The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  VI

  The Roman acquisition of Sicily and Sardinia – or rather, the exclusion of Carthage from those islands – diverted Carthaginian ambitions westwards. All Carthage had been left with was Malta, Ibiza and some trading-posts in North Africa and southern Spain. It was in Spain that Hamilcar Barca built an empire that greatly surpassed in scale and ambition the network of trading settlements created by the Phoenicians many centuries earlier. Hamilcar sought a land dominion; the question, posed by the ancient historians themselves, is whether he saw it as his personal dominion or as a new theatre for Carthaginian expansion, which would include mastery of the silver mines of ancient Tartessos. Probably it was a mixture of both. Hamilcar’s family, the Barcids, was exceptionally powerful within Carthage, even though its republican system of government meant that their influence did not go unchallenged. There is some debate whether the coins in the Greek style issued in Carthage’s Spanish dominions show an image of a god such as Melqart or a wreathed ruler in the Hellenistic style; the Barcids were tempted to project themselves as new Alexanders who were creating a territorial monarchy in the west.52 That Hamilcar was determined to emancipate Carthage from Roman shackles is made plain in a famous but possibly legendary tale: before leaving for Spain in 237 BC, Hamilcar prepared a sacrifice to the god Baal Hamon and, calling to his side his young son Hannibal, he told him to place his hand on the sacrificial beast and to swear ‘never to bear goodwill to the Romans’.53

  Not surprisingly, Hamilcar first concentrated his attention on winning control of the silver-bearing areas of southern Spain. As in Sardinia, the idea of ‘control’ must be handled with care. He made alliances with Iberian and Celtiberian chieftains, and he gradually increased his armies so that by 228 BC he had perhaps 56,000 men in the field. The other means of control adopted by the Barcids (for Hamilcar was succeeded in Spain first by his son-in-law Hasdrubal and then, after Hasdrubal’s assassination, by his own son Hannibal) was city-foundation. Hamilcar was responsible for the foundation of Akra Leuke, generally agreed to lie under modern Alicante, and around 227 BC Hasdrubal was inspired to found a city further south along the coast and even closer to the sources of silver. The Carthaginians were strangely uncreative when naming people and places; there were countless Hannibals and Hasdrubals. Hasdrubal named his new city just that: ‘New City’, Qart Hadasht, now known as Cartagena, though, since the time of Polybios, historians, to avoid confusion with the mother-city, have often called it New Carthage, ‘New New City’.54 Hasdrubal ensured that his presence was felt by building a great palace for himself at the top of one of the hills on which this city stood. More importantly, Cartagena was easily accessible from North Africa, making it an essential link in the chain of ports and garrisons tying Carthage to Spain.

  The conflict between Carthage and Rome actually resumed further north in Spain, at Saguntum, along the coast from modern Valencia. Following a lengthy siege, at the end of 219 Hannibal sacked this town, which had placed itself under Roman protection. That the Romans should take an interest in a place so remote from their political and commercial sphere suggests that they had become worried by eighteen years of Carthaginian consolidation in Spain. Once again, the real issue was strategic: the Romans did not want to be outflanked by the Carthaginians, and refused to allow them to strengthen their position to the point where they could re-establish themselves in Sardinia or Sicily. Hasdrubal had earlier entered into an understanding between Rome and Carthage about Punic control of parts of Spain, to the effect that the Carthaginians would remain south of the river Ebro, which lay a good way to the north of Saguntum.55 Rome felt it had to act to prevent a resurgence of Carthaginian power. The decision by Hannibal to take his army across the Alps and bring the war to the gates of Rome was an inspired attempt to divert the conflict away from either Barcid Spain or the waters in which Carthage had been defeated twenty-three years earlier. This did not prevent a Roman attack on Spain, led by Cnaeus Publius Scipio, who had as many as 25,000 men under his command, and who reached Spain by sea, arriving at the ancient commercial station of Emporion. He managed to win a naval engagement against the Carthaginians, but the fleets were tiny by comparison with those that had fought in the first war: about thirty-five vessels under Roman command. Before long, though, the defection of their Celtiberian allies left the Romans floundering.

