Destroy Carthage (4 page)

Rome dogged his travels unforgivingly. When negotiations
with Bithynia revealed his whereabouts to the Latin senate, extradition once more threatened. This time, there was no
escape. In his sixty-fifth year, Hannibal was too old a bird, as
Plutarch put it, to fly again. Rather than submit to capture,
he killed himself by drinking poison - to relieve 'the great
anxiety of the Romans,' he apostrophized.

The year was 183. Fate had already tagged a companion
for his sombre shade. Within twelve months, Publius Scipio
was dying at Liternum, Campania, as disillusioned and embittered as his old foe.

The
circumstances of Scipio's death introduce a new and
ominous participant to the drama of Carthage. He first appears
- a sedulous soldier-politician as conscientious in criticism as
in his duties - with the general at Zama. Then thirty-two, of
hardy Tusculum farming stock, Marcus Porcius Cato had risen
by stubborn will and ability to a rank of note in Rome, recently holding office as quaestor, or paymaster.

Soon he would be aedile, praetor and consul in quick suc­cession, later becoming censor, by which title he is best
known.

According to Livy, Romans of a future generation regarded
Cato as the personification of old school manners, of severe,
inflexible attitudes already thought reactionary by many in
his lifetime. His ethos was stern in its simplicity. He despised
luxury and extravagance, attacking their manifestations with
relentless impartiality. He railed tirelessly against relaxed
morals, especially among the young, and in women, whom
he seems to have viewed with misogynistic rancour.

Respected widely as embodying traditional Roman traits,
Marcus Cato cannot be recalled as an endearing man. Privately,
he was a hard husband, seemingly regarding his wife as a
household slave; an unaffectionate father; an often cruel
master to his servants. In office, he was diligent, repairing aqueducts, supervising
the cleansing of sewers, ensuring the safety of public places,
generally scourging what he saw as social mischief. Since he
disapproved implacably of the new ideas concomitant with
Rome's expanding experience in the 3rd and 2nd centuries,
this was a sweeping brief. Among other things, he resisted the
fashionable importation of Hellenic culture and urged the ex­pulsion from Rome of foreign philosophers. The popularity of
alien religious cults disgusted him.

Zama found Cato serving under a soldier of very different
character. Scipio, though essentially a man of action, was
broad-minded, cultured and magnanimous - a strange mixture
of patriot and cosmopolite, mystic and adventurer. Convinced
of Rome's imperial and protective mission, he applied himself
to martial and diplomatic tasks with a worldliness far removed
from the rigidities of Cato.

Long, dangerous campaigns, often far from reinforcement,
had taught Scipio the value of rewarding his troops in victory
and of showing restraint to beaten enemies. Meanness com­manded the devotion neither of the Roman soldier nor his
allies, and very real devotion had been Scipio's through a de­cade of campaigning up to Zama. In Africa, as elsewhere, he
indulged both his men and himself generously in their
triumphs, distributing spoil open-handedly.

Cato's austere sensibilities were duly shocked. The future
censor did not conceal his disapproval of such wasteful extrava­gance. By the time the Hannibalic war ended, the political op­ponents of Scipio had gained an officious and outspoken friend.

In the opening years of the new century, Cato was pro­minent not only in administration but as a force for colonial
repression. After holding a command in Sardinia, he acquired
a cruel reputation in 194 subduing the resistance of Spanish
tribes. Three years later he landed in Greece as a tribune under
consul Manilius Glabro to oppose the Syrian invasion. As vigor­ous in battle as in the senate, Cato distinguished himself at
Thermopylae by leading a column through the hills to take
the enemy in the rear.

Back in Rome, his stature now formidable, Cato became the
animating spirit of a series of attacks against Scipio and his
brother Lucius for their handling of the Syrian War in its
final phase. The generous foreign policy of Scipio, the easy
terms he proposed for Antiochus, his approval of Greek culture
- all became ammunition for the doughty Cato in a feud which
had assumed bitter proportions since Zama.

Honourably, if rashly, Scipio managed his defence in a
singularly unprofessional fashion - on ground dominated by
the enemy, and with weapons in which they were more
skilled. Though convinced of public sympathy, he offered no
popular challenge to the senatorial power of his opponents,
confining himself to formal political methods. With little
talent for such, he was at the mercy of the anti-Scipionic camp.
It was Cato's hour. The military command of Lucius was ter­minated, the treaty with Antiochus severely modified. The so-
called trials of the Scipios followed.

