The origin of the African race has provoked more criticism than any other of the various races of man on the globe. Speculation has exhausted itself in trying to account for the Negro’s color, features, and hair, that distinguish him in such a marked manner from the rest of the human family.
All reliable history, and all the facts which I have been able to gather upon this subject, show that the African race descended from the country of the Nile, and principally from Ethiopia.
The early history of Ethiopia is involved in great obscurity. When invaded by the Egyptians, it was found to contain a large population, consisting of savages, hunting and fishing tribes, wandering herdsmen, shepherds, and lastly, a civilized class, dwelling in houses and in large cities, possessing agovernment and laws, acquainted with the use of hieroglyphics, the fame of whose progress in knowledge and the social arts had, in the remotest ages, spread over a considerable portion of the earth. Even at that early period, when all the nations were in their rude and savage state, Ethiopia was full of historical monuments, erected chiefly on the banks of the Nile.
The earliest reliable information we have of Ethiopia, is (B. C. 971) when the rulers of that country assisted Shishank in his war against Judea, “with very many chariots and horsemen.” Sixteen years later, we have an account of Judea being again invaded by an army of a million Ethiopians, unaccompanied by any Egyptian force.[1]The Ethiopian power gradually increased until its monarchs were enabled to conquer Egypt, where three of them reigned in succession, Sabbackon, Sevechus, and Tarakus, the Tirhakah of Scripture.[2]
Sevechus, called so in Scripture, was so powerful a monarch that Hoshed, king of Israel, revolted against the Assyrians, relying on his assistance,[3]but was not supported by his ally. This indeed, was the immediate cause of the captivity of the Ten Tribes; for “in the ninth year of Hoshed the king, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria,” as a punishment for unsuccessful rebellion.
Tirhakah was a more war-like prince; he led anarmy against Sennacherib,[4]king of Assyria, then besieging Jerusalem; and the Egyptian traditions, preserved in the age of Herodotus, give an accurate account of the providential interposition by which the pride of the Assyrians was humbled.
It is said that the kings of Ethiopia were always elected from the priestly caste; and there was a strange custom for the electors, when weary of their sovereign, to send him a courier with orders to die. Ergamenes was the first monarch who ventured to resist this absurd custom; he lived in the reign of the second Ptolemy, and was instructed in Grecian philosophy. So far from yielding, he marched against the fortress of the priests, massacred most of them, and instituted a new religion.
Queens frequently ruled in Ethiopia; one named Candace made war on Augustus Cæsar, about twenty years before the birth of Christ, and though not successful, obtained peace on very favorable conditions.
The pyramids of Ethiopia, though inferior in size to those in Egypt, are said to surpass them in architectural beauty, and the sepulchres evince the greatest purity of taste.
But the most important and striking proof of the progress of the Ethiopians in the art of building, is their knowledge and employment of the arch. Hoskins has stated that their pyramids are of superior antiquity to those of Egypt. The Ethiopian vases depicted on the monuments, though not richly ornamented, display a taste and elegance of form that has never been surpassed. In sculpture and coloring,the edifices of Ethiopia, though not so profusely adorned, rival the choicest specimens of Egyptian art.
Meroe was theentrepotof trade between the North and the South, between the East and the West, while its fertile soil enabled the Ethiopians to purchase foreign luxuries with native productions. It does not appear that fabrics were woven in Ethiopia so extensively as in Egypt; but the manufacture of metal must have been at least as flourishing.
But Ethiopia owed its greatness less to the produce of its soil or its factories than to its position on the intersection of the leading caravan routes of ancient commerce.
The Ethiopians were among the first nations that organized a regular army, and thus laid the foundation of the whole system of ancient warfare. A brief account of their military affairs will therefore illustrate not only their history, but that of the great Asiatic monarchies, and of the Greeks during the heroic ages. The most important division of an Ethiopian army was the body of war-chariots, used instead of cavalry. These chariots were mounted on two wheels and made low; open behind, so that the warrior could easily step in and out; and without a seat.
They were drawn by two horses and generally contained two warriors, one of whom managed the steeds while the other fought. Nations were distinguished from each other by the shape and color of their chariots.