  Another new theatre of war was northern Greece. The ruler of Macedon, Philip V, was so impressed by Hannibal’s great victory over the Romans at Cannae in southern Italy (216 BC) that he took up arms against Rome. Rome found it impossible to fight on so many fronts at once, and Philip scored successes in the waters off the Albanian coast. Once again, the Romans viewed the Macedonian problem from the perspective of their strategy in Italy. They were seriously worried that they might lose control of the southern Adriatic coast, and sent an army to Brundisium (Brindisi) to head off the danger of a Macedonian landing.56 The Macedonians stood their ground and Rome was unable to bully them into submission. Rome was learning that its growing Mediterranean dominions brought it into contact and even conflict with neighbours who had not previously been in their line of sight.

  Cicero wrote of Sicily: ‘it was the first jewel in our imperial crown, the first place to be called a province’. For the Romans began to think that the exercise of informal empire in areas such as Sicily no longer met their needs. Hieron of Syracuse was treated with honour, and was permitted to make a state visit to Rome in 237; significantly, he presented the Romans with 200,000 bushels of Sicilian grain. He was welcome to control the south and east of Sicily, but by 227 the north and west, which had been the scene of several of the most bitter naval engagements with Carthage, were placed under the authority of Roman praetors; military garrisons and fleets stood by on the island, but they needed to be fed, and the navies that patrolled the central Mediterranean also needed to be supplied with tack. Accordingly the Romans decided to set in place more formal systems of grain taxation. Trouble flared in 215 following the death of the aged Hieron, and the outbreak of turmoil in Syracuse.57 Factions in the city hostile to Rome dreamed of a Punic alliance that would, improbably, ensure Syracusan domination over the entire island, as if Carthage would expect no prizes.58 Carthage impressively managed to re-establish itself on the island, with tens of thousands of troops; Akragas became a major Punic base. But it was against Syracuse that the Romans unleashed the full force of their armies and navies in 213. It was by far the largest city on the island, and the source of the new difficulties Rome faced. When the Romans tried to blockade the port their ships stood so far apart that the Carthaginian fleet was able to sail past them with impunity, although in 212 a Carthaginian attempt to sail a massive convoy of 700 merchant ships into Syracuse under the protection of 150 warships not surprisingly proved too ambitious. Still, naval blockades were almost impossible to enforce in this period, especially against a city with a wide harbour mouth and extensive sea walls. The Syracusans and Carthaginians made mincemeat of the Roman fleet, benefiting from the advice of the great Archimedes, who took delight in designing new machines that lifted Roman vessels right out of the water, shaking them so hard that the crew fell into the sea, or mirrors that reflected the burning rays of the Sicilian sun on to the timbers of enemy ships, setting them alight. In the end, though, Roman tenacity resulted in the capture of Syracuse in 212, and Archimedes is said to have been slaughtered as he was sketching another of his ingenious designs in the dust.59 The next year Akragas was prised from the Carthaginians, and Rome boasted the year after that that not a single free Carthaginian could now be found in Sicily.60 The dividends were not just military and political but cultural: Syracuse was despoiled of its treasures, and Greek sculptures were carried in triumph to Rome, stimulating the growing taste of the Romans for the superior culture of the Hellenes.

  The war continued for another decade and was decided by events beyond Sicily, although without these successes in Sicily much of what Rome achieved would have been impossible. In the west, Publius
Cornelius Scipio captured New Carthage in 209 by realizing that a great lagoon bordering the town could be forded by a Roman army. The conflict was increasingly focused on Africa, however, where the Romans finally defeated Hannibal at the battle of Zama in 202 BC; he had failed to achieve his aims in Italy, after prowling around and wreaking havoc up and down the peninsula for many years. The ability of the Romans to transport thousands of men from Sicily to Africa was crucial, though alliances with the Numidian kings also ensured Roman success. The fact was that Rome had won command of the sea, and this was confirmed by the final humiliating treaty in which Carthage was allowed to retain only ten triremes – not even the big quinquiremes for which it was famous. Five hundred warships, Livy recounted, were taken out of the great round harbour of Carthage to be burned. A massive fine was once again levied and Carthage was deprived of all its possessions outside Africa, as well as some African lands which were assigned to the Numidians. The Spanish lands so carefully accumulated by Hamilcar Barca were lost to Rome. Carthage was forbidden to fight wars outside Africa, and effectively reduced to the status of a client state of Rome. Such terms had often been imposed on Italian neighbours, but for Carthage this amounted to emasculation.61 Once again Rome found itself in a commanding position, without having set out to achieve quite this degree of pre-eminence.

