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The Date of the First Treaty Between Rome and Carthage1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

R. L. Beaumont
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Extract

Mommsen left the date of the first treaty between Rome and Carthage a crux, and a crux it has remained. For many years the fires of dispute have burned fiercely, but of late they have gradually been dying down, smothered, it may be, by acquiescence in the idea that the degree of certainty for which it is legitimate to look in early Roman history is very small. Yet the question calls as imperatively for a decisive answer as ever it has done since Mommsen wrote his Römische Chronologie. It is, therefore, remarkable that the most cogent argument for the Polybian dating of the first treaty has barely been suggested, and never presented in any detail; and it is in the belief that a sixth century date can be decisively confirmed that this paper has been written.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , 1939 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright ©R. L. Beaumont 1939. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1A The Editorial Committee desires to express its thanks to Mr. T. J. Dunbabin, who generously undertook final preparation for press.

2 Römische Chronologie 2 (Berlin, 1859), 320Google Scholar ff.

3 Lists of references to the enormous literature on the problem will be found in Rhein. Mus. lxxix, 350, n. 1; JRS ix, 67, n. 3; Altheim, F., Epochen der römischen Geschichte i (Frankfurt a./M., 1934), 99,Google Scholar n. 17. [L. Wickert, Klio xxxix, 349 ff., adds little to the discussion.]

4 iii, 22 ff. (ed. Büttner-Wobst).

5 Strachan-Davidson, J. L., Selections from Polybius (Oxford, 1888), 52Google Scholar ff Mommsen's date of 348 for PI rested on Diod. xvi, 69, I (the treaty of 348, the first between Rome and Carthage), Livy vii, 27, 2 (a treaty concluded in 348) and Ep. 13 (the treaty directed against Pyrrhus, the fourth between Rome and Carthage).

6 The difficulty experienced even by educated Romans of Polybius' time in understanding the language of the document, points to Latin of the sixth rather than of the fourth century (Strachan-Davidson, op. cit. 54; Last, H. M., CAH vii, 859)Google Scholar. Moreover the recent study of the archaeological evidence by Inez Scott has proved that Rome in the late sixth century was already a centre of considerable importance (Mem. Am. Ac. Rome vii, 69 ff.).

7 This is well brought out by Cary, M. in JRS ix, 69,Google Scholar where it is remarked that Polybius nowhere says that he ransacked the aerarium in person (as Strachan-Davidson, l.c., and others have said) and that Polybius' commentary on P2 is an absurd and very slipshod misfit.

8 This line of thought, was introduced by Ed. Meyer, (Gesch. d. Altertums iii 2, 677)Google Scholar; cf. Last, , CAH vii, 859Google Scholar.

9 Meltzer, O., Gesch. d. Karthager i, (Berlin, 1879), 181;Google Scholar Strachan-Davidson, op. cit. 65; Schulten, A., CAH vii, 774Google Scholar.

10 v, 23.

11 Pliny, loc. cit.

12 Livy xxix, 27, 8 ff.

13 Punica 14.

14 [So Meltzer, Commentationes Fleckeisenianae 259 ff.; Th. Lenschau, P-W s.v. ‘Karthago (Lage),’ 2152.]

15 Strachan-Davidson's argument (op. cit. 65 ff.) is self-stultifying. Its core is that one limit of navigation is pointless, and two are needed to protect an area. But if this argument be applied to the limit of the Fair Promontory of PI, which is the only limit given, the nonsensical result ensues that the Carthaginians make the Romans swear to observe a limit which protects nothing at all. For even if ἐπέκεινα τοῦ Καλοῦ ἀκρωτηρίου meant, as is contended, ‘to the westward,’ it would not close Spain to the Romans, and to prove that it means to the westward entails proving that one limit cannot close an area. Even supposing ἐπέκεινα to mean ‘to the west of’, it is not a limit closing Spain to the Romans. Would the Carthaginians, if they wanted to stop the Romans going to Spain, do so by inserting a clause in a treaty forbidding them to sail west of a point on the Gulf of Tunis ? No ! When they want to stop the Romans going to Spain, they quite naturally specify a point on the coast of Spain, as in P2. If ἐπέκεινα does mean ‘to the west of’, the aim of the clause must be to protect the Punic interests on the north coast of Africa. This is possible, though unlikely, if PI is to be dated to 508: the Liby-Phoenician settlements were to some extent the work of Hanno, son of that Hamilcar who fought the first battle of Himera (Justin xix, 2, 4, and prol. xix), and their importance is not likely to be so early as 508. [Wickert's argument in Klio l.c., that τοῦ Καλοῦ ἀκρωτηρίου, Μαστίας, Ταρσηίου of P2 must all be in the same neighbourhood, and therefore in Spain, carries no weight. And how does he suppose that in the sixth century Roman or Latin ships would come by accident to the south-eastern coast of Spain ?]

