July 20, 2011 • 24 mins
Carthage was a trading hub of the ancient world, challenging the budding Roman Republic. In 264 B.C., Rome and Carthage began the Punic Wars, which continued for more than a century. Tune in to learn more about the rise -- and fall -- of Carthage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Daddy and I'm Deblina Chuck Reboarding. And today
we're gonna start the podcast with a myth, or more specifically,
(00:20):
the epic poem version of this myth and Nia by Virgil.
And you're probably familiar with the main arc of the Aenia.
The young hero a Nias escapes from Troy and eventually
goes on to start Rome. But it's the middle part
of the story that concerns us today, his little romantic
stopover in Carthage. So according to the Ania, a Nia
(00:44):
stopped in the North African city of Carthage, where he
was welcomed by the city's queen, died Oh. And it
wasn't long before she fell in love with him. And
then when Jupiter finally ordered a Nias to keep on
keeping on with his travels and move along, died Oh
basically flipped out. To put it in a non epic
poetry kind of way, she ended up committing suicide and
(01:07):
swore everlasting hatred between East and West. And and here's
what she had to say in a in an epic
poetry kind of way. No love between our people's ever
shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword against sword.
This is my curse, war between all our people's, all
(01:27):
their people's endless war. It's pretty serious stuff there. So,
as a Nia's finds out on a subsequent jaunt to
the underworld, war does come for Rome and Carthage, and Virgil,
writing well after the fact, would have known that, in fact,
the spurned love of Dido was virgil simple poetic solution
(01:50):
to the question of why these bloody, endless wars between
Rome and Carthage started in the first place. But there
are more complex reasons behind it, and that's sort we're
what we're going to be looking into today. How it
really came to be that Rome and Carthage fought three wars,
that Carthage ended up being completely destroyed, and that Rome
(02:11):
came pretty close to the brink in the process too.
But before we get into that at all, first we
want to take a look at Carthage a little bit. Obviously,
Rome was the victor in the clash between the two,
so consequently we know that city, we know the empire. Carthage,
on the other hand, we know less about it's thought
of as an extinct city. I think there's a little
(02:33):
tag and next all the entries in the Galileo database
that indicates that made me feel kind of sorry for it.
It was basically wiped off the face of the earth.
So where was Carthage? Who words people? Well, they were Phoenicians,
a seafaring people. More specifically, Carthage was founded as a
colony by Phoenician people from the city of Tire now
in Lebanon an eight twelve b C. Yeah, and the
(02:55):
name means new city, the name Carthage. But considering it
was founded three sent trees before the Roman Republic, that's
all sort of relative, depends on how you look at things.
But the Phoenicians chose the spot which is now near
the city of Tunis in North Africa, because it was
just perfectly positioned. It had a secure harbor, It sat
(03:15):
on the east west trade route that brought Spanish silvered
attire and the north south line that connected Greece to
Italy and Sicily and down onto North Africa. So it
wasn't too long before the colony became not just a
merchant capital but a local leader to started producing items
itself and Initially this was luxury goods like terra cotta
(03:38):
figurines and carved ivory masks, jewelry. My favorite item here
decorated Ostrich eggs. It's funny to imagine there was ever
a time when you'd have an industry for that, but
Carthage was on it, and they were really known for
their beds and cushions and mattresses. Um. Those items from
Carthage were considered to be a special your ritzy, the
(04:00):
best of the best, and when the city of Old
Tire declined, Carthage really became the new Phoenician hub, especially
with its powerful fleet and merchant network. They even developed
their own dialect called Punic, which also became a bye
word for their culture. Yea, so we're going to toss
around the word Punic in this episode, obviously, because the
(04:20):
wars we're talking about are the Punic War. Still, though,
the city of Carthage, even though it was quite successful
and was expanding, didn't get big aspirations for imperialism until
just before the First Punic War, and by that point
there was a bit of a problem with their neighbor
to the north, which was Rome by this point getting
(04:42):
more and more powerful both Rome and Carthage wanted to
expand to Sicily because Sicily was fertile, had rich soil.
It was just a good place to be in possession
of and the key. It was also the key to
southern expansion for Rome and northern expansion for Carthage. So
it's not only a jewel in its own right, it's
(05:03):
it's a bridge to bigger things. But before we get
to war, it's important to know something about mercantile Carthage,
so we're gonna explain that a little bit. They were
rich and considered to have the best navy in the land,
but their population was very small, so consequently they relied
on mercenaries or silver spears, led by Punic officers. And
French historian Jules Michela puts it this way, the life
(05:26):
of an industrious merchant or a Carthaginian was too precious
to be risked, as long as it was possible to
substitute for it that of a barbarian from Spain or Gaul.
Carthage new and could tell to a drachma what the
life of a man of each nation came to. So
they have a bought army, but they also weren't exactly
popular with their subject lands, and well, Rome sort of
(05:48):
came in and would make conquered territories at least willing
to submit to being Roman because money would eventually follow.
