Carthage, a city on the north coast of Africa, the capital of one of the great empires of the ancient world. It was situated on a peninsula at the north-east corner of the region now known as Tunis, and was founded, most probably about the middle of the 9th century B.C., by Phœnicians who came either from Tyre or from the Tyrian settlement of Utica. The Carthaginians were thus of Semitic origin. They were an offshoot from the Canaanites who occupied Palestine before the Jewish invasion, and whose language was closely akin to Hebrew. The name Carthage is a corruption of Kirjath, the Canaanite word for a town, which occurs in Scripture in such names as Kirjath-Baal and Kirjath-Jearim. The city, called Carthāgo by the Romans, and Karchēdon by the Greeks, was known to its own inhabitants as Kirjath-Hadeshath, or the New Town, to distinguish it either from Tyre or from the earlier Phœnician colony of Utica. Its history may be divided into three periods—the period before 509 B.C., when the first treaty was concluded with Rome; the period of the Græco-Phœnician wars in Sicily; and the period of the Punic wars, from 264 B.C. to 146 B.C.
Of the city's rise to power and opulence nothing is known. It does not come within view of the historian until the 6th century B.C., when it appears as centre of a great commerce and the capital of extensive dominions, including part of the north coast of Africa, Sardinia, part of Sicily, and probably Malta. Corsica was acquired about the close of the century. A hegemony was established over Utica, Hadrumetum, Hippo, and the other Phœnician cities in Africa, from which a money tribute was received, while a tribute in kind was exacted from the neighbouring African tribes. Besides pure Canaanites, the Carthaginian population included a large number of Liby-Phœnicians, or half-breeds, the offspring of unions of Phœnicians and Africans. These half-breeds were regarded with keen jealousy by the rulers of the city, and the famous expedition of Hanno, which took place, as far as can be ascertained, towards the close of the 6th century B.C., was fitted out to transport them to distant settlements. There is in the library of Heidelberg a Greek manu- script termed the 'Periplus' (or 'Circumnavigation'), which is said to be a translation of the account of his voyage placed by Hanno in the temple of Moloch at Carthage. According to this narrative, Hanno sailed beyond the Pillars of Hercules; founded cities of the Liby-Phœnicians; made his way up 'a great river called Chretes' (probably the Senegal); and after having 'sailed by streams of fire,' came to 'a bay which is called the Southern Horn,' and which has been identified with Sherboro Sound, to the south of Sierra Leone. Scarcity of provisions prevented him from sailing farther to the south. (See Mer, Mémoire sur le Périple d'Hannon, Paris, 1885.) About the same time Himileo is said to have explored parts of the northern coasts of Europe, but regarding this voyage we have no trustworthy information. In 525 B.C. Carthage would in all likelihood have been destroyed by Cambyses but for the refusal of the Phœnicians, who formed part of his fleet, to act against their kinsmen. By the first treaty between Carthage and Rome (509 B.C.) the Romans were restricted from sailing beyond the Fair Promontory (probably Cape Bon)—a provision probably designed to exclude them from Spain, with which Carthage had a great commerce—while the Carthaginians were forbidden to injure any Latin city, even though it should not happen to be subject to Rome. A later treaty, of which the exact date is unknown, imposed harder conditions on the Romans, whom it debarred from trading in Africa and Sardinia, while it permitted the Carthaginians to attack Latin cities not under Roman rule. It forbade them, however, to make any settlement in Italy.