16 E.g., ps-Skylax (III) calls Ras Sidi, Livy's Promunturium Pulchri, Ἵππων ἄκρα.

17 Herod, v, 42, 3.

18 Ibid, iv, 178–9; cf. Pindar, , Pyth. viGoogle Scholar.

19 Herod, vii, 158, 2.

20 Polybius had a special reason to be interested in the Syrtes. In the late fifties of the second century Masinissa cast longing eyes on the Emporia, and, after a characteristically successful piece of filching, the aggrieved Carthaginians had the matter raised at Rome. Now it seems to me that this was most likely the occasion on which the treaties which, as Polybius says, were discovered in the aerarium in his lifetime, came to light and importance. For P1 and P2 would be valuable cards in the hand of a philo-Carthaginian senator who wanted to prove that the Carthaginian claim was of respectable antiquity.

21 Herod, iv, 152. [For the identification of Tartessos, cf. Schulten, A., Tartessos (Hamburg, 1922)Google Scholar, and P-W s.v. (iv A,Google Scholar ‘Tartessos.’)]

22 Ps-Skylax 1; cf. Strabo 175, 802.

23 Pliny, NH ii, 169;Google Scholar Avienus, Ora Maritima, 114 ff. We do not know Himilco's date (pace Cary, M. and Warmington, E. H., The Ancient Explorers (London, 1929), 32,Google Scholar where it is argued that ‘Carthaginis potentia florente’ dates Himilco before the Himera campaign of 480; but the phrase could legitimately be used to describe Carthage of the later fifth or middle fourth century). The similarity between Nem. iii, 22 ff., and Avienus' account of Himilco's troubles (114 ff.) suggests that Pindar may have heard some story such as Himilco's.

24 None of Pindar's references is earlier than the seventies of the fifth century. The statements in The Ancient Explorers 31, ‘By 500 the Ocean gates had been bolted against the Greeks,’ and in Carpenter, Rhys, The Greeks in Spain (Bryn Mawr and London, 1925), 36,Google Scholar ‘With ούκέτι … εὐμαρές (Nem. iii, 20), the seal was set on the first chapter of the Greeks in Spain,’ and Schulten, P-W, iv A, 2450, are hardly justified by Ol. iii, 44 ff., Nem. iii, 20 ff., iv, 69 ff., Isthm. iii, 11 ff. Pindar specifically says (Ol. iii, 44) that beyon d th e Pillars no man, wise or fool, can go; which cannot be taken to mean that Carthaginians could and Greeks might not. Had Pindar, laureate of the Deinomenids, known of a Carthaginian veto, he would not have acquiesced so fatalistically. But he merely uses the Pillars to mean the farthest west or the end of the world (cf. Plato, Kritias 104 b); in Nem. iv, 69, he substitutes Gades, but he may have thought, like Agrippa, that the coast of Spain ran from the Straits north with, if anything, a slight tilt to the east, so that the Pillars remained the end of the world to the west. Herakles, not the Phoenicians, ordained that the straits should be the limit of the world (Nem. iii, 23). I take it that Gibraltar and the Hill of Apes opposite were called Pillars of Herakles by some early Greek sailor (or Stesichoros in his Geryoneis), perhaps to assert the Greek right to establish colonies in the neighbourhood (cf. Herod, iv, 178, Lake Tritonis; V, 43, Eryx; de mir. ausc. 100, Sardinia). Pindar's references are as devoid of geographical and political significance as many modern references to Timbuctoo, or as Euripides' use (Hippolytus 736) of ᾽Αδριηνὴ ἀκτή, although Adria was a big trading city and imported masses of Athenian vases.

25 iv, 49, 3.

26 201 ff.

27 iii, 115.

28 The seventh century is represented by a Proto-attic amphora now in Copenhagen, said to come from a Punic grave near Cadiz, whose pedigree is highly suspect [: it is, therefore, not proof of direct contact in the early seventh century]. In the sixth and fifth centuries, there are Attic vases from Rhode and Emporion (Frickenhaus, A., Anuari d'Estudis Catalans, 1918, 201 ff.Google Scholar): see also Rhys Carpenter, The Greeks in Spain 37 ff., 97 ff.; his thesis of East Greek influence in the Santa Elena bronzes is yet to be proved. In the fourth century, there are Kerch vases from Alcacer do Sal, on the Bay of Setubal in Estremadura, indifferently illustrated in Ebert, Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte i, 96.

29 [Cf. Avienus, 178 ff., for an overland trade-route to Tartessos.]