Carthage just milked as African provinces for all they or worth,
really draining them dry. So consequently, Carthage's subject lands were
definitely willing to look at any other offers that came
(06:10):
their way. So there's already a lot more at stake
before we get to this first war than just Sicily
and all of Sicily's bounty. Because of Rome's allies, Carthage's
mercenaries were outnumbered ten to one, and because It's subject
lands would surely rebel if the Romans ever landed in
North Africa, the fight couldn't come too close to home.
(06:31):
Carthage didn't want it getting anywhere near their actual home
bad because the subject lands would turn on them definitely,
So this building tension between the two would be Sicilian
conquerors finally erupted in two sixty four BC, and fighting
went on for about a generation, with Rome winning for
most of that time. If you could call it that really,
I mean, Cecily was pretty much destroyed in the process,
(06:53):
but near the end a punic leader emerged, Hamilcar the Thunderbolt.
He's really good and brings things to draw on land,
leaving the ultimate result to be decided at sea. Yeah,
so we know already that the Phoenicians are famous for
their navy, so Carthage has obviously had the superior navy
over the years. But Rome has been shoring up what
(07:15):
it has over this decades long war by this point,
building up their navy, and they ended up trumping Carthage
with a pretty nifty new invention. It sounds really simple,
but it did the trick. Basically, it was a plank
spike combo that you could hook the other ship onto
your own, latch two ships together, so your ship and
(07:37):
the enemy ship, and then have your men rush on
board to the enemy ship and fight hand to hand,
so basically turning a naval battle between two ships into
a battle between marines. And the war finally ended with
a naval battle in two forty one b C in
which Rome got sicily they won. After that they had
peace for twenty five years, but it was a really
(07:59):
uncomfortable piece. Both knew that war would come again at
some point. Yeah, but Carthage wasn't just sitting around brooding
thinking about future wars. Really, they were busy making money
in Spain, specifically from silver we mentioned that earlier, and
they were also raising a new generation of leaders for
this eventual, unavoidable war, specifically the sons of the Thunderbolt,
(08:24):
Hamilcar's three sons, Hannibal, Hosdrubal and Mago or Mego. I couldn't.
He's the least famous of these sons. So pronunciation, no pronunciation,
keys of it for anyone knows right to us. So
now this new generation is in the picture. War does
come again, though this time the fight starts over a
Spanish city instead of Sicily, and it starts when Hannibal
(08:47):
seizes the Spanish city and to eighteen BC. Soon though,
he heads towards Italy because he knows that if the
Carthage Rome battle ever reaches North Africa, it's bad news
for Carthage. So basically what they knew before, what they
were trying to prevent before, he's trying to perfect again,
disaffected subject lands would rise up, presumably exactly. Plus if
(09:08):
he can get to Italy first, he's thinking maybe it
will have the same effect, and some of those Roman
allies will join up with him instead, or at least
not fight with Rome, so we'll have fewer people to
deal with. So he crosses the Alps with his army
and his troop of elephants. That's probably what he's most
famous for, and we're going to talk about elephants a
little bit more later, but he basically starts crushing it
(09:29):
after that, one victory after the next, and his most
famous triumph came into six BC at the Battle of Kenny,
left fifty thou Romans dead, a huge loss for for Rome,
and the Roman allies were starting to defect at this
point to just as Hannibal had hoped. And we kind
of come to a stalemate here though, or at least
(09:52):
a pause in the action, because Hannibal couldn't take Rome
itself alone. So in two oh seven NBC, he calls
on his brother Hasdrubal, who has been busy defending Spain
all this time with only a handful of sort of
the last pick men, fifteen thousand of them are so
so we're gonna have two of these Thunderbolt brothers now
(10:15):
coming into Italy and Rome down and out. After all
of these battles, So it seemed like a pretty serious
situation for Rome, and according to a Lee Leven article
in Military History, he said, these were without question the
darkest days in the history of the Roman Republic. Really,
they didn't know if they were gonna pull through with
(10:37):
this one. So to try to start to turn the
surround before they can even do that, to go head
to head with those two brothers Rome votes and two
new consoles who happened to hate each other, which isn't
such a good thing. You wouldn't think that would be
a very good to make. They were gayest Claudius Nero,
ancestor of the Emperor, and Marcus Livia's Salinator. Now, so
(11:00):
and Tour will block Hasdrubal's crossing over the Alps from
Spain to Italy. That was his job, and Nero's job
was to block Hannibal to the south. So the tide
turns in Roman favor when Hasdrubal crosses the Alps too
quickly and finds himself ahead of his brother, So he
tries to send off a message that actually ends up
in Nero's hands instead. Yeah, but Nero thinks that it
(11:22):
might be a trick, you know, these tricky people from Carthage,
and he thinks about it long and hard, looks at
the messengers. They do look tired, they look kind of dirty.
