Thank you for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, sign up at restishistorypod. Com. That's restishistorypod. Com. Hi there. It's Alister Campbell and Rory Stewer here from the Rest is Politics.

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Tickets are on general sell now. Just go to therestishpolitics. Com. Com. That's therestespolitics. Com. It is said that Scipio Emilianus, as Carthage was going up in flames, its anihilation almost complete, gazed at the city in its death throes and openly wept for his enemies. He stood wrapped in thought for a long time, pondering how every city, every people, every empire must, as men do, meet with their doom in the end. For such had been the fate of Troy, once a proud and flourishing city, and of the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, each in their own day, the greatest in the world, and of Massodon, which only recently had blazed with such a brilliance. Then, either deliberately or because he not help quoting them, Scipio spoke two lines of Homer, A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, and Priam and his people all be slain. And when Polybius, speaking to him with the freedom he was granted as Scipio's tutor, asked him what he meant by these words, it is said that without any attempt to veil his meaning, Scipio made reference to his own country. For when he pondered how all things that are mortal must fall, he dreaded how Rome, too, would fall.

That's the end of the story of Carthage, the destruction of Carthage and the great Roman general, Scipio, looks out and he mourns not just the fate of Carthage and of all empires, but he thinks about the fate that awaits Rome itself. Tom, we're doing this mighty series about Carthage. We're looking forward here to the end of the story. That's an absolutely fascinating passage because that implies a degree of empathy for Rome's great enemies that we wouldn't normally associate with the Romans.

Which we have to say is very unusual. The Polybius who is mentioned in that passage, is really our great source for much of the story we're going to be telling. He was a Greek who had been taken hostage and taken to Rome in the second century BC. He wrote a history about how what had been a a multipolar world, so a Mediterranean full of different states, had become a unipolar world ruled by Rome. This was his great theme. The destruction of Carthage is the climax of his story. The fact that the city is obliterated and that the Romans hated it so much that they were willing to inflict this terrible fate on what had been one of the great, great cities of the Mediterranean, points to what is glamorous, mysterious, and cruel about Carthage's reputation. Because the fact that most of what we know about Carthage comes from its enemies gives it a slightly malevolent aura in the sources that we have.

It's a bit like the city equivalent of Cleopatra, right? All we know about Cleopatra, generally comes from her enemies. The same is true of Carthage, too. They're both seen as really glamorous, sinister, depraved, degenerate, luxurious, all of those Orientalist things. Is that fair?

Yeah. We've talked about how Dido, the legendary founder of Carthage, in Virgil's great poem, The Aneered, she is equated with Cleopatra. That sense of simultaneous the glamor and the cruelty is absolutely enhanced by the fact that the Romans really hated Carthage. Carthage is the city that pushes Rome closer to destruction than any other enemy that she has to face. Of course, even Scipio in that passage, he's not really He weeping for Carthage. As you say, he's weeping for Rome. Throughout the Roman sources, the Latin word for Carthaginian, punicus, it's almost always used as a term of abuse. It's always associated with negative connotations. Even if you look at the Greeks, when they write about Carthage, because the Greeks had been rivals with the Carthage Indians for centuries and centuries, trade rivals, and particularly in Sicily, they'd been geopolitical rivals. They hate the Carthage Indians, too. Polybius begins his history with the first great war between the Romans and the Carthage Indians, what we call the first Punic War. But there had been a history that had ended at that point written by a guy called Timaeus. Timaeus hated the Cathergyneians. Everything he writes about them is negative.

He liked the Romans, it's endlessly going on about how the Carthaginians are treacherous, they're cruel. Timaeus, he can't get enough about child sacrifice. He absolutely loves that. He's always going on about it. Perhaps the most shocking thing that Timaeus alleges about the Carthaginians is that they wear underpants beneath their robes.

They wear underpants underneath their robes.

Yeah, not like Scotsmen.

Right. Okay. Did Greeks not wear underpants, Tom? Apparently not. I don't believe that. I think they probably did.

Toméas condends it as absolutely shocking behavior.

I find that implausible. So just to step back a second for people who are completely bewildered where we are and what we're talking about. Someone like the city of Carthage, which flourishes from very roughly as it states, Tom?

Ninth century up to the second century.

So it becomes one of the great superpowers of the Mediterranean, this maritime power, very mercantile. And the thing about it, so going back to that reading, Carthage going up in flames, the thing that gives Carthage this enduring... One of the things, anyway, that gives us this enduring glamor and mystery is that almost everything is destroyed. Now, you said last time that there are some stones and stuff left in Tunis, pretty much on the site of Carthage. But all its is destroyed, everything written by the Carthaginians.

We're told that they're given away to a people in Libya, famous horseman called Numidians. The story goes that they give it away. The one collection of books that the Romans do keep is a 28 volumes treatise on agriculture. That's depressing. No, but apparently, the Carthaginians were tremendous agronomists. As you say, there's this story that it gets sown with salt. The ruins get sown with salt. This isn't actually true. It actually got invented in 1920. It's now been repeated over and over again. There are places. We talked about the Tofet, the place where they did the child sacrifices in the previous episode, and that got buried beneath the rubble of the city, which the Romans used as filler for new settlements. There are fragments of it, but there's not a huge amount. You have to try and stop seeing it through Roman and perhaps particularly Greek eyes, because the Greeks did respect Carthage as almost being on a level with the Greeks themselves, and there was no higher source of praise. Aristotle, for instance, he has a list of all the various these constitutions of cities, and Carthage is the only non-Greek city to be included in that.