Great care was taken in the manufacturing of the chariots and also of the breeding of horses to draw them. Nothing in our time can equal the attentionpaid by the ancients in the training of horses for the battle-field.
The harness which these animals wore was richly decorated; and a quiver and bow-case, decorated with extraordinary taste and skill, were securely fixed to the side of each chariot. The bow was the national weapon, employed by both cavalry and infantry. No nation of antiquity paid more attention to archery than the Ethiopians; their arrows better aimed than those of any other nation, the Egyptians perhaps excepted. The children of the warrior caste were trained from early infancy to the practice of archery.
The arms of the Ethiopians were a spear, a dagger, a short sword, a helmet, and a shield. Pole-axes and battle-axes were occasionally used. Coats of mail were used only by the principal officers, and some remarkable warriors, like Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. The light troops were armed with swords, battle-axes, maces, and clubs. Some idea of the manly forms, great strength, and military training of the Ethiopians, may be gathered from Herodotus, the father of ancient history.
After describing Arabia as “a land exhaling the most delicious fragrance,” he says,—“Ethiopia, which is the extremity of the habitable world, is contiguous to this country on the south-west. Its inhabitants are very remarkable for their size, their beauty, and their length of life.”[5]
In his third book he has a detailed description of a single tribe of this interesting people, called the Macrobian, or long-lived Ethiopians. Cambyses, the Persianking, had made war upon Egypt, and subdued it. He is then seized with an ambition of extending his conquests still farther, and resolves to make war upon the Ethiopians. But before undertaking his expedition, he sends spies into the country disguised as friendly ambassadors, who carry costly presents from Cambyses. They arrive at the court of the Ethiopian prince, “a man superior to all others in the perfection of size and beauty,” who sees through their disguise, and takes down a bow of such enormous size that no Persian could bend it. “Give your king this bow, and in my name speak to him thus:—
“‘The king of Ethiopia sends this counsel to the king of Persia. When his subjects shall be able to bend this bow with the same ease that I do, then let him venture to attack the long-lived Ethiopians. Meanwhile, let him be thankful to the gods, that the Ethiopians have not been inspired with the same love of conquest as himself.’”[6]
Homer wrote at least eight hundred years before Christ, and his poems are well ascertained to be a most faithful mirror of the manners and customs of his times, and the knowledge of his age.
In the first book of the Iliad, Achilles is represented as imploring his goddess-mother to intercede with Jove in behalf of her aggrieved son. She grants his request, but tells him the intercession must be delayed for twelve days. The gods are absent. They have gone to the distant climes of Ethiopia to join in its festal rites. “Yesterday Jupiter went to the feast with theblamelessEthiopians, away upon the limits of theocean, and all the gods followed together.”[7]Homer never wastes an epithet. He often alludes to the Ethiopians elsewhere, and always in terms of admiration and praise, as being the most just of men; the favorites of the gods.[8]
The same allusion glimmers through the Greek mythology, and appears in the verses of almost all the Greek poets ere the countries of Italy and Sicily were even discovered. The Jewish Scripture and Jewish literature abound in allusion to this distinct and mysterious people; the annals of the Egyptian priests are full of them, uniformly the Ethiopians are there lauded as among the best, most religious, and most civilized of men.[9]
Let us pause here one moment, and follow the march of civilization into Europe. Wherever its light has once burned clearly, it has been diffused, but not extinguished. Every one knows that Rome got her civilization from Greece; that Greece again borrowed hers from Egypt, that thence she derived her earliest science and the forms of her beautiful mythology.
The mythology of Homer is evidently hieroglyphical in its origin, and has strong marks of family resemblance to the symbolical worship of Egypt.
It descended the Nile; it spread over the delta of that river, as it came down from Thebes, the wonderful city of a hundred gates. Thebes, as every scholar knows, is more ancient than the cities of thedelta. The ruins of the colossal architecture are covered over with hieroglyphics, and strewn with the monuments of Egyptian mythology. But whence came Thebes? It was built and settled by colonies from Ethiopia, or from cities which were themselves the settlements of that nation. The higher we ascend the Nile, the more ancient are the ruins on which we tread, till we come to the “hoary Meroe,” which Egypt acknowledged to be the cradle of her institutions.