He decides that maybe it's legit, or at least he's
just got to hope it is, and he goes with it.
He decides to act, while Hannibal is is clueless about
(11:42):
his brother's whereabouts. So Nero decides to take a small
group of his guys sort of the elite legions from
his forty thousand general group, and join up with Salinator
to face Hasdrubal with combined consular forces. But for Hannibal
realizes what's going on, and he doesn't want to attract notice.
(12:05):
He doesn't want Hasdrubal to realize that suddenly there are
two consular forces to go up again. So Nero and
his men slip into Salinator's camp at night, even just
slipping into their tents. They're not even pitching their own tents.
But Hostruble is sharp and he realizes that something is
going on, that there are suddenly extra Romans in that camp,
(12:27):
and he notices unshaven men, guys with dirty armor, people
who look like they've been traveling and he gives them
the slip and heads to cross the Metaurus River because
he doesn't know what's going on, if his brother Hannibal
has been defeated and the consular armies have joined forces,
(12:48):
or if some other confusion has happened. So he's planning
if he can just get across that river, he'll be
safe on the other side and he can send out
new messengers and try to figure out what on Earth
Earth is going on. Unfortunately for him, though, the river
is flooded, and so when Nero and Salinator show up
to fight, he's in a really tight spot, especially since
(13:10):
his mercenaries from Gall are drunk. That's one of the
problems with mercenaries, especially uh. These guys had not been
working with him for very long, so they hadn't gotten
used to. I guess his regimen, but don't get drunk.
I would think that would be an obvious introductory instruction.
But has your ball makes do? He lines up those
(13:32):
unruly galls on his left on high ground that's too
steep to attack. So their purpose was basically to distract
the Romans because they could potentially charge downhill, but also
to be too far off to be obviously drunk, so
conceal their condition a little bit. In the center. Meanwhile,
(13:53):
he lines up his dependable ligurians, who are you know, guys,
guy so he can count on, and lines them up
with his ten surviving elephants, which ten elephants not a
whole lot to work with. But elephants were obviously pretty
scary to go up against. And I think we've talked
(14:13):
about them before in the um king porous episode. And um,
the crucial thing about them here is that horses who
hadn't seen elephants before, we're just absolutely terrified of them.
They wouldn't go near them, so it could really decimate
a cavalry pretty easily, and then just frightened soldiers clearly.
(14:35):
And um, finally, so we've covered the left and the center.
On the right has your bal stations himself, along with
his Spanish and his African veterans, and these are the
best of the best, his his guys. He can count
on his number one soldiers. And the plan is to
use this swing of the army to push forward and
(14:56):
cut around the Romans. Sounds like a pretty comp x
plan and it does work. Initially, the right pushes ahead,
the center holds, and the galls are scary enough up
on that hill to keep the Romans that are right
under the command of Nero stalling, and they miss the action. Finally,
though Nero does catch on, he realizes that the battle
(15:16):
is to his left, and so he decides to abandon
his position, take half a legion with him, and fight
on Salinator side. Carthage gets confused at this point. They're
like breaking apart. Uh, They're going in different directions. The
battle is lost. Yeah, So, knowing the jig is up,
Hasdrubal charges into the line. He wants to die a
warrior's death. He's killed, and he's beheaded, even though he
(15:40):
and his brother had been pretty careful about properly burying
Roman generals Roman consuls. He's beheaded, and the first thing
Hannibal sees of his brother in ten years is when
Hasdrubal's head is thrown into his camp. So after that defeat,
After the defeat of Hasdrubal, Hannibal's mystique was sort of compromised,
(16:03):
and he fought on for a few more years in
southern Italy, but there wasn't that supreme threat to Rome anymore,
and by two O one b C, the Second Punic
War was over and Carthage was yet again a loser.
So Carthage seemed pretty much out for the count at
this point. Especially looking at at retrospectively, we know where
(16:25):
Rome is going what lies in Rome's future here. But
even though Carthage is military and political cloudwork gone, the
city started to gradually over the decades make a comeback
in trade and and chow some promise. Again. The problem
here is that Rome still holds a grudge though, and
some Romans in particular wanted to see Carthage destroyed. Senator
(16:48):
Cato the Elder takes two ending speeches with a quick quote,
Carthage must be destroyed. So Rome actually starts to intentionally
provoke Carthage, and finally they make this kind of ridiculo
list demand that Carthage actually relocate inland, and after that
war is declared in one BC. Because obviously a seafaring
(17:08):
merchant town their their whole livelihood depends on their location,
it doesn't even make sense. So, like you mentioned, war
starts in one nine b C and after the siege
of Carthage goes on for some years, but by the
spring of one b C the Roman army, which at
this point is under the commander Scipio Amelianas, gets through
(17:32):
the city's defenses and launches the last assault on beer Sell,
which was the citadel of Carthage and also it's religious center,
center of government, really the heart of the city. And
it's bloody work from there. And um, the accounts we have,
which are Greek and Latin accounts, so you know, we
don't get here. Carthages side of the story are pretty horrendous.
