History of Money, Banking, and Trade
A historical look at the development and evolution of money, banking, and trade. From the ancient civilizations to the present.
History of Money, Banking, and Trade
Episode 35. The Rise and Struggles of Ancient Carthage's Maritime Empire
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Welcome podcast listener. I am Mike D and this is the History of Money, banking and Trade podcast. When we last left off, we were giving you an overview of the beginnings of Carthage. While Rome was still a small city-state, carthage was already dominating the Mediterranean as it had reigned as the wealthiest maritime power. We discussed how it was born, as a distant colony of the Phoenician traders seeking to escape from Assyrian control. In this new city on the North African coast, we also talked about how it had a founding myth that may have had some elements of truth to it. But, more importantly, carthage evolved into something far greater than its founders had imagined.
Speaker 1:Unlike their Phoenician ancestors, who operated as merchant vassals under regional powers, carthaginians developed political independence alongside commercial dominance. Their innovative republic balanced aristocracy, councils with elected officials that were called suffolks and the people's assembly. This sophisticated constitutional system impressed even Aristotle, who praised its checks and balances, and it likely influenced Rome's own republican government. What made Carthage exceptional wasn't just that they traded purple dye and silver and had agricultural expertise, but it was also how they traded. They pioneered silent trading techniques with indigenous Africans. They had established trans-Saharan trade routes. They had developed complex credit systems that challenged our own assumptions about ancient economies Rather than simple barter. Carthaginians created sophisticated financial arrangements that enabled trade across vast distances.
Speaker 1:The transition from purely commercial power to a naval military force occurred gradually as Greek expansion threatened Carthaginian interests in Sicily. Due to their westward expansion by the various Greek tribes, this ultimately meant that they were eating into the Carthage trade networks that they had established over the centuries. In the past, if a foreign entity that wasn't Phoenician and wasn't obviously a much stronger power like the Assyrians or the Babylonians, the Carthaginians would have called on their Phoenician cousins to deal with the encroaching sea power. Like the Greeks, however, the Phoenicians and the Levant were weak because of the pressure put on them by the Babylonia, so the people of Carthage were going to have to deal with the Greek problem on their own. Ultimately, this had an unintended effect, as it pushed the Carthaginians to assert themselves more and more as the dominant leaders of the Phoenician city-states. As such, they had no choice if they wanted to protect the existing trade networks upon which the new city relied on for its survival. They couldn't let the Greeks in Sicily push them around. This ultimately ratcheted up a notch when, in 580 BCE, the Sicilian Greeks tried to expel them from the entire island. The Greeks wanted to expand their own trade networks and take control over trade with the settlements in Sicily, while further cutting off the Phoenicians or Carthaginians from their colonies in Sardinia and going back to Carthage asserting itself as a power.
Speaker 1:I want to be clear here. This was a slow process. It wasn't like they were immediately leaders of the Phoenician city-states. It would just slowly build up to becoming the clear power and true leader of the Phoenicians.
Speaker 1:Another thing that should be noted is that the Greeks and Sicily tried to push out the Carthaginians basically while Tyre was under siege by Babylonia. So the timing was probably not a coincidence. It was probably known that Carthage would have been on their own, so it was a now or never kind of scenario. The Greek Sicilians were ultimately unsuccessful, despite being weak. It appears that the Phoenicians were able to provide the Carthage cousins some assistance Now, without really probably knowing it at the time. This probably had an unintended long-term consequence for Carthage, as they basically made it a point going forward that they would always make sure they had a presence in Sicily. Point going forward that they would always make sure they had a presence in Sicily. One could say that this policy could be the undoing of them in the long run. Thus, it was the Greeks who prompted Carthage to become protectors and the end rulers of the Phoenicians in the West.
Speaker 1:Now, before we go further, I think it's important to note and I've said this several times throughout these series that a lot of the information that we are getting concerning the history of Carthage and Phoenicia comes from the Romans and the Greeks, and even the people of Numidia and their surrounding African territories, but to a much lesser extent, and I point that out specifically, kind of from my point of view, because I used to be under the impression that the people of Carthage were these bloodthirsty imperialists In the first instance, it appears to me that it was actually the Greeks that initiated the conflict, not the Carthaginians. While this was all happening, the Carthaginians were maintaining close ties with their Phoenician cousins in Spain, possibly helping them to develop the trade colony and keep it alive while they struggled at home in the Levant. During the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE, the Phoenicians, and more specifically the Carthaginians, began implementing trade deals with the Etruscans, a neighbor of the Romans, whom owe a lot of their culture to. The Etruscan-Carthage-Phoenician trade complex turned out to be a very successful one for all sides. By all accounts, it appears that everyone benefited and no one felt like they were being ripped off by their trade partner. Also, as these trade deals were flourishing, there was kind of a weird kind of thing happening in Western Anatolia, as many of the Ionian Greeks that had a really interesting relationship with authority. They were vassals to the Persians and as such they were allowed to rule as they felt they needed to. But they were restless and despite having quite a bit of economic freedom, they had revolted from their Persian overlords and many had fled to Italy.
Speaker 1:Around 540 BCE, the conflicts between the Greeks and the Carthaginians resulted in some positive things as well, as it's not really uncommon for two sides to have disagreements, and maybe they're kind of at war with each other or there's some kind of cold war type of thing happening. A lot of times they end up having some kind of dialogue between the two sides and what ends up happening is you get a lot of cultural exchanges and even ideas between the different cultures, even if they're warring with each other. So, for example, the lydians in anatolia were the first culture to mint coins and since they were friendly with their neighbors, the Ionian Greeks, they quickly picked up on this process and they too began to mint their own coins. Well, this spread to the other Greek communities in Sicily and southern Italy around 540 BCE, as they started to mint their own coins themselves. However, the Carthaginians were kind of late to the party, but they did see the value-added nature of coinage and the efficiency it brought to trade, so they finally got to minting around 115 years later. So, as you can see, they're pretty late. Around 425 BCE is when they started minting. This would be kind of a foreshadow of the problems that Carthaginians will have, in that they were initially the great innovators of sea trade and shipbuilding and even building factories that were modern day assembly lines, but for some reason they started to show signs of becoming stuck in their ways and unwilling to think outside the box or even adapt to the modern world. I mean, this is just my opinion and not something I've really ever read, but this is kind of like the first crack in the eventual downfall of Carthage. How can a society that was so dependent upon long-distance trade be so far behind in coinage? Although they were behind, they did manage to play a bit of catch-up.