30 As Etruri a probably re-exported to Carthage from Greece (Payne, H., Necrocorinthia, Oxford, 1931, 188)Google Scholar: pseudoSkylax says (112) that Punic merchants sold Attic pots on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. [The Carthaginians certainly took Greek goods with them to Ibiza, where more of the material is Greek, or graecising, than pure Phoenician: see Escudero, A. Vivezy, La Necropoli di Iviza (Madrid, 1917)Google Scholar, passim; Perez-Cabrero, A., Ibiza arqueológica (Barcelona, 1911)Google Scholar.]

31 Conversely, Punic influences are perceptible in the south of France, at Ensérune and elsewhere (Jacobsthal, P., Schumacher Festschrift, Mainz, 1930, 192,Google Scholar n. 14); [and the Carthaginians in 480 had Ligurian mercenaries and Elisykoi from the neighbourhood of Narbonne (cf. Avienus 586 f.). That is to say,] Massalia, though hostile to the Carthaginians, was unable completely to exclude them.

32 The date of the earliest source of Avienus is quite uncertain, and Schulten's argument (Avienus, Barcelona and Berlin, 1922, 9)Google Scholar, does not establish that he lived before c. 500. The insufficiency of his proof is obvious: ‘Scripsit auctor ante annum 509, ante foedus primum inter Carthaginienses et Romanos sociosque, scilicet Massilienses, ictum, nam foedere illo navigatio ultra prom. Pulchrum (Cap Farina) nempe occidentem versus, idest in Hispaniam, prorsus vetita est.’ This we have seen to be a misinterpretation of the text (p. 78). It also presupposes that no Greek ship ever ran the blockade, and that Massalia was a Roman ally at the time. The suggestion that it was before the foundation of Emporion and Rhode is a very dangerous argument from silence. Berthelot seems rightly to have rejected the idea that Ora Maritima can be divided on the basis of its sources and these dated from internal evidence (Avienus, ed. A. Berthelot, Paris, 1934, 137).

33 As no Kerch has been found at Carthage, it is improbable that they are Carthaginian re-exports. They may possibly have come overland from Catalonia, where a fair amount of Kerch has been found (Schefold, K., Untersuchungen zu den Kertscher Vasen, Berlin–Leipzig, 1934,Google Scholar nos. 62, 96–100, 141); but the site on the Bay of Setubal looks to the sea.

34 Herod, i, 163 ff.

35 The famous fragment of Stesichoros (Diehl fr. 4), and the abundance and early date of Himera's silver coinage (cf. Bowra, C. M., Greek Lyric Poetry, Oxford, 1936, 85)Google Scholar, combined with the geographical position of the city, are grounds for believing this.

36 FGH (Jacoby) i, frs. 38–52.

37 Suidas s.v. Χάρων ˄αμπσακηνός.

38 Cf. Plut., Themist. 27, 1Google Scholar. [And see Jacoby, F. in Studi it. di fil. class. XV, 3, 1938, 207Google Scholar ff.]

39 Avienus 337, 350; cf. P-W vi, 1060.

40 See Jacoby, P-W vi, 1509 ff.

41 [Beaumont, JHS 1936, 179 f., 190.]

42 Head, HN 2, 879.

43 The peg on which theories of early Carthaginian dominion in Southern Spain have been hung is the prefix of ἀνεκτᾶτο used by Polybius (ii, 1, 6) of Hamilcar's work in the thirties of the third century: cf. Schulten, , CAH vii, 774Google Scholar. It creaks under the strain put on it.

44 Herod, vii, 165, Iberian mercenaries; perhap s first employe d after Mago's reform of the army (Justi n xix, 1, 1f.).

45 Strabo 169, a Tyrian foundation. The traditional date of 1110 B.C. is hard to swallow [but a Phoenician settlement in the seventh century is not unlikely. Cf. Schulten, Tartessos 3 ff.; and the Proto-attic amphora (first quarter of the seventh century) said to be from Cadiz, mentioned above (p. 81, n. 28)].

46 Nem. iv, 69: dated tO 477 by Wade-Gery, H.T., JHS 52, 223Google Scholar.

47 Last, , CAH vii, 861Google Scholar.

48 Diod. v, 19–20; de mir. ausc. 84.

49 Perhaps Madeir a (The Ancient Explorers 53).

50 Ibid. But θαλασσοκρατοῦντες, used by Diodorus, is a general word, and does not imply preponderant naval strength. Further, it needs, or may need, more than one defeat to destroy the naval power of a state which commands resources in wood, iron, men, and harbours. Lepanto did not break Turkish sea-power. It cannot, then, be shown that the tradition refers to the years between Alalia and Cumae, but it can safely be dated before 348.

51 The Italo-Corinthian pottery at Emporion (Payne, Necrocorinthia 189, n. 1) is valuable confirmatory evidence of the fact that the Etruscans as well as the Massaliotes had trading connections on the north-east coast of Spain, but does not help to date the story more accurately.