(17:56):
There are apparently so many dead in Carthage that Scipio
made some of his soldiers responsible just for clearing the
streets of body so that more troops could move through
and they wouldn't be slowed down. But it took six
days and six nights, even even with all of that bloodshed,
and on the seventh day, city elders brought all of
(18:17):
branches down from the temple from the highest point of
the beer c citadel. Sipio spared them and the fifty
thousand who surrendered along with them, but some in Carthage
did stay and fight to the death. But the city
wasn't just defeated, it was destroyed. After that, Scipio had
his men tear down the city walls and ramparts. They
burned houses and buildings, They looted and pillaged, they sold
(18:39):
off citizens into slavery. But there's one thing they didn't do.
They didn't actually plow the earth with salt. That is
a myth right there. It is because Rome had just
conquered this territory which did have a lot of agricultural
action going on, and why would you want to intentionally
destroy all of that. One thing that the Romans couldn't
(18:59):
just destroy out of hand, but eventually also fell fell
in the fall of Carthage was the language, the Punic language.
It was wiped out over time, and it was kind
of this utter destruction was kind of a message from
Rome that we don't mess around. According to an article
in History Today by Michael Brett, here's what he had
(19:21):
to say, the destruction of Carthage now stood as a
bloody memorial to the cost of resistance to Rome in
a suitably apocalyptic fanfare for Rome's coming of age as
a new world power. So intense it does sound kind
of apocalyptic a few if you think about clearing the
bodies from the streets, and and the fire that burned
(19:42):
the city and just the general destruction and that it's
just gone. These people's lives or livelihood everything. Yeah. Well,
although Carthage did bounce back eventually as a distinctly Roman
capital of North Africa. It was a favorite city of
the emperors, but after it's captured by the Arabs in
six a d. It was abandoned and eventually eclipsed by Tunis,
(20:07):
which is right next door. I don't know if we've
already mentioned this, but Carthage is a kind of upscale
residential suburb now of Tunas, So the landscape has changed
a little bit, and the meaning of the word punic
has also come to mean something different now it means quote,
faithless or treacherous, parting to Marion Webster. According to Marion Webster,
and just as an example of Carthage's bad reputation, it's
(20:29):
perhaps most famously associated with the rumor that they'd sacrifice
their children instead of the standard goat or lamb sacrifice,
and there's actually been some recent anthropological research into that claim.
According to the journal Archaeology, a team from the University
of Pittsburgh led by Jeffrey Schwartz studied the cremated remains
of five hundred forty children from three hundred forty eight
(20:50):
burial urns which were excavated in a cemetery outside Carthage's
main burial ground, and they determined that half were prenatal
or couldn't have survived long and after birth and therefore
couldn't have been sacrificed. So it looks like this is
just a myth. And the vast majority of the others
were really quite young, most of them under the age
of one, but almost all of them under the age
(21:12):
of five or six, which was the age you could
expect to graduate to the main cemetery, and this weren't
unusual mortality rates for the population at the time. And
another theory that sort of came out of that study
was that some civilizations didn't really regard babies or really
young children as individuals like they would for adults or
(21:33):
older children, and therefore, if you if you didn't regard
something as an individual, it might not be worthy of
a sacrifice. So sort of spinning that rumor about Carthage
on its head. It's also interesting because there are these
three great destructive wars, how often the story of Carthage
came up right after World War two, when the world
(21:56):
had obviously just gone through a horribly destructive ordeal. And
there's one specific quote from Bear tilt Breck that you
might see. He used it to kind of frightened fellow
Germans out of remilitarization. And here's what he had to say.
Great Carthage drove three wars. After the first one, it
(22:16):
was still powerful. After the second, it was still inhabitable.
After the third one, it was no longer possible to
find her. So a serious end for kind of a
serious podcast when whenever we do these battle episodes they
tend to be downers. Yeah, they are kind of downers.
I don't know. I guess um. Every now and then
(22:37):
you have an uplifting connection for like marathon for instance,
or something. But yeah, battle it's not pretty. No, they're
never prettier fun, but they always give us good insight
into different cultures and why they do what they do,
I think. But if anyone has anything else to add
to the story, or suggestions for other battles that you
(22:57):
would like covered, or wars in fact, lost cities, any
of those types of stories, please write us Where History
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com or you can
look us up on Twitter at Myston History or on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about Nero, as in the ancestor of the narrow we
talked about today, we have an article called did Emperor
(23:18):
Nero play the fiddle while Rome Burns? So you can
find out the answer to that question by searching for
Nero on our home page at www dot how stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
(23:38):
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise.