But Meroe was the queenly city of Ethiopia, into which all Africa poured its caravans laden with ivory, frankincense, and gold. So it is that we trace the light of Ethiopian civilization first into Egypt, thence into Greece, and Rome, whence, gathering new splendor on its way, it hath been diffusing itself all the world over.[10]
We now come to a consideration of the color of the Ethiopians, that distinguish their descendants of the present time in such a marked manner from the rest of the human race.
Adam, the father of the human family, took his name from the color of the earth from which he was made.[11]
The Bible says but little with regard to the color of the various races of man, and absolutely nothing as to the time when or the reasons why these varieties were introduced. There are a few passages in which color is descriptive of the person or the dress. Job said, “My skin is black upon me.” Job had been sick fora long time, and no doubt this brought about a change in his complexion. In Lamentations, it is said, “Their visage is blacker than a coal;” also, “our skin was blacker than an oven.” Both of these writers, in all probability, had reference to the change of color produced by the famine. Another writer says, “I am black, but comely.” This may have been a shepherd, and lying much in the sun might have caused the change.
However, we now have the testimony of one whom we clearly understand, and which is of the utmost importance in settling this question. Jeremiah asks, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” This refers to a people whose color is peculiar, fixed, and unalterable. Indeed, Jeremiah seems to have been as well satisfied that the Ethiopian was colored, as he was that the leopard had spots; and that the one was as indelible as the other. The German translation of Luther has “Negro-land,” for Ethiopia,i. e., the country of the blacks.
All reliable history favors the belief that the Ethiopians descended from Cush, the eldest son of Ham, who settled first in Shina in Asia. Eusebius informs us that a colony of Asiatic Cushites settled in that part of Africa which has since been known as Ethiopia proper. Josephus asserts that these Ethiopians were descended from Cush, and that in his time they were still called Cushites by themselves and by the inhabitants of Asia. Homer divides the Ethiopians into two parts, and Strabo, the geographer, asserts that the dividing line to which he alluded was the Red Sea. The Cushites emigrated in part to the west of the Red Sea; these, remaining unmixed with otherraces, engrossed the general name of Cushite, or Ethiopian, while the Asiatic Cushites became largely mingled with other nations, and are nearly or quite absorbed, or, as a distinct people well-nigh extinct. Hence, from the allusion of Jeremiah to the skin of the Ethiopian, confirmed and explained by such authorities as Homer, Strabo, Herodotus, Josephus, and Eusebius, we conclude that the Ethiopians were an African branch of the Cushites who settled first in Asia. Ethiop, in the Greek, means “sunburn,” and there is not the slightest doubt but that these people, in and around Meroe, took their color from the climate. This theory does not at all conflict with that of the common origin of man. Although the descendants of Cush were black, it does not follow that all the offspring of Ham were dark-skinned; but only those who settled in a climate that altered their color.
The word of God by his servant Paul has settled forever the question of the equal origin of the human races, and it will stand good against all scientific research. “God hath made of one blood all the nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.”
The Ethiopians are not constitutionally different from the rest of the human family, and therefore, we must insist uponunity, although we see and admit the variety.
Some writers have endeavored to account for this difference of color, by connecting it with the curse pronounced upon Cain. This theory, however, has no foundation; for if Cain was the progenitor of Noah, and if Cain’s new peculiarities were perpetuated, then, as Noah was the father of the world’s new population, the question would be, not how to account forany of the human family being black, but how can we account for any being white? All this speculation as to the change of Cain’s color, as a theory for accounting for the variety peculiar to Cush and the Ethiopians, falls to the ground when we trace back the genealogy of Noah, and find that he descended not from Cain, but from Seth.
Of course Cain’s descendants, no matter what their color, became extinct at the flood. No miracle was needed in Ethiopia to bring about a change in the color of its inhabitants. The very fact that the nation derived its name from the climate should be enough to satisfy the most skeptical. What was true of the Ethiopians was also true of the Egyptians, with regard to color; for Herodotus tells us that the latter were colored and had curled hair.
