CARTHAGE AFTER 201 B.C.

:AFRICAN PROSPERITY
AND ROMAN PROTECTION ∗

Like Great Britain after 1945, Carthage after defeat in the Second
Punic War (218– 201 B.C.) had lost an empire and could not find a
rôle — at any rate a meaningful rôle. She kept her North African
territories but could exercise no independent foreign policy. Even
waging war within Africa required Roman consent, which would
not be given since the only likely enemy would be Rome’s ally
Numidia. Yet over the next half-century Carthage recovered
prosperity and for the most part maintained her territorial
possessions, paradoxically under the protection of her former foe
until — again paradoxically — her success attracted both the greed
of Numidia and, fatally, the resentment of Rome.
The economic recovery
The evidence for Carthage’s return to prosperity is sizeable. North
Africa had suffered less in Hannibal’s war than Italy had. Roman
naval raids, though numerous between 218 and 204, had harassed
the coasts but never thrust deep inland; Scipio Africanus, invading
in 204, had time for only a couple of interior chevauchées before
the battle of Zama in 202. Carthaginian efforts to restore
productivity then began promptly, if the late Roman writer
Aurelius Victor is reliable in stating (de Caesaribus 37) that
Hannibal used his soldiers in peacetime to plant olive-trees, to
keep them out of mischief. If true, this happened after peace
returned and before he gave up his military command, thus around
201–200. Moreover Libya, Carthage’s famously fertile hinterland,
was already producing enough wheat by the year 200 to enable a
gift of 200,000 bushels (modii) to the city of Rome and another
200,000 to Roman forces assembling for the new war with
Macedon. Possibly the Carthaginians were seeking to gratify their
ex-enemy with these contributions even if this imposed some
sacrifice on themselves. But larger gifts of produce are recorded
later, too. Half a million modii of barley and perhaps a million of
wheat (Livy’s text is not certain) were offered in 191 during the
war with Antiochus III — though the Romans insisted on paying
for them — and later, in 170 during the Third Macedonian War,
250,000 modii of wheat and 125,000 of barley (Livy 36.4; 43.6).
When sufete in 196–195 Hannibal achieved a reform programme
which included overhauling the state’s finances. Widespread
corruption was vigorously attacked; public funds that had been
appropriated by powerful aristocrats were recovered. Such
∗This article first appeared as ‘Carthago entre dos guerras’ in the journal Desperta
Ferro: Revista de Historia military y política 31 (Madrid: Septiembre 2015). The
editors of DF have generously approved its appearance in its original English
version.

Vol. XLI.1 Classicum

peculation had been vividly illustrated in 199, when the first
indemnity payment of 200 silver talents was sent to Rome. The
quaestors assaying it discovered that 25 per cent of the silver was
adulterated, forcing Carthage’s no doubt embarrassed envoys to
borrow the shortfall from Roman bankers (Livy 32.2). In 195, by
contrast, Carthage was able to pay the year’s instalment in good
silver — and without the special tax which the previous dominant
faction had threatened to levy (33.46–7).
Moreover, although Hannibal’s reforms provoked his political
enemies to enlist Roman support for driving him into exile, the
reforms themselves seem to have endured. In 191, only four years
after his flight, Carthage offered to pay all the remaining indemnity
— forty years’ worth: 8,000 talents — in a single sum. Rome was
at war with Antiochus III, the Great King, and expenses were high,
but the offer was declined (Livy 36.4). It was politically useful, the
Romans may have thought, to maintain Carthage’s symbolic
dependence; it also showed off to the outside world Rome’s sturdy
reliance on its own resources, even against so great a foe. Of
course, in practical terms the Roman gesture left the Carthaginians
with that much more capital — a very handsome amount — to
devote to their own recovery. Another advantage, paradoxically
enough, was that they could not devote much money to
armaments: the peace of 201 left Carthage with a ten-ship navy
and a virtual ban on making war. For half a century she was, in
effect, compelled to do other things with her revenues.
Second-century B.C. construction projects similarly point to
improved prosperity. A new residential and commercial area,
replacing workshops, was built on the southern slope of the Byrsa
hill sometime in the century’s early decades. The sectors excavated
show narrow streets in grid patterns, stone and plaster buildings
with shops on the ground floor and, it seems, flats and apartments
above, and cisterns installed underground to catch rainwater. Such
structures recall the six-storey buildings lining the streets up to
Byrsa’s citadel, in Appian’s graphic account of the Romans’
conquest of the city in 146 (Lib. 128.610). A smaller area nearby,
close to the sea walls, also shows fresh development in the second
century. The Byrsa site has been nicknamed the ‘Hannibal quarter’
from the attractive (if optimistic) theory that Hannibal’s reform
programme included such projects. In any case, the fact that
Carthage and Carthaginians could afford such works points again
to a notable civic revival.