Download it today on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Daddy and I'm Deblina Chuck Reboarding. And today
we're gonna start the podcast with a myth, or more specifically,
(00:20):
the epic poem version of this myth and Nia by Virgil.
And you're probably familiar with the main arc of the Aenia.
The young hero a Nias escapes from Troy and eventually
goes on to start Rome. But it's the middle part
of the story that concerns us today, his little romantic
stopover in Carthage. So according to the Ania, a Nia
(00:44):
stopped in the North African city of Carthage, where he
was welcomed by the city's queen, died Oh. And it
wasn't long before she fell in love with him. And
then when Jupiter finally ordered a Nias to keep on
keeping on with his travels and move along, died Oh
basically flipped out. To put it in a non epic
poetry kind of way, she ended up committing suicide and
(01:07):
swore everlasting hatred between East and West. And and here's
what she had to say in a in an epic
poetry kind of way. No love between our people's ever
shore clash with shore, sea against sea and sword against sword.
This is my curse, war between all our people's, all
(01:27):
their people's endless war. It's pretty serious stuff there. So,
as a Nia's finds out on a subsequent jaunt to
the underworld, war does come for Rome and Carthage, and Virgil,
writing well after the fact, would have known that, in fact,
the spurned love of Dido was virgil simple poetic solution
(01:50):
to the question of why these bloody, endless wars between
Rome and Carthage started in the first place. But there
are more complex reasons behind it, and that's sort we're
what we're going to be looking into today. How it
really came to be that Rome and Carthage fought three wars,
that Carthage ended up being completely destroyed, and that Rome
(02:11):
came pretty close to the brink in the process too.
But before we get into that at all, first we
want to take a look at Carthage a little bit. Obviously,
Rome was the victor in the clash between the two,
so consequently we know that city, we know the empire. Carthage,
on the other hand, we know less about it's thought
of as an extinct city. I think there's a little
(02:33):
tag and next all the entries in the Galileo database
that indicates that made me feel kind of sorry for it.
It was basically wiped off the face of the earth.
So where was Carthage? Who words people? Well, they were Phoenicians,
a seafaring people. More specifically, Carthage was founded as a
colony by Phoenician people from the city of Tire now
in Lebanon an eight twelve b C. Yeah, and the
(02:55):
name means new city, the name Carthage. But considering it
was founded three sent trees before the Roman Republic, that's
all sort of relative, depends on how you look at things.
But the Phoenicians chose the spot which is now near
the city of Tunis in North Africa, because it was
just perfectly positioned. It had a secure harbor, It sat
(03:15):
on the east west trade route that brought Spanish silvered
attire and the north south line that connected Greece to
Italy and Sicily and down onto North Africa. So it
wasn't too long before the colony became not just a
merchant capital but a local leader to started producing items
itself and Initially this was luxury goods like terra cotta
(03:38):
figurines and carved ivory masks, jewelry. My favorite item here
decorated Ostrich eggs. It's funny to imagine there was ever
a time when you'd have an industry for that, but
Carthage was on it, and they were really known for
their beds and cushions and mattresses. Um. Those items from
Carthage were considered to be a special your ritzy, the
(04:00):
best of the best, and when the city of Old
Tire declined, Carthage really became the new Phoenician hub, especially
with its powerful fleet and merchant network. They even developed
their own dialect called Punic, which also became a bye
word for their culture. Yea, so we're going to toss
around the word Punic in this episode, obviously, because the
(04:20):
wars we're talking about are the Punic War. Still, though,
the city of Carthage, even though it was quite successful
and was expanding, didn't get big aspirations for imperialism until
just before the First Punic War, and by that point
there was a bit of a problem with their neighbor
to the north, which was Rome by this point getting
(04:42):
more and more powerful both Rome and Carthage wanted to
expand to Sicily because Sicily was fertile, had rich soil.
It was just a good place to be in possession
of and the key. It was also the key to
southern expansion for Rome and northern expansion for Carthage. So
it's not only a jewel in its own right, it's
(05:03):
it's a bridge to bigger things. But before we get
to war, it's important to know something about mercantile Carthage,
so we're gonna explain that a little bit. They were
rich and considered to have the best navy in the land,
but their population was very small, so consequently they relied
on mercenaries or silver spears, led by Punic officers. And
French historian Jules Michela puts it this way, the life
(05:26):
of an industrious merchant or a Carthaginian was too precious
to be risked, as long as it was possible to
substitute for it that of a barbarian from Spain or Gaul.
Carthage new and could tell to a drachma what the
life of a man of each nation came to. So
they have a bought army, but they also weren't exactly
popular with their subject lands, and well, Rome sort of
(05:48):
came in and would make conquered territories at least willing
to submit to being Roman because money would eventually follow.
