by Dexter Hoyos
car Barca himself: he can hardly be the same Hamilcar as an able general
active in earlier years of the war with Rome, but a few writers ancient and
modern think he was.1
Hamilcar was ‘fairly young’ when appointed to Sicily, according to Cor-
nelius Nepos’ biographical sketch. Nepos probably exaggerates for effect.
True, Hamilcar’s eldest son later did become general-in-chief in his mid-
twenties, but that was to be after more than a decade and a half of his
family’s dominance in Carthage’s affairs. If the later historian Appian can be
believed, Hannibal already in 218 had a nephew, Hanno son of Bomilcar, old
enough to command a cavalry corps: in other words a sister’s son (Hannibal
had no brother named Bomilcar) who should by then have been at least
twenty years old. This would mean that by 238 Hamilcar had a daughter
already married and a mother.
This chimes with other facts. Around 240 he did offer a daughter in
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marriage to a Numidian prince, and a few years later married another to his
close political ally Hasdrubal. In other words by the later 250s he had already
become a father. He must have been born by 275, or rather earlier. A man of
thirty could still—for literary effect—be called ‘quite young’.
When Hamilcar left for Sicily, his wife was expecting another child. Proba-
bly late in 247 the birth took place. Hamilcar must have been particularly
satisfied: this was a boy, his first son. He named him after his own father, as
was customary. But he seldom saw the little Hannibal for years to come. He
was at war abroad and it is very unlikely that the boy and his mother went
with him—especially as another baby, Hasdrubal, followed around 244. This
supports the possibility noted earlier of occasional visits home. A third
brother, Mago, was born probably around 241 or 240, as he too held an
important command in his brother’s army by 218. So as the 230s opened,
Hamilcar was the father of three growing sons and perhaps as many daugh-
ters, an unusually sizeable brood in ancient times.2
The family was not just socially prominent but rich too. Early in the next
century, after 40-odd years when most of its male members had been at war
away from home, Hannibal owned estates in the fertile territory of Emporia,
the later Byzacium by the gulf of Hammamet, 120 or so miles (200 kilo-
metres) south of Carthage. The spoils of war quite likely contributed to such
holdings, but from the start it was virtually essential for Hamilcar to be rich if
he meant to take part in public life. A century before, Aristotle had reported
that Punic officials, especially the highest ones, were chosen on the basis of
birth and wealth together—partly because bribery was taken for granted, as it
still was in Hamilcar’s and his sons’ day. At the same time, degrees of wealth
no doubt existed, and before he died Hamilcar was to become much richer.3
To be appointed general in Sicily against the Romans and hold command
for six years implies strong political connexions, especially if the appointee
was still relatively young. A well-connected marriage may have helped,
though nothing is known of Hamilcar’s wife. His father Hannibal too may
well have been or still was a man of consequence at Carthage, but it is typical
of our limited knowledge of affairs there that all this is guesswork.
As we saw, Hamilcar’s appointment coincided with a distinct running-
down of his country’s effort in the Roman war in favour, it seems, of
expansionist campaigning in the Carthaginian hinterland. As we saw too, the
leading figure in this expansion was Hanno, mysteriously dubbed ‘the Great’
by some ancient writers, who is widely suspected of instigating the rundown
of the war-effort in Sicily during the 240s. Did Hamilcar, then, already belong
to a faction or clique politically at odds with Hanno’s, and was he given the
Sicilian command as a poison cup to oblivion?
This is possible, but not probable. The slackening of effort there had
begun before he arrived, for the victories of 249 were not followed up effec-
tively. It is just as likely, or even likelier, that Hamilcar was appointed because
he convinced the Punic senate that he could make a difference with the
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limited resources available, while expansionism and exploitation at home
would build up the resources for a bigger effort to come. Given Hanno’s cur-
rent eminence in the state, it might surprise that he did not block the
appointment—if Hamilcar was already his enemy. That the appointment
went through and was continued for six years suggests the two were not the
foes then that they later became. Hanno’s view of the situation very likely
chimed with Hamilcar’s in those years.
Hanno’s was the successful war. He operated close to home and won glam-
our, plaudits and extra revenues; when the mercenaries rebelled later on he
was the obvious choice to command the Carthaginians against them. All
points to his being the senior political figure of the day. To gain the com-
mand in Sicily, Hamilcar would need his support. Nothing suggests that they
were hereditary enemies—certainly no ancient writer does. In 247 Hamilcar
may even have been a vigorous new member of Hanno’s own political circle.
By contrast Adherbal and Carthalo, his predecessors in Sicily who disappear
from record after 249–248, may have belonged to a different circle which
could not stand up to Hanno’s revitalized group.