He actually rates Carthage very highly. He ranks it with Sparta and Crete as one of the top three constitutions in the world. So there are positive takes as well. But of course, it's really important to emphasize that Carthage is not just a Urzatz, Greek city. It's Phenitian.

Yeah, because you talked about that in the last episode. So the Phenitians, who are these people from modern day Lebanon, Thaia and Siden. You think they did exist? Some historians think they're invented, but you and other historians think that there was a commonality of identity among those Lebanese people. And that still matters in Carthage. They're still very conscious of themselves as descended in the same way that Americans would look to Great Britain. Same relationship, Tom.

So you think about the most famous Carthaginian of all is Hannibal, who leads an army against the Romans, Elephant over the Alps. I mean, that literally means the Grace of Baal. So Baal is the Lord, so the Grace of the Lord. And That is one of really only a handful of names that the Carthaginian elite seem to have used and which derived from Tye. It makes it very annoying because there are multiple people.

Everyone got the same name.

There are waves upon waves of Hannoes who appear throughout Carthaginian history, so we'll have to try and negotiate that.

Are we going to get more child sacrifice in today's episode?

No, we're not. But listeners can be reassured that the very final section of this series, there's some sensational torture to look forward to. So all kinds of atrocities.

Okay, brilliant. We love a bit of sensational torture.

So should we go through the sweep of Carthage's history?

I would love nothing more, Tom. Good.

So again, we talked about this in the previous episode. The traditional date of Carthage's founding is 814, and it's absolutely not implausible. And it is called the new city, Khat Hadash in Finesian, which implies that it is founded to be a city, to be a permanent colonial settlement. I think the reason for that is that its location is tremendously advantageous. So as you said, it's just north of where Tunis is now. So it's that bit of Africa that sticks out towards Sicily. And its location is very, very advantageous. So it's a bit like Constantinople. There's a peninsula that sticks out. So it's defensible, but it is also large enough that there is room for expansion.

Believe Tom, you can get a light rail now that goes along the peninsula and all the stops are called Hamel car.

That's so romantic. I've never actually been. Have you not?

So to give people a sense of it, you get this little railway, stroke tram thing out of the center of Tunis, which I have to say, I don't massively recommend. Every now and again, you get off the various stops, they'll say, Brilliant Carthaginian site here. I went with a former girlfriend who, it's fair to say, was not a massive convert to Catholic Union history.

Punic history.

We'd get off this and we'd walk a little bit and there was what looked like a disused bit of waste ground and a load of old stones hanging around. I love it.

I can't believe I haven't taken my children on a holiday there.

A very garbled little caption would say, possibly child sacrifice things, who knows? That was it. I wouldn't say I was held in a massively high regard by my traveling companion during that holiday.

I know, but Dominic, imagine that you were back there in the eighth century, shortly after its founding.

That was what I was saying, Tom. That was what I was saying.

And you've got the acropolis in front of you. So this was called the Bírsa, which in Greek means oxide. And so they had this story that Dideo, when landed, she was allowed by the local king to have as much space as could be covered by an oxide. And so she cuts it into tiny slices and puts it around the Bírsa.

I think I've heard that story about 20 different cities.

I know. And it's definitely not true Because actually the name derives from an Acadian word for fortress. But it's a nice story. And of course, it has harbors, spectacular harbors. And this is really why they settle it. But the other thing is that it is perfectly situated to dominate two alternative trade routes. So one, obviously from Phenetia in the east, right the way up to Spain in the west, but also, just as crucially, north-south. So you've got Sicily, very accessible just across the sea. And then, of course, you've got Italy. So Carthage is perfectly placed to control all this trade. And as a result of this, it grows very fast. And so archeologists looking at all these fascinating sites that you visited with your girlfriend, estimate that probably within a century of its founding, there may be 30, 40,000 people. And it expands so fast that the walls keep having to be knocked down and rebuilt to make room for people.

And just you mentioned agronomy. So the hinterland is very fertile. Actually, you see that today in Tunisia. People probably haven't been to North Africa thinking, oh, it's probably all desert. It's absolutely not. It's olive groves and lovely fields and all that thing.

Yes. And it actually takes time for the Carthage Indians to develop this, because to begin with, I think they definitely remain a trading power. They're not particularly expanding into the hinterland because there are tribes there.

Beduin, Tom, surely, or Burbers or something.

Burbers, yeah. Libyans, they're called, or the Némiddians, who we also mentioned. I think to begin with, it's primarily a trading city. This is why Carthage itself, of course, is a colonial settlement, but they then start going out and planting settlements across the Western Mediterranean, so particularly on Sardinia. And these are not towns. These are just trading posts. So rather like the settlements that, say, the Venetians would have put up later or the Portuguese in Africa.

So It's a fort and markets, basically.