Carthage just milked as African provinces for all they or worth,
really draining them dry. So consequently, Carthage's subject lands were
definitely willing to look at any other offers that came
(06:10):
their way. So there's already a lot more at stake
before we get to this first war than just Sicily
and all of Sicily's bounty. Because of Rome's allies, Carthage's
mercenaries were outnumbered ten to one, and because It's subject
lands would surely rebel if the Romans ever landed in
North Africa, the fight couldn't come too close to home.
(06:31):
Carthage didn't want it getting anywhere near their actual home
bad because the subject lands would turn on them definitely,
So this building tension between the two would be Sicilian
conquerors finally erupted in two sixty four BC, and fighting
went on for about a generation, with Rome winning for
most of that time. If you could call it that really,
I mean, Cecily was pretty much destroyed in the process,
(06:53):
but near the end a punic leader emerged, Hamilcar the Thunderbolt.
He's really good and brings things to draw on land,
leaving the ultimate result to be decided at sea. Yeah,
so we know already that the Phoenicians are famous for
their navy, so Carthage has obviously had the superior navy
over the years. But Rome has been shoring up what
(07:15):
it has over this decades long war by this point,
building up their navy, and they ended up trumping Carthage
with a pretty nifty new invention. It sounds really simple,
but it did the trick. Basically, it was a plank
spike combo that you could hook the other ship onto
your own, latch two ships together, so your ship and
(07:37):
the enemy ship, and then have your men rush on
board to the enemy ship and fight hand to hand,
so basically turning a naval battle between two ships into
a battle between marines. And the war finally ended with
a naval battle in two forty one b C in
which Rome got sicily they won. After that they had
peace for twenty five years, but it was a really
(07:59):
uncomfortable piece. Both knew that war would come again at
some point. Yeah, but Carthage wasn't just sitting around brooding
thinking about future wars. Really, they were busy making money
in Spain, specifically from silver we mentioned that earlier, and
they were also raising a new generation of leaders for
this eventual, unavoidable war, specifically the sons of the Thunderbolt,
(08:24):
Hamilcar's three sons, Hannibal, Hosdrubal and Mago or Mego. I couldn't.
He's the least famous of these sons. So pronunciation, no pronunciation,
keys of it for anyone knows right to us. So
now this new generation is in the picture. War does
come again, though this time the fight starts over a
Spanish city instead of Sicily, and it starts when Hannibal
(08:47):
seizes the Spanish city and to eighteen BC. Soon though,
he heads towards Italy because he knows that if the
Carthage Rome battle ever reaches North Africa, it's bad news
for Carthage. So basically what they knew before, what they
were trying to prevent before, he's trying to perfect again,
disaffected subject lands would rise up, presumably exactly. Plus if
(09:08):
he can get to Italy first, he's thinking maybe it
will have the same effect, and some of those Roman
allies will join up with him instead, or at least
not fight with Rome, so we'll have fewer people to
deal with. So he crosses the Alps with his army
and his troop of elephants. That's probably what he's most
famous for, and we're going to talk about elephants a
little bit more later, but he basically starts crushing it
(09:29):
after that, one victory after the next, and his most
famous triumph came into six BC at the Battle of Kenny,
left fifty thou Romans dead, a huge loss for for Rome,
and the Roman allies were starting to defect at this
point to just as Hannibal had hoped. And we kind
of come to a stalemate here though, or at least
(09:52):
a pause in the action, because Hannibal couldn't take Rome
itself alone. So in two oh seven NBC, he calls
on his brother Hasdrubal, who has been busy defending Spain
all this time with only a handful of sort of
the last pick men, fifteen thousand of them are so
so we're gonna have two of these Thunderbolt brothers now
(10:15):
coming into Italy and Rome down and out. After all
of these battles, So it seemed like a pretty serious
situation for Rome, and according to a Lee Leven article
in Military History, he said, these were without question the
darkest days in the history of the Roman Republic. Really,
they didn't know if they were gonna pull through with
(10:37):
this one. So to try to start to turn the
surround before they can even do that, to go head
to head with those two brothers Rome votes and two
new consoles who happened to hate each other, which isn't
such a good thing. You wouldn't think that would be
a very good to make. They were gayest Claudius Nero,
ancestor of the Emperor, and Marcus Livia's Salinator. Now, so
(11:00):
and Tour will block Hasdrubal's crossing over the Alps from
Spain to Italy. That was his job, and Nero's job
was to block Hannibal to the south. So the tide
turns in Roman favor when Hasdrubal crosses the Alps too
quickly and finds himself ahead of his brother, So he
tries to send off a message that actually ends up
in Nero's hands instead. Yeah, but Nero thinks that it
(11:22):
might be a trick, you know, these tricky people from Carthage,
and he thinks about it long and hard, looks at
the messengers. They do look tired, they look kind of dirty.