Speaker 1:The first Carthage mints were established in western Sicily, in modern-day Palermo. The currency produced by these communities is known as the Siculo-Punic coinage. Like the coinage that was produced by the Greek communities in Sicily, it was minted solely in silver on the Attic-Euboei weight standard, with iconography mostly adapted from pre-existing Sicilian coinages, primarily those of Imera, segesta and Syracuse. This Sicilou Punic coinage probably preceded Phoenician's own Tyring shekels, which were developed around 400 BCE. The ironic part is that the Carthaginian economy was modernized in the 5th century BCE primarily to pay mercenary armies deployed against the Greeks in Sicily, which really shouldn't be a surprise, because the Persians were slow to adapt to coinage as well. But ultimately, one of the biggest drivers of developing coins was that they could pay their mercenary armies, because that's what they would have accepted. So it wasn't like they were developing coins to use in the economy as a whole. They developed coins because that's what the mercenaries wanted and they had to supply them with their needs, had to supply them with their needs.
Speaker 1:So in reality, the Carthaginians got the idea of coinage from their enemies or rivals, the Ionian Greeks, who were often looking for plunder and really could almost be viewed as crooks and pirates, as they started attacking both the Carthaginians and the Etruscans and disrupting their trade in colonies, which prompted the two nations to ally against them. The main targets of the Greek pirates were the Etruscan colonies on Corsica and the Phoenician colonies on Sardinia. It appears that the Greeks did this strategically, as they knew these colonies were weakly defended. Eventually, the Etruscan Carthage allies were able to push back from the plundering of Corsica and Sardinia, and the Greeks retreated to their home base in the south of France. It sounds like this piracy situation enabled the Etruscan Carthaginians to grow closer. The thing is, the Etruscans never unified into a single state.
Speaker 1:Despite that, the closeness between the Carthaginians and the Etruscans was kind of capped off with a trade agreement signed in the late 6th century BCE. What makes the timing of this trade agreement interesting was the fact that Carthage was also beginning diplomatic and trade relations with the Etruscan neighbor, rome. It appears that even though Rome was an up-and-comer, the Carthaginian merchants could see it as a potential lucrative trade partner. In fact, early Roman historians state that in 509 BCE, in the first year of the Roman Republic, the two nations signed a friendship treaty. So it's interesting that Carthage was one of the first states to recognize Rome in terms of trade and potential alliances.
Speaker 1:Now, it should be noted that not everyone was on board, that Carthage and Rome were instant allies. Some modern scholars tend to think that this alliance happened a little later, possibly in the late 5th or early 4th century BCE. Little later, possibly in the late 5th or early 4th century BCE. Now, in my opinion, the dates really aren't all that important. What is important is that they were trade partners early on, and the Carthaginians and the Phoenicians were much more powerful and influential than the upstart Romans. The treaty ultimately placed limitations on how the Romans could trade on Phoenician soil, while the latter had no restrictions on how they conduct business in Roman territory. So that right there can tell you all you need to know about who was in power between the two. This treaty also divided up the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1:Rome was confined to Italy, while Carthage was recognized as controlling Sicily, sardinia and Northern Africa. At this point, spain really isn't mentioned. Not that it means much, but Sicily sits on the northern edge of the African plate where it collides with the Eurasian plate. This is why the island experiences significant volcanic activity due to tectonic collisions. Since Carthage derived their culture and society from the Phoenicians, they really didn't have an army and instead would have relied on mercenaries if needed. The reason being is for one, they never had one to begin with, which is why they were a nation of merchants, and also Carthage had a population too small to sustain prolonged military campaigns anyway. Thus, it was seen as a better option for the citizens to continue their trading, while their mercenary army would be paid from their taxes. This was basically the same model that the Italian city-states had used in the late medieval European or early Renaissance period.
Speaker 1:An early test of this model came when the Greeks tried to settle in Libya, not far from Carthage. The Greeks were apparently led by a Spartan king named Darius, but the Carthaginians and the local Libyans kicked them out, despite Carthage having strong leaders in place. Like Hamilcar, carthage remained a republic. The Spartan king Darius tried his luck again in Sicily, which Carthage believed it controlled. Carthage raised an army, either through mercenaries or from their local vassals, or even a mix of both, and in 509 BCE the forces had forced the Spartan king out of their land. In this process, the king lost his life, along with many of his followers. The Carthaginian problem in Sicily was mitigated, at least for now.
Speaker 1:One thing to note is it's not really known for sure if the local inhabitants of Sicily were necessarily happy to be under the thumb of the Carthaginians. We really don't have any record one way or the other. To know, the next roughly two decades were a peaceful period and the Carthaginians were able to grow economically, and this will be a recurring theme in that during the times of peace, carthage experienced higher than normal economic growth in the domestic production and foreign trade. In fact, it is around this time that many historians view the very beginning of the Carthage Empire as the new city that was inoff place. They possibly set up a government. That would have been sort of how Cyrus the Great would have set up his government when Persia was expanding its empire.