Yes. And as with the Portuguese settlements, there's an underpinning of violence. So it's bad news for the locals, really. And so by the sixth century, Carthage is no longer colonial relative to Venetian. And in part, that's because back in Phonesia, the Babylonians have conquered Tire. So there's been a long 13-year siege. Nebuchadnezzar takes control of it, the guy who will go on to conquer Jerusalem. And at the same time, there's a collapse in the price of silver because the Phenitians have been mining all this silver in Spain, and there's a glut. And so basically, the Tyrian economy implodes.

Inflation, Tom.

Galloping inflation, as with Spain, when they discover silver. And so this leaves the field open for Carthage to basically displace the mother country. So again, a bit like America and Britain, I guess. So a sad story. But it's imperialism. It's still very Venetian. It's not, say, like the Romans, conquering territory. It's still planting settlements and constructing trade nodes. But there is a straw in the wind at this point because there's a garbled account in both the Greek and the Roman sources, writing much later, of a guy called Malkus. And that has a hint of the a finetian word for king. He is supposed to have campaigned very hard in Sicily and Sardinia. His export seemed to be slightly exaggerated, but it does suggest that the Greeks are starting to arrive on the scene now. The Carthage Indians had it all their way, but now the Greeks are turning up and starting to compete for resources in Sicily, in Sardinia, in Southern Gaul, in Spain.

At this point in the Mediterranean, there is no, as it were, superpower. It's all up for grabs. Nobody is sophisticated and powerful enough.

Well, Carthage is the most powerful city.

Even at this stage?

Yes, absolutely. And has been accustomed to having its own way on the trade front for a fair while, which is why the arrival of the Greeks, particularly in Sicily, is so destabilizing. In the 730s, the most significant Greek city in Sicily is founded, and that's Syracuse, which, of course, is still there, I mean, wonderful situated. Syracuse is squaring up to Phenitian cities that have been founded in the east. The most significant of these is Panormas, which is today Palermo. These are cities that are being founded in places that are absolutely perfect for cities. Panormas is actually the Greek name for it. Brilliantly, the Phenitian name seems to have been ziz.

Ziz? That's a brilliant name.

Apparently, it means flower. It's such a shame it's not still called ziz. The other very significant Phenitian settlement is a place called Mottia, which we mentioned in the previous episode is having a top tofet, top place for child sacrifice. And a bit like Tahr, it's on an island. And so archeologists have been able to look at it. They know what it was like in the sixth century. It had incredible dry docks, temples, it had the tofet, of course, industrial zones. And again, it was involved in making dye. So this involves smashing up mollusks and leaving them to dry in the sun. And also it's making garum, which is this...

Fish source.

Fish-based source. So I think you could assume that Phenitian cities stank. I mean, you can imagine drying mollusks and drying fish. I mean, that's quite hard.

But would they stink more than others, Tom? That's the question. So surely Greek cities would have had their own stench, wouldn't they?

But the Phenitians control the dye market. The Greeks never really work out how to do that. So I think that adds a extra dimension.

Extra level, yeah.

So Panormas and Mocha, they're not subject to Carthage, but obviously they're under Carthage Indian influence. And the sense that Phenitian settlements in Western Sicily are going to be absorbed into a Carthageanian sphere of influence intensifies because, of course, the Greeks are spreading from Eastern Sicily westwards, and they are starting to crash into the Carthaginian sphere of influence, the Fénitian sphere of influence. By 600, you are getting cities that are almost going toe to toe with the Phenitians. You have a place called Salinas on the south Coast of Sicily and a place called Himera on the north Coast. In 580, Greek colonists try to build a city directly opposite Mottia on its island. The Fénitians, they form an alliance, Carthaginians join in, they drive the Greek colonists away. The result of this is that Mottia improves its defenses, but so also does the Greek city of Salina. There's a sense that a cold war is really starting to hot up.

Do we know about this from archeology? Because you mentioned improving their defenses.

Also, we know about it from historians because Herodotus, this is almost within living memory. He writes about this, but he also writes particularly about a city on the Eastern Seaboard of what's now Turkey, so on the Aegean Coast, called Farkhia, the amazingly named Farkhia. The Persians have arrived on the scene, and they have conquered the Greek cities on the Eastern Agean. The Fakians are besieged. They all get into their ships while the Persian siege works are outside. They sail off West. So when the Persians break in, the city is empty and déserted. So the Fakians head westwards. They sail into the Western Mediterranean. Basically, they are operating as pirates because by this point, there are Greek cities that they've been planted in Corsica and in Southern Gaul. So Nice is originally Nasea, and Marseille is originally Marsilia. They are Greek cities. The Foukeans are just sailing around acting like pirates, preying on Carthaginian ships. The Carthaginians ally themselves with a people called the Etruscans, who are in Northern Italy. They've given their name to Tuscany. Yeah, of course. The Etruscans and the Carthaginians, they make an enormous fleet. They sail out, they fight the Fáquians in a battle.

It comes to be called the Battle of the Sardinian Sea. And although both sides suffer heavy losses, the Fáquians have the worst of it. Lots of them are taken prisoner, and the Etruscans take them back to Tuscany or Etruria, we should probably call it, and stone them to death.