He decides that maybe it's legit, or at least he's
just got to hope it is, and he goes with it.
He decides to act, while Hannibal is is clueless about
(11:42):
his brother's whereabouts. So Nero decides to take a small
group of his guys sort of the elite legions from
his forty thousand general group, and join up with Salinator
to face Hasdrubal with combined consular forces. But for Hannibal
realizes what's going on, and he doesn't want to attract notice.
(12:05):
He doesn't want Hasdrubal to realize that suddenly there are
two consular forces to go up again. So Nero and
his men slip into Salinator's camp at night, even just
slipping into their tents. They're not even pitching their own tents.
But Hostruble is sharp and he realizes that something is
going on, that there are suddenly extra Romans in that camp,
(12:27):
and he notices unshaven men, guys with dirty armor, people
who look like they've been traveling and he gives them
the slip and heads to cross the Metaurus River because
he doesn't know what's going on, if his brother Hannibal
has been defeated and the consular armies have joined forces,
(12:48):
or if some other confusion has happened. So he's planning
if he can just get across that river, he'll be
safe on the other side and he can send out
new messengers and try to figure out what on Earth
Earth is going on. Unfortunately for him, though, the river
is flooded, and so when Nero and Salinator show up
to fight, he's in a really tight spot, especially since
(13:10):
his mercenaries from Gall are drunk. That's one of the
problems with mercenaries, especially uh. These guys had not been
working with him for very long, so they hadn't gotten
used to. I guess his regimen, but don't get drunk.
I would think that would be an obvious introductory instruction.
But has your ball makes do? He lines up those
(13:32):
unruly galls on his left on high ground that's too
steep to attack. So their purpose was basically to distract
the Romans because they could potentially charge downhill, but also
to be too far off to be obviously drunk, so
conceal their condition a little bit. In the center. Meanwhile,
(13:53):
he lines up his dependable ligurians, who are you know, guys,
guy so he can count on, and lines them up
with his ten surviving elephants, which ten elephants not a
whole lot to work with. But elephants were obviously pretty
scary to go up against. And I think we've talked
(14:13):
about them before in the um king porous episode. And um,
the crucial thing about them here is that horses who
hadn't seen elephants before, we're just absolutely terrified of them.
They wouldn't go near them, so it could really decimate
a cavalry pretty easily, and then just frightened soldiers clearly.
(14:35):
And um, finally, so we've covered the left and the center.
On the right has your bal stations himself, along with
his Spanish and his African veterans, and these are the
best of the best, his his guys. He can count
on his number one soldiers. And the plan is to
use this swing of the army to push forward and
(14:56):
cut around the Romans. Sounds like a pretty comp x
plan and it does work. Initially, the right pushes ahead,
the center holds, and the galls are scary enough up
on that hill to keep the Romans that are right
under the command of Nero stalling, and they miss the action. Finally,
though Nero does catch on, he realizes that the battle
(15:16):
is to his left, and so he decides to abandon
his position, take half a legion with him, and fight
on Salinator side. Carthage gets confused at this point. They're
like breaking apart. Uh, They're going in different directions. The
battle is lost. Yeah, So, knowing the jig is up,
Hasdrubal charges into the line. He wants to die a
warrior's death. He's killed, and he's beheaded, even though he
(15:40):
and his brother had been pretty careful about properly burying
Roman generals Roman consuls. He's beheaded, and the first thing
Hannibal sees of his brother in ten years is when
Hasdrubal's head is thrown into his camp. So after that defeat,
After the defeat of Hasdrubal, Hannibal's mystique was sort of compromised,
(16:03):
and he fought on for a few more years in
southern Italy, but there wasn't that supreme threat to Rome anymore,
and by two O one b C, the Second Punic
War was over and Carthage was yet again a loser.
So Carthage seemed pretty much out for the count at
this point. Especially looking at at retrospectively, we know where
(16:25):
Rome is going what lies in Rome's future here. But
even though Carthage is military and political cloudwork gone, the
city started to gradually over the decades make a comeback
in trade and and chow some promise. Again. The problem
here is that Rome still holds a grudge though, and
some Romans in particular wanted to see Carthage destroyed. Senator
(16:48):
Cato the Elder takes two ending speeches with a quick quote,
Carthage must be destroyed. So Rome actually starts to intentionally
provoke Carthage, and finally they make this kind of ridiculo
list demand that Carthage actually relocate inland, and after that
war is declared in one BC. Because obviously a seafaring
(17:08):
merchant town their their whole livelihood depends on their location,
it doesn't even make sense. So, like you mentioned, war
starts in one nine b C and after the siege
of Carthage goes on for some years, but by the
spring of one b C the Roman army, which at
this point is under the commander Scipio Amelianas, gets through
(17:32):
the city's defenses and launches the last assault on beer Sell,
which was the citadel of Carthage and also it's religious center,
center of government, really the heart of the city. And
it's bloody work from there. And um, the accounts we have,
which are Greek and Latin accounts, so you know, we
don't get here. Carthages side of the story are pretty horrendous.