The city’s most striking archaeological site, in turn, is the pair of
enclosed ports to the south of these sectors, with their final form
achieved after 200 B.C. Their sadly degraded versions still exist.
The rectangular port, directly accessed from the sea, matches
Appian’s famous description of the merchants’ harbour; the
circular port linked to it is clearly the naval harbour which he then
describes (Lib. 96.452–5). Modern studies have shown that
extensive work was done on both during the second century B.C.
— so extensive, in fact, that the whole project is usually dated to
that period. Carthage, however, had no navy after 201; although
the Numidian prince Gulussa told the Roman Senate in 151 that
one was being created (Livy, Epitome 48), the Carthaginians had
no warships to hand over to the invading consuls in 149. In the
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ensuing war, their only naval effort was a scratch fleet of fifty
triremes and some smaller boats put together from salvaged
materials (Appian, Lib. 121.574–77). The ports more likely
originated during Hannibal’s war when the Carthaginians did have
to rebuild their previously neglected navy and protect their
seaborne commerce. After 201 the merchants’ port could
obviously continue in use, and the mid-century overhaul of both
may well have been due to growth in maritime trade. It could also
account for the activity around the ports seen by prince Gulussa —
who went to Rome not as an objective reporter but to incite the
Romans against Carthage, just as he had tried to do two decades
before (Livy 43.3) — and by Roman envoys to Carthage in 153,
who had reported large quantities of ‘naval timber’ there, a bald
statement that Livy’s epitome does not amplify (Epitome 47).
Whatever their date of origin, the fact that at some stage before
150 the enclosed ports could be thoroughly renovated, or created,
is striking witness to the city’s renewed vitality. Carthaginian
commerce continued to be both busy and far-flung. Punic pottery
finds in Spain and Sicily, as well as Italy, indicate exports of grain,
oil, and other produce from Libya. Some hoards of Carthaginian
(and Numidian) coins in the Balkans point to imports from those
lands to North Africa; and, still further afield, a second-century
grain merchant left evidence of his sojourn at Istros or Istropolis, a
Milesian Greek colony on the Black Sea near the Danube. Imports
from Italy resumed, and at least one large-scale exporter, Trebius
Loisius (a Campanian name), is known from bits of amphorae
unearthed at Carthage (A. Degrassi, Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae
Rei Publicae, no. 1177).
Until the final clash with Rome, therefore, Carthage attained
noteworthy prosperity, even if this may have been less extensive
than in Barcid times. Polybius, a contemporary, writes that around
150 it was judged ‘the wealthiest city in the world’, and Appian
says much the same (Polybius, Histories 18.35; Appian, Lib.
67.303, 69.312). Roman and Italian merchants probably flocked
back as soon as peace returned, just as they had after 241. When in
149 news of the consuls’ ultimatum reached the city, Italians who
had incautiously stayed on were attacked by the enraged citizens
(Polybius 37.7; Appian 92.434). In turn Carthaginian merchants
surely returned to ply their trade at Rome and in Italy. A teasing
literary glimpse of how Romans saw Carthaginians even as early
as the 190s is Plautus’ comedy Poenulus (‘The Punic Fellow’), in
which the title character Hanno is a bumbling Carthaginian
merchant, not entirely admirable, yet depicted not as a hateful
enemy but simply as a father searching for his lost daughters.
Hanno even speaks some of his opening lines in Punic, which
Plautus’ audience was apparently expected to follow since another
character then makes punning jokes from them.
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Politics 201–149 B.C.
Political life at Carthage after Hannibal’s fall is almost blank until
after 160. Appian’s description of busy and contentious activity
essentially concerns the 150s (Lib. 68.304-5): he offers three
parties or factions, one pro-Roman, one pro- democracy, and one
favouring Masinissa the king of Numidia. Yet this picture is
schematic and flawed. Appian’s claim that the pro-Romans were
led by the old foe of Hannibal’s family, Hanno ‘the Great’, is
nonsense: first recorded around 247 as a general, Hanno cannot
have lived long beyond 201 at most, and Appian never mentions
him again. It is implausible, too, for two parties to focus on foreign
relations but the third on internal politics. Carthaginian
‘democratisers’ were not necessarily anti-Roman or anti-Numidian.
Moreover after 167, when Rome itself sided firmly with
Masinissa’s territorial claims on Carthage, a pro-Roman party
would scarcely differ in real terms from a pro-Masinissa party.