Speaker 1:The reason I say this is because whenever Carthage came to dominate a particular area, they allowed the local inhabitants to self-govern, but they expected them to pay their tribute and taxes back to Carthage. However, unlike the Persians, carthage became a little bit more dominant in the way their culture spread in conquered territories or maybe conquered is a strong word, but maybe they're colonies that they had controlled. I say that because the Persians really believed in allowing the local population to maintain its original culture and religion, but it appears that wherever Carthage controlled, the Phoenician culture began to permeate more of it, whether it was done purposefully or not. So, in other words, the local inhabitants solely accepted the Phoenician languages, or a variant of it, and its artistic styles and religious customs. However, it wasn't necessarily a one-way street either, because it appears that the people of Carthage may have also picked up on foreign customs back in North Africa as well. So it's possible that the people of Carthage began to pick and choose certain things that they seem to have liked from the foreigners that they came in contact with or conquered, or at least controlled. As such, by the 5th century BCE, the Carthaginian civilization was virtually independent of its Phoenician cousins. By this point, in fact, the Romans would have called the people of Carthage and their language as Punic, which was a Romanized variation of Greek Phoenician. Therefore, the Romans were differentiating the people of Carthage from the Phoenicians and the Levant, and I think it's quite obvious at this point. But the people of Carthage did not call themselves Punics or say they spoke a Punic language or had a Punic culture. This was purely a Romanized version of it.
Speaker 1:Carthage was at a point that was very different from its Phoenician cousins. Carthage was at a point that was very different from its Phoenician cousins. The reason being was the Phoenicians would have had trade colonies that they would have needed to defend from indigenous populations that were much less sophisticated militarily and didn't have the metallurgy skills of. The Phoenicians didn't ever need to raise an army because they were so small and new. It would have been pointless because they had to deal with the local hegemons, such as the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the Babylonians, of which they would have had virtually no chance of defeating. So from their perspective, it was a lot easier and made much more sense to just play ball with the larger powers and pay the taxes and tributes, along with their supply in their navy, when they were called upon. In other words, the various states of Phoenicia were in no position to raise an army or hire mercenary soldiers to attack a foreign state or defend itself from a foreign state.
Speaker 1:Carthage, on the other hand, had developed much differently, in part because of its location on North Africa, because it didn't have to deal with the Egyptians or the Mesopotamian powers. Furthermore, the Greeks were sort of a backwater place when the Phoenicians were growing their long-distance trade. They weren't so much of a threat or direct competition at first. By the time that Carthage is reaching its heyday. The various Greek city-states are in a much different place and now are players in the long-distance trade and therefore would have been direct competitors of Carthage. In addition, they weren't afraid of mixing it up with much bigger and stronger powers, and they certainly weren't afraid of mixing it up with their own Greek cousins. So therefore the idea of the Greeks backing away from the Carthaginians would have been a non-starter. Carthage had to defend its colonies from people who had some way behind them and weren't afraid of a fight, whereas the Phoenicians didn't necessarily have to worry about that when they were setting up trained colonies.
Speaker 1:One other thing that Carthage was doing was sending its sailors farther and farther west. By the 6th century or the early 5th century BCE, carthage was able to dispatch two exploratory expeditions into the Atlantic Ocean, with one making left-hand turn and moving down the African coast, and this expedition would have made it all the way down to the Gulf of Guinea, which is around Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, if you want a frame of reference. If you want a frame of reference. But we aren't 100% sure exactly where they made it to, as this information would have come from Greek accounts centuries after the fact. So the information may not necessarily be correct, but they initially said that this expedition included 30,000 people and was led by Hanno. Now, 30,000 may be an extreme exaggeration, but nonetheless it was potentially a sizable fleet that sailed down the coast of Africa.
Speaker 1:To be honest, I don't know what the goal of the expedition was, but it doesn't appear that there was any long-term settlements on the coast, because there isn't any archaeological evidence to support that. It's quite possible that the main goal was to establish new trade partners and get access to new raw materials and finished goods from the local indigenous population. However, it doesn't appear that they were able to establish long-term trade deals. In fact, the only real long-term impact that we know of, or at least we think we know of, was the fact that on this voyage, there was an account of them capturing a savage hairy human that the local interpreters call gorillas. Many have assumed after reading these accounts that the Carthaginians had in fact captured apes, not hairy people had in fact captured apes, not hairy people.
Speaker 1:Now I mentioned that they sent two expeditions to the Atlantic Ocean. The first made the left-hand turn and went down Africa. The second one made a right-hand turn and went up further into Europe. This expedition was led by Himmelkopf and it appears that he may have sailed all the way up to the British Isles and into around northern France. Once again, it appears that this goal was to establish trade connections with the people of northern Europe. The expedition of extensive trade with the British Isles isn't very clear, but it appears that there was extensive trade in Tinn with the people of modern Portugal. Was extensive trade in tin with the people of modern Portugal?
Speaker 1:It sounds like the Carthaginians' biggest goal at this point was to make sure that they controlled the Pillars of Hercules. In other words, they wanted to control the Straits of Gibraltar and any access into and out of the Atlantic Ocean. One of the tricks that they used was to tell the tales of these vicious sea monsters that controlled the Pillars of Hercules. And this kind of makes a lot of sense, because if you scare the hell out of people, they're not going to sail there and therefore you'll be able to control the region without a fight.
Speaker 1:And I think it's partly the reason why I've always been fascinated with how certain superstitions appear, because I'm personally not a superstitious person and they always seem kind of illogical to me. So therefore I've always been kind of curious as to the origin stories. So when you hear of sea monsters ripping up and killing merchant ships in the western Mediterranean, you wonder how did those stories get started and why did they get started? Well, wonder how did those stories get started. And why did they get started? Well, it's because they wanted to protect trade, because fear is one of the most important means of controlling the population. It's exactly why certain political parties and 24-hour news channels in the United States use fear as a means to keep people in line to control their voting patterns, despite these people voting against their own economic interests.
Speaker 1:It's off the subject here, but one of my favorite stories behind a superstition is the superstition that many of you probably heard growing up is if you break a mirror, it's seven years bad luck. Well, I used to always wonder why this superstition appeared, because it seemed very illogical to me and a bizarre story even when I was younger. Why would I have seven years bad luck if I accidentally broke a mirror? Well, the reason why I found out when I was much older was because a mirror used to be very expensive and the only way people can afford them is if they were very wealthy, and these wealthy people typically had servants working for them. Well, the wealthy people didn't want the servants to break their mirrors because they were expensive, so they wanted them to be very careful around the mirrors. So what they did is they made up this crazy story that, hey, if you break this mirror, you'll have seven years bad luck. This way, the servants would be much more careful when they're cleaning the mirrors. So that's how superstitions like that get started, just like the sea monster superstition in the Western Mediterranean. You don't want competition out there or you want people to be careful, so you make up a story that keeps people in fear.
