Destroy Carthage (9 page)

Gelon, warned by Theron of Hamilcar's approach, was ready
with his army. The opposing forces marched on Himera from
Panormus and Syracuse, encamping beyond the walls, the in­vasion fleet beached in the vicinity. Marginally outnumbered,
the tyrant compensated with a cunning stroke.

Hamilcar called on Selinus to replace the cavalry lost at
sea. Learning of this, Gelon dispatched a body of his own horse
to keep the rendezvous. Deceiving the guard on the Carthag­inian fleet, the Syracusian cavalry gained their camp and burnt
the beached ships. It was a demoralizing blow for Hamilcar's
mercenaries. They fought stubbornly but never regained the
initiative.

The fate of their general is hazy. According to Carthaginian
report, recalled by Herodotus, on perceiving the battle lost
Hamilcar threw himself into a sacrificial fire lit to appease the
Phoenician gods, thus emulating Dido. Alternatively, he was
said to have been cut down by the impostors who fired the
ships. Few of his men escaped death or capture.

Carthage was stunned by the bad news. Her most ambitious
intervention to date in Greek affairs, Himera would have been
costly enough as a victory. As a defeat, it was exorbitant. Gelon
had now to be bought off with silver. His price was more than
fifty tons of it.

To the north, the Etruscans were losing ground to the Italian
Greeks. In the east, Salamis had proved a Persian debacle. It was
a time for licking burnt fingers. Prudently, the Carthaginians
fell back in Sicily on Motye and the far west, leaving the
Siceliots to resolve their own arguments. Revenge would come
later. At the moment, Africa, for all its wild wastes, seemed the
safest place.

Naval
losses inflicted by Gelon; the diminution of northern
trade, especially the import of corn and oil; the need to ac­cumulate reserves against the prospect of renewed war - a
variety of factors stimulated Carthaginian interest in the
hitherto neglected hinterland. Poetically, the change of strate­gic emphasis was described by one writer (Chrysostom of
Antioch) as 'transforming the Carthaginians into Africans.'

Apart from its northern fringe, Africa mystified the ancient
world. Egypt had encountered the Nubians of the Upper Nile,
fought the Ethiopians - the 'dark-faced people'-, probed the
Libyan wilderness. Beyond, in an imagined domain of monsters
and sorcerers, the gods held nocturnal revels and the sun
retired: so thought Homer.

While the coasts of Andalusia, Italy and the intervening
islands presented obvious attractions to Carthaginian travel­lers, the aspect inland of their adopted shore was forbidding.
To the west, the Tellian Atlas formed an almost unbroken
barrier between the sea and the interior as far as the straits of
Gibraltar. To the east, the coastal plains, themselves less daunt­ing, were bounded by swamps and the wastes of the Hamada.
Predatory beasts roamed a jungle of wild olives and mastic
trees.

The people encountered in North Africa were known by the
Greeks as Libyans, later as Berbers from the Latin
Barbarus.
A
group of tribes sharing a basically common tongue, they were
scattered widely between Egypt and the Atlantic coast. South
of the Atlas, they bordered on black preserves. To the north,
through the early history of settlement, they held sway to the
outskirts of the coastal towns.

Little is known of the race other than that it was white
and nomadic, subsisting by stockbreeding, hunting and exploit­ing the black tribes. Inured to a harsh existence, its people
were fierce and austere, not dissimilar, it seems, to the Tuareg
of modern times. Until the epoch of Himera, they had been
sufficiently strong in Tunisia to exact ground-rent from Carth­age.

Thereafter, the city set about subduing its neighbours with
urgency. The chronology of her African expansion is impre­cise. Some acquisitions may have occurred in the 6th century;
some not until the 4th. Nevertheless, by far the greatest surge
of activity attached to that part of the 5th century following
Himera.

It was led by the family most anxious to efface the humility,
namely the Magonids, in particular by a son of Hamilcar
named Hanno. Hanno lost no time. In the space of a few decades, Carthage had dominated the easterly peninsula of Cape
Bon, conquered an area of the hinterland (including the Medjerda and Siliana plains) approximating to the most fertile
part of modern Tunisia, raised villas and farmsteads in the
wilderness.

The annexed regions were of two kinds: those immediate
to Carthage, including the isthmus and Cape Bon peninsula,
counted as city land; the more distant as subject territories.
Their inhabitants seem not to have been enslaved as a general
rule. Adopting, at least in part, the culture of their masters,
they became, again in Greek parlance, Libyphoenicians.

By the end of the century, visitors would express amaze­ment at the fecundity of a countryside transformed by fruit
trees, vines, almond, pomegranate and cereals. Land experts
had supervised the reclamation. One of them, an official with
the favoured name of Mago, was celebrated for a treatise on
agriculture which, translated, became a standard Roman
source. 'Above all writers,' declared the agriculturist Columel­la, 'we honour Mago the Carthaginian, father of husbandry.'
Varro cited the work as the highest authority in its field.

Control of the interior reinforced the authority of Carthage
in Phoenician coastal settlements. Though numerous, these had
not on the whole attained much size. Few could be dignified
as cities in any sense. Some had grown into modest townships
with markets attracting the surrounding tribes; others re­mained no more than trading stations, possibly occupied
seasonally.