The vast increase of the population of Ethiopia, and a wish of its rulers to possess more territory, induced them to send expeditions down the Nile, and towards the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of these adventurers, as early as B. C. 885, took up their abode on the Mediterranean coast, and founded the place which in later years became the great city of Carthage. Necho, king of Egypt, a man distinguished for his spirit of enterprise, sent an expedition (B. C. 616) around the African coast. He employed Phœnecian navigators. This fleet sailed down the Red Sea, passed the straits of Balel-Mandeb, and, coasting the African continent, discovered the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, two thousand years before its re-discovery by Dias and Vasco de Gama. This expedition was three years in its researches, and while gone, got out of food, landed, planted corn, andwaited for the crop. After harvesting the grain, they proceeded on their voyage. The fleet returned to Egypt through the Atlantic Ocean, the straits of Gibralter, and the Mediterranean.
The glowing accounts brought back by the returned navigators of the abundance of fruits, vegetables, and the splendor of the climate of the new country, kindled the fire of adventurous enthusiasm in the Ethiopians, and they soon followed the example set them by the Egyptians. Henceforward, streams of emigrants were passing over the Isthmus of Suez, that high road to Africa, who became permanent residents of the promised land.
[1]2 Chron. xiv: 8-13.
[2]Hawkins, in his work on Meroe, identifies Tirhakah with the priest Sethos, upon ground, we think, not tenable.
[3]2 Kings, xvii: 4.
[4]2 Kings, xix: 9.
[5]Herod. iii: 114.
[6]Herod iii: 21.
[7]Iliad II: 423.
[8]Iliad XXIII.
[9]Chron. xiv: 9; xvi: 8; Isaiah xlv: 14; Jeremiah xlvi: 9; Josephus Aut. II; Heeren, vol I: p. 290.
[10]E. H. Sears, in the “Christian Examiner,” July, 1846.
[11]Josephus Ant., Vol. I: p. 8.
Although it is claimed in history that Carthage was settled by the Phœnecians, or emigrants from Tyre, it is by no means an established fact; for when Dido fled from her haughty and tyrannical brother, Pygmalion, ruler of Tyre, and sailing down the Nile, seeking a place of protection, she halted at Carthage, then an insignificant settlement on a peninsula in the interior of a large bay, now called the gulf of Tunis, on the northern shore of Africa (this was B. C. 880), the population was made up mainly of poor people, the larger portion of whom were from Ethiopia, and the surrounding country. Many outlaws, murderers, highwaymen, and pirates, had taken refuge in the new settlement. Made up of every conceivable shade of society, with but little character to lose, the Carthaginians gladly welcomed Dido, coming as she did from the royal house of Tyre, and they adopted her as the head of their government. The people became law-abiding, and the constitution which they adopted was considered by the ancients as a pattern of political wisdom. Aristotle highly praises it as amodel to other States. He informs us that during the space of five centuries, that is, from the foundation of the republic down to his own time, no tyrant had overturned the liberties of the State, and no demagogue had stirred up the people to rebellion. By the wisdom of its laws, Carthage had been able to avoid the opposite evils of aristocracy on the one hand, and democracy on the other. The nobles did not engross the whole of the power, as was the case in Sparta, Corinth, and Rome, and in more modern times, in Venice; nor did the people exhibit the factious spirit of an Athenian mob, or the ferocious cruelty of a Roman rabble.
After the tragical death of the Princess Dido, the head of the government consisted of thesuffetes, two chief magistrates, somewhat resembling the consuls of Rome, who presided in the senate, and whose authority extended to military as well as civil affairs. These officers appeared to be entirely devoted to the good of the State and the welfare of the people.
The second was the senate itself, composed of illustrious men of the State. This body made the laws, declared war, negotiated peace, and appointed to all offices, civil and military. The third estate was still more popular. In the infancy and maturity of the republic, the people had taken no active part in the government; but, at a later period, influenced by wealth and prosperity, they advanced their claims to authority, and, before long, obtained nearly the whole power. They instituted a council, designed as a check upon the nobles and the senate. This council was at first very beneficial to the State, but afterwards became itself tyrannical.
The Carthaginians were an enterprising people, and in the course of time built ships, and with them explored all ports of the Mediterranean Sea, visiting the nations on the coast, purchasing their commodities, and selling them to others. Their navigators went to the coast of Guinea, and even advanced beyond the mouths of the Senegal and the Gambia. The Carthaginians carried their commerce into Spain, seized a portion of that country containing mines rich with gold, and built thereon a city which they called New Carthage, and which to the present day is known as Carthaginia.