From the beginning of the 5th century B.C. to the date of the city's downfall, the history of Carthage is the history of a struggle for supremacy between the Semitic and the Aryan races—a struggle waged first by the Canaanite and the Greek, and then by the Canaanite and the Roman. The Græco-Phœnician wars were fought for the possession of Sicily, an island only a hundred miles distant from Carthage, and 'the natural bridge between Italy and Africa.' On the outbreak of the Persian war, the Carthaginians determined to annex Sicily at a time when its Greek colonists could receive no aid from the parent cities. In 480 Hamilcar landed on the island with a motley force of Phœnicians, Libyans, Iberians, Corsicans, Sardinians, and Ligurians, said—but probably with exaggeration—to have numbered 300,000 men. Gelon of Syracuse, with 55,000 men, met the invaders at Himera, where Hamilcar was slain and his army cut to pieces. This great victory is said to have been won on the same day as the battle of Salamis. Seventy years elapsed before the Carthaginians renewed the struggle. In 410 B.C. Hannibal, a grandson of Hamilcar, invaded Sicily with 100,000 men, and after massacring the people of Selinus, captured Himera, and there offered up 3000 captives as an expiatory sacrifice to the spirit of Hamilcar. Another expedition was despatched from Carthage in 406 B.C., and in 396 B.C. Himileo blockaded Syracuse, the last of the great Hellenic cities in the island which remained unconquered. But pestilence having broken out among the besiegers, Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, fell upon their camp, and only a fragment of their army escaped to Africa. The struggle went on until the death of Dionysius, success inclining now to one side, now to the other. Then there was peace for twenty years, during which the power of Carthage steadily waxed in Sicily. So formidable did she become, that in 344 the Syracusans appealed to Corinth, their mother-city, for aid against her. The Corinthians sent them 700 mercenaries under Timoleon. With 6000 men Timoleon routed a host of 70,000 Carthaginians as they were attempting to cross the river Crimessus (339 B.C.); a second Greek victory followed; and the tide of Semitic invasion was rolled back. Carthage sued for peace, and the contest was not renewed until 309 B.C., when Syracuse, under the rule of the tyrant Agathocles, was rent by civil dissensions. Hard pressed at home, Agathocles formed the audacious design of falling upon Carthage while her forces were mainly in Sicily. Eluding the Carthaginian fleet, he landed in Africa, gained victory after victory, and carried the war up to the walls of Carthage. But his presence being urgently required in Syracuse, he had to leave his son Archagathus in charge of the army. Archagathus proved incompetent. On the return of his father a mutiny broke out; Agathocles fled to Sicily, and his troops made peace with Carthage. The Greco-Phoenician wars came to an end with the Sicilian campaigns of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. That monarch, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, projected the conquest of Carthage, but wasted his strength in a futile contest with Rome, and after leading the Greeks of Sicily with varying fortune against the Carthaginians, was forced to quit the island in 276 B.C.
The first of what are known, from the Latin word Punicus, 'Phoenician,' as the Punic Wars began in 264 B.C. The conquest of Southern Italy by Rome had brought face to face the two rivals for supremacy in the Mediterranean world. The Mamerines, a body of Campanian mercenaries who had served under Agathocles, sought and obtained Roman aid against Syracuse and Carthage. The Romans won two great sea-fights at Myle (260 B.C.) and at Economus (256 B.C.), and Regulus carried the war into Africa, where he was defeated and his army almost annihilated by the Carthaginians under the command of the Spartan Xanthippus (255 B.C.). In Sicily the Romans were for a time baffled by the consummate generalship of the great Hamilcar Barca, who defied all efforts to dislodge him from the stronghold of Eryx. But he received no adequate support from Carthage, and a naval victory won by Rome at the Ægates Islands brought the war to a close in 241 B.C. Carthage gave up all claim to Sicily, and paid an indemnity of nearly £800,000. But Hamilcar marched out from Eryx with all the honours of war. The Carthaginian mercenaries then mutinied, and were supported by the Libyan tribes. After a bloody struggle which lasted from 241 to 236 B.C., the rebellion was crushed by Hamilcar. That great general then determined to build up an empire in Spain which would compensate for the loss of Sicily and furnish an admirable recruiting ground in the struggle with Rome, of which he foresaw the renewal. He crossed into Spain in 236 B.C., and before his death in 229 B.C. he had by arms and diplomacy extended the sway of Carthage over a great part of the peninsula. His work was ably carried on by his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, who was remarkably successful in conciliating the Spaniards. Hasdrubal was assassinated in 221 B.C., when Carthage held all Spain up to the Ebro.