  VII

  The victory over Hannibal still left Rome facing many unresolved problems in the central Mediterranean. Two more wars were fought against the Macedonians, who were forced to accept Roman protection; further south, Rome battled the Aetolian League in central Greece; further east, it fought the armies of the Seleucids, the Greek generals who had gained power in Syria after the death of Alexander the Great.62 By 187 BC the reach of Rome stretched from the ex-Barcid lands in Spain right across the Mediterranean to the Levant. There were still potential rivals, such as the Ptolemies in Egypt, with their massive fleets, but, for the first time, the entire Mediterranean felt the powerful political influence of a single state, the Roman Republic. Amid these conflicts Carthage stayed quiet and was loyal to the humiliating terms of its treaty with Rome. The Carthaginians willingly supplied their few remaining warships to serve in their distant ancestors’ waters during the Syrian War. They provided grain to the Roman armies and navies from the broad estates that stretched across the horizon away from Carthage.63 In 151 BC the Carthaginians completed payment of the indemnity they owed to Rome. It was just at this moment that they found themselves in conflict with the octogenarian king of Numidia, Masinissa. The Carthaginians had no doubt that they were by now free from Roman shackles, and could make their own decision to attack Masinissa. The mood in Rome was different. A prosperous, resurgent Carthage that conducted its own policies was now seen as an indirect threat to Roman dominion over much of the Mediterranean, even if there was no direct threat to Rome’s possessions in Sicily, Sardinia or Spain. After a visit to Carthage, as an official mediator between the Carthaginians and Masinissa, the arch-traditionalist Cato became obsessively convinced that the future of Rome could be secured only by the city’s annihilation. He constantly denounced Carthage in his speeches to the Roman Senate, and made sure that he ended every speech, even if it had nothing to do with Carthage, with the words: ‘in addition, it is my opinion that Carthage must be destroyed’.64 The bullying began. Carthage was first ordered to supply hostages, which it did, and next ordered to hand over its stock of arms, including 2,000 catapults, which once again it did. But the third demand made by Rome was simply unacceptable. The Carthaginians were ordered to abandon their city entirely and to migrate at least ten miles into the interior to a place of their own choosing.65 If the Romans thought they were being generous in allowing the Carthaginians to choose where to live, they were deceiving themselves. The Carthaginians refused and war broke out; as the final demand made plain, this was now a war for the survival of Carthage, as neither of the previous wars had been. Under the command of Scipio Aemilianus, stepson of the great Scipio who had faced Hannibal, the Roman forces headed straight for North Africa. This time there was no shadow-boxing in Sicily or Spain, which were well outside the greatly constrained Carthaginian sphere of influence. Although the Carthaginians managed with extraordinary energy to construct a new war fleet, the city was blockaded by sea and besieged by land, and eventually fell to the Romans in spring 146. Scipio enslaved the inhabitants, and razed great parts of the city (though it is not actually clear whether he sowed salt into the ground as a sign that Carthage must never rise again).

  The Punic Wars had stretched across nearly 120 years. Their significance extended far beyond the western and central Mediterranean: the year Carthage fell, Rome consolidated its hold on Greece, opening up the prospect of vigorous competition with the rulers of Egypt and Syria for mastery over the eastern Mediterranean. More than two decades of struggle with the Macedonians and then with Greek city-leagues culminated in the capture of Corinth, also in 146 BC. Corinth was seen as the focus of opposition to Rome, but its commercial attractions, with its two ports, were undeniable. The whole city was ruthlessly treated as booty. The entire population was enslaved. Its magnificent and often ancient works of art were auctioned. Shiploads of sculptures and paintings were despatched to Rome, resulting in a further surge of aristocratic interest in Greek art. The cultural effects of the destruction of a city thus varied enormously. Punic civilization lingered as the demotic culture of North Africa after the fall of Carthage, but Greek civilization was diffused westwards after the fall of Corinth.66 These wars entered the Roman consciousness in other ways. Writing under Augustus Caesar, Virgil described the fateful entanglement between Dido, foundress queen of Carthage, and Aeneas the Trojan refugee. It was a tumultuous relationship that could be resolved only if Dido’s Carthage was destroyed on the funeral pyre:

  The groans of men, with shrieks, laments, and cries

  Of mixing women, mount the vaulted skies.