The Mediterranean was soon covered with their fleets, and at a time when Rome could not boast of a single vessel, and her citizens were entirely ignorant of the form of a ship. The Carthaginians conquered Sardinia, and a great part of Sicily. Their powerful fleets and extensive conquests gave them the sovereign command of the seas.
While Carthage possessed the dominion of the seas, a rival State was growing up on the opposite side of the Mediterranean, distant about seven hundred miles, under whose arms she was destined to fall. This was Rome, the foundation of which was commenced one hundred years after that of Carthage. These two powerful nations engaged in wars against each other that lasted nearly two hundred years. In these conflicts the Carthaginians showed great bravery.
In the first Punic war, the defeat and capture of Regulus, the Roman general, by the Carthaginians, and their allies, the Greeks, humiliated the Romans, and for a time gave the former great advantage over the latter. The war, however, which lasted twenty-fouryears, was concluded by some agreement, which after all, was favorable to the Romans. The conclusion of the first Punic war (B. C. 249) was not satisfactory to the more republican portion of the ruling spirits among the Carthaginians, and especially Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal, who, at that time occupied a very prominent position, both on account of his rank, wealth, and high family connections at Carthage; also on account of the great military energy which he displayed in the command of the armies abroad. Hamilcar had carried on the wars which the Carthaginians waged in Africa and Spain after the conclusion of the war with the Romans, and he was anxious to begin hostilities with the Romans again. On Hamilcar’s leaving Carthage the last time to join his army in Spain, he took his son Hannibal, then a boy of nine years, and made him swear on the altar of his country eternal hatred to the Romans, an oath that he kept to the day of his death.
When not yet twenty years of age, Hannibal was placed second in command of the army, then in Spain, where he at once attracted the attention and the admiration of all, by the plainness of his living, his abstinence from strong drink, and the gentlemanly treatment that he meted out to the soldiers, as well as his fellow-officers.
He slept in his military cloak on the ground, in the midst of his soldiers on guard; and in a battle he was always the last to leave the field after a fight, as he was foremost to press forward in every contest with the enemy. The death of Hasdrubal placed Hannibal in supreme command of the army, and inheriting his father’s hatred to Rome, he resolved to takerevenge upon his ancient enemy, and at once invaded the Roman possessions in Spain, and laid siege to the city of Saguntum, which, after heroic resistance, yielded to his victorious arms. Thus commenced the second Punic war, in which Hannibal was to show to the world his genius as a general.
Leaving a large force in Africa, and also in Spain, to defend these points, Hannibal set out in the spring of the year B. C. 218, with a large army to fulfill his project against Rome.
His course lay along the Mediterranean; the whole distance to Rome being about one thousand miles by the land route which he contemplated. When he had traversed Spain, he came to the Pyrenees, a range of mountains separating that country from Gaul, now France. He was here attacked by wild tribes of brave barbarians, but he easily drove them back. He crossed the Pyrenees, traversed Gaul, and came at last to the Alps, which threw up their frowning battlements, interposing a formidable obstacle between him and the object of his expedition.
No warrior had then crossed these snowy peaks with such an army; and none but a man of that degree of resolution and self-reliance which could not be baffled, would have hazarded the fearful enterprise. Indeed, we turn with amazement to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; that great and daring feat surpasses in magnitude anything of the kind ever attempted by man. The pride of the French historians have often led them to compare Napoleon’s passage of the Great St. Bernard to Hannibal’s passage of the Alps; but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French Emperor, it may safely be affirmed that hisachievements will bear no comparison whatever with the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny, on the shores of the Rhone, and above the Lake of Geneva, he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road, impracticable for carriages, was very good for horsemen and foot passengers, and was traversed by great numbers of both at every season of the year.
Comfortable villages on the ascent and descent afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers by day and by night; the ample stores of the monks at the summit, and the provident foresight of the French generals had provided a meal for every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage; the guns were drawn up in sleds made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone, the French troops, without losing a man, stood on the Doria Baltea, the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po, amidst the gardens and vineyards, and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po.
