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The First Genocide: Carthage, 146 BC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Ben Kiernan
Ben Kiernan*
Affiliation:
Genocide Studies Program, Yale University
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Abstract

Some features of the ideology motivating the Roman destruction of Carthage in 146 BC have surprisingly modern echoes in 20th-century genocides. Racial, religious or cultural prejudices, gender and other social hierarchies, territorial expansionism, and an idealization of cultivation all characterize the thinking of Cato the Censor, like that of more recent perpetrators. The tragedy of Carthage, its details lost with most of the works of Livy and other ancient authors, and concealed behind allegory in Virgil's Aeneid, became known to early modern Europeans from briefer ancient accounts rediscovered only in the 15th century, as Europe's own expansion began.

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Type
Research Article
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Diogenes , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , August 2004, pp. 27 - 39
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Copyright © ICPHS 2004

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References

Notes

1. M. Dubuisson, ‘”Delenda est Carthago”: remise en question d’un stéréotype’, Studia Phoenicia X, Punic Wars, Leuven, 1989, 279-87; F. Limonier, ‘Rome et la destruction de Carthage: un crime gratuit?’, Revue des Etudes Anciennes 101 (3-4), 1999, 405-11; W. Huss, Geschichte der Karthager, Munchen, 1985, 436-57; E. Maroti, ‘On the Causes of Carthage’s Destruction’, Oikumene 4, 1983, 223-31.

2. Plutarch, The Lives of Aristeides and Cato, trans. D. Sansone, Warminster, 1989, 159; Serge Lancel, Carthage, Oxford, 1995, 410; E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae (264-70 BC), Oxford, 2000, 130-3.

3. Polybius, 36.2.1; W.V. Harris, ‘Rome and Carthage’, The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. VIII, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 BC, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1989, 148-9, 152.

4. Maroti, ‘Carthage’s Destruction’, 228, citing Rhet. ad Herenn., IV.14, 20; Polybius, 18.3.59.

5. Strabo put Carthage’s population c.149 BC at 700,000 (17.3.15). B. H. Warmington considers this impossible and suggests 200,000, though ‘in the early third century… it would be surprising if it did not approach 400,000’ (Carthage, London, 1980, 124-7). Appian reported the population rose ‘greatly’ after 201 BC (Roman History 8.10.69), as archaeology has ‘fully confirmed’ (Ursula Vogel-Weidemann, ‘Carthago Delenda Est: Aitia and Prophasis’, Acta Classica, XXXII, 1989, 79-95, at 86-7). Huss adds that during the siege, ‘large sectors of the rural population took refuge within the city walls’ (Geschichte, 452).

6. Appian, Roman History, 8.126; Polybius, Histories, 38.8.10.12, 38.1.1.6.

7. A.E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus, Oxford, 1967, 36, 53, 280-1; Yann Le Bohec, Histoire militaire des guerres puniques, Monaco, 1995, 311, estimates over 55,000 survivors; Huss, Geschichte, 455-6 n.133; Plutarch, Lives of Aristeides and Cato, 157.

8. The Athenian conquerors of Melos in 416 ‘put to death all the grown men whom they took, and sold the women and children for slaves’. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, V.115.

9. The Senatorial order was: ‘The towns that had allied themselves consistently with the enemy it was decided to destroy, to the last one’ (Appian, Roman History, 8.135). Tunis, Hermaea, Neapolis and Aspis ‘were demolished’ (Strabo, 17.3.16). Bizerta was destroyed, and seven towns spared (Le Bohec, Histoire militaire, 314). The fate of Carthage’s allies Kelibia, Nabeul, and Nepheris is unspecified (298-9, 308).

10. Vogel-Weidemann, ‘Carthago Delenda Est’, 80; Huss, Geschichte, 441-2.

11. Harris, in Cambridge Ancient History, VIII, 160. ‘Such a diktat was the equivalent of a death sentence [to Carthage]… the destruction of its temples and cemeteries, the deportation of its cults, were a more surely mortal blow than displacing the population.’ Lancel, Carthage, 413. See Badian, Foreign Clientelae, 138.

12. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus, 51, 53; Appian, Roman History, 8.12.83-5, 89.

13. Harris, in Cambridge Ancient History, VIII, 154 (‘submission and disarmament were not enough’), 161. ‘The Senate sent ten… deputies to arrange the affairs of Africa… These men decreed that if anything was still left of Carthage, Scipio should raze it to the ground, and that nobody should be allowed to live there.’ Appian, Roman History, 8.20.135.