Speaker 1:Fear has an amazing way to keep people in line, and the people of Carthage were hoping to use this fear to keep the Greeks out, and other peoples as well, but primarily the Greeks. The problem is, the Greeks really didn't go away, especially in Sicily, and the one thing about the Greeks was they were the cousins who loved each other and then loved to fight each other, the most notorious being the Athenians and the Spartans. But on the island of Sicily, it was the Ionians and Adorian Greeks that started to clash. This was, in part, due to the fact that a certain tyrant named Gelo or Gellon rose to power and wanted more power and money for himself. At Syracuse, the Dorians and the Ionians warred with each other in the 480s BCE. Apparently, the Ionians quickly realized that they were probably outmatched and thus turned to Carthage for help in 483 BCE. The issue for Carthage was they probably had no choice in the matter, because the Dorians probably would have united all the Greeks in Sicily and if they did that they potentially would have kicked out the Carthaginians or at least would have had a costly war that potentially dragged on for a while.
Speaker 1:But shockingly, carthage actually held back for a few years and didn't get involved until Hamilcar sent about 30,000 troops to Sicily. Now that 30,000 is disputed by modern historians. They think they kind of overestimated by a factor of 10. In addition, as I'd mentioned prior, carthage took a similar view that the Italian city-states took in the medieval European times, in that when they fought they preferred to hire a mercenary force. So, by all accounts, most of the 30,000 or 3,000, whatever it was were in fact mercenaries. The Dorians had about 26,000 troops, so it would have been a one-to-one match. According to the original estimates, most likely this was much less than 26,000. Maybe it was 2,600. But at some point the Dorians intercepted a message to Hamilcar and therefore were able to beat the Carthaginian mercenary force to the punch and easily defeat them, and killed Hamilcar in the process.
Speaker 1:I just want to stop right here. Hamilcar is a name that you're going to see come up over and over and over. It's a different person, but they just like using the same names over and over and over, so it gets quite confusing. But I digress. The thing was, the Dorian leader, gallo, was smart enough to realize that it was the perfect time to sue for peace, because he would have been negotiating from a position of strength. He could have kept going, but it's possible that the war would have been too costly for him on his side and the other side, possibly the Carthaginians, would have turned the tide because they could have easily hired more mercenaries and they weren't completely destroyed. To begin with, the peace consisted of asking for only 2,000 talents of silver, which equates to about 50 tons of silver, and Carthage had to build two temples where the treaty would be displayed. Carthage agreed to the deal and accepted.
Speaker 1:Now it's worth noting that, according to Greek accounts, they made it appear that Carthage was utterly destroyed at first, but modern historians really weren't buying it. However, despite all this. It appears that economic growth had slowed considerably for Carthage in the years following the skirmish. In fact, around 480 BCE, carthage may have gone through sort of an economic depression, or maybe it was not as severe and possibly just a recession, but either way trade was down by quite a bit. The Greeks, on the other hand, had recently come off a series of victories over the Persians. As such, they were now the economic and trade powers of the eastern Mediterranean, and therefore their Phoenician cousins had to take a major backseat and were even becoming Hellenized to a certain extent. This meant that for the Carthaginians, their trade deals in the Levant and Egypt were basically close to them.
Speaker 1:Also, around the same time, things were starting to shake up in Italy. Rome began pressuring the Etruscans, who were probably the first economic allies that the people of Carthage had in Italy. This goes back before Rome was even a republic. So now Carthage was on the verge of losing yet another major trading partner, in addition to Egypt and the various states in the Levant. So you can kind of see the root cause of this economic depression or recession, or whatever you want to call it, because that expansion that they had prior was clearly slowing down, if not reversing.
Speaker 1:So it appears that Carthage probably figured it's best to just focus locally on North Africa, where the Greeks and the Romans couldn't interfere at this point. But it turned out to be a little bit more of a difficult task than they had expected, because the Libyans, if you want to call them that or Berbers, were quickly developing economically and even militarily. So it wasn't like it used to be, where the Phoenicians would just go into places like Spain and North Africa and meet up with the locals that were so much further behind technologically speaking, because it sounds like these Libyans or Berbers whatever you want to call them were closing the gap. The issue here was the same issue that we would see in many other places at so many different points in history. Whereas a hegemon has power over the local population and proceeds to exploit that power, in this particular case, carthage imposed a much higher tax rate and other fees on the non-Carthaginian populations in North Africa. After a while, people are just going to start to figure this out and they're not going to be happy with the arrangement. So you can almost guarantee that at some point the local population is going to align themselves with the enemy of Carthage, because they're going to view these potential invaders as liberators. This will almost always happen and it still happens to this day, if the situation were to occur.
Speaker 1:In addition, the Carthaginians were also applying a lot of pressure on the Berbers to impose their culture on them. So, in other words, the Berbers were not going to go along with this and change their religious rituals or their language or even just their normal customs, and they're going to be taxed much more than the Carthaginian neighbors. So, therefore, you can almost guarantee that they're just kind of waiting around for the right opportunity to strike and probably waiting for a foreign group to come in and aid them. With all this being said, you can see how Carthage had evolved and changed from a state that was a purely economic state, interested in long-distance trade and establishing trade colonies, to becoming more and more like an empire and trying to impose its will on the local population. In other words, they were kind of becoming the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Persians, the people that the people of Phoenicia would have resented but would have gone along with anyway, because they had no choice. Now, despite all this what I just said, it is possible that it wasn't really like this and it wasn't that bad, and we're getting misinformation from people that may have not had the best interest in mind when telling the Carthaginian story, but either way, it does appear that they were changing nonetheless. Also, what we start to see in Carthage is the rise of the Algarci in aristocracy. As such, certain political institutions were created to try to limit the power of these families, particularly the Magadha family. Despite this, carthage remained an Algarci republic, with the Magadhans at the head of it.
