The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
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III
The Ptolemies had no difficulty spending their income. The glorification of the dynasty was achieved by seizing the body of Alexander the Great as it was being carried through Syria and burying it magnificently somewhere in the centre of Alexandria (hunting for the site has long been a favourite Alexandrian pastime). But Alexandria was a living city, and its greatest buildings were not surprisingly those attached to the massive palace complex on its northern side. There the Ptolemies created a linked pair of institutions that confirmed their deep dedication to scholarship and, at the same time, their determination that whatever they did should be the biggest and best: the Mouseion, or ‘museum’, and the Library of Alexandria, where the papyrus of Egypt was used to build the greatest collection of literature the world had ever seen. The idea of a Mouseion, a shrine to the Muses, was not new (there were famous Athenian models on which to draw, and Ptolemy I relied on the advice of a learned Athenian, Demetrios of Phaleron), but the scale of this enterprise, its longevity and its influence were all exceptional. This was not simply a cult centre where music, philosophy and the arts were graciously cultivated. It was an Institute of Advanced Study, an All Souls College, where scholars, largely free of teaching duties, could devote themselves fully to literature, science and philosophy. According to Strabo there was even a Common Room and the members dined together; the institution possessed an endowment and a priest appointed by the king presided over the community.26
The second great scholarly institution, the Library, is also quite mysterious. It was not a public library, though access was clearly granted to serious scholars, and there were side rooms where scholars could hold discussions and work side by side. Its origins lay in a decision by Ptolemy I to ‘equip the library with the writings of all nations so far as they were worthy of serious attention’.27 Although it has been claimed that the Mouseion was concerned with Greek learning, it is clear that the Library, at any rate, extended its interests far beyond the Greek world, though it is likely that most non-Greek texts were translated before they were deposited – chronicles of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the Hebrew Bible, Indian tales. Under the direction of Demetrios of Phaleron (c. 350–c. 280) and his capable successors, the Library was accommodated somewhere within the great palace complex of the Ptolemies, though there soon developed a ‘daughter library’ at the Serapaion which seems to have been more accessible, even if its collection was perhaps a tenth of the size of that of the main library, 42,800 papyrus rolls as against 400,000 ‘mixed’ books and 90,000 ‘unmixed’ books in the central depository.28 Some of the rolls held several texts, but longer works (of which the Alexandrian poet Kallimachos famously said mega biblion, mega kakon – ‘big book, big evil’) were divided into separate scrolls. The evidence suggests, though, that the question of quality competed with that of quantity. The Ptolemies were determined to lay their hands on the best possible texts of the great authors: they hoodwinked the Athenians into sending their master copies of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophokles and Euripides for copying, and then retained them, even though that meant sacrificing an enormous deposit in silver.29 Meanwhile the scholars of the Mouseion concentrated many of their energies in classifying and editing the great poets of archaic and classical Greece, such as Sappho and Pindar, neglecting both lesser-known, but very capable, classical writers and their own talented contemporaries such as Kallimachos, whose works have often had to be recovered from small papyrus fragments found in the desert sands of Egypt.30 Thus the Mouseion and the Library were of crucial importance in the creation of a canon of great classical writers, and the sanctification of archaic and classical Greece as the great age of literary production, at the expense of Hellenistic Alexandria itself.
It would be a mistake to disparage the literary productions of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Kallimachos of Cyrene and Apollonios of Rhodes served on the staff of the Library of Alexandria, and Kallimachos devised a cataloguing system for the Library. But they also composed work of lasting significance: Kallimachos was famous for his epigrams, while Apollonios’ great contribution was an epic in the Homeric mould, the Argonautika, which recounted Jason’s adventures in search of the Golden Fleece and his love affair with Medea. But his style did not parody that of Homer: he had an unusual ability to present events as if he were an observer, addressing the audience directly, and his rather ornate style has charm. His description of the Mediterranean waters through which Jason supposedly passed, and of the European river system beyond, betrays the influence of contemporary Alexandrian geographers and ethnographers, even though he could never quite escape the influence of Homeric geography, with the result that Roman commentators laughed at his errors.31
The Alexandria Library was unique in size and comprehensiveness, but it had its rivals. The kings of Pergamon on the coast of Asia Minor amassed their own library; anxious to prevent it from growing, Ptolemy II is said to have placed an embargo on the export of papyrus to Pergamon. But the librarians of Pergamon came up with a solution: the use of animal-skin parchment (pergamenon) as a writing surface.32 On the other hand, the Alexandrian collection grew quickly and then slowly declined. Wear and tear, illicit removal of texts (borrowing was forbidden) and periods of relative neglect meant that, even when Julius Caesar set alight some warehouses storing books on the quayside at Alexandria – probably an off-site library deposit of some sort – the Alexandria Library had passed its peak.33 Although its destruction is traditionally associated with the Arab invasion in AD 642, it is generally accepted that by then there was little left to destroy, and, sadly, no original material from this great library now survives.34
The clearest proof that the Ptolemies were not closed to the wisdom of other peoples lies in the much repeated report by ancient authors that Ptolemy II commissioned a translation of the Hebrew Bible.35 A famous story tells how seventy-two wise Jews were sent to Alexandria by the High Priest in Jerusalem, placed in seventy-two cubicles and ordered to translate the Pentateuch in isolation from one another. They emerged with seventy-two identical translations, the ‘Septuagint’, or ‘Seventy’.36 In fact, the Septuagint emerged gradually over several decades, and it met the needs not just of the curious Ptolemies and their scholars but of the Alexandrian Jews, who increasingly were Greek-speaking; it is not even clear that the great philosopher Philo had much command of Hebrew. Interestingly, the Septuagint was based on a Hebrew text that differed at several points from the standard, ‘Masoretic’ text of the Hebrew Bible preserved by the Jews, and included apocryphal material discarded in the Jewish Bible. Some of this material, such as the book known as ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’, betrays strong influences from Hellenistic philosophy – further proof that the Jews of Alexandria were not isolated from Hellenistic culture, but greeted it with enthusiasm. The Septuagint was one of the great contributions of Alexandria to the cultural history of the Mediterranean, adopted by the Christians of Constantinople as the text of the Old Testament; indeed, Byzantine Christianity preserved much more of Alexandrian Jewish culture than the Jews themselves, including the voluminous works of Philo.