52 Schulze, W., Zur Geschichte lateinischer Eigennamen (Berlin, 1904), 581Google Scholar f.: ‘Es drängen sich also in und um Rom die Namen etruskischer Geschlechter in solcher Fülle, dass sie wohl Einfluss auf die Gestaltung unserer Vorstellungen von den Anfangen der ewigen Stadt fordern dürfen.’ Though the conclusions drawn may be questioned (Beloch, K. J., Römische Geschichte, Berlin and Leipzig, 1926, 227)Google Scholar, the very frequent occurrence of Etruscan names in Rome cannot.

53 Livy ix, 36, 3: ‘habeo auctores uolgo turn Romanos pueros, sicut nunc Graecis, ita Etruscis litteris erudiri solitos’ (during the fourth century, and, a fortiori, earlier). Etruscan may well have been one of the languages in which P1 and P2 were negotiated.

54 Pliny, NH XXXV, 157Google Scholar.

55 Cf. Livy vii, 38, 2.

56 CAH vii, 383; Scott, Inez, MAR vii, 95Google Scholar ff.

57 Pliny l.c.

58 In Ancona—a very close parallel to the Capestrano Warrior.

59 Tomba del Littore at Vetulonia: Montelius p1. 194; cf. Silius Italicus viii, 483.

60 CAH iv, 416 ff.

61 CAH vii, 385.

62 The nearest certainly Etruscan grave is four miles from the Forum, on the di S. Agata, Colle (CAH vii, 386;Google Scholar Scott, op. cit., 69, n. 1).

63 Dion. Hal. i, 29, 2: τὴν Ῥώμην αὐτὴν πολλοὶ τῶν συγγραφέων Τυρρηνίδα πόλιν εἶναι ὑπέλαβον. Among these writers the fourth-century pseudo-Skylax should perhaps be numbered: 5. Τυρρηνοί. Τυρρηνοὶ ἔθνος μέχρι Ῥώμης πόλεως. He does not mention Rome under the entry ˄ατῖνοι. But his use of μέχρι equivocal; it can mean ‘up to and including’, as in 8, and ‘up to and not including’, as is clear from the conjunction of 22 and 28.

61 There is another point against the 348 date for P1. P2 cannot be dated to 306 (JRS ix, 75): if P1 is put in 348, P2 must, then, fall five years later, in 343, when Punic envoys came to Rome (Livy vii, 38). But so short an interval cannot be reconciled with what Polybius says about the difficulty experienced in understanding the language of the first treaty.

65 [It should be said that the arguments which overthrow the date 348 for P1 do not prove that 508 is the correct date. The date 508 fits what is known of Carthaginian growth and policy very well, as has been shown above; but an early fifth-century date is not on these grounds excluded. The arguments against it are—(1) that Polybius gives 508, and there is no reason to depart from it for a date which has no authority, and (2) that the relation of Rome to Latium illustrated in the treaty fits the late sixth century, and not the early fifth; and Carthage would more naturally strike a treaty with Rome immediately after her break-away from Etruria than after some time, when she was in difficulty with her neighbours and of only local importance.] E. Täubler pointed out that the treaty, drawn up after a Punic, not a Roman pattern, will not have had its date on it (Imperium Romanum i, Leipzig and Berlin, 1913, 263)Google Scholar. Punic practice had from a very early period been to regulate trade and intercourse by treaty: a cuneiform tablet of (?) 677 B.C. (Luckenbill, D. D., Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia ii, Chicago, 1927, 229Google Scholar ff.; cf. Rev. d'Assyriologie xxvi, 189 ff.) records a treaty between Esarhaddon and Ba'alu of Tyre with provisions which might be described as αύμβολα περὶ τοῦ μὴ ἀδικεῖν, such as are contained in P2 and such as are mentioned by Aristotle (Pol. iii, 1280a, 36) as in force between Carthage and the Etruscans.

66 Diod. v, 13, 3 f.: Karalis a Phokaian colony (Diodorus says in Corsica). Diog. Laert. i, 81; Herod, i, 165, 1; v, 106, 6; cf. Paus. iv, 23, 5: Greek designs on Sardinia. De mir. ausc. 100; P. Rylands 473: mythical support. The date of the Carthaginian conquest (Justin xviii, 7, 1; xix, 1, 3 f.; Orosius iv, 6, 6 ff.)—or rather occupation of vantage-points on the coast, which was all that pre-Barcid Carthage attempted anywhere—is uncertain: in 480 they had Sardinian mercenaries serving in their army in Sicily (Herod, vii, 165). The Phoenician settlements at Tharros, Sulci, and Cagliari, datable by the extraordinary number of Punic gems and scarabs which their necropoleis have yielded, date as powerful cities from c. 500, and Greek imports are very few.

67 De mir. ausc. 100 [which may be derived from Timaios]. The author goes so far as to claim the nuraghi as ‘beautiful buildings in the ancient Greek style.’