Speaker 1:By 450 BCE, carthage and its Algars had recovered financially by this point. This recovery may have been because they were able to expand further into Africa and therefore were able to grow more foodstuffs and not rely on the importation of food like they had in the past. So, in other words, they were able to increase their crop yields due to their expansion in North Africa. In addition, their trade colony in Sardinia was becoming more and more developed and was exporting more goods throughout the Mediterranean. But probably the biggest factor that fueled their most recent economic expansion was their trade colonies that were set up in the Iberian Peninsula, which is modern Spain, as it had an abundance of natural resources, including valuable metals such as silver being the most important one. Therefore, carthage and its oligarchs were able to grow much richer.
Speaker 1:What also helped Carthage grow richer was the fact that this was a time of peace, and I know I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a bit here, but one thing you'll see over and over with Carthage is whenever they have a time of peace, they are able to grow their economy and their treasury. In fact, it's between the periods of the Punic Wars when Carthage recovers relatively quickly, and this really scares the hell out of the certain Roman senators. So the fact is, since there was a lack of a costly conflict, this meant that the Carthaginian treasury was able to grow much richer and not be depleted. But you know who takes notice? The Athenians. We know this because they started writing extensively about them. They would write about how wealthy Carthage was and they would write about the great generals.
Speaker 1:So for the next 70 years or so, it appears that Carthage was content with their spot in the western part of Sicily. There was a general peace on the island, with the Carthaginians staying on their side and the Greeks staying on their side. As such, athens started to develop a good relationship with Carthage. Now, this could have been in part because Syracuse had aligned with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. So Athens was probably looking for an additional trade partner and a potential military ally if needed, especially in Sicily, because in 416 BCE, athens sent a fleet to Sicily to fight against Syracuse.
Speaker 1:However, carthage was wise enough to stay out of the Peloponnesian War, and this turned out to be a pretty smart move, because in 413 BCE, syracuse was the one that helped Sparta. However, there were certain tribes in Sicily that had aligned with Athens and not Syracuse, and of course, syracuse wasn't happy with this. One of these tribes, the Segesta, in 410 BCE asked Carthage for protection in exchange to submit to them on Sicily. So after about 70 years of inaction and peace, carthage accepted this offer and decided to get involved in a war in Sicily. The question becomes why would they do that? Some people believe that it was because the grandson of Hamilcar was now in charge of the military. If you remember, earlier, hamilcar was killed in Syracuse, so it's possible that this was taken up as some sort of revenge, but it might not be that simple. There might be some strategic reasons behind this, because Segesta was near the Carthage territory in Sicily and the fear was, if Syracuse took that over, they would start encroaching closer and closer and could potentially grow stronger and then take over the whole of the island of Sicily. Also, the Athenians had lost all interest in Sicily after the Peloponnesian War, so it's possible that the Carthaginians figured out that they can pretty much do whatever they wanted to on the island without upsetting their Athenian friends and potentially ruining a trade partnership of which they had signed in 406 BCE.
Speaker 1:Before they had signed that trade treaty with Athens in 409 BCE, the Carthaginian military mainly consisted of the mercenary soldiers and the Carthaginian navy. Hannibal led them to two great victories over the cities of Salinas and Helmera. Returnd in 406 BCE, he laid siege to the city of Acras in southern Sicily, which was the most crucial Syracuse ally and one of the wealthiest Greek settlements. However, because this was an ancient battle and we see this in so many different times, plague had ravaged the Carthaginian military and even killed Hannibal in the process. His cousin, himilco, took over command and managed to defeat the Syracuse army. Despite these victories, the Carthaginians were still being wiped out by the plague, which led Himilco to agree to a peace treaty with Syracuse. As part of this treaty, syracuse and its allies in Sicily would pay tribute to Carthage. Other towns in Sicily would gain its independence from Syracuse, and this treaty was designed to leave Syracuse isolated from the rest of Sicily, syracuse isolated from the rest of Sicily. However, there was a major problem the Carthaginians brought the plague back home to Carthage, and there were some other internal issues that they were also dealing with, so, in other words, it was weakened by this whole matter. This allowed Dionysus to ignore the treaty and conquer many of the eastern and central Sicilian cities.
Speaker 1:By around 398 BCE, syracuse had managed to rebuild its strength. We really don't know specifically how many soldiers they were able to raise, but it sounds like it was a fairly significant amount. The Greeks say that they had about 80,000 soldiers, but this is probably an exaggeration. They were also reportedly able to build their navy with approximately 200 ships. Syracuse first laid siege to the island city of Matia, which was a strategically important city for Carthage as it lied on the western coast of Sicily. The city was destroyed and never recovered, and this absolutely infuriated Carthage. So therefore, himilco gathered the troops and returned to the island during the winter, a season during which, in ancient times, armies rarely fought.
Speaker 1:It's quite possible that Syracuse was kind of caught off guard, in that they may not have been expecting a winter campaign. So in the winter of 397 BCE, syracuse was besieged. Syracuse was able to hold out, as it was a walled city, and, luckily for them, as of the summer of 396 BCE approached, carthage's military was hit with yet another plague. Dionysus must have known this through his intelligence network, because he looked to exploit this information and attack Carthaginian camps and the navy. Himilco found himself in a position to be cut off, so therefore he had pretty much no choice to retreat with his soldiers on the ships and escape to Africa, leaving the mercenaries and the Sicilian allies on their own. Himilco's actions did not play well at home at all, and thus he was viewed as a coward for abandoning his mercenaries and Sicilian allies, and apparently the pressure got to him, so much so that he had committed suicide as a result. Now it sounds like the local Libyans had gotten wind of this and they decided to rebel, and then, on top of that, there was a local slave uprising. So in other words, a lot was happening, and not much of it was good, but luckily it sounds like Carthage was able to find a decent replacement in a man named Mago, who may or may not have been part of the Magadan family, and things settled down quite a bit and therefore the situation in Carthage kind of stabilized.