Tom, before you move on, one fact for you about this settling of French cities. The nickname for Olympique de Marseille, the football team, is still, I believe, the Phenitians.

Is it?

Yeah, I think so.

I didn't know that. That's wonderful.

I can remember seeing that in Lake Eep or something in the 1990s and being completely baffled by it. Theo, our producer, says, It is indeed a terrible team.

Well, that's a sorry reflection on the decline of the finitions.

Very sad. When I saw them, they had Tony Cascarino playing for them, Tom. Goodness. A fake Irishman. Anyway, that's by the by.

Well, the Irish also falsely claimed to be descendant from finitions. Really? In the 18th century.

It all connects.

It does all connect. That's the case for a renowned novelist Dan Brown. Yes. He gets his teeth into there. Basically, the Carthaginians, I think, are absolutely holding their own. They're seeing off Greek trade rivals. They are keeping the Western Mediterranean shipping lanes under their control. What they are also starting to do by this point is what you alluded to earlier, that they are colonizing the African lands that lie beyond the city itself. Probably up until the sixth century, they'd been dependent on Sardinia for food imports. I mean, that's basically why they set up settlements there because they could grow the staples that they needed. But certainly by the sixth century, it's clear from archeological remains that the food stuffs that they are using in Carthage are mainly coming from their own backyard. They We can do this basically for two reasons. One is that they now have the money that they can afford mercenaries and thereby subdue the Libyan tribes in the hinterland, subordinate them. The other is what we alluded to earlier, this agrarian revolution. The 28 volumes of agricultural know-how that the Romans saved, this was written by a guy called Mago. He basically, for the Romans, is synonymous with making the desert bloom.

He is the first guy to, as far as we know, advocate the regular use of fertilizers, the pruning of trees, so olives and so on, of vines. And Carthage becomes very famous for its sweet wines, also for its fruit. So the Romans know the pomegranate, for instance, as the malum punicum, the Carthage Indian apple. And they're very technologically adept when it comes to agriculture. So there's this weird thrashing machine, which comes to be known by the Romans as a punic cart. They're very good at irrigation. They love a bath.

That's perhaps because of the smelling issue, Tom.

Yes, exactly. Yes, you walk past all that garum and you need to have a wash.

Tom, just stop you a second. You're talking about the hinterland, the African hinterland, it says in your notes. So here's a question for you. If we've got any American academics who listen to this podcast, they will undoubtedly be thinking of this question. Is there any meaningful sense in which the Carthaginians, other than those purely starkly geographical, is there any sense in which they are African?

Africa at this point, the Roman province of Africa is essentially the lands that were ruled by Carthage. In that sense, Carthage is the capital of Africa. The word Africa for the Romans wouldn't have the sense it has for us of this vast continent. Carthage is a city in Africa. They see themselves as Fénitian, as we've said. But there are Fénitian settlements in Sicily, in Africa, in Spain. They preserve their Fénitian identity, but of course, they're aware of the geographical context that they're in.

But when they think of the world, they're basically looking outwards to the Mediterranean. They're not looking backwards. I mean, the Sahara is behind them. Do they have sub-Saharan links?

This is why they are sending ships out through the Straits of Gibraltar. They're always looking to the sea. That is how they trade. The lands that lie behind Carthage heading inland are there basically to sustain and feed Carthage and to provide it with troops, with mercenaries. But I think their ultimate loyalties is always with the sea.

Just one last question on this front. I know this is probably a very difficult question to answer, but as it were, ethnically, they are still the descendants of the Phenitian settlers or settlers from elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Presumably, again, there might well be some admixture with sub-Saharan migrants or something, but probably not great.

All these people are calling themselves Hannibal and Hanno, the elites. These are the Fynician equivalent of wasps.

Oh, white Anglo-Saxon protestants.

Or people in 19th century New York, who claimed Dutch heritage. These are people who are very, very aware of their pedigree and very, very proud of it. But of course, Carthage is a great teeming cosmopolitan city. So there are people drawn from across the Mediterranean. There are people from the interior of Africa. It is a great melting pot in that sense, but it absolutely retains its Fénitian identity. Absolutely. Actually, it is, if there's such a word, punicising, Fénitianising the interior, because by the fifth century, thanks to Mago and his thrashing machines and his fertilizer and all that stuff. What had previously been scrub is really starting to bloom. Greek visitors from Sicily marvel at the fecundity of it. To quote, the beauty of the land, it's prosperity. There are gardens everywhere, there are orchids. There are irrigation channels filling what had previously been dry and barren with flowing water. And so you were getting country estates, the equivalent of the villas that Roman aristocrats start to build outside Rome, you're finding these as well. And you're getting stud farms, then you're getting livestock everywhere. So a Greek visitor to Carthage in, say, I don't know, the very early fifth century would know that he was visiting a city of impressive and intimidating power.

It's very beautiful, it's pretty exotic, and it is potentially a menace. Again, this goes back to what we're talking about at the start of the program, that for the Greeks, Carthage is a place of mystery and fear.