The young general was able and ambitious, and Punic politics were no
more governed by party-affiliations or a permanent pecking-order than
Roman or Athenian. He would naturally hope to win a greater level of emi-
nence and influence as time went by. But the war in Sicily brought less and
less prospect of these. As suggested earlier, Hamilcar’s political standing
went down rather than up as the years dragged on. If Hanno failed to sup-
port him strongly, that should hardly surprise; Hamilcar was going nowhere.
What should be noted is that even so the Carthaginians never moved to
appoint a new general, and still judged him highly enough to make him their
plenipotentiary in the peace talks during 241.4
But the ending of the war and the crisis that it brought on completed
Hamilcar’s eclipse. He could argue that he had given up nothing that his
countrymen had not already lost, that Sardinia and the western seas were
untouched, an indemnity was normal, and it was the home government that
had failed to pay his troops for so long. His critics, by contrast, could retort
that he had made no impact on the enemy’s war-effort for years; then had nei-
ther bargained the Romans down in the peace talks nor even prevented them
from worsening the indemnity; had made promises to the veteran mercen-
aries in the name of Carthage that Carthage could not possibly honour—and
had now given up his post and left the task of coping with the restive men to
others.
But these were not indictable failings, and Hamilcar had enemies who
wanted to be rid of him. Actual criminal charg
es were prepared against him
for stealing public funds during the war. As he walked the streets of his city in
the first weeks of peace, looking for support, Hamilcar must have wondered
whether he faced the same fate as so many of his military predecessors—
crucifixion for failure.
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II
Hamilcar’s Carthage stood on the southern side of an arrow-shaped penin-
sula beside the gulf of Tunis. On its north side it was bounded by a large bay
(now a silted-up swamp); on the south by the gulf and the lake behind this. A
broad flat isthmus between these waters joined the arrowhead to the main-
land, and a range of low hills edged its coast. At the southern end of the
range, on Byrsa hill, stood the temple of one of the Carthaginians’ chief
gods, Eshmoun. Northwards along the hilltops lay the city’s ancient burial-
grounds, while on the watery plain between Byrsa and the lake of Tunis was
the sacred sacrificial ground, the tophet.
The city spread down in narrow, often steep, but straight streets from the
hills to the sea, and over the hills westward to the isthmus. The ground
between Byrsa and the shore, the Old City, was of course the most closely
settled. Temples, public buildings, workshops, houses and high apartment-
blocks lined the streets. Over the hills lay the suburb of Megara, a broad
domain of villas, gardens and orchards intersected by canals. The massive
fortifications ringing the whole city measured more than 18 miles (30 kilo-
metres) around.
The best-known feature of Carthage was the pair of landlocked artificial
ports in its south-east corner, existing today as a couple of shallow lagoons.
Appian vividly describes them as they were in the mid-second century: first a
rectangular merchant-haven reached from the sea by a channel 70 feet (22
metres) wide, then, via a further channel from the merchant-harbour, the cir-
cular war-haven with the fleet commander’s island at its centre (the island too
survives). Both the ports and the island were lined with boat-houses framed
by columns. The circular port’s capacity, according to Appian, was 220 ships.
Archaeology confirms his essential accuracy, though the war-haven’s
claimed capacity looks exaggerated. At some date the Carthaginians decided
that their existing coastal installations were not enough, developed though
these were. They then transformed a narrow silted-up channel, which had
once extended northwards for about 400 yards (365 metres) from the city’s
southern shore past the tophet, into this elaborate installation. But they did so
at a fairly late date: possibly only a few years or decades before the Third
Punic War or, more likely on historical grounds, during the Second Punic War.
In 241 the project was probably no more than an idea in some enthusiast’s
head, at best.5
The peninsula had been a strong and safe site for Phoenician traders and
settlers in early times. Qart-hadasht, ‘New City’ in Phoenician, was suppos-
edly founded earlier than Rome or any western Greek settlement, in 814 or
813 according to the early third-century historian from Sicily, Timaeus. The
Greeks and Romans of later ages, probably elaborating a Carthaginian tradi-
tion, told the story of Elissa or Dido who established the new city on the site
of Byrsa. Archaeological finds do show a city existing by the earlier half of
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the eighth century, which brings us quite near to Timaeus’ date. But Carthage
was almost the youngest of the Phoenician settlements in the western
Mediterranean; younger for instance than Gades, beside the Atlantic in
southern Spain, and Utica a few miles up the coast from Carthage.
Other important Phoenician foundations were Hippou Acra west of
Utica, Lepcis on the Greater Syrtes gulf, the gulf of Sirte to the south, Panor-
mus in Sicily and Malaca in Spain. Like Carthage they were created to trade
and many did so very successfully. But Carthage prospered more than any of
them, thanks to her central Mediterranean position and the Carthaginians’
talents in seafaring, commerce and (increasingly) agriculture. The city spread
northwards beyond the hill-cemeteries. In the sixth and fifth centuries a
Punic empire, too, began to grow.
