Carthage Page 6

  Yesterday I went out alone in the morning to find a certain banker and ensure that things are as I hoped. They are. The banker, a Cretan, had kept the acrostic of the password Scipio had given him when he made his deposit all those years ago. I must check the Cretan’s calculation of the interest that has accrued. But as a rule, in the afternoons Hanno and I walk together round this great city and explore, ignored. Even on the first day I felt safe enough to let Trimalchio and the Apollodorus go, as we had planned. People do as they please here, making money by what means they can. New faces are common in this city made for trade, and no one thinks us strange. But there must be guilds, communities. All will be revealed.

  I am most struck by five things about this city, four of substance, one of form. First, the walls. Word of Troy’s, Jericho’s and Jerusalem’s great walls has reached us through the mists of time. In Africanus’ copy of the Ephemerides of the great Alexander, I have read myself of the walls of Tyre which neither the Assyrians nor even the Babylonians could breach. I have read accounts of the walls and fortifications of Askut, an island fortress in the upper Nile, and descriptions of the defences girding Hattussas, capital of the Hittite kings.

  But I have now walked round the circumference of the walls of Carthage and, when the guards have let me, have stood atop her walls. Everything Africanus told me is true. The walls of Carthage are without parallel, stupendous. I make their length to be 21 Roman miles, and their height 90 feet. Every 400 feet or so, wooden towers four storeys high rise above the walls whose breadth seems to average 40 feet, though on the seaward side and where they face the south-western plain, it is more than that. It is in these sections, in garrisons within the walls, that the Carthaginians house their horses and elephants. They could and, I imagine, often have housed soldiers too. How many? When I am better placed, I will enquire. What is beyond doubt is that the city could accommodate a mercenary army in its walls without strain on the rest of the city, while its walls must be as inviolable as man can make.

  What we have is a city in the shape of an arrowhead, jutting into the sea which girds it on three sides, the wall rising on those sides straight up from the cliffs. An addition to the city, the harbours where we disembarked jut out into the bay. It is strange, but from high on the walls the harbours look like a clenched fist, pointing at Rome.

  To the south-west, at the arrowhead’s base, an isthmus perhaps a mile wide connects the city to the mainland. I imagine the isthmus is actually a causeway, because there is a lagoon on either side of it, the domain of cranes and reeds and clumps of stunted tamarisk trees. So they would make an aggressor’s approach difficult, if not impossible. As for the causeway, it is protected not by one great wall, but three.

  A lower outer wall, with cantilevered battlements, defends a wide moat where, a guard told me, the Carthaginians dump the bodies of their suicides. A special breed of crab sacred to Eschmoun lives in the moat, which even in summer never dries out, and feeds on the suicides’ eyes. And do you have many suicides in Carthage, I asked the guard. He did not know. I saw no bodies floating, certainly. Perhaps they weigh them down with stones. Perhaps they have no suicides.

  The moat itself is guarded by a higher middle wall, whose catapults and towers could rake the causeway with fire. From there, the ground climbs steeply to the final wall on which I have stood.

  From front, side or rear, then, Carthage is impregnable, secure – to escalade or battering, certainly. But assuming a besieger could cross the lagoon or, under protective canopies, get enough men across the causeway, what about mines under the western wall? That depends on the moat. It is wide. But is it deep?

  The second thing that strikes me is the city’s gridiron layout. It is consistent, even in those parts of the city that are clearly the oldest. But I had thought such plans for cities came with the Greeks, Hippodamos of Miletus in particular, only some two hundred years ago. Perhaps Carthage’s founders had a Phoenician model of which we do not know. I will ask, when I can determine who might know. Anyway, this layout would make Carthage easy to defend, and hard to attack – assuming one could ever breach or mine those walls. Fighting would be building by building, street by street. Even if that were successful, the belligerent would face the hurdle of the city’s great citadel, whose walls of smooth, dressed stone sparkling with malachite rise up some sheer 50 feet from the Byrsa hill.