Wow, exciting. Tom, it would be fascinating to know a little bit more about who ruled Carthage, Carthageanian politics, and the long and dramatic history of Carthageanian imperialism. Let's do that after the break. I've been reliably informed that when battle was joined and Hamel car was having the worst of it, he disappeared off the face of the Earth and was never seen again, alive or dead. The explanation for this, given by the Carthaginians themselves, and not implausibly as well, is that the battle between the Barbarians and the Greeks dragged on from dawn until late afternoon, and that Hamelkar stayed for the entire duration of this clash in the camp, where in his attempt to secure favorable omens, he offered up the entire bodies of sacrificial victims on a massive pyre. It so happened, as he was pouring libations onto them, that he saw his troops turning tail, and he hurled himself onto the blaze. The reason then that he was never seen again, was because he had been burnt to ashes. That's Herodotus's account of the Battle of Himera, which was fought in the year 480 BC between a Carthaginian army, which was led by the great big wig of the a Hamel car, ends up burning himself alive, and an army from Syracuse, his great trading rival in Sicily, led by its tyrant who was called Gelon.

Yes. Great name. Tom, By this point, the Syracusians and the Carthaginians, they're the great rivals. This is the great Mediterranean Derby.

Heavyweight clash, Dominic.

Heavyweight clash. Heavyweight clash. Syracuse, which we now think of as an Italian city, Sicilian. That's the big Greek city at this point. Is that right?

Yes, in Sicily, and in fact, very possibly in the whole Greek world. Because 480, of course, is the year that Xerxes, the Persian king, invades Greece. And this is the year that sees the battles of Thermopy and Salamis. And before Xerxes invades, the Greeks in Greece itself, so Athens and Sparta, particularly, know the Persians are coming. And so they send ambassadors to Syracuse to ask Galon if he will help them face the Persian onslaught. Galon doesn't really want to do it. He doesn't want to seem like he's not standing by the Greeks in their hour of need. So he says, Yeah, I'll do it, provided I can be commander in chief. And the Spartans are not having this, and so they refuse. So Herodotus said that actually Galon might still have come and helped the Greeks, had it not been for the fact that the Carthaginians that summer of 480 decided to launch a massive invasion of Sicily, so of Greek Sicily. And There's no question that the Battle of Himera, which you read in that magnificent translation of Herodotus, was a really stunning Greek victory because as far as we can tell, no Carthaginian force would invade Sicily again for about half a century after that.

Of course, the eeriness of that account of Hamelkar vanishing, supposedly having thrown himself into the flames. I mean, again, this is an absolute rift. The Greeks are obsessed with the idea that the Carthaginians are endlessly hurling things, including their children, into flames. There's a I think, that Hamelkar is condemning himself to a tophet there, that he's offering himself up as a living sacrifice. So that's mysterious.

And this is the Greek obsession with Carthaginians behaving in a... They have this sense that the Carthaginians are unsettling- An alien and eerie.weird, supernatural. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Okay. And there's a further sense of the uncanny about this battle of Himera, which is that numerous Greeks claim that the battle was fought on the same day as Salamis. There's this dovetailing of the Persian barbarians and the Carthaginian barbarians being defeated at the same time. The claim is that the Carthaginians were invading Sicily to distract Syracuse and the other Greeks in Sicily from going to the rescue of Athens and Sparta because the Tyrians are subjects of the Persian Kings. So there's been liaison between the Persians and the Carthaginians.

But that's perfectly plausible, right? I mean, it's perfectly plausible that ambassadors could have gone between the two, that they could have said, Listen, we're going to attack such and such a time. Why don't we do this?

No, because I think the ulterior motive there, very plainly, is that Galon is trying to cast himself as a hero alongside Leonidas or whatever.

Of course, but that doesn't mean that that couldn't have happened. I mean, people do collude all the time in history.

But we know enough about how this battle came to be fought that it's very clear that this was nothing to do with a synchronized geopolitical clash of Titans. Hamakar is not launching an invasion in cajoots with Xerxes. What he's doing is he has a Greek ally called Terelus, who is the tyrant of Himera. They have a very close bond, a sacred bond of guest friendship, as it was called. This guy, Terelus, has been expelled by Galon's forces. He's been kicked out. And so Teralas goes to his friend, Hamelkar, and says, Would you help me? And Hamelkar says, Yeah, sure I would. And of course, Hamelkar is doing it for strategic reasons. He knows how dangerous Galon is, not least Because actually, this shows how the idea of absolute division between Greeks and Barbarians makes no sense, because Hamelkar's mother is actually from Syracuse. So he knows the city very well. So he's half Greek? He's half Greek. But more significantly, he belongs to a clan called the Magenids, so descended from a guy called Mago. And it's this that enables him to do what he's doing because he's by miles the most powerful, wealthy, influential figure to the degree that he's described in many of the Greek sources as being a Basileus, a king.

He is operating as a private citizen, going to the help of a friend, doing it for the good of his city at the same time. That essentially is his motivation. There's a sense, I think, that it's tremendous kutzpa from Galon, because Galon is a tyrant. He has crushed the democracy in Syracuse. There's no sense of that. He's made himself its sole leader. It's Carthage, which will go on to be praised by Aristotle for the perfection of its constitution, Precisely because it's not subject to tyrants. I'm absolutely sticking up for Carthage here. I think the idea that Himera is a great battle, one for the Greeks against barbarian despotism is shameful propaganda.