14. A friend of Scipio Africanus told the Senate debate on Carthaginian policy in 201 that it was ‘righteous and expedient to our prosperity not to exterminate whole races, but to bring them into a better state of mind’. Appian, Roman History, 8.9.58. Polybius wrote of the debate 50 years later that ‘their disputes with each other about the effect on foreign opinion very nearly made them desist from going to war’ against Carthage (The Histories, 36.1.2.4). He recounted Greek views on Rome’s destruction of the city (36.2.9); ‘it is not easy to find a subject more renowned’ (36.1.1). Astin, Scipio Aemilianus, 52-3, 276-80.

15. A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor, Oxford, 1978, 127-8; Badian, Foreign Clientelae, 125.

16. B. Dexter Hoyos, ‘Cato’s Punic Perfidies’, Ancient History Bulletin, 1.5 (1987), 112-21, at 120.

17. Ben Kiernan, ‘Sur la notion de génocide’, Le Débat (Paris) 104, mars-avril 1999, 179-92.

18. Harris, Cambridge Ancient History, VIII, 155, 160, noting ‘the difficulty of believing that Carthage itself was a source of profound fear to Rome in the 150s’ (153). Strabo specified that Carthaginian war preparations followed Rome’s final ultimatum (17.3.15). Vogel-Weidemann argues that Carthage was ‘well armed… Remains of shipsheds and plentiful naval material’ have been found (‘Carthago Delenda Est’, 86-7). Maroti agrees: ‘[B]y the beginning of the siege, the Carthaginian fleet was ready in the harbour… the new warships could only [have been] built against Rome’ (227). Carthage’s naval harbour could dock 250 ships, which Limonier terms a violation of the treaty of 201. But he adds (409, n. 27) that warships were not mentioned in the Roman demands of 149 and could have been built subsequently, or commercial craft re-commissioned. Badian, citing Strabo (17.3.15) says ‘the Carthaginians certainly had the few warships they were allowed by the treaty’ (Foreign Clientelae, 134 n.). D. Kienast believes ‘the naval material… was intended for the enlargement of her merchant fleet’ and Harris dismisses the naval material and the warships (Vogel-Weidemann, 93, n. 88). See also Astin, Scipio Aemilianus, 270-6.

19. The Senate’s order to the Carthaginians ‘to abandon their city and move inland was the best method to incite this humiliated people, deprived of its past, to place itself in the service of a Numidian prince… a mass exasperated with Rome and ready to do anything to retrieve its lost homeland’ (Limonier, 407).

20. Vogel-Weidemann suggests that Rome’s ‘vindictiveness may have been rather a matter of cold policy, namely, to do away once and for all with centers of traditional anti-Roman leadership and, possibly, to set an example’ (88), citing W.V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 1979, 234-40, and Diodorus to the effect that from 168 BC, ‘at any price whatsoever’, Rome ‘sought to secure her predominance by fear and intimidation and by destroying the most eminent cities’ (83, 85-6).

21. Cornelius Nepos: A selection, including the lives of Cato and Atticus, trans. N. Horsfall, Oxford, 1989, 35.

22. Plutarch, Lives, 173; Cornelius Nepos, 37-8 (Pliny, NH 8.11).

23. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, trans. H. Bettenson, Harmondsworth, 1976, 34.4, 144.

24. Vogel-Weidemann, 92 n. 73, citing Cato’s speech De bello Carthaginiensi, in H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta 3, 1967, fr. 195.

25. Cato and Varro on Agriculture, trans. W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, Cambridge, MA, 1993, Introduction, x.

26. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, 155-8; Cornelius Nepos, p. 5; Plutarch, Lives, 113-17.

27. Maroti, ‘Carthage’s Destruction’, 226; Astin, Cato, 126-7; Plutarch, Lives, 157-9.

28. ‘The way in which Cato propagated his Italian chauvinism appealed to them.’ F.J. Meijer, ‘Cato’s African Figs,’ Mnemosyne, XXXVII (1-2), 1984, 117-24, at 122-3; Marcus Cato, De Agri Cultura, 8.1, and Marcus Terentius Varro, De Re Rustica, I.41, in Cato and Varro on Agriculture, 21, 273.