The mountain sides, which had not yet been cleared by centuries of laborious industry, presented a continual forest, furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents. There were no bridges to cross the perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions, scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes, were then nowhere to be found, having been hidden away by the natives, and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles, defended with desperate valor thegates of their country, and when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal’s soldiers, still beset the ridges about their line of march, and harassed his troops with continual hostility. When the woody region was passed, and the vanguard emerged in the open mountain pastures, which led to the verge of perpetual snow, fresh difficulties awaited them.
The turf, from the gliding down of the newly-fallen snow on those steep declivities, was so slippery that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step, and rolled down in great numbers into the abyss beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privation and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers, worn out by incessant marching and fighting, began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors formidable to all, but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers, awaited them at the summit.
It was the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides, silent and melancholy even at the height of summer, when enameled with flowers and dotted with flocks, presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the lakes which were interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose at all sides, presenting an apparently impassable barrier to their further progress. But it was then that the genius of Hannibal shone forth in all its lustre.
“The great general,” says Arnold, “who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts of Italy, and thatthe torrent which rolled before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of cisalpine Gaul, endeavored to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he pointed out to them the valley beneath, to which the descent seemed but the work of a moment.
“That valley,” said he, “is Italy; it leads to the country of our friends, the Gauls, and yonder is our way to Rome.” His eyes were eagerly fixed on that part of the horizon, and as he gazed, the distance seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy he was crossing the Tiber, and assailing the capital. Such were the difficulties of the passage and the descent on the other side, that Hannibal lost thirty-three thousand men from the time he entered the Pyrenees till he reached the plains of Northern Italy, and he arrived on the Po with only twelve thousand Africans, eight thousand Spanish infantry, and six thousand horse.
Then followed those splendid battles with the Romans, which carried consternation to their capital, and raised the great general to the highest pinnacle in the niche of military fame.
The defeat of Scipio, at the battle of Ticinus, the utter rout and defeat of Sempronius, the defeat of Flaminius, the defeat of Fabius, and the battle of Cannæ, in the last of which, the Romans had seventy-six thousand foot, eight thousand horse, and many chariots, and where Hannibal had only thirty thousand troops, all told, and where the defeat was so complete that bushels of gold rings were taken from the fingers of the dead Romans, and sent as trophies to Carthage, are matters of history, and will ever give toHannibal the highest position in the scale of ancient military men. Hannibal crossed the Alps two hundred and seventeen years before the Christian Era, and remained in Italy sixteen years. At last, Scipio, a Roman general of the same name of the one defeated by Hannibal at Ticinus, finished the war in Spain, transported his troops across the Mediterranean; thus “carrying the war into Africa,” and giving rise to an expression still in vogue, and significant of effective retaliation. By the aid of Masinissa, a powerful prince of Numidia, now Morocco, he gained two victories over the Carthaginians, who were obliged to recall Hannibal from Italy, to defend their own soil from the combined attacks of the Romans and Numidians.
He landed at Leptis, and advanced near Zama, five days’ journey to the west of Carthage. Here he met the Roman forces, and here, for the first time, he suffered a total defeat. The loss of the Carthaginians was immense, and they were compelled to sue for peace. This was granted by Scipio, but upon humiliating terms.
Hannibal would still have resisted, but he was compelled by his countrymen to submit. Thus ended the second Punic war (B. C. 200), having continued about eighteen years.
By this war with the Romans, the Carthaginians lost most of their colonies, and became in a measure, a Roman province. Notwithstanding his late reverses, Hannibal entered the Carthaginian senate, and continued at the head of the state, reforming abuses that had crept into the management of the finances, and the administration of justice. But these judicious reformsprovoked the enmity of the factious nobles who had hitherto been permitted to fatten on public plunder; they joined with the old rivals of the Barcan family, of which Hannibal was now the acknowledged head, and even degraded themselves so far as to act as spies for the Romans, who still dreaded the abilities of the great general.
In consequence of their machinations, the old hero was forced to fly from the country he had so long labored to serve; and after several vicissitudes, died of poison, to escape the mean and malignant persecution of the Romans whose hatred followed him in his exile, and compelled the king of Bithynia to refuse him protection. The mound which marks his last resting-place is still a remarkable object.