It would be easy to produce a catalogue of the remarkable Greek scholars who studied in Ptolemaic Alexandria. Some of the most influential are also the murkiest: was Euclid a man or a committee of mathematicians? In the third century, Eratosthenes, who worked out with remarkable precision the diameter of the earth, served as librarian of Alexandria; another innovative scientist was Aristarchos, who deduced that the earth revolves around the sun, though he was not taken seriously, and his influence waned further in the Roman period when another Alexandrian, Claudius Ptolemy, published his own very influential description of the earth in which it remained at the centre of the universe. There was a vibrant medical tradition in Alexandria; understanding of the human body was enhanced by the practice not just of autopsy but of dissecting condemned prisoners while still alive. Archimedes probably spent only a relatively short part of his long life (287–212 BC) in Egypt, but he maintained contact with Alexandrian mathemat
icians such as Eratosthenes.37 His career serves as a reminder of the fascination of the Ptolemaic court with ingenious machines. One of these has been recovered from the Mediterranean seabed off the island of Antikythera, and appears to be a mechanical model of the universe.38 Alexandrian science was of more than local interest. The discoveries and inventions of many of these figures were of lasting importance, and provide further proof of the great vitality of Hellenistic culture, of which Alexandria established itself as the capital.
IV
Alexandria cannot be considered in isolation. Its commercial success depended on links to the eastern Mediterranean, and at least as far west as Carthage. There was another place in the eastern Mediterranean that also filled the vacuum left by the decline of Athens as a great maritime and commercial power: Rhodes, whose island aristocracy of Greek origin managed to maintain its independence from competitors even though the world beyond was fast being divided up among the Macedonian generals. The Rhodians successfully resisted an attempt by the Seleucid king Demetrios to seize their island in 305; he brought 40,000 men from Syria and harried Rhodes for a year, but in the end their determination forced him to withdraw – the first in a series of famous sieges of Rhodes. This victory was commemorated by the construction of a gigantic statue of the sun-god Helios, who bestrode the harbour of Rhodes, the famous Colossus, completed by about 280 BC. The Rhodians even managed to create their own territorial dominion in the eastern Aegean islands and on the coast of Asia Minor, which became an important source of goods and manpower.39 They had great need for manpower because they launched large fleets and expended much energy clearing the seas of pirates, whose appearance was the inevitable consequence of the decline of Athenian sea power. In 206–203 BC the Rhodians worked hard to suppress pirates based in Crete.40 The Rhodians dedicated themselves to the principle that no single power should dominate the seas where they navigated; they aimed to preserve a balance between competing forces. Thus, although they enjoyed close commercial and political ties to Ptolemaic Egypt, they were willing to support the Seleucids if the Egyptian navy threatened to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. All this was achieved without trying to build the preposterously vast vessels beloved of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. One Rhodian favourite was the triemiolia, an adaptable version of the trireme that was able to make use of sail power and oar power at the same time, making these ships ideal for chasing pirates; the Rhodians also employed an early type of Greek fire, combustible flares lobbed from poles on to the decks of enemy ships.41
Although the Ptolemies had created such an imposing war fleet, the commercial traffic of Alexandria was dominated by the ships of Rhodes, which could reach Egypt in only three or four days when the wind was behind them, while even in winter return traffic to Rhodes was on the move, if much more slowly.42 Diodoros wrote: ‘the Rhodians derived the majority of their revenues from the merchants sailing to Egypt’; he added: ‘one could even say that their city was sustained by that kingdom’.43 It was the Rhodians who shifted most of the Egyptian grain that was despatched northwards, and it was from Rhodes that large quantities of wine arrived in Egypt, for the Rhodians had developed extensive vineyards all over their island; the physical evidence for this trade survives in the stamped handles of over 100,000 Rhodian amphorae, discovered in and around Alexandria.44 These wine jars can also be found on sites throughout the Aegean, up into the Black Sea, and westwards in Carthage and Sicily. Ancient sources provide an estimate of the annual value of Rhodian trade around 200 BC: 50,000,000 drachmai, based on a 2 per cent tax which was levied on incoming and outgoing traffic, and which produced 1,000,000 drachmai each year.45 A web of Rhodian bankers existed across the eastern and central Mediterranean; they advanced credit, oiling the commercial networks of the Mediterranean. The weight standard of Rhodian coinage was adopted by towns and islands in the Aegean. All this earned appreciation rather than enmity: when Rhodes was devastated by an earthquake in 227 or 226 BC, offers of aid arrived from rulers in Sicily, Egypt, Asia Minor and Syria.
