Part 23

Carthage was built on a peninsula, of which, however, it did not take up the whole, as indeed has been supposed, but only the southern half: this mistake arose from its having been said that the city was twenty-three (Roman) miles in circumference. It seems to have been entirely surrounded by a sort of breastwork. This is now known from the excavations of Colonel Humbert, who was several years in the service of the Dey of Tunis; but the results of his researches have not yet found their way into books.[58] (His papers fell into the hands of a downright adventurer, Count Camillo Borgia, who copied his drawings, and passed them off as his own.) The old town of Carthage was so thoroughly destroyed, that no traces of it are found above ground;--the place on which it stood was laid under a curse, and therefore the later Roman Carthage was founded by the side of it;--yet there is still to be seen a quay built of great blocks of hewn stone, from which I had a piece broken off as a relic, which is, however, still lying at Leghorn. Where it faced the isthmus, the city, as has been remarked before, was fenced by a triple wall; next to this was the Bozra; on the south was the port, which was detached, as at Cadiz. The harbour (Cothon), which was dug out, had several basins with a narrow entrance, like the docks in London: from the offing one sailed into the harbour for merchant vessels, and from thence by a canal to the arsenal, which was situated on an island, and strongly fortified; round the basins, there were storehouses with the equipments for every ship. This port was of later origin; probably there was a third district also. In the course of time, there had likewise grown up a large suburb, Megara or Magalia, the situation of which cannot be exactly defined: it was quite covered with gardens, but was also surrounded by a wall. As the coast was very steep, it was difficult to land there. It is the present El Marsa. The Roman Carthage, founded again by C. Gracchus and Cæsar, was in this neighbourhood, as may be clearly made out from the antiquities, which are brought to light there. The only Carthaginian relics to be found in it, are tombs; which is easily accounted for, as it lay outside of the city.