Good for Carthage. Yeah. Good for Carthage. Tom, Aristotle loves its Constitution, so it doesn't have a king, doesn't have an Emperor, but it's not quite a Republic. What is it?

We're not entirely sure, partly because it evolves quite a lot, I think, over time, and partly also because the Romans got rid of all the Carthage Indian writings. We're reliant on the Greeks and the Romans for descriptions of it. They use their own words which come freighted with all kinds of baggage. Yeah, of course. So Hamelkar, is he a king? It's difficult to know because Herodotus says that he's a king, but he also says that he had become king of Carthage by virtue of his courage. So that suggests that he's been elected. Romans, when they talk about the dynasty of Mago, so the dynasty that Hamel car belongs to, they use the word dux, which is a military leader or dictator, which, of course, is the office where in times of emergency, a citizen is appointed to lead the state. I think that whether there was a monarchy that got replaced by an appointed king substitute or whether there was never a monarchy, and that was always what happened, we're not sure. But essentially, the monarchical element is probably elective if they did have it.

A strong man chosen by his peers.

Yeah. But I think what is definite is that there is a dynastic quality to the authority that the family of Mago exercise. Interestingly, the reputation of Hamelkar, despite the defeat at Himera, it's not particularly blackened. The Maganid prestige doesn't seem to have been particularly impaired by it. The Maganid remain the dominant dynasty in Carthage over the course of the fifth century. It's likely that we talked about Hanno, the Navigator. He's one of the many Hanno's that will feature in this story. You remember the guy who sails out through the Pillars of Hercules, goes down the Coast of Africa and sees what were maybe chimpanzees. So he was probably Hamelkar's son.

And you said these are descend from a guy called Mago, but he's not the agronomist. The guy's writing about crops.

No, he's a different one. This is the awful confusion. There are only about 10 Carthaginian names. No, he's a different Mago. And then Hanno, the Navigator's son, Hannibal.

But he's not Hannibal.

No, he's not Hannibal. So he goes back on the attack in Sicily, and he gets a spectacular vengeance for Himera. So he captures Salinas, which is the Greek city on the south Coast, near the Venetian zone of influence, raises its walls completely, and he captures Himera, and he obliterates it from the face of the Earth. He then, according to the Greeks, He rounds up 3,000 prisoners taken at Himera, and he leads them to the place where Hamelkar is supposed to have immolated himself in the fire. And there, he slaunters the lot of them.

Oh, my word, Tom. Very strong stuff.

As a bloody offering to the memory of his grandfather.

But then in the fourth century, it goes wrong for the Magenids. They attacked Sicily again, and that's a bit of a shambles. Is that right?

It's a complete shambles. And this time, it's not just that the invasion gets defeated, but that the guy who leads it, who's a guy called Himmelko. That's the great grandson of the Hamelkar who threw himself on a funeral pyre. He commits all kinds of terrible sacrilegious acts. He's endlessly burning down Greek temples and doing things like that. As a result, as the Greeks see it, and indeed, perhaps the Carthaginians, his army gets ravaged by an epidemic. They're camped out in front of Syracuse trying to capture the city, and plague just sweeps the Carthaginian camp. Himmelko goes mad, and He flees the siege. He goes back to Carthage. When he gets there, he's so ashamed that he takes off all his finery. He puts on the rough tunic of a slave. He covers his hair in ashes, and he roams He comes around lamenting his utter failure in front of Syracuse, the fact that he's abandoned his troops, that he's betrayed them. Then he walls himself up in his own house and kills himself. So obviously, this isn't good branding for his dynasty.

No. At the end of the Magenids. Oh, my word. Yeah, pretty much. Terrible way to end.

With that story, you have the sense that perhaps something is not entirely being told. It seems quite odd.

Having listened to all this, the way that the Carthaginians are behaving, strikes me as absolutely standard Mediterranean- It is. Great power politics. For all that the Greeks try to paint them as these weird, sinister, depraved, even the way their constitution works, it's not so outlandish. It's not as weird and Orientalist as we would think. I mean, this is pretty standard.

Right. And so this is why Aristotle is able to praise it, is able to compare it to Crete or to Sparta. And Aristotle is praising Carthage for resisting tyranny as he would praise a Greek city. Actually, the backdrop to Aristotle writing about this is a demonstration of the Carthageanian refusal to accept tyranny. So in the wake of the collapse of Magnid power, there's another guy who emerges, and he inevitably is called Hanno. Yes, but of course. As I say, waves of Hanno's. So he comes to be called Hanno the Great. And it's honestly like a football league where year after year, Syracuse and Carthage are meeting up and Sometimes Carthage wins and sometimes Syracuse wins. But basically, they're top of the league. Sometimes one is at the top, sometimes the other is at the top. The middle of the fourth century, so this is when Aristotle is very much hanging around in Greece, Hanno the Great wins this crushing naval victory over Syracuse, and this redounds tremendously to his glory. He's incredibly rich. It enables him to rule in Syracuse as the dominant figure for about two decades. But as the time passes, the Carthaginians become ever more restive, and they fear that Hanno is aiming at, I suppose, what we today would call anachronistically a dictatorship, perhaps the Greeks would call it tyranny.