The situation had been different thirty years earlier (though Appian
obscures this). The collapse of Barcid political dominance after
201 brought to power, or brought back, a group that Livy calls ‘the
order of judges’ (iudicum ordo, 33.46): probably members of the
tribunal which Aristotle circa 330 B.C. had termed the One
Hundred and Four (Politics 2.1273b–1274a; Justin 19.2.5–6 says
one hundred) — in older times the terror of failed generals, but
under Barcid dominance apparently tamed. As enemies of
Hannibal they were, unsurprisingly, well-disposed to Rome;
moreover, like many other Carthaginian grandees, they had close
ties of guest-friendship with Roman aristocrats (Livy 33.45, 47).
As sufete Hannibal in turn broke their supremacy, ending their
lifelong tenure by making their positions open to annual election
and banning any judge from being re-elected two years in
succession.
Despite his banishment the following year, the ‘judges’ did not
recover unquestioned dominance — so, at any rate, the more fluid
political situation of the 150s suggests. With judgeships now open
to annual election like the sufetate and perhaps other offices, the
old oligarchic faction probably reorganised itself, or even perhaps
split into varied new ones centred on particular leaders. Whoever
did enjoy political success after 195, all the city’s leaders for
decades to come can be seen as well-disposed, even subservient, to
Rome. This is clear from Carthage’s supplies of grain and other
produce to her ex-foe, from the six warships sent in 191 to help
against Antiochus’ navy (Livy 36.42, 44; Appian, Syriaca 22.101),
and from Carthage’s frequent appeals for redress against
Masinissa’s depredations. As early as 193 when Hannibal’s agent
Ariston of Tyre came over to stimulate support for the exile,
Carthage’s authorities were entirely hostile. Ariston gave up and
sailed away, while Carthage sent envoys to Rome to report the
matter (Livy 34.61).
Until about 165 this faithfulness earned Rome’s favour (as argued
below). By contrast a significant pro-Masinissa faction contesting
politics during the same decades is much less likely. With the king
repeatedly trying his hand at annexing
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Punic territory, such a faction’s political prospects would be flimsy
at best. After all, its only practical programme would be to give the
king what he wanted, when he wanted it—in effect a danegeld,
inviting ever more depredation. But this was to change when
Rome’s attitude to both states changed.
By contrast the group or groups which had once supported the
Barcids did probably survive Hannibal’s fall. Barcid friends were
still active (though mistrusted by the authorities) in 193, as the
Ariston episode reveals. Hannibal and his Barcid predecessors had
outdone their political opponents in popular support, as Hannibal
did again in 196–195. Forty years later, a party or faction which
stood for ‘democracy’ was, by definition, one that sought popular
support by advocating measures that appealed to voters: in other
words, one much like the Barcid faction of old, though now in
narrower circumstances. A reasonable surmise is that this faction
wanted voters in the citizens’ assembly (the ham) to enjoy a
greater say in public business, and wanted Carthage’s complex
assortment of public officials—elected and appointed — to be
more transparent in administration and more answerable to the
ham. Hannibal as sufete in 196 had set an example on this latter
point too, for when that year’s finance official (Livy terms him
‘quaestor’: 33.46) defied his summons he had the man brought
before the ham to be denounced, and probably deposed. Even forty
years later there were no doubt plentiful features of public life still
meriting reform.
As already noted, nothing suggests that being anti-Rome was part
of the ‘democratic’ programme (even if ageing former supporters
of the Barcids nursed such resentments privately). On the other
hand, when Masinissa began to make real gains at Carthage’s
expense from around 165 on, some Carthaginians who resented
this did want a firmer stand to be taken against him. These were
not in the dominant faction or factions, which kept seeking help
(unsuccessfully) from Rome. As the events of 151– 150 revealed,
those who wanted the firmer stand were the ‘democrats’—among
them, interestingly, a grandson of Masinissa named Hasdrubal,
whose mother had married a Carthaginian (Livy, Epit. 50; Appian,
Lib. 93.439).
Carthage’s relations with Rome: oppressive friendship?
Ancient sources tend to portray Rome as endemically suspicious
and hostile towards Carthage, but treating Masinissa by contrast as
a favourite son whose land- grabs were approved and even
encouraged. The surviving record is different.
When the king pressed claims to Punic territories in 193 and 182
the Senate, appealed to by Carthage, made it clear that he should
leave them alone. In 193 Rome’s envoys, led by Scipio Africanus,
‘decided in favour of neither party and left everything in the air’
(34.62), and in 181 — admittedly after some delay — the Romans
‘guaranteed [to Carthage] peace not only with themselves but also
with
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Masinissa’ who had occupied the claimed region (40.17, 34). Livy
blurs what happened in 193 by transferring to that year Masinissa’s
seizure of the Emporia region thirty years later (the correct date is
in Polybius: Histories 31.21). In 181 — so he lets his readers
assume — Masinissa kept the occupied area. But later he registers
a Senate decree, in 172, that Rome would not permit any change to
Carthage’s postwar borders which Scipio Africanus had assigned
in 201 (42.24). In other words Masinissa had still not gained any
Punic territory. Appian’s story of the king seizing territories with
Rome’s permission not long after 201, then making a treaty with
Carthage which brought her fifty years of prosperous peace (Lib.