Appian is the only source, which gives us the details of this war. Fortunately he has copied from Polybius; for otherwise he is below criticism. Yet even then, his account, like that of Zonaras, is very obscure and unconnected. We merely gather from thence that Scipio landed on the outer part of the peninsula, where he took up his position, and made himself master of the suburb; so that Carthage was confined to the old town and the harbours. About a year before his consulship already, a Roman officer had discovered the possibility of landing at Megara, and of taking possession of it; and by this means Carthage was brought to great distress, as a large part of the provisions used to come in that way. Nothing could be done against the walls on the landside; Scipio, therefore, directed his attack against the side from the bay with redoubled energy. In the meanwhile, the Carthaginians summoned Hasdrubal to the city, and he entrenched himself on the isthmus before it; but when the suburb was taken, he threw himself panic-struck into the town, and the Romans occupied his fortified camp; so that the Carthaginians were entirely hemmed in. Another Carthaginian general, Bithyas, had remained in the interior of the country; and he behaved admirably, always supplying the city with provisions, which he conveyed to it through the very midst of the unwieldy Roman ships. To cut off from Carthage this support, Scipio now chose as a last expedient, the gulf being shallow, to choke up the mouth of the harbour by running a dam across; and this was so much the easier, as the swell, when coming from the Syrtes, carries with it a good deal of mud. The harbour has ceased to exist; yet one may still very distinctly make out its site and shape from the silt which has been washed in. From the dam, Scipio tried to batter the wall of the harbour with his engines: the desperate struggles of the Carthaginians to hinder this, beggar all description. The greatest feat which they accomplished, was the building of a whole fleet of fifty triremes in the arsenal, and then,--as the latter was connected by a canal with the outer harbour, the entrance of which Scipio was endeavouring to block up,--digging from thence an outlet on the other side to the sea, by which they brought out their ships to attack the Roman fleet in the gulf. Polybius (in Appian) justly remarks, that, if at that moment they had fearlessly fallen upon the Roman fleet, they would undoubtedly have destroyed it, as the Romans had utterly neglected their naval concerns. Unhappily, they slackened after their more than human effort, and, lingering for some days, irretrievably lost time, and with it all the fruits of their labour: the Romans got their ships ready as well as they could, and thus the Carthaginians were driven back, particularly by the Græco-Asiatic ships of Sida, which fought quite in a way of their own. Four of these small vessels would cast anchor, on which they swung round as on a pivot, and thus defended themselves against the Carthaginians, an example which was followed by the others. The Carthaginians retreated. The next day, they wished to renew the attack: but they got foul of each other in the narrow entrance, the canal, which they had dug, being unfortunately not wide enough, and the Romans bore down upon them, and drove them against the wall of the harbour; so that this gigantic undertaking was again baffled. The Carthaginians now saw nothing but ruin before their eyes. Scipio first took the harbour for merchantmen, and from thence he advanced through the canal against the arsenal. Thus the city was conquered bit for bit, and the Romans made their way as far as the arsenal; as this could not have been held, the Carthaginians, perhaps too hastily, at once set fire to it, and then to the storehouses for the ships. The Romans were in possession of both harbours, and the fight was for the old city, Bozra (Byrsa), which had no walls on that side, but only leant upon the threefold wall on the isthmus: from the harbour, three large streets led up to the Byrsa, and in these the rich and the old families seem to have lived:--one may still trace in the description the gradual development of the city. The houses there were most of them seven or eight stories high, with flat roofs. (We must look upon Carthage as having been with regard to art and beauty like the fine towns of Greece, but with much more of Roman grandeur and massiveness: the building of stately streets is ascribed to them by the Romans as a thing peculiarly their own; the Greeks knew nothing of it.) There was now the same struggle as at Saragossa. House after house was defended and taken; the enemy broke through the party-walls, they fought from room to room, and when they had forced their way up the stairs, and driven the unfortunate inmates from the last stories, they tried to throw bridges from the roofs across the streets. The superior strength of the Romans assured them the victory, besides which, a most fearful famine was raging in the city where people were already feeding on dead bodies: and yet the besieged would not hear of surrender, though indeed such a thing could hardly have been mooted, as Hasdrubal had treated the Roman prisoners with the most horrible barbarity. When, after much bloodshed, part of the city was already taken, the Romans stopped short, and set fire to the buildings; on which the Carthaginians, fleeing before the flames, pulled up the houses, and thus raised up a huge mound of rubbish against the wall and the citadel: the harrowing description of this fire is evidently from Polybius, the unfortunate eye-witness of the horrors which now took place. The soldiers deliberately buried the wounded alive under the ruins! Thus the old town was reached, and now every one tried only to save himself; the priests went as suppliants with signs of truce, and begged for mercy: Scipio then caused it to be announced that the lives of those who would come out should be spared. On this, the people which still survived, fifty thousand in number, came forth; the Roman deserters only, with Hasdrubal and his family, retreated to the highest part of the citadel, a most hallowed place which was called Ἀσκληπιεῖον. Hasdrubal was base enough to sue for his life; but his wife slew her children, and cursing him, even from the pinnacle of the temple, threw herself into the flames, an example which was followed by the deserters. Thus Scipio became master of a heap of smouldering ruins drenched with blood. Much must, however, have been preserved, as he took from the temples many Sicilian trophies, which he sent back to that island. Neither Tarentum nor Capua had been destroyed by the senate; but Scipio had to raze Carthage to the ground at their command. He now completed the work already begun, and drove a plough-share across the site as a sign of its everlasting desolation: the army, when it went away, left only that utter wilderness in the midst of which Marius seated himself sixty years afterwards. The prisoners were treated with more or less humanity: most of them were sold for slaves, some also were slain; a few of those of higher rank met with a better fate, and were distributed among the Italian towns. Bithyas was one of these; their race and their name perished from the earth. The Romans, whose forefathers had put to death the great C. Pontius, spared the life of Hasdrubal: he was kept for the triumph.

Carthage had stood for seven hundred years. Part of its territory was given to the Numidian kings, the three sons of Masinissa; the rest became a Roman province, under the rule of a proconsul or prætor.

THE PSEUDO-PHILIP. THE ACHÆAN WAR. DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.