Speaker 1:By 393 BCE, syracuse and Carthage had grown tired of fighting, and probably more so. Their treasury was being drained on top of that. So in 392 BCE, both sides signed a peace treaty. It was somewhat similar to the one they had signed before, whereas they both agreed that they would stay on each other's side of the island. However, syracuse continued to gobble up territories on the eastern side of Sicily and expand it into southern Italy. Carthage saw this and was preparing for another inevitable war.
Speaker 1:And by 383 BCE, dionysus, the tyrant of Syracuse, essentially broke the peace treaty by trying to induce alliances where towns in western Sicily would have gone against Carthage. Mago himself led the campaign into Sicily, but Carthage suffered a bad defeat and he lost his life in the process. Carthage wanted to end this conflict and look for a peace treaty. Carthage wanted to end this conflict and look for a peace treaty. However, in a sort of a foreshadow, dionysus gave an ultimatum that Carthage wasn't going to abide by and that they were told to abandon Sicily. Well, that wasn't happening. So Carthage put Mago's son, helmico, as its new general, once again confusing names, because they all have the same name, carthage managed to regroup and defend the Syracusans in a battle near modern-day Palermo around 376 BCE. Now, this was enough for a peace treaty to be signed between Syracuse and Carthage, with Syracuse paying about a thousand talents a year, and a new demarcation line was drawn.
Speaker 1:However, the plague came back again, and once again the Libyans and now the Sardinians had revolted. At the same time, dionysus saw that Carthage was literally sick and took his shot and decided to attack Carthage. However, carthage held its own, but Dionysus was elderly and he died shortly thereafter, and his son, dionysus II, took the throne and accepted the peace. Now, I'm not sure what happened, but what ended up happening was something must have went wrong, because Syracuse had a civil war and Dionysus II was ousted. Now, what's interesting with this whole situation is you would have thought that Carthage would have stuck his nose in there and took a shot, considering the Greeks were basically fighting with each other, but shockingly, carthage stayed away from the fray. Now, it probably had more to do with the fact that there was a little bit of a political instability back home in Carthage. In fact, in 350 BCE, it sounds like Hanno was planning a coup. First, he tried to murder a number of high-ranking state officials at his daughter's wedding banquet, but somehow this plot was foiled and Hanno had to retreat to his country estate for a last stand. Hanno was eventually captured and crucified for his treasonous activities and his family was exiled In the middle of the 4th century.
Speaker 1:Through the middle of the 3rd century BCE, carthage goes through a population boom and I've heard it said that Carthage kind of starts to look like an ancient version of Manhattan, whereas it's very condensed and the buildings are six-story apartments, which was highly unusual back then, and it would have been said that people of all sorts of different backgrounds would have said this is the place to go if you wanted to make it in life and take your chance to get rich. In fact, it's possible that the city may have reached a population of about 200,000 people around 350 BCE, and this was most likely due to the fact that Carthage was very much involved in long-distance trade and if one is so inclined to look for adventure on the high seas, one could potentially get rich or die in the voyage in a far off place. You get the sense that a lot of young people would have moved to Carthage and would have been the same types that would have been moving to Amsterdam for work in the Dutch East Indian Company, as they could get on a ship, travel long distances and make quite a bit of money or, at the very least, have a much better quality of life than working on a farm. So what you have here is a large foreign population that is moving into the city of Carthage, and the key thing is they wanted to be within the city walls, and that's why the city started growing vertically to accommodate the population growth. Now, keep in mind, these people would have been coming in from all over the Mediterranean, not just Phoenicia. However, the citizens of the Carthage allies would have been most likely treated better or at least had semi-citizenship.
Speaker 1:As far as women are concerned, not much is known about them, but it appears that they were pretty marginalized, as they were banned from having citizenship, which would have been in line with a lot of other ancient societies like Rome and Athens. And that would have made a lot of sense, because the Phoenicians were notoriously harsh on women and they had far less rights in comparison to places like Assyria or Egypt. I mean, if you look at Egypt in particular, they had almost the same amount of rights as men did. Women in ancient Egypt could start their own businesses, they could marry and divorce their partners, they could own properties and they could even be a witness in court. There were no records of women owning any businesses or property, which is kind of ironic considering the founding story is of Dido the princess, and now women have virtually no rights whatsoever, with slaves having less rights, of course. As such, slavery was very common in Carthage, just like it was in other ancient societies.
Speaker 1:Slaves could have been captured as part of POWs, or they could have been put into slavery due to unpaid debt and they could have been traded in the open market like a commodity and, of course, they could have been born into slavery. Now I get the sense that they were not treated like chattel slaves in the American South and the Caribbean and the reason why I say that it was. It was a manual that was discovered that went in to talk about how you should treat slaves in good order to inspire loyalty, and that would increase productivity. In addition, slaves in Carthage, just like the slaves of Mesopotamia and Rome and other places, could run businesses and they could buy their freedom. In fact, I did read an account that basically said that they were treated so well that the slaves would have fought alongside their masters in wartime situations, alongside their masters in wartime situations. But to be honest, I'm not really comfortable with that kind of talk because it's the same kind of nonsense that a lot of bigots would have used to say that when they're talking about the American slavery in particular, and they would say something along the lines some nonsense that black American slaves in the South fought for their Southern masters because they were treated so well. And that's complete nonsense and it's completely trying to whitewash history and I absolutely positively reject any of that kind of nonsense. So when I read about this in ancient Carthage, my BS antennas start to kind of get raised. Bs antennas start to kind of get raised by 345 BCE.
