Carthage Must Be Destroyed

For Rome to be great, Carthage had to be a legendary villain. Excellent and engaging look at the Punic Wars with Miles paying special attention to the propaganda war constantly being waged by all parties. The cult of Heracles as well as the issuing and debasement of coinage are unique touchstones throughout that drive home the long game both empires played for material power as well as historiographical sympathy.

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I listened to this as an audiobook, which I found to be educational and entertaining.

The author presents Carthaginian history from its pre-existence in the Phoenician city of Tyre to its destruction by Rome to the creation of a Roman city of Carthage.

This is not the mainline of history. Normally, the mainline is Greece, Rome, Babylon, Peria and Assyria. The Carthaginian track runs from Phoenicia to Tyre to Sicily, and interminable fights with Syracuse, to Spain and the African hinterland. This is all stuff that tends to get mentioned in passing, or as the recipient of some event caused by the mainline. For example, Tyre is always there, on its island, connected by a mole, until Alexander conquers it by permanently connecting it to the mainland. But what was Tyre's backstory? And from this we get a jumping off about the development of Melquart-worship in Tyre (who?) and how it was brought to Carthage.

I've heard of Melquart, but that's it, i.e., heard the name. It never dawned on me to wonder who Melquart was supposed to be, but this detail brings up an interesting tangent. We are used to hearing about Greco-Roman Mythology, but not so much about other Mediterranian cultures. What's interesting from author Richard MIles' account is that Melquart was assimilated to Hercules, such that the Phoenicians incorporated Greek mythology into their own mythology. In a similar way, Carthaginian gods, such as Astarte, became assimilated into Roman mythology.

Miles mentions the Roman rite of “evocatio,” which was designed to invite the gods of an enemy to desert the enemy and take up residence in Rome. I hadn't seen this mentioned before, but it seems to have been a very real consideration for the peoples of the Mediterranian. Hannibal's successes threatened a loss of Rome's ideological status because he seemed to imply that Roman gods were deserting Rome.

Another sideshow that moved into the main ring was the island of Sicily. Syracuse, of course, gets a mention in the Peloponnesian War for undoing the Athenian expedition sent to capture it, but Syracuse had been a substantial regional player with Carthage for at least a century, with either Carthage or Syracuse getting the upper hand. Although Carthage was larger and wealthier than Syracuse, we can see how Syracuse was not going to be an easy target for anyone.

Miles depicts Rome as the aggressor in its wars with Carthage. At the very least, Rome upset the traditional way that war was fought in the central Mediterranian. Previously, Carthage might win or lose on Sicily, but it never fought to destroy the enemy. Rome was committed to winning and would throw in manpower and resources to win.

Another sense I got was that Rome was just better as a military power. Carthaginian generals would win, but it seems that they lost as often as they won. They lost their vaunted dominance at sea with the development of the Roman corvus, and they never regained that dominance. While they won some sea battles and some land battles, it seemed that the Romans would run a string of victories before they suffered the occasional loss. The Carthaginian practice of crucifying military leaders probably didn't help, as did Carthage's reliance on mercenaries, but probably the fact that Carthage remained a mercantile power, rather than an explicitly imperial power diverted energy and interest from war to commerce in Carthage in a way that did not happen to Rome.

Hannibal represented the rare Carthaginian general who could win. It is worth noting that Hannibal was raised to be a military leader in Spain. However, even while Hannibal was winning brilliant victories in Italy, he was losing Spain, and he was not causing the Roman imperial system to unravel. MIles points out that Roman genius involved its ability to quickly incorporate new territories into its imperial system. Carthage didn't have that tradition.

Another tradition that Carthage didn't have, but Rome did have, was the tradition of not giving up:

“Directly after his greatest military triumph, however, Hannibal had already made his first serious miscalculation, for he assumed that Rome could be forced to negotiate. Hannibal's hybrid education under Sosylus and other Greek tutors might have well prepared him for the intricacies of Hellenistic statecraft, but the contemporary situation now highlighted just how far removed those tutors were from the brutal realpolitik of the age. Two centuries later, the triumph of Roman obduracy was an incontrovertible fact around which the Greek intelligentsia would construct their own version of how the Roman state had come to rule the world. In the final decades of the third century BC, however, the Mediterranean world was only slowly beginning to discover the realities of Roman determination. For Rome, the Italian peninsula was not merely a piece of conquered territory that could be traded or bartered as political circumstance dictated. It would have been a brave politician who suggested that Rome compromise with its enemies or retreat from the hard-won Italian dominions. The Roman senators whom Hannibal faced had been raised on stories that dwelt extensively on their forebears' obstinate refusal to negotiate with the enemy, even in the most desperate of circumstances. That some of these tales concerned examples of heroic Roman grit within living memory, such as Appius Claudius Caecus' refusal to parley with the all-conquering Pyrrhus in 280 BC, only added to their potency. In a society where elite self-representation was so closely associated with mos maiorum, the ways of one's ancestors, to give up the land won by the blood of one's forebears was unthinkable.”

Decadent cultures scoff at the traditions that inspire and shape its citizens. Romans of the time took those stories very seriously and had examples they had to live up to.

The Third Punic War reflects poorly on Rome. Carthage had been reduced to a military nullity, although it had returned to commercial prosperity. Rome found a causus belli in Carthage's efforts to protect territory in North Africa. Carthage knowing that it had no chance, begged for settlement. Rome demanded Carthaginian children as hostages and Carthage's weapons as a precondition for settlement discussions. Then, when Carthage had conceded these demands, Rome demanded that Carthage destroy its city and move inland. When Carthage refused to destroy itself, it was besieged and destroyed utterly.

In short, I found this book to an interesting look at history from the other side.