In 187, Lucius was charged with failing to account for 500
talents received from the Syrian monarch. Publius may have
been accused afterwards, but evidence of the prosecutions is
uncertain. If Publius Scipio was not condemned, he was suffic­iently disillusioned to leave Rome for Liternum, where he died
within a few months. An 'ungrateful Rome' should not have
his bones, he growled.

Scipio's death coincided with Cato's term of greatest power.
That year he exercised the censorship, ruthlessly revising the
lists of knights and senators. All those he judged unworthy by
his moral standards, or lacking in proper means, were expelled
in an abrasive purge. At the end of his censorship, Cato was
fifty. It was to be his last public office, but by no means the end
of his influence. For another thirty years and more he would
regale the senate with predictable fervour, the arch-opponent
of new ideas and old sins.

Meanwhile, a subtler force was working in Africa. It has
been shown that the treaty of 201 had given Masinissa of
Numidia a claim to such territories of Carthage as had belonged
to his ancestors. Within the spirit of the settlement, this may
have seemed reasonable, but the clause left room for exploi­tation. Masinissa set out to make the most of it.

Realistically, the king took account of Roman attitudes.
Gratitude between allies had its limits, and Masinissa was far
too astute to abuse his luck. Timed at prudent intervals, usually
when Rome was elsewhere preoccupied, the Numidian's claims
harmonized by remarkable coincidence with ostentatious dem­onstrations of his support for the Roman cause, or with hints
of unseemly Carthaginian recovery.

Scipio had fixed the Carthaginian frontier after Zama at the
historically familiar Phoenician trench, a line cutting the
modern territory of Tunisia diagonally from Thabraca
(Tabarka) on the northwest coast, to Sfax in the southeast.
Masinissa's first advances, near the profitable Emporia region
on the gulf of Gabes, were outside the new boundary but on
lands the city had long held.

Though Carthage referred the issue of Numidian encroach­ment to Rome, and a commission was sent to investigate, no
further action was taken by the northern power. A decade
later, Masinissa took armed possession of land in the Bagradas
valley, nearer the African city. Again, appeal to Rome pro­duced no decision. The Numidians stayed put.

In 174, behind a screen of accusations against Carthage, in­cluding her alleged implication in a war-plot with Macedon,
Masinissa made another grab. Soon, Carthage could protest
the loss of seventy towns and outposts to her neighbour. Faced
with an urgent appeal for their return, along with lands
usurped earlier, Rome referred the complaint to Masinissa,
demanding explanation.

But a new
Romano
-Macedonian war was looming, and
Numidia's prompt contribution to the Romans of troops and
provisions blurred the outcome. When Carthage scotched
Masinissa's slanders by offering Rome ships for her campaign,
the king found another charge. The city, he exclaimed, was
contravening peace terms by embarking on naval construc­tion.

The utter defeat of Macedon in 168 left no illusions to those
who had continued to doubt Rome's might. 'For the future,'
wrote the contemporary Polybius, 'nothing remained but to
accept the supremacy of the Romans, and to obey their com­mand.' An overweening sense of mastery, pervading the re­public, was reflected in its changing diplomacy. Scipio was
dead. Increasingly, the protective imperialism expressed in his
philosophy gave way to a bullying, ruthless foreign outlook.

Toward Africa, this appeared in a mounting indifference to
Carthaginian complaints against Numidia. From 168 to 161,
Masinissa concentrated on the gulf of Gabes, annexing the
whole of the Emporia to a realm which now ranged from west
of Cirta to well into modern Libya. Anger quickened in
Carthage. Not only had Rome failed repeatedly to provide
redress for injustices, she had actually pronounced on occa­sions for Numidia.

Carthaginian government was shaken. Seemingly purged
of corruption, the aristocratic party which had dominated
since Hannibal Barca left had sustained a high order of econ­omic recovery, but backed a forlorn foreign policy. Its view
even now was that deference to the Romans would pay off; that
Masinissa's ambition was incompatible with the reality of
Rome's power, and that eventually the Numidian king would
knot his own noose.

Many citizens thought otherwise. A second party favoured
detente
with Masinissa. While no arrangement was likely
without concessions to his interest in the city, there were, it
was argued, advantages for Carthage in such a course. Masin­issa's growing nation, increasingly civilized in outlook, was a
potential market of great value for its commercial neighbour.
The king's co-operation could hardly prove less dependable
than that of Rome.

But the issue was emotional. Obstructing any pro-Numidian
policy was the tradition, evolved through centuries, of Carth­aginian superiority among the peoples of North Africa. To
parley on equal, let alone deferential terms with Masinissa and
his 'natives,' was a prospect repugnant to most Carthaginians.
Indeed, deference to any power, Rome included, was pro­foundly at variance with the psyche of a city steeped in inde­pendence.