  Next, the buildings amaze me. Even the simplest ones are made of rubble courses, strengthened by dressed slabs and uprights. I believe the technical term for this type of strengthening stone is the Greek word, orthostat. Yet I am sure the technique is an ancient Phoenician one. I wonder what the Carthaginians call it. My Punic vocabulary does not reach that far. I must ask. Anyway, all the buildings here are of stone, not the wood and mud and brick that make up much of Rome. This is a city it would take much to burn.

  Fourthly, water. Cisterns and standpipes and fountains abound. Are there wells, springs? If so, where does the water rise? Could this be Carthage’s only flaw? I would love to meet the city engineer. But assuming the water lasted, in a siege it would be easy to quench any fires that did break out.

  Finally, form. There is a sense of permanence, of confidence about this city that I have not felt elsewhere. It is as if Carthage has always been. This is a city that does not tell its past, but contains it, like the lines of a human hand.

  For our possessions, the money and jewels in particular, I am not concerned. The one thing everyone in Carthage must abide by, whatever they do, is the law. The city has many officials they call mehashebim who are responsible for the order and upkeep of the streets and squares. There are police on almost every corner, and nightwatchmen patrol. I enjoy half waking to their hourly calls. There is a gallows at the east side of the marketplace. Yesterday we saw a thief hanged there. And naturally, this being Carthage, there was an auction of his clothing afterwards, stripped from him before the cadaver was cold.

  I wrote to Mastanabal the night of our arrival, now ten days ago. I have heard nothing. Perhaps, like many great men, he has little ears.

  Letter found among the papers of Titus Licinius Labienus,

  magistrate in Capua, and preserved in the consistory of the

  Capuan courts

  My dear friend. If this finds you at all, I hope this finds you well. I write only to inform you of where we are: in Carthage, in the house of one Malchus, by the temple of Eschmoun. As you see, I have no need of apocrypha. No one from without can harm us here. So write to me when and if you can. As for us, what we hope for has not yet begun. Bostar.

  From Hanno’s memoir

  We had gone to bed. I heard the banging, banging at the door. We had no live-in servant. I got up, pulled on a shift and went downstairs. I unbarred and opened the door, screwing my eyes at the torches’ sudden glare. Two men were there, both in matching cuirasses of black leather with gold beading, wearing high collars that covered their necks and strange, peaked hats. Both were tall, but of different build. The one on my left had a long, thin face, a high forehead, a large hooked nose that shadowed half his face in the flickering light, and a lantern jaw. The other man was fleshier, with a round face, afflicted with wens and pink pustules, like a suet pudding encrusted with currants.

  ‘Yes?’ I managed.

  ‘We are looking for Bostar of Chalcedon,’ the taller of them said. I caught the Punic perfectly, though the accent was still strange.

  ‘He is in bed. It is late––’ I faltered.

  ‘It’s all right, Hanno,’ came Bostar’s voice behind me. ‘I’m here.’ Fully clothed, his sandals on, he moved into the doorway beside me.

  ‘You are Bostar of Chalcedon?’ The other man, his voice deeper, asked.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then you must come with us.’

  ‘And you are?’ Bostar asked mildly.

  ‘We are stewards of the Sufet.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Bostar replied lightly. ‘I have been waiting for you. Lead on, gentlemen, lead on.’ He gesture
d into the street, and turned to look at me. ‘Hanno, good night again. Go to sleep if you can. But please don’t bar the door.’ With a gentle touch to my shoulder, he was gone.

  Deposition, preserved in the archives of the Senate and

  People of Rome

  Lodged by Marcus Porcius Cato, Censor of Rome, on the day before the Nones of August, in the year ab urbe condita DLXX. Acting under the powers vested in me by custom, statute and decree, I had Marcus Antonius Regulus, High Clerk of the Treasury, send me the will of the late Publius Cornelius Scipio, known as Africanus.

