What if Hannibal had won? What if Carthage rather than Rome had become the dominant power in the Mediterranean?
Dexter Hoyos believes that Carthage was capable of the same civilization-building function that Rome played, and in this skillful overview of an obscure ancient culture says that if Carthage had won the Second Punic War, “the civilization that resulted would have spoken Punic and Greek rather than Latin and Greek, but would certainly have made an equally momentous contribution to history.”
Of course, it didn’t work out that way. Hannibal’s war started with a brilliant stroke in 218 b.c., when he left Carthaginian-held southern Spain and crossed the Alps into Italy. Once there, he defeated the Romans in three great battles. The last of these—Cannae (216 b.c.)—was one of the greatest military triumphs of all time, and one which generals throughout the ages have striven to replicate. Hannibal expected the Romans to negotiate for terms, as any reasonable state would do after suffering such horrendous defeats. But the Romans kept fighting, not only in Italy, but even carrying the war to the Carthaginian base in Spain. In the face of this perverse reaction, Hannibal appears to have run out of ideas: He received only minor reinforcements from Carthage—just 4,000 men and 40 elephants in 215. Instead, the bulk of Carthaginian strength was sent elsewhere—to Spain, Sicily, even to strategically unimportant Sardinia—rather than being committed to the decisive Italian theater.
After his defeat, Hannibal claimed that he had been let down by the authorities back home. Some modern historians accept this view, but Hoyos, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Sydney and author of several earlier books on the Punic Wars, holds that Hannibal’s supporters dominated the political scene at Carthage. Hannibal himself, as overall commander of the Carthaginian war effort, is likely to have signed off on the decisions which led to Punic power being scattered over the western Mediterranean. So Hoyos’s view sharply diminishes Hannibal’s stature, making him the embodiment of an unfortunate combination: brilliant tactician, mediocre strategist.
Carthage is particularly fascinating because most traces of it were obliterated. Fifty years after Hannibal’s defeat, Rome launched a vindictive and cruel war of extermination, burning Carthage in 146 and slaughtering or enslaving the inhabitants. Over a century later, the Romans built their own city on the desolate site and removed the top of the hill of Byrsa, the former Punic citadel, eradicating all traces of the great temple of Eschmoun and the stairway leading up to it.
Roman ruthlessness explains why very few Punic sources remain. To follow Carthage’s history, we have to rely primarily on Greek and Latin literary sources, which are generally hostile. (Although not exclusively so: In his account of the First Punic War, the Greek historian Polybius drew some information from a lost pro-Carthaginian writer.) Carthage was a Phoenician colony planted in North Africa in the ninth or early eighth century b.c., and after a period of conflict, the colonists achieved a measure of symbiosis with the native Libyans (the ancestors of today’s Berbers). Greek and Latin writers noted the presence of a mixed population of “Libyphoenicians.” Carthage became a great mercantile city, maintaining trade links with the Phoenician homeland, as well as with Egypt and the Greek world.
The greatest strength of Hoyos’s account is the extensive use he makes of the archaeological evidence. Punic inscriptions are the most tantalizing, because they allow Carthaginian voices to speak for themselves. One inscription gives a brief account of a military operation fought against the Greek cities of Sicily. Two generals, Adnibaal (Hannibal) and Himilco, are reported to have sacked Acragas (on the southern coast of Sicily) in 406—an event corroborated by a Greek source. Inscriptions have also revealed the Punic title for general (borne by Hannibal himself) which was probably pronounced rab mahanet. And the Punic language and culture did not die with Carthage in 146, as demonstrated by the discovery of many “neo-Punic” inscriptions from the Roman period.
Archaeologists have also excavated a neighborhood of Punic Carthage, on the southern slopes of Byrsa, preserved under rubble when the Romans removed the top of the hill. The “Hannibal quarter” (so-called because it dates from the late second century, when Hannibal served as a government official after his defeat) was a mixed commercial/residential district with standardized building sizes. Each building was subdivided into smaller units serving as dwellings or shops. (The remains of a jeweler’s shop have been identified.) Pieces of an Ionic column found in the area provide material confirmation that Carthage was receptive to Greek culture.
In one area, Hoyos’s high regard for the Carthaginians causes him to brush aside some unpleasant facts. Greek and Roman authors charged that the Carthaginians engaged in child sacrifice, a practice seemingly confirmed by the excavation of the so-called tophet—a cemetery with urns containing the cremated remains of infants and animals. But his discussion of the topic reads like a brief for the defense: He plays up discrepancies among the written sources, and between them and the archaeological evidence, and concludes by expressing doubt that the sacrifices occurred. Yet even if the details don’t always mesh, the bulk of the evidence points insistently towards something sinister, and at this late date, there is not much point in being defensive about the Carthaginians’ dark side. Moreover, he passes up a delightful opportunity to needle the Romans, who were supposedly scandalized by Carthaginian practices but resorted to human sacrifice themselves in the panicked aftermath of Hannibal’s great victory at Cannae.
Carthage, a Semitic transplant, was able to develop a constitution worthy of a Greek polis, and the Carthaginian political system was praised by no less an authority than Aristotle, who wrote that Carthage possessed a sound mixed constitution combining monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements. The “monarchs” were the two chief magistrates called sufetes, elected for one-year terms. (The term demonstrates the affinity of Punic with Hebrew: Sufetes is the Latinized version of shophetim, the biblical term usually translated as “judges.”) The sufetes worked in coordination with the Carthaginian senate—the “aristocratic” element in Aristotle’s schema—and surviving Greek and Latin sources show the senate involved in foreign relations and deciding on war and peace.
Perhaps the most surprising element of the Carthaginian political system was the strength of the “democratic” element. Aristotle states that if the sufetes and senate could not reach agreement on an issue, it was decided by the popular assembly. Even some decisions jointly made by sufetes and senate went to the assembly, which had the power to reject them. The assembly also elected sufetes, generals, and lesser officials. It was surely powerful by the standards of the ancient world. Polybius thought it too much so: By the time of the Second Punic War, he writes, Carthaginian policy was determined by the mass of its citizens; Rome, by contrast, was led by its best men—namely the members of the senate. In Polybius’ view, Rome’s superior decision-making apparatus was ultimately responsible for its victory
over Hannibal.
Hannibal and his family, the Barcids, learned how to work the Carthaginian system to their advantage. Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca, was elected general by the assembly after the First Punic War, when Carthage’s mercenaries, angered by poor treatment and inadequate pay, launched a revolt that threatened the city itself. Hamilcar crushed the revolt in a brutal three-year war (240-237), and, exploiting his new prestige, he proceeded to conquer southern Spain for Carthage. After his death in 229 or 228, his son-in-law Hasdrubal became the ruler of the Spanish province, and his position was confirmed when the Carthaginian assembly approved his appointment as general. Upon Hasdrubal’s death in 221, Hannibal was elected general, in turn, indicating that supporters of the Barcid family dominated the Carthaginian assembly. But by electing Hannibal, the assembly had unknowingly voted for the ruin of their city.
Richard Tada is a writer in Seattle.