Hannibal, like the rest of the Carthaginians, though not as black as the present African population, was nevertheless, colored; not differing in complexion from the ancient Ethiopians, and with curly hair. We have but little account of this wonderful man except from his enemies, the Romans, and nothing from them but his public career. Prejudiced as are these sources of evidence, they still exhibit him as one of the most extraordinary men that have ever lived.
Many of the events of his life remind us of the career of Napoleon. Like him, he crossed the Alps with a great army; like him, he was repeatedly victorious over disciplined and powerful forces in Italy; like him, he was finally overwhelmed in a great battle; like him, he was a statesman, as well as a general; like him, he was the idol of the army; like him, he was finally driven from his country, and died in exile.[12]Yet, no one of Napoleon’s achievements was equal to that of Hannibal in crossing the Alps, if we consider the difficulties he had to encounter; nor has anything in generalship surpassed the ability he displayed in sustaining himself and his army for sixteen years in Italy, in the face of Rome, and without asking for assistance from his own country.
We now pass to the destruction of Carthage, and the dispersion of its inhabitants. Fifty years had intervened since Hannibal with his victorious legions stood at the gates of Rome; the Carthaginian territory had been greatly reduced, the army had witnessed many changes, Hannibal and his generals were dead, and a Roman army under Scipio, flushed with victory and anxious for booty, were at the gates of Carthage.
For half a century the Carthaginians had faithfully kept all their humiliating treaties with the Romans; borne patiently the insults and arrogance of Masinissa, king of Numidia, whose impositions on Carthage were always upheld by the strong arm of Rome; at last, however, a serious difficulty arose between Carthage and Numidia, for the settlement of which the Roman senate dispatched commissioners to visit the contending parties and report.
Unfortunately for the Carthaginians, one of these commissioners was Cato the elder, who had long entertained a determined hatred to Carthage. Indeed, he had, for the preceding twenty years, scarcely ever made a speech without closing with,—“Delenda est Carthago.”—Carthage must be destroyed. Animated by this spirit, it can easily be imagined that Cato would give the weight of his influence against the Carthaginians in everything touching their interest.
While inspecting the great city, Cato was struck with its magnificence and remaining wealth, which strengthened him in the opinion that the ultimate success of Rome depended upon the destruction of Carthage; and he labored to bring about that result.
Scipio demanded that Carthage should deliver up all its materials of war as a token of submission, which demand was complied with; and the contents of their magazines, consisting of two hundred thousand complete suits of armor, two thousand catapults, and an immense number of spears, swords, bows and arrows. Having disarmed themselves, they waited to hear the final sentence. The next demand was for the delivery of the navy; this too was complied with. It was then announced that the city was to be razed to the ground, the inhabitants sent elsewhere for a residence, and that the Carthaginian name was to be blotted out. Just then the navy, the largest in the world, containing vessels of great strength and beauty, was set on fire, the flames of which lighted up with appalling effect the coast forty miles around.
The destruction of this fleet, the naval accumulation of five centuries, was a severe blow to the pride of the conquered Carthaginians, and taking courage from despair, they closed the gates of the city, and resolved that they would fight to the last.
As in all commonwealths, there were two political parties in Carthage, struggling for the ascendency; one, republican, devoted to the liberty of the people and the welfare of the State; the other, conservative in its character, and in favor of Roman rule. It was this last party that had disarmed the State at the bidding of the Roman invaders; and now that thepeople had risen, the conservatives who could, fled from the city, to escape the indignation of the masses.
Unarmed and surrounded by an army of one hundred thousand men, resistance seemed to be madness; yet they resisted with a heroism that surprised and won the esteem of their hard-hearted conquerors.
Everything was done to repair the damage already sustained by the surrender of their navy and munitions of war. The pavements of the streets were torn up, houses demolished, and statues broken to pieces to obtain stones for weapons, which were carried upon the ramparts for defence. Everybody that could work at a forge was employed in manufacturing swords, spear-heads, pikes, and such other weapons as could be made with the greatest facility and dispatch. They used all the iron and brass that could be obtained, then melted down vases, statues, and the precious metals, and tipped their spears with an inferior pointing of silver and gold.
