The History of Rome, Book IV. Theodor Mommsen

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СКАЧАТЬ found insufficient; to the question, what in that case would suffice, the reply was given that the Carthaginians knew that themselves. They might, no doubt, have known what the Romans wished; but yet it seemed impossible to believe that the last hour of their loved native city had really come. Once more Carthaginian envoys—on this occasion thirty in number and with unlimited powers—were sent to Rome. When they arrived, war was already declared (beginning of 605), and the double consular army had embarked. Yet they even now attempted to dispel the storm by complete submission. The senate replied that Rome was ready to guarantee to the Carthaginian community its territory, its municipal freedom and its laws, its public and private property, provided that it would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue to them. The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously, as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves pointed out. The circumstance that everything which they could ask was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the semblance of concession. The Carthaginians, however, would not open their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or to thorough resignation. When they heard at the same time of the horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe. The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in Africa. The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the provisions demanded were supplied. When the gerusia of Carthage appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the disarming of the city. To the question of the Carthaginians, who was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants— against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by flight—it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans. Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of private persons—to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of armour—and inquired whether anything more was desired. Then the consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council, that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose, provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.

      Resistance of the Carthaginians

      This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the—shall we say magnanimous or frenzied?—enthusiasm, which was displayed previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the Jews against Vespasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population, when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear home beside the sea. Hope and deliverance were out of the question; political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission. But the voice of the few who counselled the acceptance of what was inevitable was, like the call of the pilot during a hurricane, drowned amidst the furious yells of the multitude; which, in its frantic rage, laid hands on the magistrates of the city who had counselled the surrender of the hostages and arms, made such of the innocent bearers of the news as had ventured at all to return home expiate their terrible tidings, and tore in pieces the Italians who chanced to be sojourning in the city by way of avenging beforehand, at least on them, the destruction of its native home. No resolution was passed to defend themselves; unarmed as they were, this was a matter of course. The gates were closed; stones were carried to the battlements of the walls that had been stripped of the catapults; the chief command was entrusted to Hasdrubal, the grandson of Massinissa; the slaves in a body were declared free. The army of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal—which was in possession of the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Hadrumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an invaluable support for the defence—was entreated not to refuse its aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency. At the same time, concealing in true Phoenician style the most unbounded resentment under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy. A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days' armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms; the public buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal; women cut off their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults; in an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed. That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few miles off, learning anything of it, is not the least marvellous feature in this marvellous movement sustained by a truly enthusiastic, and in fact superhuman, national hatred. When at length the consuls, weary of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.

      Situation of Carthage

      Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its situation8 and by the art of its inhabitants, who had very often to depend on the protection of its walls. Into the broad gulf of Tunis, which is bounded on the west by Cape Farina and on the east by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is connected with the mainland only towards the west. This promontory, at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat, again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two heights of Jebel-Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends the plain of El Mersa. On its southern portion which ends in the height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The pretty steep declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there. On the wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art of fortification in those times was expended. It consisted, as its recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent; these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad.9 This enormous wall, composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories, exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high, to a height of 45 feet,10 and furnished in the lower range of the casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks.11 The citadel-hill, the Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference of fully 2000 double paces,12 was joined to this wall at its southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined to the city-wall of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps. The south side of the city СКАЧАТЬ