Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life (6 page)

Hannibal’s family, the Barcids, were connected to the governmental elite of Carthage both in a political and military sense and he was brought up to function at the highest level of the city’s administration. By the time of their ascendancy, in the third century, the government of Carthage was a factional oligarchy where elite families vied for power and influence. A family like
Hannibal’s, whose influence endured over a long period, was sustained by close family ties, alliances formed through marriage and client–patron relations. Polybius tells us that the power of the oligarchical government at Carthage, by the beginning of the Second Punic War, had moved towards an excess of democratic behaviour with ‘the people’ given too much say (6.51.3–8).
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Polybius was no great admirer of democracy and he implies that Hannibal and those who held sway at Carthage in his time sustained their political support through the popular assembly.
⁷⁰
This was the body of male citizens of Carthage who formed the lowest rung of the governmental hierarchy.
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The Barcid family belonged to an established group of elite citizens from whom the governing magistrates at Carthage were chosen. The Punic name meant ‘the great ones’ (
’drm
) and it functioned as a senate. In Aristotle’s description of the Carthaginian government he referred to the Senate at Carthage as a ‘council of elders’ (
gerousia
) and remarked that the Carthaginians believed that ‘the rulers should be chosen not only for their merit but also for their wealth’. The decisions of day-to-day government at Carthage were made by magistrates, called
sufetes
, who were chosen annually from the three hundred or so members of the Senate. The
sufetes
embodied the ruling power of the Carthaginian Republic; the equivalent Roman term was praetors in Livy (33.46.3–4).
⁷²
Within the broad range of the Senate were other groups who held influence at Carthage. There was an inner group of elites within the wider membership of the ruling Senate. We learn, again from Aristotle, that this ‘council of one hundred and four’ was chosen ‘according to merit’ and that another smaller group of thirty senators was considered to be a type of supreme ‘council of elders’.
⁷³

The poorly understood system at Carthage can perhaps be clarified by looking at the much better understood Roman political and military structures. The highly competitive nature of the senatorial elite families at Rome and the outlet this gave individuals to engage in military action and achieve a great reputation, accrue massive wealth and political clout, drove the almost continual engagement in war and conquest during the Roman Republic. It seems very likely that elite Carthaginian males (as well as the population as a whole) also were engaged in and profited from the exploits of the Carthaginian navy, especially in the period after
c
. 400
BCE
when Carthage appears to have become more ‘imperial’ in its outlook.
⁷⁴
Individual families and their supporters seem to have held sway for periods of time, with military success underlying political power in the assembly.
⁷⁵
A warlike aristocracy was a common link between Rome and Carthage. Hannibal’s family was among those who led the direction of policy at Carthage through the latter half of the third century.
⁷⁶

Hannibal and his two younger brothers were raised for command and to ‘fight Rome’ (Valerius Maximus 9.3.2). Hannibal would inherit a position in the Carthaginian hierarchy as a military commander from his father via his brother-in-law.
⁷⁷
In Rome military command was usually acquired through familial connections and generals were chosen from ex-consuls and praetors, the civic rule entwined with military power. At Carthage the generals seem to have held military positions before civic magistracies. It is difficult to tell if Hannibal’s career path was exceptional or the norm.
⁷⁸
The power of commanders in the field and the degree of their political autonomy have been much discussed in relation to Hannibal, his father and brothers and other Punic generals in Iberia in the period of the Hannibalic War.
⁷⁹
The Carthaginian military commanders during the Punic Wars appear to have operated with a wide range of autonomous power and decision-making authority. Policy seems to have been driven from the field as much as from the Senate at Carthage.
⁸⁰
This was not dissimilar to the process of Roman decision-making in the field, which has been described as ‘ad hoc’ and driven by the decisions of individual military commanders.
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In the ancient world the farther a general was from home, the more autonomy he had. The autonomy of the Carthaginian general was balanced by a very harsh system of punishment for those considered not to have succeeded. A military commander who was deemed to have failed could expect to face a trial and prosecution on return to Carthage. Indeed, on more than one occasion during the First Punic War the punishment of choice for a failed commander was crucifixion.
⁸²
The great advantages and opportunities that the elite Carthaginian men acquired with command came with equally great consequences if they were seen to fail.

We know little about the creation or enforcement of laws at Carthage as the evidence is scant. One fascinating fragment comes from Plato, who discusses the Carthaginians’ strict laws concerning the drinking of alcohol. Plato mentions that at Carthage drinking alcohol was banned for a ‘soldier on the march’, who should confine himself for the whole of that time to water. The ban on alcohol extended to slaves in the city and magistrates during their year of office, and to pilots (in the busy ports) and judges while on duty. Carthaginian lawmakers did not believe anyone should taste wine at all during the daytime, except for reasons of bodily training or health; or at night, ‘be he man or woman—when proposing to procreate children’ (
Laws
647a–b). This intriguingly modern view on alcohol consumption suggests a highly regulated society. Wine in the ancient world was often used to cut water to make it safer to drink and perhaps one assumption we can make, based on the Carthaginian
ban on wine-drinking during the day, is that their water supply was relatively safe and clean.

