and that its great rival would never re-emerge in North Africa. Some of the libraries and archives of Carthage survived the burning of the city and in them were preserved books of Carthaginian history, perhaps of poetry and documents of mythology, science and medicine from the Phoenician voyages of discovery to the ends of the world, but all of these were taken by the Romans, some were simply burned while others were distributed among the African allies of the Romans, as a result, not a single one of these works has Today, barely a few documents written by a Carthaginian can be read. and no literary or historical work has come down to us, so for the next 2,000 years their story would be told by others, their voices and their memory, just as their city was.

Completely obliterated, the territory of Carthage was absorbed into the new Roman province of Africa and for the next hundred years what remained of the ruins of Carthage crumbled into the Sands, home to wild dogs covered in scrub, weeds and washed maram grass. salt. from the sea air, the nest of seagulls and crows, more than a century later, Rome would send a group of three thousand settlers to the ruins of the shattered city and found a Roman colony on the rubble while settling in the area where They found the ruins of Carthage. buried under a new Roman city that shared almost nothing of the city that once stood there except its name, and even the ruins of the city as it once stood would soon be forgotten by theIn 1835, the British statesman Sir Granville Temple visited the ruins of Carthage and wrote the following description of his disappointment at discovering how little remained of that once great city.

The next morning I walked to the site of the great Carthage of that city at the sound of whose name Mighty Rome itself had trembled so many times. I was prepared to see but a few vestiges of its former grandeur, but my heart sank within me as I ascended one of its hills, for I saw nothing but a few scattered, shapeless masses of masonry. same name is now unknown to the current inhabitants buried in the Silence of the tomb, no living Soul appears except occasionally a soldier going to or returning from the fort or the solitary and motionless figure of an Arab who watches over his flocks from the top of the fragment of some ancient Palace or Temple Solitude and silence dominate the entire scene, a scene that imprints on the mind a feeling of melancholy from which it was difficult for me to get rid of another person who visited these ruins was the English poet Leticia Elizabeth Landon and I would like to Finish the episode with his poem titled Carthage.

As you listen, imagine what it would feel like to see the streets and temples of that city crumble and burn as 800 years of history are buried under ash and soot. Imagine every book that has ever been written in your life. native language destroyed and your people enslaved and scattered across the face of the Earth imagine what it would feel like to see your own hometown disappear, emptied of all life and demolished brick by brick and then left empty until only a few ruins remain scattered over the Earth . to Earth all that that Earth gave birth to Palace Market Street and the feigned dust that never asks in vain has claimed its own dust again the king of the wide world where now are the glorious hours of a nation gathering powers like the setting of a star in the unfathomable Far away times Eternal wing around those ruins casts the dark presence of the past You build your home on sand and the palace-girt beach fades like a dream Your great victories only show that all is nothing beneath Thank you once more for listening to the fall of civilizations podcast I would like to thank my voice actors for this episode Michael hagiantones Lachlan Lucas Alexandra Bolton Simon Jackson Tom Marshall Lee Chris Harvey Nick Denton and Paul Cassell Sound engineering was by Alexei sibikin I would like to thank my historical advisor for this episode Dr Michael J Taylor from the University at Albany the original music was composed and produced by pavlos capralos with sasuri on percussion Anastasia papadopullo on vocals June faletti on oboe and on Ood and flute pavlos capralos all original tracks composed for this episode will be available to download for all Patreon subscribers, a public list of all sources and recommended readings for this episode will also be available on Patreon.

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