When the supply of hemp and twine for cordage for their bows had failed, the young maidens cut off their hair, and twisted and braided it into cords to be used as bow-strings for propelling the arrows which their husbands and brothers made. Nothing in the history of war, either ancient or modern, will bear a comparison with this, the last struggle of the Carthaginians. The siege thus begun was carried on more than two years; the people, driven to the last limit of human endurance, had aroused themselves to a hopeless resistance in a sort of frenzy of despair, and fought with a courage and a desperation that compelled the Romans to send home for more troops.
Think of a walled city, thirty miles incircumference, with a population of seven hundred and fifty thousand souls, men, women, and children, living on limited fare, threatened with starvation, and surrounded by the sick, the dying, and the dead!
Even in this condition, so heroic were the Carthaginians, that they repulsed the Romans, sent fireships against the invaders’ fleet, burned their vessels, and would have destroyed the Roman army, had it not been for the skill of Scipio, who succeeded in covering the retreat of the Roman legions with a body of cavalry.
On the arrival of fresh troops from Rome, the siege was renewed; and after a war of three years, famine reduced the population to a little more than fifty thousand.
The overpowering army of Scipio finally succeeded in breaking through the gates, and gaining admission into the city; the opposing forces fought from street to street, the Carthaginians retreating as the Romans advanced. One band of the enemy’s soldiers mounted to the tops of the houses, the roofs of which were flat, and fought their way there, while another column moved around to cut off retreat to the citadel. No imagination can conceive the uproar and din of such an assault upon a populous city—a horrid mingling of the vociferated commands of the officers, and the shouts of the advancing and victorious enemy, with the screams of terror from affrighted women and children, and the dreadful groans and imprecations from men dying maddened with unsatisfied revenge, and biting the dust in agony of despair.[13]
The more determined of the soldiers withHasdrubal, the Carthaginian general at their head, together with many brave citizens of both sexes, and some Roman deserters, took possession of the citadel, which was in a strongly-fortified section of the city.
The Romans advanced to the walls of this fortification, and set that part of the city on fire that lay nearest to it; the fire burned for six days. When the fire had ceased burning near the citadel, the Roman troops were brought to the area thus left vacant by the flames, and the fight was renewed.
Seeing there was no hope of successfully resisting the enemy, Hasdrubal opened the gates, and surrendered to the Romans. There was, however, a temple in the citadel, capable of holding ten or fifteen thousand persons; in this, many of the brave men and women took refuge; among these were Hasdrubal’s wife and two children. The gates of the temple had scarcely been closed and securely barred, ere some one set the building on fire from within. Half-suffocated with the smoke, and scorched with the flames, these people were soon running to and fro with the wildest screams; many of whom reached the roof, and among them, Hasdrubal’s wife.
Looking down and seeing her husband standing amongst the Roman officers, she loaded him with reproaches for what she conceived to be his cowardice, stabbed her children, threw them into the flames, and leaped in herself. The city was given up to pillage, and set on fire. After burning for seventeen days, this great city, the model of beauty and magnificence, the repository of immense wealth, and one of the chief States of the ancient world, was no more. The destruction of Carthage, previously resolved upon incold blood, after fifty years of peace, and without any fresh provocation from the defenceless people, who had thrown themselves on the generosity of their rivals, was one of the most hard-hearted and brutal acts of Roman policy. The sequel of the history of Carthage presents a melancholy and affecting picture of the humiliation and decline of a proud and powerful State.
Meroe, the chief city, and fountain-head of the Ethiopians, was already fast declining, when Carthage fell, and from that time forward, the destiny of this people appeared to be downward. With the fall of Carthage, and the absorption of its territory by Rome, and its organization into a Roman province, the Carthaginian State ceased. Of the seven hundred and fifty thousand souls that Carthage contained at the time that the Romans laid siege to the city, only fifty thousand remained alive at its fall. The majority of these, hating Roman rule, bent their way towards the interior of Africa, following the thousands of their countrymen who had gone before.
After Carthage had been destroyed, the Romans did everything in their power to obliterate every vestige of the history of that celebrated people. No relics are to be seen of the grandeur and magnificence of ancient Carthage, except some ruins of aqueducts and cisterns.
In the language of Tasso:—