When Carthage was overpowered, the Macedonian war was already ended, and Corinth near its downfall. The Macedonian war of Andriscus is a striking example of the way in which the whole of a people may be taken in. The false Demetrius, as he was called, was in the opinion of those who knew history well, by no means an impostor: but he had been brought up in Poland, had gone over to the Roman catholic religion, and had adopted European manners; whence the mistrust which he met with in Russia. There is a very strong likelihood that one of the Sebastians in Portugal, was the true king: (Lessing, in the “_Literatur briefe_,” has also written a masterly article on this subject, though it was one which was out of his beat.) But Andriscus was really an impostor, most likely a Thracian gladiator; heaven knows how he could have dreamed of the venturesome idea of giving himself out as the son of Perseus: perhaps he bore some likeness to him. Such personifications are not unseldom attempted in the East; in Europe, some instances of the kind are met with in the middle ages. The war had already broken out when Scipio became consul, perhaps even a year before: (the destruction of Carthage was in the time of his proconsulship.)

Perseus and his sons were, after the triumph of Æmilius Paullus, sent as prisoners to Alba on the lake Fucinus, where they were treated in a way which clearly showed that their extinction was determined on. The king did not outlive this cruel usage more than two years; he had so childishly clung to life, that he would not listen to the hints of Æmilius Paullus, to take it himself: they probably killed him by constantly disturbing his sleep. His eldest son died in the same manner; the youngest lived in the most abject degradation. Being clever, he learnt the Latin language, and earned his daily bread as clerk to the municipal council of Alba: beyond this, we have no further trace of him.

During the Carthaginian war, Andriscus now set forth that he was a son of Perseus, and he found a party in Macedonia; being, however, unable to stand his ground, he went to Demetrius in Syria, and was by him given up to the Romans. Such an act is just what one would have expected from Demetrius, who had every reason to do his best to regain his footing with the Romans, now that he had only just escaped being punished by them. He had fled indeed from Rome after the death of his brother Antiochus Epiphanes, to secure the throne; and the Romans had sent commissioners to Syria, on hearing that the Syrians, contrary to the existing treaties, were keeping elephants, and had moreover built a greater number of ships than they were allowed. One of these commissioners was slain in a riot at Laodicea, and Demetrius, with great difficulty, turned aside the vengeance of the Romans, by yielding up the murderers and killing the elephants. Under these circumstances, it was but natural that Andriscus was given up. At Rome, this man was, as an adventurer, held in such contempt, that he was not properly guarded; and he again made his escape. He came to Thrace, where the Romans were already feared and hated; all sorts of people flocked to him there, and he made an inroad into Macedon. A war in that country was very inconvenient to the Romans, who were engaged in their enterprise against Carthage, and had no troops in the north of Greece. To the amazement of every body, Andriscus routed the Macedonians on the eastern bank of the Strymon; he then crossed the river, and beat them once more, whereupon they all joined him. His success was quite wonderful; he put on the diadem under the name of Philip. Things must at that time have been in a very dismal state in Macedon. The Romans had brought in the wretched republican constitution, and the most eminent men had been led away to Italy; so that the people, who from the earliest times had been accustomed to kingly rule, eagerly caught at this hope of bettering its lot. In Thessaly also, he found partizans. Nasica, who happened to be there, got together the contingents of the Greeks, and with their aid repulsed Philip when he invaded it: at that time, therefore, the Greeks were still faithful. Andriscus was a tyrannical fellow at bottom: Polybius calls him στυγνὸς ἀνήρ. Yet he knew how to make himself respected: his armaments were on an extraordinary scale, and he ventured to wage war even against the Roman prætor, P. Juventius Thalna; after having beaten him, he marched once more into Thessaly. Matters looked serious enough: Q. Metellus, the prætor, was obliged to go with a large army to Greece, where he landed on the coast, which could not have been easily defended; in the meanwhile, the Achæans already showed themselves very mutinous, and the war, if it lasted, could not but lead to a rising. Metellus drove the king from Thessaly, who, like Perseus, fell back upon Pydna, followed by the Romans. The Macedonians, who were superior in numbers, divided their forces for a foray; and Metellus took advantage of this, and attacked and utterly routed them. The conquest of Macedonia in this insurrection was not, however, so easy as the former one had been; for many places held out, expecting a worse fate. On this occasion Pella must have been destroyed: Dio Chrysostom, in the first century after the birth of Christ, speaks of it as a ruined city; it now lies buried under mounds of earth, and is only to be traced by the row of hills which marked its site. Undoubtedly the most interesting antiquities might be found there, especially works of art; but unfortunately, the present condition of European affairs gives little hope of any thorough researches being made there so very soon. Andriscus was taken prisoner in Thrace, and put to death: Macedon became a regular province, and from henceforth a governor seems to have been constantly sent thither; its few remaining privileges were taken away.