Carthage had developed into a monumental and multicultural city by the third century. It was reputed to be well governed and had a large and diverse urban population, rich industrial production, agricultural wealth and a maritime culture that stretched across the Mediterranean. Carthage is frequently described as ‘beautiful’ and ‘wealthy’.
⁸³
These claims are repeated so often as to be suspect, for whenever ‘the prosperity of the Carthaginians, abounded in wealth of every kind’ (Diodorus Sic. 20.3.3) or ‘Carthage, reckoned to be the wealthiest city in the world’ (Polyb. 18.35.9) is mentioned by the later sources, it is always in connection with an invasion of their territory.
⁸⁴
Even if the ancient sources tend to overstate the prosperity of Carthage, we do know it was a thriving and crowded city that had a well-constructed urban centre with a high standard of living.
⁸⁵
Carthage was also a city of libraries as the Roman natural historian Pliny tells us (
NH
18.22–3) consisting of scrolls of papyri in the Egyptian tradition. The only known Carthaginian text that survived its demise is a famous agricultural treatise written by an agronomist named Mago that was much read and translated by the Romans and Greeks.
⁸⁶

With so much of the public city of Punic Carthage destroyed in 146
BCE
and again when the Roman city was constructed on the ruins, elements of guesswork and intuition are inevitable in any description of the physical landscape and its population. Our understanding of the institutions and culture of the city comes through a distorting lens from the Greek and Latin writers. It was in the realms of religion and culture that Carthage and, by extension, Hannibal were perceived as most foreign in the contemporary Greek and Roman sources.
⁸⁷
The Carthaginians worshipped a pantheon of gods centred on Ba’al Hammon, a multifaceted deity with eastern roots reflecting the Phoenician heritage of Carthage and the female deity Tanit.
⁸⁸
The god Melqart played a particularly important role in the imagery and self-representation of Hannibal and his family. Melqart was also a heroic god of the western Mediterranean linked to Herakles and connected to great adventures and military prowess. He was a patron god both of the city of Carthage and of the adventures of Hannibal.
⁸⁹

The most renowned and controversial site of religious significance at Carthage is the Tophet, also referred to as the Sanctuary of Tanit, which was located behind the commercial ports near the sea.
⁹⁰
Here worship took the form of the dedication of cremated remains of very young children and small animals (sometimes mixed), interred and then marked by stelae and stone naiskoi (a dedicatory monument in the shape of a small temple) in the open
air. The rituals at the Tophet were intimately connected to the worship of Ba’al Hammon and his consort the goddess Tanit (sometimes called Tinnit on inscriptions). This open-air sanctuary (or temple) contains some of the oldest remains recorded from the very first occupation of the city.
⁹¹
The ritual significance of the Tophet at Carthage and the importance of the site to the population of the city are clearly emphasized by the continual use of the site over the centuries.

There are a myriad of different types of offering and thousands of stelae that record dedications made to Ba’al Hammon and Tanit in fulfilment of a vow by the population at Carthage and also from farther afield.
⁹²
From the first foundation through to the destruction of the city and beyond, the sanctuary was used and reused, cleared and reconstructed, and it evolved as part of the intrinsic identity of Carthage. The act of sacrifice by fire played an important symbolic part in the foundation myth of Carthage when Dido threw herself on a pyre. Fire was key to the worship of Melqart whose annual ritual of death and rebirth involved fire and also appears in other early stories of the history of the city.
⁹³
The religious significance of the site is clear but what actually happened there is still very much debated. Whether the remains at the Tophet are the result of infant sacrifice, as our ancient sources attest, or the dedication of infants and neonates who had died of natural causes, is not universally agreed. The debate that started with the discovery of the site in the 1920s continues to this day. There is little doubt that at a site of such complexity no one simple ritual took place over the centuries. The urns contain many different types of offering and at least some of these seem to be the remains of sacrificed children.
⁹⁴

By the third century many other cults from outside these traditions were also found at Carthage. The influence of the Hellenistic world and culture of the Greeks spread across the Mediterranean, both artistically and linguistically, to Carthage. Educated Carthaginians were taught in the traditions of the Near East but also learned Greek as Hannibal did.
⁹⁵
Through long-standing Carthaginian involvement in Sicily, Hellenization became more visibly apparent over the course of the fourth and third centuries. The cult of Demeter and Persephone, the important Sicilian version of the Greek cult, arrived in the early fourth century from Sicily.
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There is evidence of the influence of Hellenistic artistic styles prevalent during the third century as well. A stunning decorated cuirass perhaps from a tomb of a commander in the Carthaginian army of Hannibal’s generation embodies the reflection of styles and influences from the wider Mediterranean in its Ionic columns, rosette decoration and classically styled face (Plate 1).
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The city and culture of the Carthaginians were sophisticated and, like the character of Hanno in the
Poenulus,
operated across a multicultural Mediterranean in many guises. Carthage was a city open to foreign cultural and religious influences. The arrival of new ideas and trends in its ports was a regular occurrence. At the same time the Tophet reveals a culture of deeply held beliefs linked to the very foundation of the city. The continuing connection to Tyre shows that Carthaginians retained aspects of the traditions of their Near Eastern heritage. This proud city at the centre of the Mediterranean, truly a crossroads absorbing cultures from north, south, east and west, created Hannibal. By Hannibal’s time there would not have been one identity that defined a Carthaginian, but many that reflected the complexity of the city’s origins and history.
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Hannibal would have been fiercely aware of his noble heritage and the long history of Carthage and its legends. The unique blend of influences on and wider Mediterranean outlook of the city of Carthage helps us to see Hannibal more clearly. Carthage, its legends and rich culture infuse our understanding of Hannibal even though preconceived stereotypes of the Roman conquerors are deeply embedded in our information. Hannibal, however, was much more than just a Carthaginian. He lived most of his life away from Carthage and was a creation of the wider Mediterranean culture of the Hellenistic period in the east and the west. This was a world that embraced the role of the heroic general and the brave deeds of risk-taking adventurers. Hannibal was both ‘the most famous Carthaginian of them all’ and a man whose individual brilliance and reputation outshone his culture and community in the eyes of his conquerors.
⁹⁹

CHAPTER 2

THE GREAT MAN IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

FROM ALEXANDER TO HAMILCAR

… from this point onwards history becomes an organic whole: the affairs of Italy and of Africa are connected with those of Asia and Greece.
(Polybius 1.3.4)