The Topography of Carthage
The following sketch of the present appearance of the site of ancient Carthage is from the pen of the Rt. Hon. James Bryce, M.P.: —
At the extremity of a peninsula stretching eight or ten miles into the Mediterranean, and connected with the mainland by a flat isthmus, across which the sea must once have flowed, there is a ridge of hills, forming a sort of semicircle some four miles long, with its convex turned toward the sea, and rising at its highest point to about 400 feet. The sea under the hills is deep and sheltered from the northwest, the quarter whence most high winds come, while toward the land the neck of the peninsula, even now only some three miles wide, and 2500 years ago probably much narrower, makes the defence of a settlement upon the hills comparatively easy. It was at the southern extremity of this line of hills that the Tyrian founders of Carthage planted their settlement, and the last eminence or hummock toward the south became their citadel or Bozrah (for
Bozrah seems to be the true Phœnician form of the word which the Greek and Roman authors have written Byrsa). This hummock rises about 200 feet above the sea, from which its base is a quarter of a mile distant. It is steep towards the sea on the east and the south, while sloping more gently towards the west. On it and around its base the city arose. The ports were excavated beneath it to the southeast, and were easily made large enough (the ground being partly alluvial and the rock soft) to contain a large fleet and many merchant vessels. Thus the position was both convenient and strong. The citadel defended the ports, and while the citadel was surrounded by a wall of its own, the city, stretching along the line of eminences to the north, had also an enclosing wall of its own, and thus gave a double protection to the citadel on the sides (north and west) where the acclivities were gentle.
So much is clear. The so-called ports which are now visible have been dug out afresh recently, on what is believed to be the site, or part of the site, of the ancient ports. The space they occupy is so decidedly smaller than the descriptions of ancient writers imply that some antiquaries suppose there existed another port, enclosed by moles projecting into the sea, which has since vanished. The remains of the amphitheatre have been unearthed in the lower ground at the western base of the hill. And as to the Bozrah itself, on whose summit stood in Punic times the temple of the great god Eshmun, and where probably stood afterwards the residence of the Roman proconsul, and still later the palace of the Vandal kings, there is no question. But almost everything else is uncertain. Various spots have been suggested as the sites of the temples and churches and other public edifices mentioned by the ancient writers, but no data have yet been discovered sufficient to fix them. Even the direction of the walls and the extent of ground covered by the city are matters of controversy, so far as the evidence of the diggings goes. The ground area included in the compass of the city proper would appear to have been small (hardly more than a square mile) compared with its population, which is said to have at one time reached 700,000 or even 1,000,000. But probably there were large suburbs; and as the bulk of the population consisted of slaves, many might well be crowded into a small space.
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As the position is strong for defence, with the sea environing it, as it is admirable for maritime empire, lying in the middle of the Mediterranean, with Sicily and Sardinia close at hand, half-way from the mother-land of Tyre to the outermost Phœnician settlements on the edge of the ocean, so it rivals in the nobility of its landscape Constantinople or Corinth or Gibraltar. The hill of Bozrah is not lofty, but it rises so steeply from the sea, and commands so unbroken a prospect in every direction, except northeast (where it is overtopped by Sidi Bou Said, another eminence of the same chain of hills two miles away), that the view seems boundless over both land and sea. To the east there is the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, broken twenty-five miles off by the rocky isle of Zembra. To the southeast a long line of hills rises over the ample bosom of the Gulf of Tunis, running far out to the Fair Promontory, as the ancients called it, now Cape Bon. To the northwest, beyond the flat lands which the sea once covered, rise the gentler ridges where stand the lonely ruins of Utica, the elder sister of Carthage, the spot where Cato’s death left Julius Caesar master of all the Roman world except Spain. To the south and southwest three magnificent mountain groups successively arrest the eye and carry it far into the interior of Africa. Nearest, with its foot washed by the sea, is the double-peaked summit of Bou Kornein, the mountain of the two-horned Baal (Saturnus Baalcaranensis, as the Romans called him), where the ruins of his temple have been recently discovered. Further to the south is Jebel Resas, the Lead Mountain, among whose gorges the mercenary troops that revolted from Carthage, and brought her almost to destruction after the First Punic war, were hemmed in and destroyed by famine and the sword. Furthest of all, and highest, is the magnificent pinnacle of Zaghwan,
Mons Zeugitanus, whence the Zeugitanian province took its name. In this peak rise the copious springs which, led by an aqueduct more than eighty miles in length, supplied Carthage with the purest water, and from its craggy top the view extends far away to the south over plains once rich, but now mostly waste and desolate, almost to the verge of the Sahara. Immediately beneath the hill of Carthage is the narrow strip of land that divides the lagoon of Tunis from the sea, with Goletta, long a stronghold of the Moorish pirates, stormed by the Emperor Charles V., and again (after his troops had been withdrawn) the arsenal and fortress of the Beys, rising upon it at the point where a narrow channel gives access from the sea to the lagoon. And at the head of the lagoon, its smooth surface ruffled only by the flocks of flamingoes that disport themselves in the sunshine, rise the minarets and cupolas of Tunis, glittering white across the blue waters, with line after line of hill seen behind it, growing dimmer and more delicate in their soft blue-gray tints till they sink beneath the western horizon on the borders of Numidia. As there are few more exquisite views in the world, so there are few which embrace a region more full of stirring and terrible events. For 1600 years, down to the destruction of Carthage by the Arabs in A.D.
697 a fierce and strenuous life ebbed and flowed incessantly round this hill and on the plain that lies between it and Tunis. For 1200 years the hill has stood silent and melancholy as it stands now, and, in the words of Tasso,
Low lies proud Carthage; and the silent shore Keeps of her lordly ruins scarce a trace.
Punic Wars. Appian of Alexandria. Horace White (Translator). New York. 1899.
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