Had the Achæans known what they wanted, the revolt of the pseudo-Philip would have been the moment for them to act: but they allowed themselves to be beguiled into folly and absurdity. Although we cannot disguise from ourselves, that the causes which hastened on the fall of Achaia, were disgraceful to the Achæans, yet it is a fact that its ruin made the condition of the survivors not better but worse; and this awakens our sympathy for them. And moreover, this degenerate people still had among them many excellent men. The Romans had for a long time been bent on the destruction of Achaia, and by means of traitors, such as Callicrates and Andronidas, they ruled there with unlimited sway; hence causes for grievances arose, and when these fellows had once gained a settled position, they too were no longer as ready to do the dirty work as before. The catastrophe was wholly brought on by one unhappy violent act of the otherwise excellent Philopœmen, a man who was justly called the last of the Greeks. He entertained from his very childhood a deadly hatred against Sparta, since Cleomenes had destroyed his native town of Megalopolis; and to bring down Sparta, was what he ever had most at heart. He took advantage of Rome’s being entangled in the war of Antiochus, to compel Sparta to join the Achæan league, and to adopt its customs and forms; for among the Achæans, unlike the other confederacies of the same kind in the ancient world, such a fusion existed. Achaia then comprised the whole of the Peloponnesus: that strange federal system was full as mischievous as that of our unfortunate German confederacy, in which the least of the petty princes has just as good a vote as he on whom the safety of the country hinges;--or as the state of things in America before the constitution of Washington, when Delaware with seventy thousand inhabitants, had an equal vote with Virginia, the population of which amounted to half a million; or as in the republics of the Netherlands, where Zeeland, which paid three per cent. of the taxes, had by its votes as much weight as Holland which paid fifty-eight per cent. This absurdity was the ruin of the Achæan league. Elis was a large town and country, while Lacedæmon, even after the sea-coast had been already severed from it, was yet greater than all Achaia; nevertheless, each of the twelve little Achæan townships, many of which were not larger than some of our German villages,[59] had just as many votes as Lacedæmon. But the second article was the most galling of all. Even as Sicyon had adopted the Achæan νόμιμα, which was all very well, so was Sparta likewise to do away with the laws of Lycurgus, to which it had clung with so much pride, and to put up with those of the Achæans: this was done some years before the war with Perseus. Spartiates, in the true sense of the word, there were none at that time, but only Lacedæmonians; the former had died away, and since the days of Cleomenes, the population of the town, which consisted of descendants of the Periœcians and Neodamodes, under the name of Lacedæmonians, stepped into the full rights of citizens. But as these Lacedæmonians had adopted the laws and the ἀγωγή of Lycurgus, and prided themselves in them, it was a great piece of cruelty in Philopœmen to force them to drop them again: for this was a change which was felt throughout the whole business of every day life. Moreover, there is not much to be said in praise of the Achæan forms, and however little good there may have been in the Spartan system, if it did nothing else, it made good soldiers. For these reasons, the Lacedæmonians strove to rid themselves of this hateful alliance, and there were long negotiations in consequence: yet it was still binding on them in the beginning of the seventh century, when even a Lacedæmonian, Menalcidas, was the general of the Achæan league.

About this time, some unlucky quarrels having arisen between the Oropians and Athenians, the former bribed Menalcidas with ten talents to help them. The assistance, however, came too late; notwithstanding which he exacted the money from them, and though he had previously promised part of it to Callicrates, he kept the whole for himself. From the charge which the latter brought against him, sprang all the woes which befell Achaia. Menalcidas did his utmost to sever Lacedæmon from the league, and he succeeded. At the time of the negotiations which took place about it at Rome, both Menalcidas and the Achæan ambassador deceived the people who had sent them: each of them carried home a false decision. It was just then the most unfortunate period of the third Punic war. Lacedæmon now severed itself, and a war broke out between the Achæans and Lacedæmonians, in which the latter had the worst of it: for Menalcidas was a wretched general, and they were so hard pressed that they had to consent to an agreement by which the Achæans got every thing that they wanted. Menalcidas laid hands upon his own life, and the Lacedæmonians again joined the Achæan league.