Speaker 1:Syracuse was under the control of Hysetus but he appeared to have had a good relationship with Carthage. This probably came in handy because the old tyrant, dionysus II, tried to retake control of Syracuse. And, let us not forget, carthage was under control of new leadership, since they had crucified the last person that tried to take control of the leadership. And the thing is, one thing that a lot of these new leaders like to do is kind of show their strength through military maneuvers. So when Syracuse came calling, they were more than happy to answer that call and provide force, for political reasons. As such, a massive Carthaginian army was sent to Sicily, entering Syracuse in 344 BCE. However, the Greeks from the mainland were starting to get involved as well when the Greek troops from the city of Corinth arrived, but these troops were on the side of Hysetas, so when everybody showed up, there were essentially four different groups. In the end, the Corinthians exiled Dionysus to Corinth.
Speaker 1:But the confusing part was, at least for me, it sounds like Isaias was also kicked out of his leadership role and now Timon was the Corinth general who oversaw Syracuse, versailles Syracuse. So it sounds to me like Carthage was kind of sitting around like what's going on here? Like they kind of got themselves in the middle of a Greek conflict that they really didn't want any part of as such, in 343 BCE, the Carthaginians withdrew back to Carthage without a fight. Now you would think that the people would be somewhat happy, you know, back in Carthage, because their sons are going to come back home alive and unharmed. But it sounds like this inaction led to public outrage. In fact, the Carthaginian general ended up committing suicide and to be.
Speaker 1:I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this whole situation because it just doesn't make any sense from a modern perspective. A foreign entity calls for help regarding a potential civil war. You show up and a third cousin shows up as well, and the three cousins kind of resolve the situation themselves, while you're just standing back taking it all in and not doing anything. And then you go home and you basically let the public know that, hey, they handled it on their own, but the people got upset with this. This situation just doesn't make any sense to me. So maybe it's something I'm missing and I apologize if I'm misinterpreting the information and not portraying it properly, but this doesn't make any sense to me at all. Why would the people be upset that you did not get yourself caught up in the middle of a quarrel that has nothing to do with you, has nothing to do with you, now that everything was under control?
Speaker 1:The Corinth general Timelin. He needed to pay his troops for intervening in the Greek Sicilian situation. Now, I don't know if it's because of the instability back in Carthage, with the fact that the people were upset that they didn't do anything, or if it's one of those things that Timur now had control of eastern Sicily and didn't want to burn his own territory down to ashes, so he proceeded to raid the Carthaginian territory in western Sicily in order to plunder resources to pay his troops. So just when Carthage thinks that they can get out of Sicily without any loss of life or an extended, expensive military action, well, it doesn't go as planned because a third person jumps in and attacks and plunders their territory. So now they need to raise an army and hire mercenary soldiers and head back to Sicily.
Speaker 1:The Carthage army was defeated by Timon in the Battle of Crimsis. By all accounts, it sounds like Carthage had a really bad commander heading its military, and this was probably because Carthage was an oligarchy and people were often promoted due to familiar ties and not because of meritocracy. Most of the soldiers were either killed or enslaved, and the defeat was total, more so than anything they'd had experienced before, and this was probably the first time that the city of Carthage was in full-blown panic mode. In fact, for them they took a drastic step in that they recalled Hanno's son, gisco, from exile and gave him full control to prepare for a potential Greek invasion. Gisco kind of figured out real quick that Timon had his hands full back in Sicily and probably didn't have the capabilities or resources to prepare for and execute a full-on invasion of North Africa, and therefore they hashed out a peace accord and in the end they ended up going back to the status quo of 367 BCE For the next 20 or so years.
Speaker 1:Carthage left Sicily on its own because, quite honestly, they had enough to deal with back in North Africa. The need for this was only further enhanced when Alexander the Great began to conquer Persia in 334 BCE and within two years the alarm bells started to go off in Carthage when he managed to take down the island city of Tyre, something even the Assyrians couldn't do. The Carthaginians accepted refugees from their mother city, which were mostly children and women. Next in line for Alexander was Egypt, which was an old trading partner of Carthage. Obviously, carthage was now petrified that they could be next and therefore they planned for an invasion. So if you're wondering why they suddenly gave up on Sicily, alexander the Great is the reason why. Now we don't know what he would have done if he had captured Carthage. But Alexander's premature death in 323 BC kind of alleviated these concerns and thus opened up Sicily once again.
Speaker 1:Opened up Sicily once again, hamilcar, who had familial ties with Gasco, took over as the leader of the Republic. Apparently, he tried to maintain good relations with Syracuse and only started to interfere after the death of Timolin. At first, the Carthaginians supported the oligarchs, before switching to a populist tyrant named Agatheles. Hamilcar even sent an expedition in 319 BCE to help secure Agatheles' position. Now you would think that this help would have extended peace between the two states, but you would be wrong. And everything started to go sideways in 315 BCE when Agathocles tried to take over and conquer Messina. Now, syracuse was originally run by a powerful group of oligarchs, sort of like how Rome and Carthage were run.
Speaker 1:Agathocles was at one point exiled to the south of Sicily where he was a mercenary captain, and therefore he grew his power base. After some time of growing an army, agathocles came back to Syracuse and was able to grab power through a coup d'etat. Grab power through a coup d'etat. So you have to understand. Agathocles was a very arrogant man. In fact, he would have saw himself as the second coming of Alexander the Great, and we know this because of the coins that he minted. The coins minted by Agathocles shared certain similarities with the coins of Alexander the Great, in particular the use of the silver tetradrachm format, which had his portrait on one side and a horse-drawn chariot on the reverse. Of course, like all rulers, he needed more money, especially if he was going to be able to afford to pay mercenary soldiers. Therefore, agathocles then invaded and plundered Carthaginian territories and western Sicily.
Speaker 1:Hamilcar died before he could stop Agathocles, but luckily he was replaced by Gisgo's son, who was named you guessed it Hamilcar. I mean, I'm just completely confused with the names and I can't even keep up at this point, because they all seem to have the same name over and over. However, it sounds like this latest iteration of Hamilcar was a lot more effective and was able to establish alliances with other Greek cities that opposed the Gathicles and were able to defeat him in 311 BCE at the Battle of Gela. However, agathocles was able to make his way back to Syracuse, and then the combination of the Carthaginian Greek forces followed him to Syracuse to take him on directly, but he did something quite astonishing, in that he somehow slipped through the blockade and sailed down to Carthage and attacked the city in 310 BCE. Obviously, this caught Carthage by complete surprise, and Syracuse was able to conquer and capture Unica and Tunis. The Libyans saw this and then they revolted again.