On the death of Hasdrubal the troops chose as their leader Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar, the greatest of all the Carthaginians, and 'the greatest captain that the world has seen.' In 219 B.C. Hannibal captured the town of Saguntum, a city in alliance with Rome. The Romans, who had long been jealous of the progress their rivals had made in Spain, thereupon declared that the treaty was broken, and the Second Punic War began. That war is in this work dealt with in the articles HANNIBAL and ROME. It was, as Arnold has said, the war of a man with a nation; no other war shows so impressively what the genius of a single man can achieve. The campaigns of Hannibal are the most wonderful in all history. Here, however, it must suffice to say that he led his men from the Ebro to Italy; that he had himself in a great measure to create the far inferior forces with which, in battle after battle, at the Ticinus and the Trebia, at Trasimenus and at Cannæ, he broke and drove the legionaries, the best soldiers of the ancient world; that he brought Rome to the verge of ruin, and that his victories would, in all likelihood, have been crowned by her capture had he been duly supported from home. But his countrymen were unworthy of the great Carthaginian. After having maintained himself in Italy for fifteen years, he was recalled in 203 B.C. In 202 B.C. Publius Cornelius Scipio invaded Africa and won the battle of Zama. Peace was then concluded. The Carthaginians were forbidden to make war on any state without permission of the Romans. They were compelled to give up all war-ships except ten, and to pay an indemnity of ten thousand talents and an annual tribute of two hundred.
In the years between the Second and the Third Punic Wars, Massinissa, king of Numidia, made repeated aggressions on Carthage. The Carthaginians appealed in vain for justice to the Romans, who had resolved on the destruction of the city, and who declared war in 149 B.C. Carthage fell in 146 B.C. It was taken by Publius Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus after a siege of two years. For six days the fighting went on in the streets of the city, the people, men and women, defending their houses with a fierce determination which recalls the resistance of the Jews in the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. The city was razed to the ground, and the country became a Roman province. At the time of the siege Carthage is said to have had 700,000 inhabitants.
Carthage was to rise again as a Roman city, but her capture by Scipio closes her history as the capital of a Phoenician state and the centre of a vanished civilisation. Our knowledge of that civilisation is meagre and vague in the extreme. And it must be remembered that what we do know of Carthage is derived from her implacable enemies. To the Greeks the Carthaginians seem to have been more repugnant than any other 'barbarians.' With the Romans 'Phoenician' was synonymous with all that is cruel and treacherous. Yet, were it not for Greek and Roman writers we should know nothing of Carthaginian history. In reading that history, wide allowance must be made for the fact that no Carthaginian version of it has come down to us. Still, even when that is done, it is hardly possible to follow with sympathetic interest the fortunes of Carthage apart from those of the great family of Barca. Her people were bold and skilful sailors, and the most industrious and enterprising of merchants. She produced several men of high practical ability, and one man of incomparable military genius. But her people had not the qualities of an imperial race. A nation of traders, they trusted in war principally to mercenaries; it was seldom that native Carthaginians, save in times of acute peril, formed any considerable part of the army. Their rule was peculiarly oppressive, and their subjects were at all times ready to rise against them. In the struggle with the Greeks they committed the bloodiest atrocities. Their civilisation seems to have been wholly material; they had apparently no artistic genius; their religion was the most hideous ever practised by a people emerged from barbarism. Their overthrow by Rome was, it can hardly be doubted, a gain to mankind. Still, it must never be forgotten that it was in this strange Canaanite people, 'alone of barbarian nations, that Greece and Italy found real instructors, worthy rivals in commerce, policy, and warfare' (Freeman).
Like other Canaanites, the Carthaginians practised a horrible form of fire-worship. Their chief god was Moloch or Baal-Hammon, who represented the destructive power of the sun. In his temple there burned a furnace into which human victims were cast. These were generally captives taken in war, but in times of extreme peril native Carthaginians were also sacrificed; when Agathocles besieged the city, it is said that 200 children belonging to the noblest families were slain to propitiate the god. The moon-goddess, Ashtaroth, the Greek Astarte, was worshipped under the name of Tanist. Melkart, who corresponded to the Greek Hercules, was held in special honour, and missions with offerings were sent at regular intervals to his great temple at Tyre. A sea-god, whom the Greeks identified with Poseidon, was in all probability the same as the Philistine fish-god Dagon. Another deity named Esmun seems to have presided over healing. Religious honours were paid to deified heroes; to certain genii or spirits; to various animals—among them the lion, the bull, and the serpent—and to several of the Greek divinities, with whom the Carthaginians became acquainted in Sicily. There does not appear to have been an order of priests, the sacrificial rites being performed by the generals and the principal magistrates.
