Another puzzling encounter, then, this time between homo sapiens and some primate cousins.
Thirty-five days had elapsed since Hanno left Carthage and, running short of provisions, he ordered his ships back to the familiar Mediterranean and safety.
THE CARTHAGINIANS IN particular and the Phoenicians in general were intrepid explorers and traders. They usually acted for commercial reasons, although as early as the seventh century an Egyptian pharaoh with a penchant for grandiose schemes commissioned some Phoenicians to circumnavigate Africa. Their fate is uncertain, but if they succeeded—and it was claimed that they did, after a journey lasting two years—it was to little purpose, for the continent’s landmass was unexpectedly large and the sea route was too long to be of practical use to denizens of the Mediterranean.
Himilco, a contemporary of Hanno and perhaps his brother, made another daring trading voyage and published a report of his adventures (now lost, although quoted by a fourth-century A.D. Latin author). He, too, sailed to the Pillars of Heracles, but turned northward. His aim was to reconnoiter the Atlantic coast of Spain, Portugal, and France. This time there was no question of searching for gold but for control of the trade in tin for making bronze and in lead, the two newly exploited metals of the age.
He reached Brittany, rich in ore, and perhaps even Heligoland (a source of amber), but seems not to have stopped off at Britain. In his dispatch, he made his journey sound as difficult and unpleasant as he could. He reported marine monsters, dangerous sandbars, and carpets of thick, clogging seaweed. The ocean was terrifyingly vast, if only one could see it through the fog. One senses that Himilco was talking up the dangers to discourage any rivals from following in his wake.
The Carthaginians were ambitious, energetic, and clever. They kept in touch with their mother city, Tyre, but in the sixth century Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to it for thirteen years. According to the Bible, an excited Ezekiel crowed on behalf of his single god, “I will stop the music of your songs. No more will the sound of harps be heard among your people. I will make your island a bare rock, a place for fishermen to spread their nets.” The prophet spoke too soon. The city held out, but eventually agreed to recognize Babylonian suzerainty. In later centuries, Egyptian and Persian invaders took their toll, and finally, in 332, Alexander the Great captured Tyre after another bitter siege. Furious at having been held up, he had two thousand citizens crucified on the beach and thirty thousand sold into slavery.
It was evident that an independent future for Phoenicians did not lie in the East. The balance of power shifted toward Carthage, whose location and excellent harbor in the Bay of Tunis suited it well for the development of trade in the Western Mediterranean. With time, its citizens were “transformed from Tyrians into Africans” and became leaders of an informal empire of Phoenician colonies, usually small mercantile outposts, throughout the region. The Atlantic port of Gades, an island stronghold separated from the mainland by a narrow arm of the sea, fell under its control around the year 500.
The Carthaginians were congenital seafarers and had little interest in acquiring land. However, to protect their “pond” and to exclude other traders, they occupied western Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and southern Spain. They also acquired footholds along the North African coast, although there were no good harbors between the Atlantic and Carthage itself. This was their backyard, and woe betide any wandering Greeks whose ship strayed into their waters. Drowning was the best that could be expected.
IN ORDER TO lower their reliance on food imports, the Carthaginians annexed the fertile hinterland that lay to the south of their capital. They became expert farmers, and were guided by a celebrated writer on agriculture named Mago. He disliked urban living: “If you have bought land, you should sell your town house so that you won’t be tempted to worship the city’s household gods instead of those of the country.”
Although his book is lost, it was often cited by Greek and Latin authors. Mago advised on planting and pruning vines, on the management of olive trees and fruit trees, on growing marsh plants, on beekeeping (including the lost art of “getting bees from the carcass of a bullock or ox,” once known to Samson), and on preserving pomegranates, known to the Romans as malum Punicum, or the Punic apple. One of his recipes was for a sweet raisin wine, or pas-sum (still drunk today in Italy as passito). Carthaginian amphorae have been found all over the Mediterranean, evidence of a thriving export trade.
The city of Carthage itself, which consumed these provisions, stood on a triangular peninsula connected to the mainland by an isthmus about two miles wide at its narrowest point. On one side lay a lagoon and on the other the sea. Any visitor walking in from the countryside was confronted by a massive battlemented wall that ran across the isthmus. It was more than forty feet high and thirty feet wide, with four-story towers every fifty or sixty yards. Inside, stables housed elephants and horses. In front were two ramparts and a wide ditch. The wall was said to have continued for twenty miles, on a less gargantuan scale, around the entire city. (By comparison, Rome’s walls ran for a little more than thirteen miles.) It was a bold general who imagined that he could capture Carthage.
In his historical novel about Carthage, Salammbo, Gustave Flaubert vividly evokes the urban panorama:
Beyond [the wall], the city rose in tiers like an amphitheater. There were tall, flat-roofed houses built of every type of material—stone, wood, reeds, shells, and beaten earth. The trees in the temple gardens made green pools in this mass of multicolored blocks, which was honeycombed with public squares and intersected by countless narrow streets. The walls of some of the old quarters of the city presented huge blank surfaces relieved only by climbing plants and streaked with the sewage thrown over them. Streets passed through yawning openings in the walls like rivers under bridges.
One of these internal walls surrounded the city’s heart, a hill called Byrsa and the two harbors, forming a citadel. Here also was a public square, or forum, and a council chamber outside which justice was administered in the open air. Three narrow winding streets, lined with six-story houses, led up to the top of Byrsa.
The first or outer harbor catered to merchant vessels. It was rectangular, measuring about 1,600 by 1,000 feet, and opened to the sea through a single entrance that could, if necessary, be barred with iron chains. Outside this entrance, a massive quay was built where merchant ships could load and unload goods. At the other end of the rectangle, a narrow channel led into the inner naval harbor. This was a circle of water about 1,000 feet in diameter, with a small island in the middle. Appian writes:
On the island was built the admiral’s house, from which the trumpeter gave signals, the herald delivered orders, and the admiral himself overlooked everything. The island lay near the entrance to the harbor and rose to a considerable height, so that the admiral could observe what was going on at sea, while those who were approaching by water could not get any clear view of what took place inside.
Around both the island and the circumference of the circle were quays and sheds to accommodate two hundred and twenty warships, as well as arsenals and shipbuilding yards. Two Ionic columns stood in front of each shed and gave the impression of continuous porticoes running around the island and the harbor’s edge. All these state-of-the-art facilities, probably completed in the late fourth century, were a state secret. They were surrounded by a high double wall and were invisible even from the mercantile harbor.