(17:56):
There are apparently so many dead in Carthage that Scipio
made some of his soldiers responsible just for clearing the
streets of body so that more troops could move through
and they wouldn't be slowed down. But it took six
days and six nights, even even with all of that bloodshed,
and on the seventh day, city elders brought all of
(18:17):
branches down from the temple from the highest point of
the beer c citadel. Sipio spared them and the fifty
thousand who surrendered along with them, but some in Carthage
did stay and fight to the death. But the city
wasn't just defeated, it was destroyed. After that, Scipio had
his men tear down the city walls and ramparts. They
burned houses and buildings, They looted and pillaged, they sold
(18:39):
off citizens into slavery. But there's one thing they didn't do.
They didn't actually plow the earth with salt. That is
a myth right there. It is because Rome had just
conquered this territory which did have a lot of agricultural
action going on, and why would you want to intentionally
destroy all of that. One thing that the Romans couldn't
(18:59):
just destroy out of hand, but eventually also fell fell
in the fall of Carthage was the language, the Punic language.
It was wiped out over time, and it was kind
of this utter destruction was kind of a message from
Rome that we don't mess around. According to an article
in History Today by Michael Brett, here's what he had
(19:21):
to say, the destruction of Carthage now stood as a
bloody memorial to the cost of resistance to Rome in
a suitably apocalyptic fanfare for Rome's coming of age as
a new world power. So intense it does sound kind
of apocalyptic a few if you think about clearing the
bodies from the streets, and and the fire that burned
(19:42):
the city and just the general destruction and that it's
just gone. These people's lives or livelihood everything. Yeah. Well,
although Carthage did bounce back eventually as a distinctly Roman
capital of North Africa. It was a favorite city of
the emperors, but after it's captured by the Arabs in
six a d. It was abandoned and eventually eclipsed by Tunis,
(20:07):
which is right next door. I don't know if we've
already mentioned this, but Carthage is a kind of upscale
residential suburb now of Tunas, So the landscape has changed
a little bit, and the meaning of the word punic
has also come to mean something different now it means quote,
faithless or treacherous, parting to Marion Webster. According to Marion Webster,
and just as an example of Carthage's bad reputation, it's
(20:29):
perhaps most famously associated with the rumor that they'd sacrifice
their children instead of the standard goat or lamb sacrifice,
and there's actually been some recent anthropological research into that claim.
According to the journal Archaeology, a team from the University
of Pittsburgh led by Jeffrey Schwartz studied the cremated remains
of five hundred forty children from three hundred forty eight
(20:50):
burial urns which were excavated in a cemetery outside Carthage's
main burial ground, and they determined that half were prenatal
or couldn't have survived long and after birth and therefore
couldn't have been sacrificed. So it looks like this is
just a myth. And the vast majority of the others
were really quite young, most of them under the age
of one, but almost all of them under the age
(21:12):
of five or six, which was the age you could
expect to graduate to the main cemetery, and this weren't
unusual mortality rates for the population at the time. And
another theory that sort of came out of that study
was that some civilizations didn't really regard babies or really
young children as individuals like they would for adults or
(21:33):
older children, and therefore, if you if you didn't regard
something as an individual, it might not be worthy of
a sacrifice. So sort of spinning that rumor about Carthage
on its head. It's also interesting because there are these
three great destructive wars, how often the story of Carthage
came up right after World War two, when the world
(21:56):
had obviously just gone through a horribly destructive ordeal. And
there's one specific quote from Bear tilt Breck that you
might see. He used it to kind of frightened fellow
Germans out of remilitarization. And here's what he had to say.
Great Carthage drove three wars. After the first one, it
(22:16):
was still powerful. After the second, it was still inhabitable.
After the third one, it was no longer possible to
find her. So a serious end for kind of a
serious podcast when whenever we do these battle episodes they
tend to be downers. Yeah, they are kind of downers.
I don't know. I guess um. Every now and then
(22:37):
you have an uplifting connection for like marathon for instance,
or something. But yeah, battle it's not pretty. No, they're
never prettier fun, but they always give us good insight
into different cultures and why they do what they do,
I think. But if anyone has anything else to add
to the story, or suggestions for other battles that you
(22:57):
would like covered, or wars in fact, lost cities, any
of those types of stories, please write us Where History
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com or you can
look us up on Twitter at Myston History or on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about Nero, as in the ancestor of the narrow we
talked about today, we have an article called did Emperor
(23:18):
Nero play the fiddle while Rome Burns? So you can
find out the answer to that question by searching for
Nero on our home page at www dot how stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
(23:38):
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has a rise.
Download it today on iTunes.
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