  Not less the clamour, than if – ancient Tyre,

  Or the new Carthage, set by foes on fire –

  The rolling ruin, with their loved abodes,

  Involved the blazing temple of their gods.67

  8

  ‘Our Sea’, 146 BC–AD 150

  I

  The relationship between Rome and the Mediterranean was already changing significantly before the fall of Carthage and of Corinth. This relationship took two forms. There was the political relationship: it was clear before the Third Punic War that the Roman sphere of influence extended to Spain in the west and to Rhodes in the east, even when the Roman Senate did not exercise direct dominion over the coasts and islands. Then there was the commercial relationship that was creating increasingly close bonds between Rome’s merchants and the corners of the Mediterranean. Yet the Senate and the merchants were distinct groups of people. Like Homer’s heroes, Roman aristocrats liked to claim that they did not sully their hands in trade, which they associated with craft, peculation and dishonesty. How could a merchant make a profit without lies, deception and bribes? Rich merchants were successful gamblers; their fortune depended on taking risks and enjoying luck.1 This condescending attitude did not prevent Romans as eminent as the Elder Cato and Cicero from commercial dealings, but naturally these were effected through agents, most of whom were Romans in a new sense.

  As it gained control of Italy, Rome offered allied status to the citizens of many of the towns that fell under its rule, and also established its own colonies of army veterans. ‘Romanness’ was thus increasingly detached from the experience of living in Rome and, besides, only part of the population of the city counted as Roman citizens, with the right to vote, a right denied to women and to slaves. There may have been about 200,000 slaves in Rome around 1 BC, about one-fifth of the total population. Their experience forms an important part of the ethnic history of the Mediterranean. Captives from Carthage and Corinth might be set to work in the fields, having to endure a harsh existence far from home, ignorant of the fate of their spouses and children. Iberian captive
s were put to work in the silver mines of southern Spain, in unspeakable conditions. But those who could demonstrate their talents might serve as Greek tutors in a noble household, or as commercial agents for their master, even travelling overseas to trade (despite the risk that they would disappear in the fleshpots of Alexandria). Accumulating funds in the peculium, the slave’s private pot of money – though legally, like everything the slave had, this was the property of the slave’s master – a slave might eventually be able to buy freedom, or a grateful master might free his favourite slaves, often under the terms of his will. Freedmen could prosper greatly as bankers and merchants, and their children could aspire to Roman citizenship. Thus a massive immigrant population of Greeks, Syrians, Africans, Spaniards grew in Rome, and it is not surprising that Greek, the standard means of communication in the eastern Mediterranean, was the everyday language of many quarters of the city. The poet Lucan, writing in the first century AD, grumbled: ‘the city population is no longer native Roman, but the refuse of humanity: such a hodge-podge of races that we could not fight a civil war, even if we wished’.2 His snobbery possessed a tinge of self-hatred: he was born in Córdoba in southern Spain, and had been brought to Rome as a small child. Yet even the ranks of the Senate were infiltrated by the sons of freedmen, not to mention well-born Etruscans, Samnites and Latins.3 The comedian Plautus livened up one of his plays, which were awash with crafty merchants and clever slaves, with passages in the Punic language of North Africa. The confusion of languages was made even greater because the city and its outports attracted large numbers of foreign merchants: Tyrians, for the merchants of the once great Phoenician city had recovered their role in trade by the time of Augustus; Jews, who at this period included a number of shippers and sailors; south Italians, for, as will be seen, the Bay of Naples occupied a special role in Rome’s system of supply. The term ‘Roman merchant’ therefore means ‘merchant under the protection of Rome’ rather than ‘merchant of Roman descent’.