By the start of the fifth century this embraced the far west of Sicily with its
old Phoenician settlements and natural wealth, Sardinia’s southern coastal
lowlands, and Carthage’s own hinterland with its people the Libyans. The
Libyans paid taxes and Libyan conscripts were an important component of
Punic armies. On the plateaux and in the mountains beyond, the Numidian
peoples under their various kings varied between friends and vassals of the
Punic republic, depending on distance and Punic assertiveness. The other
Phoenician colonies, including the Spanish ones, became allies or friends
with degrees of dependency that no doubt lessened with distance. Along the
Algerian and Moroccan coasts of Africa a chain of small trading stations—
for instance Rusicade, Tipasa, Iol and Lixus—extended Punic trade and
influence to the straits of Gibraltar and beyond.
Punic traders ranged more widely still, from working the Atlantic coasts of
Africa and Spain to gathering products of Egypt, Phoenicia and Asia Minor.
They dealt with the Etruscans of Italy, as inscriptions illustrate from Pyrgi,
port of Caere, engraved on sheets of gold in Etruscan and Punic around the
year 500: these record Thefarie Velianas, lord of Caere, consecrating a shrine
to the goddess Astarte. Near that date too the Carthaginians struck a treaty
with the Romans, quoted by Polybius in Greek translation along with its suc-
cessor of 348. These treaties restricted where and how Romans might trade
or get supplies in Punic-dominated territories, and Carthaginians in Roman,
while recognizing the Romans’ control in their hinterland Latium. As well as
showing that trade between the two states went back centuries, they illustrate
how Hamilcar’s and his fellow-citizens’ ancestors dealt with other Mediter-
ranean states less powerful at sea but important enough to deserve respect.6
Carthaginians were no more ethnically or racially exclusive than Romans or
Greeks. They often found wives or husbands from Numidian peoples and
Greek cities, for instance. A King Hamilcar who wrought fire and slaughter
in Sicily in 480 had a Syracusan mother. During the war with the mercenaries
soon after 241, Hamilcar Barca offered one of his daughters in marriage to
his admirer the Numidian prince Naravas, and in a later decade a grand-
daughter was married to a Numidian king. The famous Sophoniba, daughter
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of another general during the Second Punic War, was the wife of two other
Numidian kings in succession, the second time tragically. Two of Hannibal’s
agents in Sicily in the same war were born at Carthage, had a Punic mother
but a Syracusan exile grandfather, bore Greek names and were at home in
both cities. Hannibal himself, and before him his brother-in-law Hasdrubal,
married Spanish wives. No Carthaginian, though,
is recorded as married to a
Roman.7
The Carthaginians’ relations with their neighbours were not always this
pacific. Every so often there were clashes with the Numidians: who for
instance took the opportunity of Regulus’ invasion in 256 to revolt against
Punic domination and afterwards were harshly repressed. On the western
seas, the Carthaginians left a reputation to later ages of jealously guarding
their supposed monopoly of trade, stories much exaggerated all the same. In
Sicily from 480 on, wars were repeatedly waged with the island’s Greek states,
notably Syracuse and Agrigentum. The Carthaginians won varied and some-
times impressive successes, but were never able to extend lasting control
beyond the western quarter of the island.
On the other hand they fought Greeks only in Sicily, where Punic and
Greek territorial borders and opportunities met. Cyrene, wealthy but over
1,000 coastal miles (1,600 kilometres) away towards Egypt, and Neapolis,
Tarentum and other notable Greek cities of Italy aroused no hostilities. And
though in the sixth century the Carthaginians had joined forces with the
Etruscans to thwart Greek settlement in Sardinia, only a single clash is heard
of with Massilia, the Greek colony in southern Gaul—and that not for cer-
tain. Most of the time Punic dealings with the Greek lands were mercantile.
In return for products from Punic North Africa—purple dyes and fancy
cloths were noteworthy, and pomegranates which the Romans called ‘Punic
apples’—and goods from other lands merchandised by Carthaginian dealers,
the Greeks supplied wine, oil and ceramics to North Africa.
These items were not all they supplied. Greek culture had many attractions
to offer even to an independently vigorous community and, from the fourth
century on, the Carthaginians showed themselves receptive. In 396 they cere-
moniously adopted the cult of Demeter and Core, goddesses of grain. Greek
artworks and artistically decorated utensils were among their imports. Greek
art motifs were imitated, for instance on Punic glass vessels, ritual razors,
grave stelae and sarcophagi, as Egyptian forms already were. Punic houses
borrowed Greek features: the peristyles, the pavement mosaic (but in a plainer
local style of pottery and limestone fragments embedded in the floor-surface),