Speaker 1:By 309 BCE, hamilcar was defeated in Sicily and he lost his life in the process. The Greek alliances kind of disbanded and they started to fight on their own and, of course, because they're Greek, they began to fight amongst each other. Their situation was so dire in Carthage that a general attempted a coup in 309 BCE to become a Carthaginian tyrant whose reign would be unrestricted by the republican institutions. Even though Carthage was in desperate situations, they outright rejected this and eventually captured him and executed him before he could finalize his coup attempt. Around the same time, things weren't going so well for Agathocles. As the Greeks finally got their stuff together and forced him to return to Sicily, he left the command to his son in Africa to finish off the Carthaginians. However, this didn't go so well and they were encircled, which promptly Agathocles had to return in 307 BCE to save his sons. By the time he got there he kind of realized that they didn't have a, and he managed to escape and left his two sons behind, who were captured and killed by 306 BCE.
Speaker 1:Syracuse and Carthage were once again done with war, but Carthage was also facing a rebellion from the local Libyan population and Syracuse was also facing a rebellion from the local Greek populations on Sicily. So once again, a peace treaty was drawn and they drew a line down the center of Sicily, like they had done in the past. The interesting thing about this war was this was the one that Carthage really didn't want to get involved in, at least at the outset, but more or less was kind of dragged into. But it turned out to be the most devastating out of all of them. If you add this all up, they fought for about 180 years just to maintain their position in the western portion of Sicily. At what point do you just say this just isn't worth it? And of course, they don't have a crystal ball, because if they did, they would know that this isn't even the worst of the wars.
Speaker 1:So, as you can obviously see, I'm still in the ancient societies that are trade focused, because they ultimately set up the framework for other cultures and empires to set up their economies. This is the reason why I think the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, along with the Mesopotamians, were so important, and that's kind of why I wanted to go through these different cultures and time periods. Now, eventually, as these economies expand and grow through trade, this will ultimately enable the banking sector, along with money, to basically thrive and grow, much more important to the economy as a whole. Now, modern banking as we know it is still 2,000 years away, but I contend that it's these early societies that built the foundation for the Romans and the Chinese Silk Road, and then the Caliphates who gave the Europeans the tools to develop modern banking in late medieval Europe, even though the Christians and the Muslims banned usury. So I'm bringing this all up right now because I started developing YouTube videos a few weeks ago or a month ago, whatever, or I don't know when you're going to hear this, but I wanted to do this as a means to kind of jump around the historical timeline. This as a means to kind of jump around the historical timeline. I started with the Mesopotamian videos, but then I set up a video on basically how money gets into the economy, with the focus on the European goldsmiths that inadvertently developed modern fractional reserve banking.
Speaker 1:The next video that I'm currently working on is a company called the Stutz Automobile Company, which was pretty profitable in the 19-teens, considering the fact that at the time the automobile industry was heavily fragmented. So there was like 100 different automobile companies at the time. So obviously it was still kind of early in the sector and there hasn't been the shakeout yet. But the thing is is I wanted to pick this particular company because I wanted you to see how Wall Street kind of worked before the Securities and Exchange Commission came into play in 1934. And the reason so is because Wall Street was very clubby and very corrupt and the Stutz Automobile Company kind of shows how this corruption was very rampant and kind of really known by the population at the time. And in this particular case the trading around studs automobile really kind of highlighted this and I just thought it was a really crazy story that I just kind of wanted to tell.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to do it here because I'm, you know, I'm way back in you know 500 BCE and it kind of wouldn't really fit because I'm trying to maintain a kind of schedule here to build the framework of modern banking and money and you know. So I figured I can use YouTube to kind of really jump around and really not have a specific timeline that I'm kind of working with. So anyway, I'm bringing this up because I'm in the process of making that video, but the past two videos, I'll be honest, I don't like. I'm using a software because I don't know how to edit videos. This is all new to me and I just kind of don't like the quality of it. So I'm using a software, um, because I don't know how to edit videos. This is all new to me and I just kind of don't like the quality of it. So I'm going to try to switch it up and use a different kind of software. That's going to be a lot more labor intensive, but I hope it's a better product.
Speaker 1:However, with that being said, I may not be able to do it because I do have limited time. I have a full time job. This is not my job. I just kind of do this on the side for fun and, you know, hopefully you enjoy it. So I'm going to try to produce that video, but there's there's no really guarantee that I will be able to have the time to finish it. I hope so, because I think it's a fantastic story and I hope you'll enjoy it. But either way, I do have a couple of videos up. I'm going to leave them up.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I don't particularly like them too much, but the latest one on how money works and how it kind of really is developed. I think is a great video to watch, because a lot of people don't understand how modern money gets to the marketplace. People think that the Federal Reserve just goes in there and prints dollars, but it's really not the case. So if you want to really learn how it works, you can watch that video. You can go to my YouTube page, which is located at Money Banking Trade. I'll put a link into the description for this podcast.
Speaker 1:But yeah, if you want to check it out, that'd be great. You can like and subscribe. That would be wonderful. But yeah, so that's kind of where I'm at right now. I just wanted to kind of give you a heads up. Really, honestly, I just want to thank you for taking your time to listen to these shows. I really truly hope you enjoy it. I know I like these things, but that's just me. That's why I'm putting them out and I just hope you like it too. And, like I said, if you want to donate to the show, you can always visit us at patreoncom slash history of money bank and trade or you can visit the website at moneybankandtradecom and you would help out the show a ton. If you don't want to donate money, you can just leave a five-star review. That'd be very much appreciated, and I will talk to you soon.