The constitution was oligarchical. The two chief magistrates were called by the Romans suffetes, a corruption of a Canaanite word corresponding to the Hebrew shophetim or 'judges.' The suffetes were chosen from the members of certain distinguished families. The tenure of office is uncertain; some seem to have been elected annually, others for life; but they could not lead an army or a fleet unless specially appointed to the command. The senate contained an inner council of a hundred, which seems to have been the chief executive power in the state. It exercised a jealous supervision over the generals, who had on returning to the city to submit reports of all their transactions to its members. There was also an assembly of the people, which seems, however, to have had very slight political influence. According to Aristotle, the state officials were unpaid. So far as can be ascertained, justice was administered by special courts. The oligarchy seems to have been invariably rent into factions, and corruption was rife during at least the later period of Carthaginian history. An immense revenue was necessary to maintain the navy and mercenaries. It was drawn from heavy customs duties levied on imported goods, from the tribute paid by other Phoenician cities and the subject African tribes, and from rich mines worked by the state in Corsica and Spain. The contributions in kind were partly transmitted to Carthage, partly stored up in the provinces for the service of the army. The state could without difficulty send out a force of 100,000 troops. The fleet which was defeated at Ecnomus numbered 350 ships, and had 150,000 men on board. The commerce of Carthage was not confined to the Mediterranean ports. Her ships sailed as far west at least as the Azores, as far north as Britain and the Baltic; and she carried on an immense trade with the interior of Africa. Some of her caravans pushed across the Sahara to the basin of the Niger; others journeyed regularly between Thebes, in Egypt, and the Strait of Gibraltar, following a route with fixed stations for halting, which are carefully set down by Herodotus. Slaves, gold, ivory, and precious stones were the staple of the African trade. Wine, cattle, iron, fruit, &c. were imported from the Mediterranean countries. Spain and Sardinia furnished silver; Corsica, slaves; Britain, tin and copper; the Baltic, amber. A considerable overland trade was carried on through Spain with the Gallic tribes, as the
Massilians would not allow trading stations to be established on the southern coast of Gaul.
The Carthaginians had no aptitude for art—even their coins bear the impress of Greek design and workmanship—and if they had a literature it has perished. When the city was taken by Scipio, the contents of its libraries, which may have been principally Greek works, were dispersed and lost. A single book, a treatise on agriculture, ascribed to one Mago, was preserved and translated into Latin by order of the Roman senate. Cicero speaks of this work (De Re Rustica) as being in his day the standard authority on its subject. Himilco is said to have written an account of his voyage to the north-western shores of Europe, and, according to Livy, Hannibal wrote a history of his own campaigns. A corrupt form of the Carthaginian or Canaanite language was spoken in parts of North Africa in the days of Augustine, who was struck by the close resemblance which it bore to Hebrew.
Some twenty years after the destruction of Carthage, Cains Gracchus endeavoured to found a Roman colony on her site. This scheme, which at first ended in failure, was carried out by Augustus, in accordance with the intentions of Julius Caesar. In the 3d century A.D. the new Carthage had become one of the chief cities of the empire. It figured conspicuously in ecclesiastical history, being the scene of several important councils and synods. At a church conference held there in 411 A.D. the suppression of the Donatists was decreed; and the Pelagian heresy was condemned by a council of Carthage held in 418 A.D. The city, which was seized by Geuseric in 439 A.D., became the capital of the Vandal kingdom of Africa, and 'after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port of Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean' (Gibbon). The Vandal kingdom was overthrown by Belisarius, who took Carthage in 533 A.D., and named it Justiniana. The city, which Heraclius at one time proposed to make the capital of the empire, was destroyed by the Arabs under Hassan, governor of Egypt, who conquered part of Northern Africa for the Calif Abd-al-Melik in 692–98 A.D.
For the legendary history of Carthage, see the article DIDO.
See the histories of Arnold, Grote, and Mommsen; Bosworth Smith's admirable Carthage and the Carthaginians (1879); the History of Art in Phœnicia and her Dependencies, by G. Perrot and C. Chipiez, translated by W. Armstrong (1885); Davies, Carthage and her Remains (1861); Hennebert, Histoire d'Anibal (Paris, 1870–78); Professor Church, Carthage, or the Empire of Africa (1886); and the geographical treatises of Heeren. Among ancient writers, the chief authorities on Carthage are Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and Livy. Flaubert's Salammbô is a vivid picture of ancient Carthaginian life, marvellously learned in details, and illumined with genius.