  I know it is a serious matter to violate the privacy of a citizen’s last testament. I did so because we were denied by Scipio’s death the answers to allegations made at his trial. Did he, while supposedly on Rome’s service in Spain, appropriate gold and silver that should have been lodged with the aerarium in Rome? After defeating Hannibal, did he accept bribes from Carthage in return for favourable terms of peace? After defeating Philip of Macedon, did he accept bribes from Philip for withdrawing the legions of Rome? After defeating Antiochus of Syria, did he accept bribes from Antiochus’ ambassadors for withdrawing the legions of Rome?

  The official fortune left by Publius Cornelius Scipio was prodigious – more than double our own Treasury’s reserves. This, I submit, would be reason enough for us to suspect its origins and confiscate it all. But we have a second reason. To whom did the late senator leave his enormous wealth? Apart from some small bequests of a personal nature, he left it to one Bostar of Chalcedon, not even a citizen, a man whose origins are utterly obscure. How can this be in the interests of Rome? Now this Bostar is dead. No will of his has been lodged. Our laws state that, in the case of the intestacy of a foreigner, we must wait for three years. I move that, in this case, we suspend the law and appropriate now what remains of Bostar’s estate.

  Finally, it is of course now law that no citizen may hold deposits outwith Italy. So it has been since the black days after Cannae, when Hannibal threatened to destroy everything that we hold dear. According to the will of Publius Cornelius Scipio, he deposited gold with bankers in Rome and Capua, but also in Massilia and Carthagena, Antioch and even in Carthage.

  I have carried out enquiries. This Bostar had already made substantial withdrawals before he died. I move we confiscate everything that remains, even those sums outwith Italy if we can. I move we place this money in the hands of the Senate and People of Rome.

  Letter from Cato’s papers

  Lucius Valerius Flaccus to Marcus Porcius Cato, Censor. This morning I read with interest your deposition in the matter of Scipio Africanus. If he held other clandestine bank accounts, why would he declare some? Because, you will suggest no doubt, he hoped to conceal the others. That is conjecture, and our concern is law. Scipio was a general, a senator and a consul, whose genius saved Rome. Yes, he had flaws. Do not you, or I? As for the legatee, as you must know that matters not at all. Remember Quintus Horatius Fabius, who left the whole of his huge fortune to a cow? As for suspending the usual laws on intestacy in this case, I have no objection. What I am concerned about is any slight on the memory of Scipio. De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Remember that, Cato. After the debate on Curtius, I and the other reverend fathers will hear you move your motion. Move it well, or not at all.

  From Bostar’s journal

  It was quite a night, and not at all what I had expected. Mastanabal, High Sufet of Carthage and as powerful a man as any in the world, in a nightshirt, with dainty damask slippers on, sitting on a bed in a huge but sparsely furnished room. That is what I found after being escorted for what seemed like many stades. [Out of interest, I preserve Bostar’s Greek here, though I leave him the miles he uses elsewhere. A stade is the distance covered by a single draught of the plough, some 600 Roman feet. The Romans count five feet to a passus or pace, and 1,000 paces make up a Roman mile. It is a system more exact, I confess, than that of the Greeks. The same is true of their respective measures of area. But then the Romans worry about how much land they own; the Greeks about what to do with what little they have.] We walked and walked through the echoing corridors and lustrous halls where torches sputtered and silent guards presented arms to our profiles as we passed.

  What I remember most was the repeated motif of the sign of Tanit – a triangle, with a horizontal line across, and a circle above, its tip. It was painted on walls. I crossed several mosaic floors where, ilmenite on white, it was the theme. I walked past many statues of the goddess, different in size but in form the same. I must look into this. This iconography of Tanit is very ancient. But is the Egyptian ankh, the loop-topped cross and symbol of life, not older still?

  ‘So, you are Bostar of Chalcedon,’ the Sufet said, gesturing me towards a chair near the foot of the bed. His voice was very high and thin, like a bird’s. He had a long neck, like a grebe’s, and the huge forehead of his oval, bald and venose face gleamed in the light of the lamps. He had almost no chin, and a small mouth which pouted like a fish. Below that was a very fat body. Where his nightshirt ended, I saw rolls of fat around his ankles. He raised a languid hand.

