Pride of Carthage

HISTORICAL NOTE

Following the close of Hannibal's war, the treaty between Carthage and Rome formally held for fifty years. The Carthaginians paid the yearly indemnities on time or early, and before long the city began to prosper once more. Hannibal was elected Shophet (or Suffete) in 200 B.C., largely with the support of the populace against the power held by the oligarchy. Holding supreme power for five years, he implemented a number of democratic and financial reforms. But his old enemies within the Council conspired against him. They sent word to Rome that he was planning new hostilities against them. He was forced to flee the city to avoid capture by the Romans and spent the rest of his life as a mercenary general in largely unsuccessful wars against Rome's eastward expansion, first for the Syrian king Antiochus III and later for Prusias I of Bithynia (northern Turkey). It was in Bithynia, at the age of sixty-four, that Hannibal decided to stop fighting and to stop running. He committed suicide by taking poison. His last words are reported to have been “Let us now put an end to the anxiety of the Romans who could not wait for the death of this hated old man.”

Even with Hannibal dead, Rome feared Carthage's power. By 191 B.C., the Council offered to pay off all the tribute scheduled for the next forty years. Such wealth may have been as alarming as any military prowess. In 149 B.C., Rome declared war once again, this time on a pretext stemming from a dispute between Carthage and the aged, prospering King Masinissa. Carthage fell after a three-year siege and her citizens were killed. A door-to-door slaughter left only fifty thousand survivors out of an estimated seven hundred thousand. Buildings were knocked down, burned, obliterated. Carthaginian culture, literature, art, and customs were systematically erased from the world's historical legacy. Having destroyed its greatest rival, Rome went on to build a vast empire.