The other important centre of trade and banking in the Hellenistic world was Delos, which was at first used by the Rhodians as a clearing house for their regional trade.46 From 168 BC onwards, the Romans, who had been imprudently fighting the king of Macedon to a stalemate, started to interfere in the trade networks of the Aegean. They began to treat the Rhodians not as allies (and valued trading partners) but as a satellite, expecting Rhodes to place its fleet at the service of Rome in its conflict with the kings of Macedon. In reprisal against Rhodian lack of enthusiasm, the Roman Senate encouraged a more submissive ally, Athens, to take charge of Delos, on two conditions: the native population must be expelled and the island must function as a free port. Delos was repopulated by a merchant community, including many south Italians who ensured links with the west were maintained and enhanced; its population grew to an estimated 30,000 around 100 BC. Business was dragged away from Rhodes, which experienced sharp decline; the commercial income of Rhodes is said to have quickly fallen to 15,000 drachmai. Delian success in trade boosted the already strong reputation of its sanctuary. Excavations on Delos have uncovered large commercial areas, which were unfortified, since they were protected by the island’s sanctity. There were several agorai or marketplaces for the Italian merchants, containing not just colonnades, porticoes, shops and offices but shrines dedicated to the gods merchants favoured, such as Poseidon, master of the sea, or Hermes, the messenger god. The Italians encouraged the trade in perfumes and unguents, and indirect links were forged through Syria to the Nabataean trade routes that penetrated to sources of frankincense and myrrh in Arabia. There was also a busy trade in slaves, victims of the piracy that became more threatening by the end of the second century, with the resurgence of the Cilician pirates in the east (a reflection, surely, of the decline of Rhodes, which had policed the waters off Anatolia so effectively). By Roman times Delos was being described as ‘the greatest emporium on the whole earth’.47
Although its fortune was built to some extent on the misfortune of Rhodes, the success of Delos is further proof of the way in which, during the third and second centuries BC, the eastern Mediterranean networks of trade and business became increasingly integrated into a coherent, well-managed system, first under the hegemony of Rhodes and then under that of Delos. Delos brought in new partners, enlarging the network to include the merchants of Puteoli in the Bay of Naples. The Hellenistic world was politically fragmented into three main units – Greece, Syria and Egypt – and yet what was beginning to emerge was a single domain of trade. One element was missing: the great city of Carthage had disappeared from the map in the middle of the second century BC. It is now necessary to step back in time and examine how this happened, and how the backwoodsmen of Rome came to dominate even Greek waters before 100 BC.
7
‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed’,
400 BC–146 BC
I
While the war between Athens and Sparta for control of the Aegean was at its peak, other conflicts, further to the west, embroiled Greek cities in struggles for their life. Carthage was as significant a naval power in its sector of the Mediterranean as Athens was further to the east. In 415, the Carthaginians were content to look on while the Athenians attacked Syracuse. They could see that the Greeks were divided among themselves and too busy squabbling to turn their attention against the Phoenician trading stations on Sicily. From their point of view, anything that weakened Greek power in Sicily was welcome. On the other hand, the destruction of the Athenian forces posed a new problem, to which they found themselves responding rapidly. Not for the first time the Syracusans threatened to dominate the island. However, the real troublemakers proved once again to be the Elymian inhabitants of Segesta, who, not content with the havoc they had wreaked by calling in the Athenians, now appealed to Carthage for help against their old rivals, the Greeks of Selinous. The Carthaginians had good reason to support Segesta. It lay in an area dotted with Punic, that is Phoenician, colonie
s, notably Panormos (Palermo) and Motya. When in 410 the Segestans offered to become dependants of Carthage in return for protection, the Carthaginian assembly realized that the time had come to consolidate their city’s hold on western Sicily.1 The Segestan appeal marked a decisive moment in the transformation from a loose confederation of allies and trading stations presided over by Carthage to a Carthaginian empire that included among its subjects not just fellow-Phoenicians but subject peoples – ‘Libyans’, as the Berbers of North Africa were called by Greek writers, Elymians, Sikels and Sikans in Sicily, not to mention Sards and Iberians.