67.302-3), is as much a mishmash as his ensuing résumé of Punic
politics over the same half-century.
That as late as 171 Rome was unsympathetic to Masinissa’s
expansionism is brought out by a remarkable passage in Livy
(42.29). Masinissa reckoned that if Rome won the Third
Macedonian War he would never be able to expand his realm,
whereas if Rome lost, ‘all Africa would be his’: this was because
the Romans ‘were protecting the Carthaginians’ and ‘would not
allow [them] to be attacked’. Allegedly, then, Masinissa calculated
that Rome’s defeat by Macedon would be to his profit. Yet Rome
both won the war and also ceased to protect Carthage: this report,
therefore, can scarcely be a later invention picked up by Livy, for it
shows Masinissa as a flawed forecaster and a coldblooded
Realpolitiker. Livy’s ultimate source was more likely someone
well-informed about what went on in the king’s inner circle at least
in his later years (Polybius comes to mind).
Rome’s change of attitude became clear when Masinissa seized
Emporia, around 165. He had Rome’s support and this continued
as he made further annexations in 157 and 152, pushing his new
frontier within a hundred kilometres of Carthage. What caused the
change at Rome can only be surmised. After victory in 167 the
Senate vented a great deal of spleen not just on ex-enemies like
Macedon and Epirus, but also on friends and allies for real or
imagined insults — Pergamum, Rhodes, the Achaeans, and the
Great King Antiochus IV all felt the lash. So too did Masinissa
when he tried to tell the Senate who should be selected as a new
treaty-hostage from Carthage, though the rebuke was relatively
mild (Livy 45.14). In some way the Carthaginians had lost Rome’s
goodwill — perhaps through showing diminished enthusiasm
during the war, perhaps because Masinissa’s old allegations about
Punic dealings with Macedon (42.24; 43.3) now excited belated
rancour. This rancour would be exacerbated in due course by
Romans like Cato the Elder who came to judge the economically
— though not militarily — revived Carthaginians a potential
menace.
Pro-Roman leaders at Carthage must have suffered politically from
the change in Rome’s attitude. By contrast, Appian can be believed
in stating that Carthaginians who argued for trying to live with
Masinissa and mollifying his greed gained greater influence, at
least when he was not making another land-grab. A pro-Masinissa
faction now did have relevance. Appian names its leader as
Hannibal ‘the Starling’
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(Lib. 68.305). The long-repressed ‘democrats’, too, could also
increase their influence. Now led by a pair called Hamilcar ‘the
Samnite’ and Carthalo, they could attack the other factions as
being too devoted to their own oligarchic interests and too
conciliatory towards both Masinissa and Rome. But when
Hamilcar, Carthalo, and their allies did gain power, after
Masinissa’s takeover of yet more territory in around 152, their
policy of defiance and war brought down disaster. Their opponents
exploited it to regain control. Fatefully it proved of no avail in the
end.
Dexter Hoyos, The University of Sydney
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Further reading (selected)
Carthage and the Punic Wars: W. Huss, Geschichte der Karthager
(Munich, 1985); A. E. Astin et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient
History, 2nd ed.: Vol. 8, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 B.C.
(Cambridge, 1989); S. Lancel, Carthage (Paris, 1992); S. Peters
(ed.), Hannibal ad Portas: Macht und Reichtum Karthagos
(Stuttgart, 2004); A. Goldsworthy, The Fall of Carthage: the Punic
Wars 265–146 BC (London, 2007; first published 2000); D. Hoyos,
The Carthaginians (London, 2010); R. Miles, Carthage Must be
Destroyed: the Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (London,
2010); D. Hoyos (ed.), A Companion to the Punic Wars (New
York and London, 2013); D. Hoyos, Mastering the West: Rome
and Carthage at War (New York and London, 2015); R. Docter et
al., Carthage: Fact and Myth (Leiden, 2015). — The Hannibal and
Mago ‘quarters’: Lancel, Carthage, 192–202; B. Tang, Delos,
Carthage, Ampurias. The Housing of Three Mediterranean
Trading Centres (Rome, 2005), 72–88. — The enclosed ports:
Lancel, Carthage, 192–202; H.R. Hurst et al., Excavations at
Carthage. The British Mission II, 1: The Circular Harbour
(Oxford, 1994).