29. Maroti, ‘Carthage’s Destruction’, 228; Cicero, On the Good Life, trans. Michael Grant, London, 1971, 171.

30. Cato, De Agri Cultura, in Cato and Varro on Agriculture, 3.

31. Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert, London, 1979, 529.

32. Cato and Varro on Agriculture, ix; Plutarch, Lives, 95, 143-7.

33. Appian, Roman History, 8.12.86-9; W. V. Harris, in Cambridge Ancient History, VIII, 156.

34. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, 141-7; see also Nels W. Forde, Cato the Censor, 101-4.

35. Plutarch, Lives, 143, 153, 115, 133.

36. Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Hellenizing the Romans (2nd century BC)’, Historia 44, 1991, 429-30, 434.

37. Cornelius Nepos, 5-6; Cato and Varro on Agriculture, x-xi.

38. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, 144; Plutarch, Lives, 101; MacMullen, ‘Hellenizing,’ 427-8, 433.

39. On early Roman nobles’ openness to Greek culture, MacMullen, ‘Hellenizing’, 426; J. Briscoe, ‘Cato the Elder’, in S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (eds), Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, Oxford, 1998, 146.

40. Cornelius Nepos, 6, and commentary, 57; see also Cato and Varro on Agriculture, xii.

41. Frank M. Snowden, Jr, Blacks in Antiquity, Cambridge, MA, 1970; Susanna Morton Braund, ‘Roman Assimilations of the Other: Humanitas at Rome’, Acta Classica XL, 1997, 15-32.

42. Cornelius Nepos, 5, 36, note, 47; Astin, Cato, 171, quoting Cato’s Ad Filium from Pliny, NH, 29. 13f.

43. ‘[A] trove of Greek philosophical treatises which turned up in 181 had been barely looked at before being destroyed by senatorial order - it was feared that their teachings would arouse doubts about religion.’ In 173, Rome expelled the teachers of Epicurean philosophy (MacMullen, ‘Hellenizing’, 435). On Cato’s ‘paranoia about Greek physicians’ and view of ‘alien statuary as a profanation’, 436 nn. 62, 63.

44. Plutarch, Lives, 147-9.

45. MacMullen, ‘Hellenizing’, 432 n. 41; Plutarch, Lives, 129.

46. Plutarch, The Lives, 159-61; V. Krings, ‘La Destruction de Carthage: problèmes d’historiographie ancienne et moderne’, Studia Phoenicia, X, Punic Wars, Leuven, 1989, 329-44, at 335.

47. Dubuisson, ‘“Delenda est Carthago”’, 285.

48. Ben Kiernan, ‘Twentieth Century Genocides: Underlying Ideological Themes from Armenia to East Timor’, in R. Gellately and B. Kiernan (eds), The Specter of Genocide, New York, 2003, 29-51.

49. Jasper Griffin, Virgil, New York, 1986, 27, 36ff.

50. Virgil, Georgics 2, trans. The Internet Classics Archive [http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/georgics.html]

51. Georgics 3, quoted in Griffin, Virgil, 52.

52. Ellen Oliensis, ‘Sons and Lovers: Sexuality and Gender in Virgil’s Poetry’, in Charles Martindale (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, Cambridge, CUP, 1997, 297-9.

53. Griffin, Virgil, 84, 62; Virgil, The Aeneid: A New Prose Translation, trans. David West, London, 1991, 212.

54. Griffin, Virgil, 63-4, 54.

55. Virgil, The Aeneid: A New Prose Translation, 3-4.

56. Ibid., 41, 45, 47.

57. Ibid, 18.

58. Griffin, Virgil, 110; op. cit. note 49.

59. Virgil, The Aeneid, 19-23; op. cit. note 53.

60. Ibid, 24-7, 57, 37, 53.

61. See Philip R. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium, Oxford: 1986, 282-4.

62. Aeneid: A New Prose Translation, 95, 100-1, 147, 159; op. cit. note 53.

63. West, ‘Introduction’, Aeneid: A New Prose Translation, ix; W. Y. Sellar, Virgil, Oxford, 1897, 59, 68.

64. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean: Books XXXI-XLV of The History of Rome from its Foundation, trans. H. Bettenson, London, 1976, 596 (XLIV.44), Introduction, p. 20. Strabo, Geography Books III, VIII, and Appian, Libyca 69, Roman History 8.20.135, also mention the destruction of Carthage.

65. Livy, Rome and the Mediterranean, 430 (39.40).