Hanno, it is said, is aware that There are conspiracies against him among his peers in the Carthaginian elite. He invites them all to a banquet to celebrate the wedding of his daughter. The plan is that he's going to poison them. The wine comes out. He's waiting for all his guests to keel over dead, but he gets rumbled. We're not told how maybe there's a taster or someone kills over. But anyway, his attempt to poison the elite fails. On the back of this, it is said that Hanno decides that he's openly going to launch a coup against the Constitution. So he frees 20,000 slaves. He recruits the local Libyan tribes, but he gets defeated, he gets captured, and he gets crucified. We should say that there is quite a lot of crucifixion in Carthage Indian history. The Carthage Indians have a habit of... Basically, if you get appointed to a command and you screw it up, the likelihood is that you will be crucified. So this is one of the things that the Romans attribute to the Carthage Carthageinians is the invention of crucifixion. And although, of course, the Romans are great, they love a bit of crucifixion themselves, they say this is a marker of how cruel the Carthageinians were.

So a gentleman is watching a battle and he says, Oh, God, I'm going to be absolutely crucified for this. Yeah, literally.

Literally, yeah. But again, it's the football manager who's failed. Exactly. Up on a cross, tortured to death.

So going back to Aristotle, he thinks, Brilliant. Carthage resisted tyranny, all this thing. But like all these places, Tom, this is still a place that is defined by wealth, by breeding, by this patrician elite who basically control the levers of power.

And by finitian inheritance. And that's actually what Aristotle admires. I mean, Aristotle was a tremendous snob. He thinks that people with wealth and breeding be in a position of power.

So it's like Boston, 19th century Boston, Tom.

I think it's even more like Venice. And there's a wonderful description of how the Carthaginian aristocracy functioned by a French historian called Gilbert Charles Picard. And he writes, An aristocratic Republic, a ancient Venice, secret and well-ordered, where individuals are subject to the harsh laws of the austere and disciplined rich. Just as in Venice, you have the Doge, but you also have these councils that meet in sinister conclave. In Carthage, you have the Council of the Elders, as it's called. That's literally a Senate. I mean, that's what a Senate means, assembly of elders. You have this mysterious body of men called the Tribunal of 104. And these are the guys who appoint the generals, who appoint the officials, who supervise the law courts, who set up panels of commissioners to investigate things that go wrong. So these are the people who would sentence an incompetent general to crucifixion. But equally, of course, if they turn out to be competent, then the same fate may be visited on them.

And they could be criticized.

Absolutely. And you have two senior magistrates called suffets. It's analogous to the Hebrew word for judge. And these are They're like consuls. The Romans have consuls. They are magistrates who are elected in pairs, and they serve a term of office for one year.

There's a popular assembly as well?

There is also a popular assembly. There is also a democratic element as well. It's a complicated system system that does nevertheless seem to work. I think the reason for that is that it is above all a city of merchants, and everyone in Carthage recognizes that the wealth and the power of Carthage is founded in its commercial aptitudes. People at the head of the state recognize what the goals of Carthage Indian policy have to be. Carthage has to keep markets open. It has to open up new markets, whether that is by the point of a sword or by imposing trade treaties on distant parts to monopolize the exploitation of these various territories. If you can't have a monopoly, then you establish pacts that will determine how much things should be sold for to ensure the freedom of the seas, to abolish piracy, to cut down rival powers, all these things. These are the constants of Carthageanian policy throughout its history. But by the fourth century, I think you are starting to see a move from that Venetian, Portuguese policy of imperialism.

To a more Spanish approach.

Or dare one say a Roman one. Those Venetian settlements in the west of Sicily, so Panormas and Mocia, for instance. By the fourth century, they have basically been absorbed into a Carthageanian Empire. At the same time, Carthage is also planting colonies in Sicily of its own directly to maintain its control. Because, of course, you've got Carthage on the African side of that Strait, and you've got Sicily, the Western side of Sicily. Carthage absolutely needs to control those seas because without it, its trade will be throttled. So the major city that it founds in this period is what's now Marsala, as in the wine, Nelson's favorite wine, but was known by the Romans as Lilibeum. And this is founded in 397 after the Syracusians had captured and obliterated Mocha, the foul-smelling city on the island with its Garum factory. Lilibeum is founded to be a sanctuary for people who had fled Mocha, but also it's settled by lots and lots of Carthaginian colonists. It's basically the westernmost point of Sicily. It has massive walls, so 20 feet, has a great big ditch. It's built to be completely impregnable. This idea of a Carthaginian Empire that is simultaneously Phenitian, I think is exemplified by the fact that this is the point when the Carthaginians introduce their coinage with the palm tree on it.

The Greek word for palm tree is Phoenix. There's an illusion there to the idea of the Phenitians.

So they're still, even at this late stage, very much into the Phenitian heritage.