  ‘An interesting city, Chalcedon. I went there many years ago. Now, wine. Water. Tea, perhaps.’ A statement, not a question. ‘Yes, tea. Extract of silphium, I think. It thins the blood. Astylax, see to it.’

  From the shadows at the head of the bed, from a desk on which I saw a candle and parchment, a much younger man stood up. Dressed in the same uniform as the guards who had escorted me from our house, he was lean and muscular. He moved easily, and nodded a greeting to me as he passed to leave the room. Going by, he gave off the gentlest whiff of bergamot, one of few perfumes of which I am fond. I saw high cheekbones, a strange, flared nose. I could not see his eyes.

  ‘Astylax is my private secretary,’ the Sufet explained, moving to sit with his back to the bedhead. ‘But his mother was born a Barca, and that makes him a cousin of the late Hannibal. So I thought it would be, shall I say, interesting for him to join us.’

  ‘Lord Sufet, as I stressed in my letter what I have to say is for your ears only––’

  ‘Do not be impertinent, stranger!’ the Sufet barked, leaning forward suddenly. ‘Next I suppose you will object to these!’ He raised an arm. From the room’s shadows, four men stepped forwards, in identical uniforms of red. Mastanabal chuckled. ‘They, stranger, are deaf and dumb.’

  ‘By nature,’ I asked, looking back at him, ‘or design?’

  ‘A good question. In Carthage, we exploit both. But you may rest assured that, though Astylax is neither deaf nor dumb, he is both as far as what is said here is concerned. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear, Lord Sufet.’

  ‘Good.’ He raised an arm again. The men stepped back. The bed creaked. A breeze came through the open window to my left and stirred the lamps. Mastanabal sat back. ‘Your Punic is good,’ he went on in a more mollifying tone. ‘Where did you learn it?’

  I was explaining as Astylax returned, carrying a tray. A pungent, fetid smell rose from the pot he bore.

  ‘Good, Astylax, good. And you remembered the honey?’ Mastanabal cheeped.

  ‘Of course, my lord.’ The voice was deep and pleasant, mellifluous, measured, serene.

  ‘And do you know this plant, silphium?’ Looking at me, the Sufet enquired.

  ‘I know of it, yes. I have seen it depicted on the coinage of Cyrenaica.’

  ‘Have you, have you indeed? Yes, its export has made Cyrene rich,’ Mastanabal replied. ‘It is a strange plant. Did you know that its root tubers have the shape of testicles?’ The Sufet tittered. ‘Anyway, we are trying to grow it here. We have established farms for it – where, Astylax?’

  ‘Near Hadrumetum, my lord.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Other chamaephytes grow there. I remember, now. That is why we chose the site. I must visit the silphium farms soon, and report to the Council. Make a note, Astylax. Make a note. Meanwhile we rely on imported extract, that costs more than its weight in gold.’ Mastanabal seemed to w
ithdraw into himself, to shrink. ‘We must find more revenues, more trade,’ he muttered, eyes closed.

  The lamps spluttered. The Sufet seemed to sleep. I looked across at Astylax. He was looking down. Outside the bedchamber, I heard the muffled coughing of a guard. Suddenly, Mastanabal stirred, rising from his reverie. In a brisker voice, he went on.

  ‘Now then, Bostar of Chalcedon, let me apologise for the lateness of the hour. I sleep little, and by day there is much to be done. You have my attention. You indicated in your letter that you have matters of great moment to raise with me. Whatever they are, I want one thing understood. Rome’s spies are everywhere. This meeting did not take place. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, Lord Sufet.’

  Mastanabal nodded vigorously, and his jowls shook. ‘Very well then, begin.’

  As the hours passed, I grew to like Astylax. His interventions were few, but germane. His knowledge of Rome and her politics was impressive as, at Mastanabal’s bidding, I explained why Hanno and I had come.

  Astylax had, it seemed, no reason to love Rome. With a Barca as a mother, he had lost much in the appropriations that followed Hannibal’s war with Rome. And his father, I learned, had died in the battle of Zama, the last Hannibal had fought, the first he had lost. I sensed that in Astylax I had an ally, and Hanno a friend.