They are because it provides a way of allowing what had previously been independent Phenitian settlements to feel that they have a stake in what effectively is becoming a Carthaginian Empire. If they capture Greek cities, so they capture Salinas, for instance, on the south Coast, there's always been a thorn in the Carthaginian side. They capture that and they plant a Phenitian garrison on the Acropolis and other Greek cities are made tributary. So that basically in this period, the fact that Carthage rules the western half of Sicily is being established by treaties that are being signed with Syracuse and with other Greek cities in the East. We're into the age of Alexander the Great. I think that by this point, Carthage is becoming an empire in a way that would be recognizable, say, to Alexander.

Yes. Tom Alexander obviously never did conquer Carthage, but he was said to have thought about it. Presumably, that reflects a wider ambition among Greek warlords, as it were. They think, let's bring Carthage down. Carthage is a prize worth taking.

Well, I think obviously what Alexander's example example does, is give to other Greeks the notion that going off and conquering great empires, what a tremendous thing to do. And Carthage is a obvious one. Say in Syracuse, as we've said, the Syracus are endlessly going to war with Carthage, but there is this sense that it's like a sport where it's governed by rules. Neither one is trying to knock the other one out. But in the wake of Alexander and his successes, you have this guy called Agathoclees, who's actually a very humble stock. He's a son of a potter, but he rises to become the tyrant of Syracuse, and he actually ends up invading Africa. This is the first time that a Greek army has landed in Africa. At one point, it looks as though Carthage is going to fall to a Gathicles. If that had happened, then obviously that would have been a feat comparable to Alexander overthrowing Persha. We're told that Carthage is reduced to such desperate straits by this invasion, that they immolate 500 of the children children of the Carthaginian elite.

In desperation.

In desperation. In the event, it all goes wrong. There's a uprising back in Syracuse, and a Cathetercles has to go back home, Scarp is back. The Carthaginians sign a treaty with the Cathetercles, which It's pretty tough on them. They have to pay a large indemnity, but they survive. Within a few decades, they are back as prosperous, as intimidating as ever. So Carthage has survived where Persha didn't. Carthage has off the Greek adventurer trying to overthrow it. I think that that's tribute to the fact that it's just a very, very formidable power. I mean, probably we arrive at the dawning of the third century BC. It's clearly the most formidable power in the Western Mediterranean.

The comparison that we mentioned in the last episode, we talked about how after the French Revolution, during the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the French would say, Well, we are the land power, we are Rome, and Britain is Carthage. It's only interested in money and navies. Is Carthage still similar? You said that Carthage was becoming more of a land empire with bases and forts and stuff like that. But is it still very, very reliant on its navy rather than its army.

Well, to pursue the comparison with Britain, of course, the British are not averse to conquering territory, but they are tending to do it because they need naval bases. Then to maintain their naval bases, they need to control the hinterland and they need to keep the French out or whatever. I think it's rather similar to that. The Carthaginians are not necessarily interested in territory for its own sake, but they are interested absolutely in maintaining their control of Western Sicily because otherwise, they'll lose control of the straits. They want to keep control of Sardinia. They want to keep control of Southern Spain, because without that, they won't be able to maintain the source of their wealth, which is trade. But that is why the French do compare Britain in the Napoleonic Wars to Carthage.

Actually, weird thing is that all the places that you've mentioned, they're the places, you said about Nelson, like in that wine, they're the places that he's always visiting.

Absolutely, for the same reason.

So the Carthaginians are interested in the same harbors that the British are interested in the 18th century. Yeah.

Because if you want a Blue Water Empire, you have to have a bit of territorial control. I mean, by this point, I realized that we haven't actually described what Carthage looks like in its heyday. It is a very, very impressive city because it's a very wealthy city. So you've still got the Biersa, this acropolis, which is the the old town. The old city is counterpointed by a grid system that's cutting edge design, the same kind that you have in Alexandria. And if you imagine the acropolis, the Biersa, and slopes running down to the sea, the streets look like a fan running down to the shoreline. Further from the old center of the city, you have beautiful villas, you have docks, you have harbors, you have massive arsenals, you have teeming industrial zones, you have the Tofet, of course, you have cemeteries. Temples, Tom. Beautiful temples, yes, particularly to Balhomon, the great patron, and Tannit, his partner. These of the great patrons of Carthage. But you also have massive bristling walls, and these extend more than 18 miles around the limits of the city. And these are what had seen Agatha Clees off. He just couldn't break through.

And you'd look at Carthage at the beginning of the third century BC, and you'd say, She is absolutely secure. No one can possibly rival her. Her only conceivable rival, Syracuse, has had a crack and has disminally failed. She's going to last forever. I mean, who can rival her?

Tom, am I right in thinking a new rival will emerge from the backwater of Italy, Central Italy, and that that will set the stage for the most extraordinary superpower clash in ancient history. Is that about right?

Well, we'll find out in our next episode when we will be looking at the rise of Rome.

Crikey, what drama. Listen, if you are a member of our own sinister and decadent mercantile empire, the Rest is History Club, as you probably know, you can listen to those episodes about the battle between Carthage and Rome. You can listen to that right now. If you're not, if you're very much on the outside looking in, then I'm afraid you'll just have to wait until, as the young people say, that episode drops. So, yeah, you can either be part of the elite or you can be part of the rabble. Your choice. But either way, it's Carthage versus Rome next. Don't miss it, live and exclusive on The Rest is History. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.